BioWare Fixes Serious Old Republic PvP Exploit

[WMDogma]

BioWare Fixes Serious Old Republic PvP Exploit

BioWare fixes an issue allowing players to overwhelmingly camp their opponents in an open-area PvP zone.

In a rough few days after concerns about Star Wars: The Old Republic's viability caused major PvP glitch [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/115365-EA-Share-Price-Slides-Over-Old-Republic-Concerns] in one of the game's open PvP zones. Caused by the game's first major update earlier this week, the glitch allowed Imperial players to rack up massive amounts of kills against their Republic foes by camping their spawn points and engaging them at point blank range.

To correct the issue, players are now no longer allowed to enter opposing faction's bases, and if players dig through the patch notes, [http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes] they'll also notice there are also indestructible turrets guarding each base to further discourage players from camping. Additionally, BioWare lowered the population cap for the zone to help improve SWTOR's performance, limiting the amount of players who can be in the area at any given time.

Currently there's no plan to "rollback" any of the rewards earned through abusing the glitch, but community manager Joveth Gonzalez did state that BioWare knows which players took "extreme advantage" of the situation and is looking into taking appropriate action.

Source: Eurogamer [http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=1822494#post1822494]


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[Qitz]

Surprised they didn't roll back the people who got gear via an exploit but then I guess a ban can be a type of rolling back.

Still won't stop the explosion of hate on the forums. Makes you wonder why MMO companies even bother with those.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Grind honestly my MMO cousins, grind honestly.

 

[scotth266]

In before those who abused the system complain that they received punishment for their actions.

It's in the game, I should TOTALLY be allowed to take advantage of it! Uh, no. There's a reason that they call this sort of thing an exploit, and it's fairly obvious that this was not something you're supposed to do.

 

[Nimcha]

I don't know about not being able to enter enemy bases and indestructible turrets, but the population cap is definitely a good idea. It was the ridiculous faction imbalance on Ilum that led to that exploit in first place. Should just have addressed that.

It's actually a problem everywhere, Empire outnumbers Republic on pretty much every server. And on most by some margin.

I don't really know what Bioware can do to fix this apart from server tranfers or something?You can hardly ban people from making an Empire character...

 

[DaxStrife]

To correct the issue, players are now no longer allowed to enter opposing faction's bases, and if players dig through the patch notes, [http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes] they'll also notice there are also indestructible turrets guarding each base to further discourage players from camping. Additionally, BioWare lowered the population cap for the zone to help improve SWTOR's performance, limiting the amount of players who can be in the area at any given time.

So Bioware's solution was to use a technique that was implemented in "City of Heroes" back in 2005?

 

[Starke]

I don't know about not being able to enter enemy bases and indestructible turrets, but the population cap is definitely a good idea. It was the ridiculous faction imbalance on Ilum that led to that exploit in first place. Should just have addressed that.

Hillariously the new population cap just means the same imbalance occurs, but with fewer players total.

Rather than, say, limiting the zone to the first 50 Republic and first 50 Empire players, it simply caps at the first 100 players resulting the exact same imbalance as before, only on a smaller scale.

 

[Starke]

I don't know about not being able to enter enemy bases and indestructible turrets, but the population cap is definitely a good idea. It was the ridiculous faction imbalance on Ilum that led to that exploit in first place. Should just have addressed that.

It's actually a problem everywhere, Empire outnumbers Republic on pretty much every server. And on most by some margin.

I don't really know what Bioware can do to fix this apart from server tranfers or something?You can hardly ban people from making an Empire character...

You could configure it so that zones are segregated via faction, so if an instance has a population cap of 400, you're limited to 200 empire and 200 republic, if there aren't any more slots for your faction you're kicked into the next instance, where it will be ONLY empire until the republic population catches up. This should sabotage the imbalance so far as PvP is concerned at least...

 

[nightwolf667]

So they won't roll it back but will ban you for it anyway?

Brilliant management!

I fail to see how this actually fixes the underlying problem of faction imbalance though.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

And more bans are on their way, if that last line is anything to go by.

 

[LastDarkness]

I have no idea how this is even happening. Bioware has looked at and investigated other mmos, what worked and what didnt and what kind of projections you can make from the data. Bioware even has Mythic merged into them that are experinced MMO developers (Dark Age of Camelot and Warhammer Online)who have first hand experince with players abusing your system and large scale open world pvp.

Yet this still happens?
Now I know all of Bioware is not to blame but there is some serius droping the ball from certain parts of their team.

