The Elder Scrolls Online "Dupe Bug" Takes Guild Banks Offline - Update

[Remus]

So they went right to the banning-stage of fixing issues. Yeah i cant see this backfiring at all. /sarcasm

Just fix the exploit, look for the people who have too much gold, reduce the gold by 90%, take away any duped items and call it a day. Outright banning people does not help you, in fact you should ignore this because it means people will abuse and break the game in any effort to get ahead, which helps you with finding shit like this.

If you ban them, that means any exploit found will be kept strictly confidential, nobody will be told how to do it or what it is. It wont be reported and the few who find it can profit. Banning offenders isnt the solution you're looking for.

So let people break the game, so you can catch them doing it, but do nothing to punish those that do it. Yea that won't break the game at all, billions of duped gold in circulation, rulebreakers constantly looking for more inventive ways of disrupting the game without recourse....yea, no thanks.

Its already been pointed out by others, but i will do it again anyway for the sake of it.

If you find a glitch in the game that lets you do something you shouldnt, and the developer finds out, either via bug report or because the method used has become so widespread and known that it is impossible to ignore, then all punishment that is needed is to remove all the items that they aquired due to said glitch.

For example if you find this one monster, that on being killed drops 2 very rare items and 1000 gold, per kill, garantueed. Then what should be done is to fix the problem with the monster and then check in the database for who hung around that area alot and is suddenly very rich, then simply take away the ill-gotten gains of exploiting the glitch for personal gain. Just banning people does not help anyone, neither the gamers, the offenders, the community in general or even the developer. Lets assume i find a glitch, abuse it a couple times to make sure that it is there and then report it, should i now be banned for "doing it a couple times"? If your answer is yes, then i will not re-purchase the game, i will not continue to give them money and i will tell anyone i know to stay the hell away from the game.

I should not have to tell you what the result is of such a thing happening not just to one person, but several hundreds if not thousands. Imagine at least every third player abused this glitch for a while, now imagine the playerbase, for easier math is 300.000 Players. You now have to ban 100.000 Players. Thats 100.000 Players who will not pay a subscription anymore. Chances are thats 100.000 Players who wont bother with your products in the future.

So no the punishment should fit the crime, if the bug is there, is known and it takes them until now to fix it? Then at best what they could do is take away any items or wealth gained from exploiting it. Outright banning them though doesnt help because chances are, if you plug that hole, a bunch of them would try to find the next one. Your argument is essentially "so there is people doing QA and bug-testing for free, lets get rid of them for breaking the game and finding the bugs".

I shouldn't have to point this out, but I never said permaban for players who duped items by accident. They aren't the violators. What I do support is punishing the players who knowingly duplicated items repeatedly in order to make insane amounts of gold. This is punishment case by case, and is easily trackable. Suspensions for players who maybe made 10000 gold by duping, bans for players who made millions. Simple, right? Punishment that fits the crime is far better than no punishment at all.

 

[Eri]

The whole situation is a shitshow. Can't say I'm surprised. So many didn't even want this game to be made but they insisted. Oh well.

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Ah, another MMO with economy-breaking or levelling-breaking bugs in the release build, and once again they solve it with the ban hammer.

Nope, don't bother learning anything from the past 10 years of MMOs...

 

[A-D.]

I shouldn't have to point this out, but I never said permaban for players who duped items by accident. They aren't the violators. What I do support is punishing the players who knowingly duplicated items repeatedly in order to make insane amounts of gold. This is punishment case by case, and is easily trackable. Suspensions for players who maybe made 10000 gold by duping, bans for players who made millions. Simple, right? Punishment that fits the crime is far better than no punishment at all.

Accidental or not is irrelevant at the end of the day. Consider that any millions of gold they make can easily be taken away, so once the exploit is fixed, and its been known and reported since Beta, you just remove all the ill-gotten gains they got from said exploit. The thing is that is a smarter method than outright banning people who abuse, no matter whether you do it once, twice or a hundred times. Each player you need to ban is a player who is not going to give you money, is another player who is ultimately lost because chances are they will not buy another copy to play again.

You are advocating that Zenimax ban everyone who exploits en-masse, rather than just fixing the issue and then removing all the stuff they gained via the exploit. How is that "fitting the crime"? If thats a crime worthy of permaban, what happens once people come up with Bots? Goldsellers? Actual cheats and hacks? Real-life Death Penalty? Just take away whatever they got from exploiting and call it a day. Draconian Punishments for the smallest of crimes, especially one which was reported DURING Beta and hadnt been fixed is not going to help the community or Zenimax, because at worst, they lose players, even those who never exploited on the off-chance that if they run into a bug, thinking its legitimate because "its still there", they get banned permanently.

