Thoughts on the last exploit update / patch

That's fine if you don't agree. It wasn't a particularly strong point, but it has it's merits. For example, the exploiter population is probably in the hundreds at best, maybe 2000 players tops. The entire player base is much larger, 30k-80k players? It's a hypothetical guess, but that's awfully a lot of tokens to be handing out. The Guild Token system primarily rewards perks, it safe to say it's 60-70% Perks and the rest are other items(which includes gear/weapons/parts). 42K would at least turn the Raffle board over at least 2 twice on some squares, some squares 3 times, so a likeliness of getting an Epic perk from the "regular" board with 42K is pretty high, a thumb in the air would be like a 70% chance. 42K would also be flipping the bonus round at least twice, which gives a 1 out of 12 chance of a Legendary or Epic class item. Not bad, and quite a bonus for the entire player mass minus the exploiters, so saying that ther's little impact to the economy of the game is a bit stretching it. The only saving grace is that every player gets it, so it's fair except for the players that exploited.

To be honest, the only argument about "breaking the economy" isn't a strong one either. Let's just say that Rovio gave out Epic items to everyone, choose up to 3 items or 1 legendary. Which would easily be worth 300-400k Guild tokens to every player, even then the economy would be perfectly fine. Simply put, the current Pay2Win system is that big of a juggernaut that these measely few items do not account for the amount of money necessary to be at the top of the leaderboards. A Maxed account to go from 0 infamy to 5000 Infamy requires an absorbant amount something at the total of 40K-50K USD which is hundred of hundreds of items.

The main reason I added the "economy" was to squash it, either that exploiter's loot or non-exploiters prize although significant wouldn't necessarily impact the entire economy. It was more a "just" issue, because Exploiters gained through unfair loophole/advantage and those that didn't will be at a disadvantage in terms of account and monetary costs. It comes down to "fair" and "just", which ironically is the entire point of this thread in terms of the deserved punishment for said exploiters.

Again, this point is rather weak in comparison to the bigger and broader issues I pointed across. The biggest of all is the triple standards, that really creates several holes and overlap on players of all 3 types, and undoubtedly this creates collateral damage. Irreversible at that, so even though you say that the tiered approach was spot on, it questions the word "fair" as there's so many different situations where each class of player gets something entirely different. If I were to choose one outcome, the middle Scenario 2 is the best, forget the 42K free tokens, the 400K loaned items and credit seems to be the best solution. As a player who cheated and exploited to get this outcome, direct comparison to the non-exploiter/legit player, this would be quite undesirable and unjust in their perspective. Agree?

No problem, thanks for sticking with the thread and not derailing it.

 

Stop. Stick with the thread topic, please re-read or at least try to translate it to your own language before commenting. Nobody is crying a river here, this is a constructive discussion on what other possible and fair fixes that could have been used to prevent backlash and collateral damage.

YES, absolutely that punishments should be fair, it is what cries a proper justice system! Should thieves be shot dead for stealing?

 

Thank you, I tried gathering a lot of thought about the whole ordeal without trying to put personal experiences mixed into it.

 

OK. Please stay off my thread and please delete your unrelated comments/ posts. If you don't care, then don't post.

What? Okay, this doesn't make any sense.

 

As per my understanding of what has happened i'll make the comparison as follow (i'll just make some assumptions up to Oct 2):
SE - Severe Exploiter
ME - Mild Exploiter
NE - Non-Exploiter

Tokens:
SE - 0
ME - -250k
NE - +42k (previous boards) +42k (reward)

Items Acquired from Draw:
SE - 0
ME - Keep
NE - Keep

Item Acquired Legitimately (Crates/Battle Bonus/Scraps/etc):
SE - 0
ME - Keep
NE - Keep

Kindly correct me if i'm wrong. My question is from all of these. Who is on the 'unfair advantage'?

In my opinion, the best choice and most just would be all negative tokens. The NEs will catch up eventually. Everybody happy.

 

Simply put, in my books. ME > NE > SE.

SE gets the worst, and surely they should, but they got rolled back completely. 0 Guild tokens earned whether it was legitimately earned (of course illegitimate gets canceled not arguing that), disregarded all items earned even before exploiting(every exploiter had a turning time point so it disregards that), All items upgraded are back to what they were before, 0 resources (gold+ sugar) gained from the games played between Oct 2-Update Fix. It's roll back in time for these folks, and Guild Update is basically just starting for them. It's Oct 2nd for them all over again.

ME gets the best result. They get loaned up to 300-400k Guild tokens, and they get to use these items now. They are rewarded all the perks and items and they did not miss out on any resources and sugar gained in the time frame. Keep in mind that these guys are the "offenders" too and they were let go and given a "credit". They do lose out on the 42K bonus, but that's a small price to pay compared the the benefit of using items they haven't paid for yet. Weeks of benefits paid up front.

