Smuggler Archive

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Ribo_Flavin wrote:

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Duedroth wrote:
your logic seems fine in order to give yourself a sense of legitimacy

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Perhaps you meant "yourself" in the plural sense. If so, I apologize, Mister Internet Forum Person. If not, oh well.

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I know this is far after the fact, but I meant "you" as in anybody who would use the argument you described to justify themselves. I'm sorry that it wasn't clear I didn't mean you personally, "Mister Internet Forum Person."

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Duedroth wrote:

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Ribo_Flavin wrote:

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DrevenStrobe wrote:

It's sad that the devs haven't come up with a fix for this yet. But, until they do, just /report the offending players. Other than that, all you can do is /sigh and sit back and wait.

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To play Devil's Advocate for a moment:

1. If this exploit has been around since launch and
2. The devs have done nothing to address it and
3. No players have been banned because of it then
4. It looks like a feature

Solo grouping is an exploit, yet nothing is done about it. Jedi spawn breaking is an exploit, yet it's taken as a legitimate (if not liked) means of gaining XP. There are many exploits in this game that are tolerated by most everyone, so why does this particular exploit receive so much condemnation? If the devs didn't like it, they'd nerf it pretty quick like they've done with past exploits they felt went over the line.

The devs have a quick trigger finger when it comes to nerfs. Of all the things they've nerfed in this game, why would this one survive for over a year? It must not be that big a deal to them.

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well first off, when devs address exploits it's called a FIX, not a nerf

and also, your logic seems fine in order to give yourself a sense of legitimacy, but it's still a known exploit. The fact that the devs have more important things to do doesn't make it less of an exploit.

Plus, when was the last time a dev actually, for reals paid any sort of positive (not teasing like greenmarine) attention to smugglers?

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I don't use this method to slice, but I have to say there is some validity to the argument that if there is a known "exploit" and the devs do not comment on it or prevent it's use, it is possible that it is not actually an exploit. The geo caves excessive spawn rate is a prime example of this. Just because a code bug causes lots of mobs to spawn doensn't make it an exploit to go there and kill the spawns. You do have to kill the spawns yourself, and earn the xp. The "infinite slice" was an exploit and the devs publically stated this and banned many people for doing it.

I'm not saying this isn't an exploit, I am saying I'm not sure it is. Having this discussion may prompt the devs to weigh in on it and give a clear answer.

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Smuggler_Caylin wrote:

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Bohdi-Tzu wrote:

I don't use this method to slice, but I have to say there is some validity to the argument that if there is a known "exploit" and the devs do not comment on it or prevent it's use, it is possible that it is not actually an exploit. The geo caves excessive spawn rate is a prime example of this. Just because a code bug causes lots of mobs to spawn doensn't make it an exploit to go there and kill the spawns. You do have to kill the spawns yourself, and earn the xp. The "infinite slice" was an exploit and the devs publically stated this and banned many people for doing it.

I'm not saying this isn't an exploit, I am saying I'm not sure it is. Having this discussion may prompt the devs to weigh in on it and give a clear answer.

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It is, I confirmed this multiple times in PMs and at the summit. They just haven't fixed it. They will not come in here either to give a clear answer at this rate. I've asked too many times to no result.

They rarely publically comment on exploits on public forums. They just say that we should watch the patch notes.

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They could save themselves (an d us, the player) so much time and trouble if they would just make these public statements. I know they have a lot going on, and lots to fix and develop, but if Tiggs and TH can post "how manydevs does it take to change a lightbulb" posts, can't they drop an announcement that "this is an exploit" and have done with it? They did this with slicing lightsabers, and they did this with jedi rooftpop sampling.

Thank you for the straight answer, Caylin.

Ok, so its an exploit. Honestly I have only come across it at the bazaar a couple of times. And no one has ever asked me to slice a weapon with a powerup. I don't think its lost me much business. I put warning about it on my bio and people see it when they look at prices.

Also, you do realize that the powerup goes away after some use. I haven't had a ny mad customers because of any of this. Most I think are understanding.

As for the revamp. Hopefully this will all be addressed soon.

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AldaronTavish wrote:

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Sunrunner_Rove wrote:

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SpinningCloud wrote:

As far as I know you can't tell an exploit PU slice unless you either know the original stats and do the math to figure the slice came out higher than 35%.

Only way you'd know if one you bought on a vendor was an exploit slice is if you knew the max possible sliced stats for that particular weapon.