Why suspend? Why ban? Just take away the gold they exploited.

 

[TechNoFear]

No game needs idiots that think creating multiple copies of items in their inventory is acceptable play.

Perma ban anyone who claims 'it was a code bug, so it is not cheating' as they are not mature enough to play with others yet.

If they have the resources they should move all the cheaters to one server, where they can only play against other cheaters (and so experience why cheating reduces the enjoyment of the majority of players).

If thats a crime worthy of permaban, what happens once people come up with Bots? Goldsellers? Actual cheats and hacks? Real-life Death Penalty?

Ahh, invoking a 'slippery slope' logical fallacy.

Ban all cheaters, does not matter if they used a 3rd party app or took advantage of a code bug, the cheaters knew what they were doing was cheating (and if they didn't then a ban is required to teach them the error in their behavior).

The game does not need cheaters, they just annoy your honest customers and cause them to leave (and honest players provide your main revenue stream).

 

[A-D.]

If thats a crime worthy of permaban, what happens once people come up with Bots? Goldsellers? Actual cheats and hacks? Real-life Death Penalty?

Ahh, invoking a 'slippery slope' logical fallacy.

Ban all cheaters, does not matter if they used a 3rd party app or took advantage of a code bug, the cheaters knew what they were doing was cheating (and if they didn't then a ban is required to teach them the error in their behavior).

The game does not need cheaters, they just annoy your honest customers and cause them to leave (and honest players provide your main revenue stream).

So my pointing out the fallacy means i fell for the same fallacy? How would that make any sense?

But yes, clearly all cheating is the same, therefore it should all be punished the same way. And before long, nobody will be left to play the game. Thats whats going to happen, the whole idea is to essentially get an advantage over everybody else, even if said advantage is temporary, say your level, until you hit the cap, gear, stats, playstyle, experience and so forth. Exploiting is kind of part of that in the sense that you would try everything to get said advantage. Now if it is found, as the Developer you close the loophole and then remove everything people have unlawfully gained from doing this. Whats banning going to solve? So you'd rather be rid of a sizeable amount of people rather than just the gold they have? Just the items they may have duplicated? You'd rather play on a empty server than one where even one person has exploited his way to riches?

But yes, clearly exploiters dont even pay. They never bought the game, they dont pay for it every month, nope, only legit users do this. How is your money somehow worth more when its the exact same amount? Do you pay 1 Dollar more because you are so legit and honest and would never exploit something for your personal benefit? No you arent, and i sincerely doubt you would not abuse any kind of loophole to get even the tiniest advantage. You may not have done this specific exploit, but chances are, if you were to stumble over one and didnt know it was never intended and then found yourself banned for this, your tune would change.

But yes, ban all the exploiters, cheaters and other "un-legit" players, lets get rid of as many people as we can so it goes free earlier..or shuts down altogether. You have no sense of business, do you?

 

[TechNoFear]

So my pointing out the fallacy means i fell for the same fallacy? How would that make any sense?

Your failure in logic is that using a 3rd party app is worse, and so requires a harsher penalty.

Why?

But yes, clearly all cheating is the same, therefore it should all be punished the same way.

Now a 'strawman' logical fallacy; I did not say ALL cheating was the same.

And before long, nobody will be left to play the game.

Except the people who do not cheat...

How is your money somehow worth more when its the exact same amount?

Because non cheaters do not cause other players to leave, costing the game revenue.

No you arent, and i sincerely doubt you would not abuse any kind of loophole to get even the tiniest advantage.

Now a 'tu quoquo' logical fallacy...

if you were to stumble over one and didnt know it was never intended and then found yourself banned for this, your tune would change.

I have played online games from when they used SPX:IPX over dial-up modems in the 1990s.

I have stumbled on exploits in many games in that 20 years and have never been banned in any game.

You have no sense of business, do you?

Now an 'ad hominem' attack....

 

[Remus]

If thats a crime worthy of permaban, what happens once people come up with Bots? Goldsellers? Actual cheats and hacks? Real-life Death Penalty?

Ahh, invoking a 'slippery slope' logical fallacy.

Ban all cheaters, does not matter if they used a 3rd party app or took advantage of a code bug, the cheaters knew what they were doing was cheating (and if they didn't then a ban is required to teach them the error in their behavior).

The game does not need cheaters, they just annoy your honest customers and cause them to leave (and honest players provide your main revenue stream).

So my pointing out the fallacy means i fell for the same fallacy? How would that make any sense?

