Artifact Glitch

You obviously have absolutely no way of knowing whether people you don't know are or are not members or what their history with DCUO is, so clearly you aren't capable of telling what is or is not the truth about something. Which makes anything you claim worthless.

FWIW, I'm a Lifetime Member. And I know for a fact that a wide array of people who are pro-banning-cheaters are longtime Legendary members. So not only are you incapable of knowing the truth, you are happy to simply lie. Noted.

Who promised you it was "fair"?

So what you're saying is that Time Capsules are, at present, completely and utterly legal. And since, you assert, they will "soon" be illegal, well, then, you have nothing to worry about. Just sit back and wait for the U.S. Congress to "soon" pass a law to take care of Daybreak.

Meanwhile, by your own words, TCs are completely legal (the jurisdiction they're under being the United States alone). Are they bad policy? Perhaps. Do they take advantage of players by being a gamble? Sure, but at least they publish the odds now. Nobody puts a gun to anyone's head to make them buy a TC.

Criticizing the gambling aspect of TCs is perfectly reasonable. Too bad you have to drown that valid point behind lies and nonsense.

No, they're not.

No, they're not. I could explain why for both of these, but since you don't bother to supply an argument for your assertions, I don't feel a need to bother to do so here just now, either.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. People pay for the game because they want to. It's called "capitalism." Older, younger, smaller, larger: games come in every size and age, and both size and age are completely irrelevant to anything you're saying.

The rest of your post boils down to "do what I say because reasons!"

That's nice. I'm sure the devs will give it all the respect it deserves. Have fun playing the game!

Evidently not. I know people have been complaining about speed hackers, and PVP for the better part of a decade, and they're still going unaddressed. I know we waited eight months for five open world missions, a duo, an alert, and a raid, and none of them are particularly well received. I know people lose their jobs and careers over this kind of performance. Add in a major glitch that costs several hundred thousand dollars over a couple of days, someone is doing everything he can to keep his job.

Daybreak isn't run by people who need a tax write-off anymore. The folks at EG7 expect to make money and have a product that performs to its potential.

Overall I watch people getting speed hacked feats daily. Literally shouting out about it in LFG and public forums. People can make an argument about it being hard to combat but not right now. When the people that actually ruin the game and cheat are let on their own with no bans etc but those that may take some money from the devs (I understand it’s a lot of money) they’re gone as fast as the bug came.

Pretty much the reason this has split the community is you have the people “you disobeyed the TOS and you get what you deserve” vs the others that see the overall issues with the game and actual bad exploits and hate to see the ones who ruin the experience get nothing while those trying to make headway on a crazy horrible artifact system get the boot.

All this has shown is that Devs don’t care about bugs unless it hurts their bottom line. The company has lost its passion for the game since launch. It’s the natural issue with games nowadays when the developers stop seeing the game as their passion and start seeing it solely as a job. They easily could’ve made a large post where it let people put in support tickets if they used the glitch and exploit and if you fess up they drop those glitched arts down to where they were before the episode launched. Those that don’t fess up pay the price of perma-ban. Just doing the overall is lazy and really just showed where devs priorities are with game issues (don’t mess with the greedy money hungry company).

Mepps is the Community Manager. He's not in charge of either developing the game or running it. He doesn't have the authority to, completely on his own whim, decide arbitrarily ban hundreds of people. He works according to policy set by people above him. Your childish ignorance is showing.

This forum is for comment on gameplay. Speculating on the thinking of Daybreak employees is quite obviously beyond rude or inappropriate and into insulting, obnoxious, and bannable. If you're looking for a ban, I recommend keeping up such behavior.

Nobody responds to tickets on the weekend because customer service doesn't work on the weekend. And we're about to start the holidays.

It means a lot of people believe in cheating and that they shouldn't be punished for it.

