Ban policy for cheaters & exploiters

[Trouble]

Hoarding dungeon keys will not attract a ban. What it does is render those keys nearly useless. We'll probably use other keys for new dungeons, keys that cannot be exploited anymore. We said in the past: hoarding them won't be useful.

Perma-stunning a boss: not exactly an exploit. It's a particular strategy to defeat that boss, we don't think that offers you such an unfair advantage. You still need to inflict the damage, etc.

Farming gemstones on Magroth (Broken Mountain). Yes, it was a more efficient method to farm gemstones. Not a ban-worthy offense.

Transferring items to your event hero from outside the event = ban. You know it's not fair and you know it's an exploit.

We are reasonable. We know people might stumble upon an exploit by mistake, and we'll take that into consideration. But there's a huge difference between using an exploit once by mistake and using it one hundred times intentionally.

Thank you for the clarification, and for taking a no-BS "you know what you did" stance.

As for my part... FINE. I will discontinue my daily practice of running HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC auto-attack DPS tests in the Gauntlet. Since I cannot find a way to delete them, I have moved my stockpile of 250 keys to the toon earmarked for deletion (to make room for my ANB3 hero). I'm not sure how you expect me to run Gorgona hundreds of times to get new set/named stuff on day 1 of the next patch now, BUT I'M SURE I'LL SURVIVE.

<3

[Adrian (Developer)]

Hoarding dungeon keys will not attract a ban. What it does is render those keys nearly useless. We'll probably use other keys for new dungeons, keys that cannot be exploited anymore. We said in the past: hoarding them won't be useful.

Perma-stunning a boss: not exactly an exploit. It's a particular strategy to defeat that boss, we don't think that offers you such an unfair advantage. You still need to inflict the damage, etc.

Farming gemstones on Magroth (Broken Mountain). Yes, it was a more efficient method to farm gemstones. Not a ban-worthy offense.

Transferring items to your event hero from outside the event = ban. You know it's not fair and you know it's an exploit.

We are reasonable. We know people might stumble upon an exploit by mistake, and we'll take that into consideration. But there's a huge difference between using an exploit once by mistake and using it one hundred times intentionally.

[Cultusfit]

It was me who pm'ed Cultusfit about checking it with the dev teams, this was in reference to Adrian's "you'll know it when you use it" point about "what is an exploit" - which was raised by BAgate as well. Was trying to not discuss potential exploits "publicly", but since it have been posted again here, I'll expand on my reasonings. (Travis/dev, please feel free to delete if it's not appropriate.)


I'm not so much concerned about existing things that have been discussed here, since as you said, banning people for it now would be very unfair indeed. It's more about things going forward from now, players will need to be much more careful with "taking advantage" of things that they discover in the game. Which will either result in a lot less experimentations, or a lot more emails to poor Travis along the line of: "I did A + B + C and got X, is this an exploit?"

Sorry felt I needed to confess if it was a problem
I'd rather not feel like I won, or placed (pfft like i'm going to place at ALL this time around sheesh) By cheesing anything.

Also I've Taught a lot of the new BH players both here in the forum and discord the tactic. If it was something they didnt want us to do. I needed to KNOW so I could stop broad casting it. And it is common enough needs to probably be specifically announced.

I think this time around they did take efforts to adjust this actually. I managed the stats to perform the thing in question early but, there are things that seem to be bit different now that limit it.
I have this feeling that the assault set, with some of the responses i've seen from travis and such, workes EXACTLY how they want. And I believe the ability to use abilities to LIMIT mobs attacks and specials was intended to be a part of the element used as it's defense for being so close and such.
I think PROBABLY they never meant for it to be quite as effective in some situations as it was though.
I still stand by the comment that If i am not supposed to attempt this that I be removed from boards though, with hopefully the dev's taking my confession and willingness to come forward on this to be enough to say that I shouldn't be BANNED for it.

As for talking about it...ugh. I've told so many people in so many post that it's one of those WAAYYY past that point for me things. Especially since it doesnt seem to really work the same any more.
But I edited my above post and was careful here to try to limit how much it is broad cast.

[Nhat]

Why would that be an exploit? The game allows you to stack AR to allow you to spam your spells; you are not bypassing/breaking any game mechanisms.
If the devs no longer want the bosses to be CC'd to the point that they currently are, they can increase their CC resistance or change the way it works.
They can't just take a strategy that's been used by everyone and discussed freely in the forum and call it an exploit and start banning people without warning.

It was me who pm'ed Cultusfit about checking it with the dev teams, this was in reference to Adrian's "you'll know it when you use it" point about "what is an exploit" - which was raised by BAgate as well. Was trying to not discuss potential exploits "publicly", but since it have been posted again here, I'll expand on my reasonings. (Travis/dev, please feel free to delete if it's not appropriate.)


To me, being able to lock up the boss to the point where it cannot attack back is, at best, a "cheese" and does provide the player with an advantage over others that do not know about it. The fact that is have been discussed freely doesn't make it any less of a "cheese".

Similarly to the Gemstone farming that people previously did at The Severed Mountain, which was subsequently patched since it was a bug/unintended behaviour - again, it was publicly discussed here, and again come back to the "you'll know it when you use it" phrasing. Given the story line, it's obvious that Magroth should not have been able to be killed at The Severed Mountain, you can tell by the dialogue, and the fact that he's there in The Siege of Anderhelm - so it was a bug that you can kill him for Gemstones farming, so doing so was "taking advantage of a bug"

And the mentioned Key issue - which we're not suppose to be talking about, and can be done unintentionally as well...


