Thoughts on the last exploit update / patch

I wanted to add my feedback and my opinion about the last Exploit / Fix update and the aftermath, but before I could gather my thoughts with a clear mindset, the thread got closed by @The Grim Repair, and for good reasons as people were merely attacking each other, which is counter productive.

I know this has been a very touchy subject for a lot of you. There has been basically several camps of people that side with either side of the moral issue. I’d like to approach this with a different perspective. From the developer side, not that I’m a developer, but I’d like to ask them specific questions and how their approach and their logical path in fixing the issue with their game.

Rovio dealt with the situation with little to no remorse, I think a bit heavy-handed considering the situation was brought upon themselves. Not that they needed to be more forgiving, per say, but I think their approach was rather impulsive and reactive rather than proactive. Which really falls in line with everything they’ve done so far. Which leads to less than well-calculated results. Here’s why I think it’s been a poor to mediocre “patch” at best. And let’s not forget how long they took to take action, or how long they took to communicate it to the players in an assertive matter.

Let’s talk about the fix that Rovio applied, which I like to call it the 3 Tier or 3 Prong fix. Which had 3 distinct and separate actions:

1. Award Non-exploiters:
   • Determine if the user did not use the exploit more than 2 times, reward 42,000 Guild Tokens
2. Subtract / Negative Guild Tokens on Exploiters:
   • Determine by set value of less than X (a certain threshold) to be allowed to have a negative balance of Guild Tokens
3. Roll Back Account to a set date on Excessive Exploiters / Abusers:
   • Determine by set value or state of greater than X (a certain criteria or threshold) and then subtract all items and Guild Tokens claimed and rollback completely to set date of Oct 2nd 2017.

There are blatant issues with this multi-tiered level approaches. First, it awards and then penalizes 2 sets of players; non-Exploiters an Exploiters get completely non-leveled approach, one gets positive, and the other are negative. Neither is put to “balance” of “zero” or equal so to say. Sure, if the set idea is to reward the “morally correct” or “inactive” players that didn’t participate or play, then that’s a good solution. However, to subtract from the exploiter at the same time creates a double standard. Not only that, there has been arguments that the “Economy” was ruined because of the Exploiters/farmers, well awarding all users that are non-Exploiters I believe is a bigger sum of tokens dished out than how much the exploiters gained. I think we all agree that there are more players compared to exploiters why would this massive injection of 42K be any different in terms of economy breaking? The flip side to the issue, is that Rovio used 42K to basically buy up the common players and their vote.

Moving on, I think the Subtract/Negative Guild Tokens approach was the most sensible, but I guess Rovio did not want to award those that exploited too much a large negative balance they applied the roll-back. But what doesn’t seem to make sense is that those with a negative balance are awarded to keep their loot from the exploit. They are basically loaned until financed off the items. Last time I financed something was a Brand new car, and I really enjoyed that until i paid it off. It's a privilege more than anything. Aren’t they getting the best deal here?

Lastly, the Roll-back. Well, we all think that this was a bit of a quick and dirty approach. Rovio probably couldn’t tabulate (which I really don’t believe), rather didn’t want to spend so much time figuring it out, it was the easiest solution to Roll back to an earlier date. Undoubtedly, they don’t care what those players have lost legitimately in between and labeled them as “punishable”. In fact, I think Rovio wouldn’t care if they lost these players, which I think is simply bad for business no matter how you look at it.


Personally, I think any of the 3 individual solutions would have worked ALONE:

• Solution 1. Determine Non-exploiters, a Greater reward consisting of Guild tokens (max perhaps), and some crates along with a small sum of free pearls. The caveat would be the lesser or greater exploiters may need to be normalized to a fair degree (lesser ones get a fraction of the reward, greater ones get the debt/negative balance). I think this solution would have been the MOST generous solution, and the most unlikely from Rovio given that they are already losing so much from the exploiters. This would give all the players something to rejoice and love the game more, and be far more active.
  
  
• Solution 2. Subtract Guild tokens on all exploiters large or small. The problem with this approach is that these players get to keep their items. Which in turn is bad for the common player that didn’t exploit, I mean why are they given a financier approach to keeping these items(see above)? Seems to be fair aside from that.
  
  
• Solution 3. Roll back everyone, all accounts and pearl refunds, then give free tokens to everyone, along with resources and crates, exploiters included. Rovio send out an apology for the roundabout. Probably the least wanted solution, but the most fair in terms of applying a fix. Everyone gets to start all over, and they get freebies along with it so it’s not a complete waste of time.
  
  
• Solution 4 (new idea) Subtract all Guild Token/ rivalry benefits entirely, and rework the solution, rollback only guild stuff not account stuff. Issue an apology that Guild update was bugged, and all raffle rewards negated. Issue a Update bundle for everyone including an easter-egg. Move on. This would be the Hardest to achieve, and each account exploiter or not would be scrutinized. A lot of work and unlikely candidate. If done correctly, would have tread light on the backlash; very little if none at all, and definitely won't be dealing with monetary issues.