Nobody gives a a damn about the "background" of cheaters. Nor is this a game of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS with moral orientations. Cheaters get punished. It's not complicated and there are no valid excuses for it. What the cheaters' rationalizations and excuses are is irrelevant.

Mepps does not stand to lose his job over this, He's the communication spokesperson. notwithstanding I would highly doubt anyone stands to be fired.

Mistakes happen, those mistakes sometimes even cost money or in this case potential money, which isn't entirely easy to quantify.

People however don't regularly get fired as a result of mistakes unless they somehow verge on the utterly negligent and even then the threshold can be high.

In fact more often than not a bug in programming might be entirely unforeseeable on any reasonable level until it happens.

Do you legitimately sit there and think the programmers of Microsoft Windows are actively responsible for security flaws that get discovered even though they had direct control over programming and every time one is discovered by a hacker the responsible programmer is fired? Of course they're not.

And that's actually a similar example, if a security exploit is found in Windows, should a hacker be allowed to exploit it? Should the Microsoft programmers be held responsible instead of the malicious hacker? By the logic of a few people in here they would seem to think so - wrongly I might add.

Incorrect. Mepps is the Community Manager. He is acting as a bridge between developers and players. He isn't above them nor he guides them. In reality, when it comes to hierarchy, Community Managers are often BELOW game developers.

So no, this can't cost his job at all, he has zero decision and zero participation in what happens towards game development. IT also can't cost the developers' jobs as well.

You don't even know that Mepps isn't the leader of the team and want to insult others oveer things that only exist in your head.

Less arrogance, please.

Have you considered writing a book? This is so much fanfiction right now that I am considering copypasting your post into Wattpad.

No, they wanted to gain an advantage over other players by repeatedly abusing a bug which is obviously bad behaviour

Bingo.

the "they couldn't prevent me from taking it so they're at fault" line of logic is basically the "what was she wearing?" defense.

You shouldn't have crossed that line is the correct answer.

That would be like "someone" who's 6'4, 300 lbs., with a baseball bat and a 12 gauge telling you that your wallet is theirs now because you couldn't prevent them from taking it. Granted, our 'victim' here isn't exactly a destitute person, but still; it's victim blaming.

Going to leave my two cents on this topic.

First of all, this exploit should never have made it to live server. Probably the most blatant and obvious exploit in DCUO's history.

There needs to be a way in which artifacts can be rolled back. In *some* cases players may have just come back to the game right after GU launch and may have seen this as some kind of new update upon initial login. Not everyone is on the forums or follow DCUO's news and updates via social media.

If the devs can somehow achieve this, as supposed to banning everyone who has been suspended, the message would get across without depleting the population in the process.

There is another side to this.

Most of the suspended are endgame players. Players who test new game updates and episodes. Players who put a lot of time and money into the game.

Log onto EU server and try to run the current episode. It is a ghost town. You may be lucky and find a group, but most of time I am the only person online in my league and my friends lists is virtually empty, after having 20+ people on a few days ago. Elite raid, good luck getting a group at all now. Maybe 2-3 players tops on in each league out of those left (besides one league).

This isn't to excuse those who did the exploit. But there is an issue here. If everyone who is suspended gets banned everyone loses. EU server was hit really hard by this. No-one to test new game updates and episodes. Far less people putting money into the game. No-one to run the content with on live server unless you are on at a certain time on a certain day.

If most of your league got suspended, well you have no-one to run the new episode with. Friends gone, motivation to play the game less. Also what would be the point of you personally spending money on replay badges and levelling artifacts if all your friends and league mates aren't on the server anymore? If you can't run content because you have no-one left to play with then why would you spend money on this game?

This exploit making it to live could well be the beginning of the end for DCUO, unless there is some major population resurgence of new players joining next year.

For the health of the game:
1. The devs need to make the technology happen to correct artifacts back to where they SHOULD be as they see fit. With permanent bans only issued in the most extreme cases.
2. There needs to be serious advertisement for the game next year.
3. Merge EU/US server. Or RIP EU server.