All the above are/were due to bugs in the game's mechanics, or lack of checkings/prevention, which then allows players to perform the action - again this go back to Adrian's warning:

Fair warning: exploiting a game bug to gain an unfair advantage will be considered cheating and will also attract a ban.

I'm not so much concerned about existing things that have been discussed here, since as you said, banning people for it now would be very unfair indeed. It's more about things going forward from now, players will need to be much more careful with "taking advantage" of things that they discover in the game. Which will either result in a lot less experimentations, or a lot more emails to poor Travis along the line of: "I did A + B + C and got X, is this an exploit?"

[Chosen]

I had someone point me here for talking about the BH permamuting bosses....

is this a no no now?

Why would that be an exploit? The game allows you to stack AR to allow you to spam your spells; you are not bypassing/breaking any game mechanisms.
If the devs no longer want the bosses to be CC'd to the point that they currently are, they can increase their CC resistance or change the way it works.
They can't just take a strategy that's been used by everyone and discussed freely in the forum and call it an exploit and start banning people without warning.

[Cultusfit]

I had someone point me here for talking about the BH for a common tactic used against bosses I brought up in another post.
is this a no no now?
If so. I just confess I have (attempted) used it this entire event as it's been the well known tactic of BH for some time.
As it takes a proper build, timing and the boss has methods to compensate I presumed it was still okay.
Also noticed this ANB there seems to be some adjustments that help prevent/limit this, which I presumed was mean for bringing some balance.

If this has become exploit status i don't want a ban for missing this, and would appreciate making fun not banning me but, understand if I need be removed from leader boards for sake of fairness
(And that I need to stop teaching this to new players! Oh crap!)

If appreciate bit insight as it is clearly a function of attacking certain abilities stats and timing. Not a actual hack, crack, cheat or flaw. Thanks!

Also if that was a change for balance it feels about right. Still useful but no complete lock down

[Purple Potato]

Love the sentiment, but hate the policy. 'We'll know it when we see it', really? Facing a potential ban for doing something allowed by the program and that we have no warning will result in a ban isn't very fair. Ex., what about the key exploit, will that result in a ban? Because I 'know that when I use it', which is entirely unintentional.

If you encounter an exploit, dont abuse it is what he is saying. Report it and never do it again. If you purposefully abuse an exploit, you will be banned.

[BAgate]

Love the sentiment, but hate the policy. 'We'll know it when we see it', really? Facing a potential ban for doing something allowed by the program and that we have no warning will result in a ban isn't very fair. Ex., what about the key exploit, will that result in a ban? Because I 'know that when I use it', which is entirely unintentional.

Absolutely love the offline part, don't have a lot of internet where I am currently located and I enjoy being able to play offline.

[Xusia]

well said, Adrian!

[Narcostic]

Sounds good to constantly ban them out of events as well.

God bless their souls. RIP.

[mealypudding]

I was wondering how on day 2 people hav 2000cl. I love the offline function for travelling.

[Purple Potato]

Fair warning: exploiting a game bug to gain an unfair advantage will be considered cheating and will also attract a ban. Exploiters can point out that developers are to blame. True, we are to blame. Also true exploiters are ruining the experience of other players by abusing bugs.

+1 and thank you for this post!

[Adrian (Developer)]

Let’s have a discussion about cheating or abusing exploits.


Unlike many other games, Eternium has an awesome feature, you can play the game offline. It also makes total sense, since we don’t have multiplayer. Unfortunately this feature has a big drawback - it allows some players to use third party apps and modify their profiles gaining an unfair advantage.


Not a big issue if the game would lack any competitive aspect, if you want to ruin your experience, sure, go for it. But that’s not the case since we do have competitive events and leaderboards, and cheaters are ruining the experience of other players.


One solution is to increase the game client security, use more sophisticated methods to encrypt sensible data, and add more cheating detection methods. This will just delay the hackers(1) a bit because in practice is impossible to perfectly secure code/data if the hacker has access to it. And Eternium hackers are pretty, pretty good. Hats off to them (black hats).


The correct solution would be to move all critical game logic server side and require users a permanent internet connection to play the game. The solution adopted by pretty much every other game. We don’t like this solution because it costs development time, time we prefer to invest in further developing the game. And we also love the ability to play the game offline. Maybe we’ll do this when we have multiplayer, it would make much more sense then.


What we can do instead is a adopting a simple policy: constantly ban cheaters & exploiters.

As you noticed during past competitive events, we do have means to detect and ban cheaters.

From now on we are going to do this outside competitive events, on a weekly/monthly basis.


Fair warning: exploiting a game bug to gain an unfair advantage will be considered cheating and will also attract a ban. Exploiters can point out that developers are to blame. True, we are to blame. Also true exploiters are ruining the experience of other players by abusing bugs.

What constitutes an exploit? As the saying goes: you’ll know it when you’ll use it.


Our due apologies for not adopting this policy earlier.



Footnotes:

(1) Hacker, not to be confused with cheater or cracker, is usually a skilled programmer able to reverse engineer the application code or encryption methods. They provide the third party tools used by cheaters.