But yes, clearly all cheating is the same, therefore it should all be punished the same way. And before long, nobody will be left to play the game. Thats whats going to happen, the whole idea is to essentially get an advantage over everybody else, even if said advantage is temporary, say your level, until you hit the cap, gear, stats, playstyle, experience and so forth. Exploiting is kind of part of that in the sense that you would try everything to get said advantage. Now if it is found, as the Developer you close the loophole and then remove everything people have unlawfully gained from doing this. Whats banning going to solve? So you'd rather be rid of a sizeable amount of people rather than just the gold they have? Just the items they may have duplicated? You'd rather play on a empty server than one where even one person has exploited his way to riches?

But yes, clearly exploiters dont even pay. They never bought the game, they dont pay for it every month, nope, only legit users do this. How is your money somehow worth more when its the exact same amount? Do you pay 1 Dollar more because you are so legit and honest and would never exploit something for your personal benefit? No you arent, and i sincerely doubt you would not abuse any kind of loophole to get even the tiniest advantage. You may not have done this specific exploit, but chances are, if you were to stumble over one and didnt know it was never intended and then found yourself banned for this, your tune would change.

But yes, ban all the exploiters, cheaters and other "un-legit" players, lets get rid of as many people as we can so it goes free earlier..or shuts down altogether. You have no sense of business, do you?

What you're alluding to is simply nonsensical. Pushing a conclusion to some illogical extreme does not make it any more true. All cheating is not the same. I pointed that out in my last post. However rules do need to be enforced. This is true of any product. If you use the product incorrectly there are consequences. The more frequent the misuse, the more extreme the consequences. That's life. A dupe bug is not a loophole. It is not a strategem. It is not a special damage rotation. This is not the same thing as, say, stunlocking a major boss so they cannot attack. This is exploiting a bug in a game for gains well beyond what can be remotely considered normal for regular gameplay and you think there should be no repercussions for that. This is not Shadowbane, sorry it's not. And yes, honest players make for an overall better gaming experience to those around them than players who cheat. We all spend the same amount of money but honesty is more conducive for player retention than is cheating. An honest player-run economy is more likely to have that minor upgrade, that last green set piece for new players, at a cost they can afford and not at some ridiculous amount that is the result of a bug that increased the flow of in-game currency. Abuse of bugs like this don't make people richer. They just make the gold worth less because there's so much of it. And no, if I found this bug myself, I would not exploit it for my own gain. I keep what I kill, I don't play the markets or the "lets try and break the game to gain a teensy advantage" game. I find a bug, I report a bug so it may be squashed immediately.

 

[Korskarn]

If thats a crime worthy of permaban, what happens once people come up with Bots? Goldsellers? Actual cheats and hacks? Real-life Death Penalty?

Ahh, invoking a 'slippery slope' logical fallacy.

Ban all cheaters, does not matter if they used a 3rd party app or took advantage of a code bug, the cheaters knew what they were doing was cheating (and if they didn't then a ban is required to teach them the error in their behavior).

The game does not need cheaters, they just annoy your honest customers and cause them to leave (and honest players provide your main revenue stream).

So my pointing out the fallacy means i fell for the same fallacy? How would that make any sense?

But yes, clearly all cheating is the same, therefore it should all be punished the same way. And before long, nobody will be left to play the game. Thats whats going to happen, the whole idea is to essentially get an advantage over everybody else, even if said advantage is temporary, say your level, until you hit the cap, gear, stats, playstyle, experience and so forth. Exploiting is kind of part of that in the sense that you would try everything to get said advantage. Now if it is found, as the Developer you close the loophole and then remove everything people have unlawfully gained from doing this. Whats banning going to solve? So you'd rather be rid of a sizeable amount of people rather than just the gold they have? Just the items they may have duplicated? You'd rather play on a empty server than one where even one person has exploited his way to riches?

But yes, clearly exploiters dont even pay. They never bought the game, they dont pay for it every month, nope, only legit users do this. How is your money somehow worth more when its the exact same amount? Do you pay 1 Dollar more because you are so legit and honest and would never exploit something for your personal benefit? No you arent, and i sincerely doubt you would not abuse any kind of loophole to get even the tiniest advantage. You may not have done this specific exploit, but chances are, if you were to stumble over one and didnt know it was never intended and then found yourself banned for this, your tune would change.

But yes, ban all the exploiters, cheaters and other "un-legit" players, lets get rid of as many people as we can so it goes free earlier..or shuts down altogether. You have no sense of business, do you?

Look at the history of MMOs. Pretty much every single MMO that had a dupe bug has doled out bans - WoW, Everquest, Guild Wars... even EvE, the supposed haven of "anything goes". WoW has booted top guilds achieving World First Raids due to exploiting bugs.