Will see how this pans out in a few weeks. I don't like the exploit and I don't agree with those who did it. But if 2/3 of EU server get permanent banned then I don't see how I can continue playing this game, regardless of whether I want to or not.

If you know of existing exploits, you should report them.

Guess what? Corporations exist to make profits. If they don't make profits, they can't pay their employees. It's called "capitalism."

Since when is "profit" a bad thing? Do you believe that Daybreak Games/Dimensional Ink are non-profit foundations? If so: you are misinformed and confused.

Oh, shock, horror, the game exists to generate a profit! WHO KNEW?

Thank you so much for revealing this scandalous and previously unknown fact to us all! I, for one, am horrified to learn that DCUO is run to make a profit! Because... reasons.

It's always hilarious when people argue that their assertion is "common sense" or "everyone knows," because the only reason to make an argument is when something does not, in fact, make "common sense" and is not, in fact, something "everyone knows" or agrees about.

Because -- and wait for it, it's a really complicated intellectual point -- if something is already agreed upon by everyone and everyone knows it, there can't be any argument about it!

So claiming "everyone knows" or "it's only common sense" means, back in reality, "I have no actual logical arguments to support my assertions, so I can only make unsupported assertions and then claim they are true by simply repeating the assertion."

Repetition isn't an argument. Assertion is not an argument.

What makes an argument? Facts and actual logic.

Circular claims don't work.

Assertion: not an argument. Try making an argument. Take a class in rhetoric.

Simple assertion, followed by repetition, won't cut it.

Some of you'll are the reason I despise playing with strangers.

Fixed what you said to be more honest.

Boo-hoo.

Don't let that swinging door hit you on your way out. The game can do without cheater-apologists. There are always new players.

C'mon now, is the debate on whether these cheaters shouldve gotten banned or not, still going..? It clearly is in the Terms of service That YOU CONSENTED TO. I honestly don't understand why this is still up for debate, they violated the ToS. And that's serious. I it wasn't serious, it wouldn't be in the ToS... And blaming the devs for this instead of the actual folks who WILLINGLY and KNOWINGLY exploited a bug, (Which is clearly a pure violation of the ToS) is just.. wrong. Yes, The devs should be held accountable, but guess what, So Should You! They are not responsible for any stupid decisions you make. Period. I don't care if they knew that there was a bug, cuz once u made that conscious decision to exploit it, yer on yer own. Just stop defending these dudes. It's just not right.

Perspective is important. Maybe log EU server and see for yourself.

If 2/3 of the server get banned and can't play, the remaining 1/3 also get punished too.

Did that. All my friends are still playing. That tells me something.

If all your friends got banned, that should *really* tell you something.

Really open to interpretation with this one.

Good for you if that is your situation.

That would tell me that it is time to move on.

Comes down to perspective.

I would have to disagree with this part of your post, but I agree with the rest. Mepps has been around a long time and has quite a bit of seniority within the team. I would imagine that he does take part in some of the development discussion and he may weigh in from time to time. I do not know that for a fact, so you could be right, but as a software developer in a company with similar parts, I would suspect he participates more than zero. His involvement in what they deliver to us during the livestreams suggests as much.

Oh, this part for sure. But I mean more on the way that he doesn't have the final word on anything.

Thank you for explaining it in the way you did. Everyone of us are responsible for our own actions be they good or bad. The 800 accounts that were banned got what they deserved. They willfully, knowingly, and deliberately broke the rules. There are consequences to our actions. These gamers getting banned is the consequence Daybreak has chosen. They are the Judge, Jury, and Executioner if you will.

Mepp's provided a more detail explanation that went to great lengths to explain who the ones are and what they did, and this is satisfactory for me. For all of our information, Daybreak is graciously going the extra step to be transparent and explain in further detail in January about the actions taken.

BYSIS, thank you again for your clear, concise, non-condescending answer. It is much appreciated.