One Solution that fixes all is the most fair. Pick one! Not 3, as all 3 of these creates gaps in between each one for example; poor lesser exploiter that moved to 3 guilds and received more no more than 30k more tokens, gets a negative balance, and does not get the 42k bonus. If that player knew earlier, that hopping guilds would be dinged I'm sure he wouldn't have (that could have been incidental btw, and not premeditated) or ie; an exploiter that did 410k farming just 10k over the threshold gets Roll-back and dinged as a high-abuser.

Anyway, the fix is what it is right now. There’s a huge number of unsatisfied customers that were rolled-back to an earlier date and those players have every right to ask for a refund for lost time. The negative balance folks are the lucky ones that get to keep their loot. There’s a economy imbalance of giving every player 42K for little to no reason other than to appease the masses because of their mistake. I can’t help but to think that there was better solutions to begin with and it’s a complete shame that Rovio decided to apply this convoluted and triple standard level of fix.

Before you start labelling me as a bias exploiter, and although I admit that I did join in on this fun. I’m not looking at this approach with any bias. I’m calling It out as I see it.
If you recall back in one of the older threads: https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/guild-quest-exploit.13283/page-6#post-59682 and here was one of my quotes:

Definitely not a sound fix, and it hurts the community by creating a void between players. Some players will be forever labeled as “cheaters”, and that’s because Rovio actually used the gauntlet to punish rather than taking some of the responsibility here. It’s also clear that a large number of players are applying for refunds via Google and Apple, so I think Rovio clearly knows from a monetary level that this has not been a good week in terms of sales. Rovio could have taken more time to analyze their fix (of a problem they created) and create an opportunity here to gain more love and satisfaction from the players, they decided to play judge instead. This really questions the confidence in the company on future releases, and whether future updates will be equally as bugged and whether Rovio even cares for their players. It’s really up in the air…

 

Oh and I know this might be censored or locked. Because that happened to someone on this forum for giving constructive feedback...

 

No comment, these are not part of the discussion I was making. Please re-read my post to understand what I'm trying to explain.

 

You have clearly missed the point, please do not respond if you don't got anything to add.

 

Solution 1 would probably be too much work for the Dev's. Does give everyone rewards, but what they implemented wouldn't require looking at all individual accounts

Solution 2 doesn't roll back items. Someone I know that did this ended up with 2 legendary weapons after he was done...

Solution 3 is probably the best IMO, but does penalize players that didn't exploit so that's probably the most unfair.

 

Too much work? The current live solution created a lot of work by applying 3 separate solutions, completely separately.

Solution 2 is in effect already for some lucky few as you indicated.

Yes, I did say that it wouldn't be the popular choice, and people will get upset for the sake of it. Nobody likes getting rolled back legitimately or illegitimate because the degree of rollback would be severe to the amount of games/time spent and that itself is an investment. So whatever Rovio compensates needs to be worth that time / game. Even still, the RNG factor of the items is also a problem which is another factor Rovio brought upon themselves, giving pieces or crates doesn't guarantee at all that they give back what the player wanted or had.

 

I'll agree that the 42k tokens to non exploiters wasnt needed (obviously not complaining though!). I see it as a token of graditute for resisting the temptation to join the cheaters, it was not fun watching people farm at an absurd rate while being stuck with a 17man guild.
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Giving everyone as much loot as the worst abusers would have been nice, but the amount of tokens gained are counted in millions for the hardest working exploiters. I can understand why handing out free stuff in that magnitude wasnt the chosen solution.
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I get your critique of the two different means of punishment, it does appear to me that the bar for full reset was set pretty low though (so the ones that got to keep the stolen loot didnt farm all that much). This is only based upon a guildmate that gave into the temptation on the last day, but still hot a full reset, so guessing.

In conclusion I agree that the penalties were pretty brutal, but I am also very happy that Rovio took a firm stance against what I think was obviously a wrongful activity to participate in. Imo it was a clearly unintended flaw in the system, when you decide to abuse such a flaw you take a bet that the devs will let it go. Thankfully they didnt.

 

I think if they were to give such a firm stance, they should have warned with a "Firm statement" earlier and not give convoluted messaging to allow the situation get to this level. That's my take on it.

 

Thats a fair point. I tried to push for them to take a clear stance here, but their silence was frustrating (then for fair players, now for abusers).

It could have been handled better, fx by disabling all token gains much earlier. However, this does not equate to exploiting being ok. I cannot fathom that even a single board 1 farmer thought that was an intended mechanism and farming pace.

 

Let's leave the moral aspect outside this discussion; as in OK or not OK. It's really not the discussion I want to get into as that itself is a down a deep, very deep rabbit hole. It's like asking why people steal, why people lie, why people abuse people... Why humans sin commit crime ? (sin is not good, as it's related to religion) Um, that's a completely different topic and I'm sure you can find out that in your local library and will be thousands of books and papers looking for that answer. It's human nature perhaps?