Personaly I find it very unprofessional that your Support/Moderators often appear to be insane (read their messages) and never read the threads they Close/delete or manage. A community manager who does their best to avoid talking to the community. On teh forums we are getting more replys and information from actual team leads then the community managers/support.

Wtf are you guys doing?

 

[FoolKiller]

In before those who abused the system complain that they received punishment for their actions.

It's in the game, I should TOTALLY be allowed to take advantage of it! Uh, no. There's a reason that they call this sort of thing an exploit, and it's fairly obvious that this was not something you're supposed to do.

Actually there should be no punishment. Once again, punishing people for acting like people because Bioware made another mistake programming is just plain dumb.

This leads back to when Jim Sterling talked about developers telling him that when he reviewed their game and didn't do so favourably he wasn't "playing the game properly".

It isn't quite the same context, but the sentiment still stands. People will do what they find the most successful in a game. If they aren't explicitly cheating by altering the game or the connection, then it should be allowed to stand. I agree that it should be fixed but I absolutely am appalled that the players who find the most efficient way of playing the game within the game's world and rules can be punished.

Are they douchebags for taking advantage of that sort of camping? Yes.
Are they cheating? No.

The concept of camping spawn-points has been in existence for more than a decade in shooters. Developers have learned to cope with it and design games better (or fail with the multiplayer audience) to stop spawn campers from winning this way. The onus should fall squarely on the developer's shoulders to make a game balanced. It is a gamer's goal and right to figure out how best to go about winning at the game.

 

[NightHawk21]

I don't play the game, but I don't think they should be punished for it. Players being clever is not something to punish them for, especially if you didn't catch it yourself. Shit in games I played there were stuff like this too where you could agro stuff continuously to move it far away from its camp or to phase through locked doors to get more loot than you could normally. If the developer doesn't catch it they can't complain when it gets abused IMO. Mind you this only goes for in game exploits, soon as you start using a third party system to give you an edge you get no sympathy from me.

 

[sifffffff]

I hope the cheating d-bags get the banhammer.

 

[beniki]

I don't know about not being able to enter enemy bases and indestructible turrets, but the population cap is definitely a good idea. It was the ridiculous faction imbalance on Ilum that led to that exploit in first place. Should just have addressed that.

It's actually a problem everywhere, Empire outnumbers Republic on pretty much every server. And on most by some margin.

I don't really know what Bioware can do to fix this apart from server tranfers or something?You can hardly ban people from making an Empire character...

I think I blame the voice acting for that. I love the Sith Warrior, the Imp Agent and the Bounty Hunter... they actually sound like space movie heroes, er, villains.

But the Jedi males... well, the Consular sounds nerdy. Perhaps that's supposed to be the character, but no nerd want to role play a space nerd. And the Knight more often than not sounds like a petulant teenager. Disappointing since it's the same voice actor as solid snake.

Haven't tried all the classes yet, but that's just my suspicion for the imbalance.

 

[ShadowKatt]

I don't know about not being able to enter enemy bases and indestructible turrets, but the population cap is definitely a good idea. It was the ridiculous faction imbalance on Ilum that led to that exploit in first place. Should just have addressed that.

It's actually a problem everywhere, Empire outnumbers Republic on pretty much every server. And on most by some margin.

I don't really know what Bioware can do to fix this apart from server tranfers or something?You can hardly ban people from making an Empire character...

I think I blame the voice acting for that. I love the Sith Warrior, the Imp Agent and the Bounty Hunter... they actually sound like space movie heroes, er, villains.

But the Jedi males... well, the Consular sounds nerdy. Perhaps that's supposed to be the character, but no nerd want to role play a space nerd. And the Knight more often than not sounds like a petulant teenager. Disappointing since it's the same voice actor as solid snake.

Haven't tried all the classes yet, but that's just my suspicion for the imbalance.

I have a better explaination. People don't like to be hardcore goody goody two shoes who have to play by the rules and never have any fun. The whole ideal of the sith is that you do what YOU want, so it has a natural appeal. Then there's the imbalance itself. SOme people play the empire because they want to be a sith or bounty hunter. Others just want to be on the winning side. The former creates the imbalance, the latter simply skews it further.

 

[Vrach]

This problem is entirely Bioware's fault, complaining that people took advantage of it is like complaining that a school of piranha ate a chunk of meat you threw into the river.

Or it's like getting sued for throwing someone off the train because the train totally made the windows so that they can be opened and didn't put a "don't throw people off the train" sign next to every window.

As to your "can't do rollbacks" comment, that's just bullshit, they've done rollbacks already for another matter.