The short answer to your "but it's the designer's fault if it's in the code (and anyway, it's not like it's that bad...)" is:

No.

The long answer is:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

 

[A-D.]

Snip for brevity

Trying to gain some intellectual high ground by referring to fallacies doesnt really work well in your favour. If the only option to "win" the argument is to consider everything said a fallacy, then we may as well not even debate about any topic ever and never speak in general and i am not referring to this topic specifically, im talking generally.

You have so far refused to actually give counter-arguments to what i said, or even tried to explain why your point is the correct one, other than "Im this old therefore my Opinion is fact." and im basing this one your comment about how long you've been around the Internet.

What you're alluding to is simply nonsensical. Pushing a conclusion to some illogical extreme does not make it any more true. All cheating is not the same. I pointed that out in my last post. However rules do need to be enforced. This is true of any product. If you use the product incorrectly there are consequences. The more frequent the misuse, the more extreme the consequences. That's life. A dupe bug is not a loophole. It is not a strategem. It is not a special damage rotation. This is not the same thing as, say, stunlocking a major boss so they cannot attack. This is exploiting a bug in a game for gains well beyond what can be remotely considered normal for regular gameplay and you think there should be no repercussions for that. This is not Shadowbane, sorry it's not. And yes, honest players make for an overall better gaming experience to those around them than players who cheat. We all spend the same amount of money but honesty is more conducive for player retention than is cheating. An honest player-run economy is more likely to have that minor upgrade, that last green set piece for new players, at a cost they can afford and not at some ridiculous amount that is the result of a bug that increased the flow of in-game currency. Abuse of bugs like this don't make people richer. They just make the gold worth less because there's so much of it. And no, if I found this bug myself, I would not exploit it for my own gain. I keep what I kill, I don't play the markets or the "lets try and break the game to gain a teensy advantage" game. I find a bug, I report a bug so it may be squashed immediately.

Which was my point to begin with, we are merely arguing over the extent of said consequences. The logical thought is that Zenimax wants to make money, via subscriptions and a large playerbase, if you get rid of some of them for the slightest rule-breaking, and we can argue where the line is drawn for eternity, then they are cutting down said playerbase little by little.

The bug should be fixed and any advantages gotten from abusing it should be removed, thats entirely the first order of business. You could even argue for a short suspension as a "slap on the wrist" type of punishment. The problem is you can not and should not expect people to always be the most upstanding and honest individuals, especially if it concerns a bug which Zenimax knew about during Beta, given that it was reported.

Your argument is that, you find a bug, report it and hope it gets removed, now what if that takes a while? Do you expect Zenimax to show leniency to anyone who also finds it until that time, provided they report it? What if they dont given you already did? Should they now all suffer the consequences for not reporting it after they have done it at least once?

So at the end of the day, permanent bans is not the right way to go about this. Punishment for breaking the rules, yes of course, but overreaching and punishing everyone as harshly as possible does not send the right message. Just get rid of all the duped items and gold, give out a few day suspensions to the worst offenders and then, if these same people break the rules again, then we can argue over what punishment is required.

Look at the history of MMOs. Pretty much every single MMO that had a dupe bug has doled out bans - WoW, Everquest, Guild Wars... even EvE, the supposed haven of "anything goes". WoW has booted top guilds achieving World First Raids due to exploiting bugs.

The short answer to your "but it's the designer's fault if it's in the code (and anyway, it's not like it's that bad...)" is:

No.

The long answer is:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I've played most MMOs, and i can tell you some really funny stories of Bans that happened in GW that you wouldnt believe. I also never said its not bad, or its the developers fault. Im saying that they have known, it was reported and it wasnt fixed in a quick manner given how detrimental of a loophole it is. Outright banning everyone now for abusing it is utterly silly, but they should fix said loophole and then remove all the gold people gained by exploiting it.

If you apply the banhammer to the slightest offense against the rules, eventually, very soon, you wont really have much of a playerbase left and especially this early in its life, you might want to keep as many as you can.

 

[Zagzag]

and how Bethesda will address the economic damage already done remains unclear.

I really wish that the media didn't further confuse people about who is and isn't responsible for this game with misleading statements like this. Bethesda have absolutely nothing to do with this game.

Actually they're essentially the same. Both work in the same building run by the same company. It's more akin to Dues EX:HR and Thief. Different dev teams, same company.

Still, it's not Bethesda who made the game.

The main reason it's an issue is the sheer amount of misinformation on the internet, and the number of people who think that the team behind Skyrim made ESO, or that it's made on the same engine, etc etc, when none of those things are true. Attributing this game to Bethesda is only going to increase that.