NE is questionable. There's no real reason for dishing this out, and it's clear it's just to please the mass majority that didn't exploit. Definitely raised satisfaction for non-exploiters and creates cannon-fodder to witch-hunt / condemn with high prejudice those that exploited.

 

Nah, I would think that would be a welcome package for any new user from here on end. Which wouldn't be a bad idea either way, pretty awesome if new players got that don't you think?

 

With the solution Rovio put in place I look at it this way. Rewarding the non exploiters is telling the non exploiters thanks for being “honest” and sticking with your guild. This is always a good thing to do to build good will towards the player base as the ones who did not use the exploit suddenly faced more difficult matches with players with stronger weapons.
#2 for the exploiters I do feel the roll back and the massive debt was harsh. It does send a message saying don’t exploit the game and use loopholes. The biggest players this will effect are the free to play exploiters as they have not dumped cash into the game advance in the first place. The players who have spent money and already have strong weapons have a better chance of surviving the debt as they can get into stronger guilds andclear more boards to make up the debt.
I think Rovio should have cut the debt owed in 1/2 for the exploiters. The roll back to before quest started right decision. It was a short enough period of time to do a roll back that would not have a killer impact. I think they wanted to set a debt that players would have to earn back over the same amount of time they took advantage of the exploit. The problem is with the way quests go you would need to clear 4+ boards each cycle and that can be brutal. I do believe 1/2 the debt and a roll back would have still sent the same message and would allow those players to recover in a reasonable amount of time.

 

Nothing against freebies, it's good for the game to Give away more stuff. The game isn't incredibly generous in the first place, so free gifts for the masses is a step in the right direction. The only thing is the several standard created here.

Roll backs that are not well thought out will create backlash regardless. From Rovio's standpoint that's possible revenue loss. Anytime you do something like this, the customer/player has clear rights to report directly to either app stores to get refunds. This is common in all mobile IAP games.

F2p or P2P players, a I imagine are the bulk of the exploiters here. they have the most to gain as their items needed the improvement the most. P2W was had no incentive to farm the exploits whatsoever except maybe to perfect their gear, they also had the least to lose even if they got rolled back. Resources aren't even a big deal, and any bundles bought were refunded so they can repurchase their crates etc.

I don't think you understand the severity of the roll back. The guild with benefits was almost 2 weeks ago. Imagine rolling everything back to that state, it's quite a lot and being singled out, you lose not just the guild tokens, you lose the time and all the games/effort spent earning gold, sugar and pearls gained and all the items you gained (minus the exploit stuff) in between. There's no debt to be paid, it's far worst than a debt.

 

I only got like 12k cause I was at 180k+ and the 42k didnt overfill, be warned that guild tokens don’t overfill, it’s a real bummer.

 

They do overfill I think saw that in bittersteel video he had over 200k raffles.
Maybe it's a bug ask for Dev help

 

On the subject of the 42k. I think the purpose was, actually, to ‘compensate’ rather than ‘reward’,

It’s there to offset any lingering advantage, that might persist beyond the action; and it compensates anyone who's progress may have been harmed by exploiters (for example losing a rivalry).

42k isn’t that much really. I’ve already made more than that from questing since the rollback, and the rivalry bonuses haven’t been awarded yet.

 

No, it was not overfill. He simply didn't claim it from the Guild Quest screen.

 

No matter how Rovio worded it or how you interpret it. It's a package that they gave / gifted to non-exploiters.

As for harmed by rivalry, if youre referring to alt/ mini/ new accounts , I don't think this was any compensation for that in any regard. Many smaller guilds were using this technique too, it wasn't just the exploiters and I do not believe Rovio took any action against that at all aside from fixing it from kills to damage instead.

 

It was on over fill see the pic below he has 202k tokens

 

That’s not really saying anything. Restating ‘what’ it was, has no bearing on ‘why’ it was given, or if it was justified, which was your original point of contention.

I wasn’t referring to anything specific. In fact the whole point is that it’s often difficult to determine all the ways that an injured party may have been affected by an action. The idea of compensation is to reasonably cover the costs, whatever they may be.

 

This thread is probably over. Rovio and developers were shortsighted. Their mess. Their solution to fix mess was even worse.
Tickets for fixing too harsh of punishment was a waste. They don't care.
And say as much.

The lack of communication about what levels the punishment entails to have light on situation met with silence.

Biggest exploiters vs token debt margins never explained.

Lucy u have so explaining to do

 

I'll just wait for whatever content this "Fix" has and check if the will is still there. Though it's not much but I already cancelled VIP. It might not hurt but i'll stand firm for what i believe. The fact that their mess is directed to others, definitely there's something wrong. You don't make a mistake and blame others for it. As i've said before they have to make a "Fix" that's fair to everyone. And we're not talking about Pearls.