BTW, I've never had a customer even HINT at doing a PU slice for them. Of coure I'd refuse and let them know it's an exploit.

And, BTW, just because no one is banned or they haven't fixed it in a year now does NOT mean it's OK.

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So what would be the cut off point, what if they ignore it for two years, or maybe three. Would five years do it? If the Dev's know about it and know that everyone else knows about it and is taking advantage of it then they must not consider it an exploit.

No one has ever asked me to do it for them when they ask me to slice something and had they I would have said no, but the fact remains that the Dev's don't seem to consider it an exploit so at what point do we stop considering it an exploit.

For all we know the Dev's have decided to leave it in there when they do the re-vamp (if that ever happens) and just didn't say anything to us (like that would be anything new) and so don't consider it an exploit.

It would be nice if a Dev could ever answer any of the issues like this that come up on the boards.

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How many times does it have to be said?! The devs have said it's an exploit. The fact THE GAME removes pups before the slice makes it an exploit. What more do you want?

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Preciesly. Talk to me about merchants and the vendor exploit. That was a bug in the system from release, where every Joe Shmoe would be allowed to keep a vendor regardless of skill points allocated to Businessman.

SOE from the outset stated that the vendorbehavior was a bug, and anyone using it were concidered exploiting it. But it took 14 months to finally fix it. Trust me. I was leading the charge in the Merchant's forum (hence the Community Advocate badge) to strike down exploiters that flamed endlessly on our boards. It was a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, and a lot of tears, but in the end, the code of the game changed to follow the actual rules of the game.

The moral: Don't exploit. The game will change to end your exploiting ways. It's only a matter of time.

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SpinningCloud wrote:

"If the Dev's know about it and know that everyone else knows about it and is taking advantage of it then they must not consider it an exploit."

Umm..that is NOT a logical conclusion. It especially is not a logical conclusion if the Devs have SAID it's an exploit.

With their statement that it's an exploit the logical conclusion is that they have not had time or resources to get around to fixing it yet.

You're working REALLY hard to justify something that logical and ethical thinking should be telling you otherwise.

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I'm not trying to justify anything, personally I think it's an exploit and I don't do it. I also think the Dev's think it's an exploit, they just won't fix it. What I'm saying is that if it's an exploit and people use it and suffer no consequences and the Dev's never fix it then at what point do people stop considering it an exploit. To tell you the truth I have played several online gamesand this is the first one I have ever played that I even heard an exploit publicly mentioned before it was fixed. Every game I have played until SWG you'd hear things like "Did you hear WhatsHisName was banned along with a bunch of other people yesterday for an exploit" and by that time the exploit was fixed. Generally exploits have the highest priority, they are game breakers, if they are left unfixed and people use them to cheat eventually either everyone is going to be cheating or people are going to leave because they can't compete with the cheaters.

The fact of the matter is, it could be fixed, and while I can't say for certain it could be fixed easily the code already exists to check for a powerup on a weapon before the slice. The code to check for the Powerup is called when you start to slice and if one is there it calls theobject to remove it, so calling it at every step of the process and at the close of the process is all it would take to determine that the exploit had taken place, add another piece of code to completely nerf the weapon if it has a powerup on it when the slice is closing and it's fixed. Like I said I don't know the code itself but everything is built just about the same way so I'm at least close.

I'm not one to complain about the Dev's a lot, yes I want the Smuggler revamp and I want it now but I know that something like a revamp takes quite a bit of time so I don't flame the Dev's (well not too much) but when it comes to an exploit that they know about and ignore there is not excuse. It needs to be fixed or they need to declare that it's not exploit until they get around to fixing it to level the playing field.

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SpinningCloud wrote:

"If the Dev's know about it and know that everyone else knows about it and is taking advantage of it then they must not consider it an exploit."

Umm..that is NOT a logical conclusion. It especially is not a logical conclusion if the Devs have SAID it's an exploit.

With their statement that it's an exploit the logical conclusion is that they have not had time or resources to get around to fixing it yet.

You're working REALLY hard to justify something that logical and ethical thinking should be telling you otherwise.

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To quote the old adage "Actions speak louder than words." You can say something all you want, but if you don't back your words up with action, than your words aren't worth the paper they're printed on. It's like those weird laws that every State has, but are never enforced. It's against the law to do a lot of things, but if the law isn't enforced, then its meaningless.

If the devs were really that concerned about this, then they would address it right away, like they have with credit duping and the like. Their lack of urgency is more telling than any amount of clandestine emails.