Thank you for reminding me why I will never play on a public server.
You can find good servers and bad servers. I play PvP official and had to go thru a few.
Conflict servers ftw
There’s actually some people in the states that want to prosecute exploiters with the CFAA and other laws to cover exploiting in game on hosted servers lol.
But in all seriousness what the gaming community has said time and time again is that exploiting is wrong , ruins the game for legitimate players and that official servers should have a GM system to moderate against exploiting. Funcom isn’t interested in that though nor endorses any privately ran servers that are moderated. I think the pvp community would love competitive, cut throat servers that were proactively moderated against exploits and other abuse but if the server doesn’t have the word "official " in the name then people don’t trust it or consider it valid. Too many bad experiences with private servers in the past has caused many players to reject the idea of spending time on private servers competitively.
So until there’s a trusted, competitive “gamer league” that moderates servers (or funcom decides to get GMs) I think the loss of players due to exploiters will continue.
I’ve seen first hand since launch lots of veteran players/clans quit over exploiters undermapping, duping, offlining, shutting off direct damage etc. There’s whole guilds of players on this game who make it their game to exploit and kill servers and without consequence. Legitimate players don’t want to invest time in a game if the sense of value they get from the competitive nature of PVP is undermined by people who just want to ruin gameplay any way they can.
If GM positions were something people could volunteer to do I’m sure lots of players would come out of the wood work to offer their help in banning exploiters. Even a part time work from home gig a lot of people would be interested in. Sometimes I wonder if a “GM as a Service” type of business would be viable these-days with so many game developers not wanting to take ownership of policing their player base.
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Of course, b/c GMing is traditionally supposed to be part of the business. Many developers do consider it a necessary part of the gaming industry but for some reason don’t consider it part of their core business when it relates to their online titles.
I could see a business opportunity in outsourcing moderation to firms that specialize in it but in many cases I think developers are just foregoing moderation completely either because of costs or b/c they don’t feel it should be their responsibility what others do online in their games past a certain point.
I would think letting exploiters run wild as they have though would hurt the game/company reputation and even cause a potential loss in future sales.
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Game Masters would just cure the symptom, but not the cause.
We need something better.
Hiring Game Masters is literally like using coins for bullets and firing it at exploiters who pop up like whackamoles.
Coins that can be used to open new servers after exploits have been fixed. Open “Seasons”. Each new server offering a theme.
Exploits suck. Throwing coins at it isn’t going to remove the problem. Only fixing it, will. Fixing it, without RetCon, cuz that’s too destructive. I get why peopel will beg to differ, but get this.
If they remove official servers as a whole, i’d be agree with everyone that Exterminatus is a good option. But as long as you have people minding their own business, then experience hellfire from above… what sort of constellation is that?
It’s really just the glee of punishing people for the hell of it, so others can feel righteous.
Age of Conan has GMs, mind you it’s two servers, I think, but is it my understanding that players still exploit, 3rd party, and macro script?
I revisited the forums bc I REALLY miss that game, and just read up how many of 80s gank new players, rangers stalking players for hours, etc.
Long way to say, even with GMs, players will find a way.
But every game is exploited, just to what extent I suppose.
Another example is obtaining emperor is elder scrolls online, where players work eith the enemy factions to stay on the top leaderboard, making it extremely tough for a casual to ever get it. Cheating, exploit, I’m sure playe4s argue that point over there.
Coming from an IT perspective, I don’t understand why any business would tolerate widespread exploitation of their software/servers. Aside from better QA and development(which should always be the primary focus regarding vulnerability prevention but we see obvious shortcomings here), Administrative and legal options could be taken to prevent further loss. I would think lots of end users quitting the game because of rampant exploits would count for a loss but b/c the server/app is a “videogame” suddenly companies should take a lax approach? I’ve never understood why some people think game companies should take a lax attitude towards defending their own livelihoods and reputation. Most exploiters are not leet hackers hiding behind 7 vpns and a bullet proof server, they’re just petty teenagers to young adults who inadvertently doxx themselves all over steam/xbox/psn/facebook with their sh1ttalk and bragging.
A GM (or embedded/sleeper GM) could easily identify them, ban them and forward the worst / ban evading individuals over to legal for further potential action if needed. Its not rocket science.
No a GM won’t stop everything either but they can stop a lot of stuff that you currently don’t see much of in similar games. For example 1 gm could ban a handful of bad players and keep the majority of players of any given server happy, who in turn keep playing the game, participate in the community and buy future DLC. But saying not doing anything about exploiters b/c they’ll always try to find a way is like saying don’t even bother locking your doors at night b/c criminals are always going to steal.
I never said that nothing should be done about exploiters.
I am saying that the GM approach only tackles the symptoms, but not the cause/source.
Funcom is fixing the source, but sources keep springing up, therefore the best approach is to fix, offer a tabula rasa, rinse repeat.
Their current RetConning approach is incredibly invasive. Something that can be done better via inheritance based polymorphism, which is a C++ feature.
You work in IT, so you should know that games and business applications are two different animals, requiring 2 different approaches.
Business applications have a very specific target audience, with specific needs. The use cases are predictable and/or can be discussed with clients directly. It is a pay-by-feature business model basically.
A game has a very very wide target audience, everyone who is interested, basically. The use cases can’t be predicted, but only offered and aren’t discussed with clients as clearly demonstrated. It is a consumption based subscription business model ,where you buy DLC’s because your supporting the devs. The crap they put into those DLC’s are a farce, cuz most of the armors and weapons in them don’t get used. They are merely there to legitimize value. The tiles are useful.
When it comes to exploits, such thing is a MAIN FOCUS of a business application.
Games though… It should be a main focus too, but a games evolution outpaces it’s security.
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