 

[wooty]

Hmm, if it were me running the show, I'd just ban the ones who took part this mass duping. Then maybe make some minor adjustments to the costs of things. (I really have no idea how this stuff works, but thats what I'd do if its possible.)

Off topic: Its too bad you can't dupe a load of items and then use the gold to buy something to do. ESO feels like the most hollow game I've played in a while. I'm just thankful that a friend of mine lets me use his account to try it out.

 

[shintakie10]

Permabans so soon after launch for a bug that was reported multiple times during beta and was supposedly piss easy to do seems...harsh.

I'm always down for banning cheaters. They ruin the game for legit players all the time, but man. Its not a good look for your not even a month old game to have to whip out the banhammer on a large scale already.

 

[faefrost]

This game feels like it was made in 2004. They are working on 10 year old logic and, if the visuals are anything to go by, 10 year old game systems. I look forward to 12 months from now when it is free to play.

That's been my takeaway of the whole game. It feels like it was created by a very good but totally inexperienced team, with no real reference to all that has been learned and evolved in the genre since around DAOC. The game has problems that others solved 10-15 years ago.

 

[faefrost]

Bah! Double post

 

[VoidWanderer]

I find the 'punish those who used the exploit' comment amusing. This is a bug that was apparently discovered by accident, and they probably would've 'tested' the bug to make sure it wasn't a glitch, would they get banned too? They technically did use it.

I say, fix the bug and leave things alone.

 

[faefrost]

One other take away from this is Zenimax and TESO apparently did not build in a more modern set of monitoring tools and feedback loops to prevent this sort of thing. (Once again pointing to developers very skilled at RPG's with no background in online games and player management in such.) modern MMO's have careful back end monitors. They know how much gold or items of certain quality are supposed to enter the game world over time. They carefully track this rate and sound alarms the minute thresholds are exceeded. Heck DAOC used such systems to detect and neutralize such an exploit the day after their much beloved Darkness Falls dungeon was patched in. With TESO this has obviously been in game and been active since the last several weeks of Beta testing. So it's been in play for several weeks of live game. That's a pretty good hint that managements monitoring tools are minimal and not up to task.

 

[Pinky's Brain]

An item transfer should never create new items to begin with ... item transfer code should only ever creates new references, but not new items. That way no matter how much you screw up the transfer code it will never dupe, just create duplicate references which will show up in some sanity check code fast enough.

Memory is dirt cheap, lets say a player has 100 stacks of 100 items in his inventory ... so that's 80 kB extra data per player as compared to just maintaining an item ID and a stack size, lets say you have 10000 players ... that's still less than 1 GB of data, 1 GB of memory to solve one of the most common and destructive bugs in multiplayer games with inventories and economies.

 

[TechNoFear]

Trying to gain some intellectual high ground by referring to fallacies doesnt really work well in your favour.

It articulates why your position is untenable and logically inconsistent.

I note you do not actually rebut any of my points, nor answer any of my questions, you only continue the 'tu quoquo' attack.

If the only option to "win" the argument is to consider everything said a fallacy, then we may as well not even debate about any topic ever and never speak in general and i am not referring to this topic specifically, im talking generally.

Another 'slippery slope' logical fallacy....

In general; your argument must be consistent, as well as being able to stand up to logical scrutiny.

I was demonstrating that your argument does not withstand even the briefest logical scrutiny.

BTW the counter argument for both 'slippery slope' and 'strawman' arguments is to simply expose them, as they are not worth rebutting.

Your entire argument assumes that the company can 100% identify the duped items AND the player who duped the item AND what benefit the cheater gained from the duped item (ie gold).

If this is not possible your solution will not work.

Your solution also ignores that the duped item may have provided other benefits (XP, PvP rewards / rankings, etc) that will not be lost once the duped item is removed.

This means that the cheater will still profit from the duping and so will have not be motivated to stop exploiting in the future.

 

[TechNoFear]

One other take away from this is Zenimax and TESO apparently did not build in a more modern set of monitoring tools and feedback loops to prevent this sort of thing.



With TESO this has obviously been in game and been active since the last several weeks of Beta testing. So it's been in play for several weeks of live game. That's a pretty good hint that managements monitoring tools are minimal and not up to task.

I agree, to some extent. I am not a fan of security through obscurity.

However I know how hard it can be to find a bug, especially in multi-threaded, real-time systems.

I have spent 3 months on a small code base (250,000 lines) trying to find a bug (ESO would be in the millions, if not 10's of millions of lines).

In the end I moved 2 lines (not changing a single character) and the bug was fixed.