The point on this discussion is whether the players that was dealt justice, was fair. People seem to think just because Rovio waved justice, that whatever is dealt wouldn't matter as long as it was dealt with firmly. But what about fairness in the justice, even criminal law, every sentence / punishment is scrutinized and given when proven guilty are proportionate the the level of crime itself, and even each one is tried and heard seperately. A judge himself in a democratic Common Law , cannot determine that with out proper procedures so sentencing is not taken likely. Perhaps criminal justice is far reaching, but it doesn't mean that we can't challenge whether Rovio was fair or just on the punishments.

I also agree that this is already past tense. Rovio could have done a LOT of things to prevent this fallout, there's no winner here to really celebrate this situation as everyone is getitng the stick end of things; legit players included.

 

Very well said brother. I wish they would think it over before they make up with that coming patch so as to keep it fair to everyone. As i can see from all of these, Devs' errors are being directed to exploiters.

 

Devs could just shut down servers for maintenance once they figured out about their BUG (exploit), I'm pretty sure all players would be fine with it. Instead they let it run for 2 weeks to rollback players after...
And now so many people left the game, the reputation of the company suffered.

 

If they said that or and put guilds on hold or pause we in a whole different situation, but they instead they didn't and we got all sorts of new problems.

 

The punishment is so harsh because if they fuck up again, which they are banking on doing would stir people away until they got word from rovio themselves it was okay and not a dum dev who was just as clueless and should've told us to stop instead he egged us on and said it was clever and no rules were being broken.

 

To developers the lack of communication before exploit, during exploit, and after to punishment phase has been extremely low.

Any level of true mass wide emails on where developers stood on these issues would have prevented most abuse.

Instead we were fed a line or two from one developer.

Case in point on punishment.

DMG.Don wrote me...." biggest exploiters were punished with the rollback"

This is now a simple question developers. What consititues biggest exploiters? At what number is that threshold? Considering you have away for free 42k tokens?.

Most that got labelled big exploiters didn't start till the weekend. Myself. Saturday for a few hours.

Simply put...how is that equal to hxd.guild or team Canada guild who did every single day? Not throwing these guilds under the bus with that statement.

Just asking a fact finding question. What is biggest mean?

And also dx3 is correct in stating the multi tiered punishment was flawed.

In Marvels contest of champions and exploit loophole was shut and no punishments rendered.

In War Machines game...an exploit was shut down and a light ban of 10 days was given.

Developers considering you banned Tpro a player in the game for 10 days as well for infamy stacking...why wasn't that approach considered.

It would have solved token debt. And rewarded those who didn't farm.

They would have had 10 days of gathering resources against easier opponents.

Lastly. Pearls for money was a poor developer thought as well.

You failed to return legendary pieces. And items bought fairly. Pearls don't equal legs.
Everyone here knows that.

So now from a technical question. Developers will u fix the technical flaws of the punishment and return taken items?

Tickets have been made. But we need a mass email on this subject to take out the one developer said stuff.

 

This thread is more a reflection for Rovio, and how things could have been handled better in terms of solution (I'm not even going to account them on the poor communication attempts, which I'm sure they are reflecting on) and although no mistake of this magnitude can be corrected perfectly, I'm almost positive that the current fix isn't remotely close.

To be honest, there probably will be no fix upon a fix. This is it, the most might happen(and you won't see) if Rovio has any sense, is to individually support those that were rolled back in private and given a settlement to prevent refunds.

 

hi d3x well i like ur post a lot as they are well informed and well written but there are quite a few red flag with this
first economy breaking which wonderfully explained by caffeinated chris that the thing you pt out does not break the economy of the game but is just a mere incentive for being honest.
look it at this way the amount earned by few people is quite staggering and makes whales upset because in order to earn those they spend thousand of dollars while these exploiter got them practically for free.
and giving out everyone 42000 token no way makes anyone progress even 1% to the amount the have spent.
moving on there are quite a lot of red flag but i will not wrong a long post on this as i have already done so in previous thread related to this
what i can and will do is share a post by withal which i think answers all ur queries and the red flag in ur thread mostly solution proposed.
we are currently going through his pt one.
now moving on what can be done?
this is slippery slope the balance is so much of a key here.(i am sorry if there are some moral pts here but they are bound to spring up in this topic)
rovio really did a huge mistake in not reaching out sooner as pointed out by both exploiter and non exploiter.
they should not dole out such harsh punishment what should be done combines a bit of ur sol 1 and 4 because 2 &3 are just bad sol.
they should give back your progress except whatever you guys earned in the raffle remove that and just dish out an sum of token to every non exploiter and remove all the guild token debt.
now the key here is amount of tokens to be dished out towards you. because here you should get a little punishment because in all fairness you used an exploit.
and moreover you guys wouldn't have played that much matches for which yo are requesting gold if you have been playing honestly so you guys are getting a little benefit here too so a little set back on dishing out guild token is fair.
Oops again it became a long post.