Customer Service Clarification Requested: What Constitutes an Exploit?

I am not an official, so i can only give my interpretation:
No, just sitting somewhere is not "afk gameplay" - provided nothing else happens.
e.g. you invis in an area where no SI mobs are around = no "interaction" between your char and the environment while you are afk = no unattended gameplay.
If however you are attacked during your afk, even by a grey mob, and your pet/merc/whatever takes care of it = unattended gameplay = suspendable/bannable offense.

That is, as i read it, the spirit of the quote - even though the letters cannot quite spell it out completely by nature of the topic.

Again, my take on things:
If you are grouped and your teammates are at the keyboard, covering for you while you are afk = no need to disband etc - your character is not doing anything it shouldn't and for the group there is no "unattended gameplay".
Length does not matter either, but what happens during the absence is what matters as i take it.

Who does the killing?
Your pet while you are afk? = violation.
Your groupmates that are actively playing while you are afk, "just contributing nothing" or your merc assisting your active group-mate's? = no violation.
Again, as i interpret the "rule".


As with anything, my take need not be 100% correct.
But i apply some "common sense" and get by fine doing so.
Some people consider afk-killing greys fine because you get no XP (but drops etc) - i do not, therefore i do not do it.
But i have seen many people doing so (e.g. in RSS farming for artisan's prize or riposte/pet-killing mobs for faction and similar things and all over the place really), and some cases i mind more than others.

LOL yeah right.
This is absurd and you know it obviously.

I can agree with the spirit, but not the letter of this.
Whenever there's RL money involved, i "buy rights". What this encompasses differs ofc, but whenever i spend money, i get some "right" in exchange - otherwise it's a donation not a "business transaction".
On the other hand, if i pay for a privilege, it's no longer a privilege as privileges are granted, not sold.
Which is why Martin Luther had very much of a case with his 92theses for example.

Despite knowing for years, even decades, that one can cross a street in places where there is no traffic-light or crosswalk, they have not walled up the sidewalk-
Therefore, your honor, i should not be made to pay the fine for my violating the traffic regulations because the city did lay out a trap by their omission to build walls preventing me from crossing the road where i shouldn't just to collect fines which in turn constitutes robbery.
I did not violate any regulations, your honor, and if i did others are responsible for allowing me to do so - instead i am the only person in the whole world still fighting for freedom and for what is right!
Please release me, let me go!

It's not personal. There are no moral or legal issues. It's just business.
We each agreed to do business with DBG when we accepted their terms, and paid our subscription fees. We gave them carte blanche, to do and act as they see best for their interests.

You get caught using an exploit you pay the price , IMO the punishment is not long enough for these cheaters , also not only should they be suspended ,their guild raid and group content should also be rolled back as well as any lvl or AA they have gotten ....

YiMin

I don't do math, it's supit

Oh god I hope this happens to certain people / guilds on BB I know for a fact these people abused this and I would love to have their tears in my coffee!!! Lmao

[QUOTEDespite knowing for years, even decades, that one can cross a street in places where there is no traffic-light or crosswalk, they have not walled up the sidewalk-
Therefore, your honor, i should not be made to pay the fine for my violating the traffic regulations because the city did lay out a trap by their omission to build walls preventing me from crossing the road where i shouldn't just to collect fines which in turn constitutes robbery.
I did not violate any regulations, your honor, and if i did others are responsible for allowing me to do so - instead i am the only person in the whole world still fighting for freedom and for what is right!
Please release me, let me go!][/QUOTE]

I can not agree with your analogy as it is fundamentally flawed if you actually work with legislation and regulations or even have a clue about real traffic laws beyond being an 'expert' because you have a drivers license. You analogy is based on the assumption that the authority has not crossed their 'T's' and dotted their 'I's' . I don't know what country you live in, but where I live the following regulation is in place about pedestrians crossing at traffic signals when there is no WALK light:

Pedestrians at green light

When, at an intersection, a traffic control signal shows a green light alone, a pedestrian who is facing the green light (a) may proceed across the roadway within a crosswalk, subject to any pedestrian traffic control signal directing otherwise, and (b) has the right of way for that purpose over all vehicles.

So no walk light does not mean that it is illegal to cross and does not mean anyone should build a wall to keep pedestrians from crossing.

But let's take the spirit of you comment and say that you lived in a jurisdiction where no laws covering the situation you described existed. First, the practical side of life says in the absence of a law, drivers and pedestrians must do things safely, so the result of that would be that pedestrians would have to be careful and only cross when it was safe to do so. Drivers would also have to take care and not purposely run over pedestrians crossing the road as life is precious.

Now lets take it one step further and say that the road authority implemented a law but didn't tell anyone that made it illegal for pedestrians to cross BUT DIDN'T TELL ANYONE and then had their police force start writing ticket and throwing people in jail for 7, 14 or 21 days for crossing the road where they had always crossed the road (this sounds like something that Boss Hogg would do in Hazzard County IMO) . In this situation happened in real life, an IMPARTIAL judge would most likely throw out the tickets and then chastise the road authority for not adequately informing the public and would most likely inform the police officer to not bring any more such tickets to court until the public was adequately notified (it is actually quite humorous to watch a judge chastise on over-zealous police officer!). That being said, the judge would not require the law to be changed, but would not enact any such fines until the public was adequately notified of the change.

So your point actually helps me make my point, DBG needs to state clearly that if they are going to allow something for years and then make a change, they need to inform their population of that change before they start doing enforcement. After that point, I agree that enforcement should be done swiftly and appropriately.

Here is a somewhat similar real life example that was done properly (and not some half-baked make-believe scenario). I used to live in a jurisdiction where the local police were tired of people speeding and causing fatalities on a certain section of highway. Local enforcement and judicial practice was that there was a 5 mph leeway given to drivers to allow for in-accurate speedometers and/or speed detection equipment. At that time, the police made an announcement that the carnage had gone on long enough and they were adopting a zero tolerance approach to speeding. Only because they made that announcement in a massive public PR campaign, the judges supported the tickets issued and did not throw out the ones that were within that tolerance level. Otherwise, to bring a speeding ticket with less than a 5 mph over the limit would have been thrown out.

Unfortunately we don't have an impartial judge overseeing DBG CS department, but we also do not have any statement prior to the suspensions that DBG was changing their level of tolerance about something they have known about for years and did nothing to change how they did business to prevent from happening. Add on top of that there is a handful of people that just want to see a good stoning (go watch the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian, or perhaps the scene in Monty Python and The Holy Grail where they are trying a 'witch' and come to the creative conclusion that if she weighs the same as a duck then she must be a witch!

I am sure there would be a lot more people posting about this issue if they did not lose their access to post to the forums along with their suspensions. So in the end you are arguing with those that have not been banned as DBG has effectively muzzled them during the suspension.

So to make the discussion relevant with both sides having access to these discussions, those that lost access can still post by making a free to play account. All you need is an active email account and a couple of minutes of time. Such an free-to-play account will also let them contact customer service if you so feel the need.

I thank you for coming out to post this, but this really does not answer the main question in this thread.

If my group requests a Heroic Adventure, say "On Behest of the Emperor" in Chardok, zones in, completes all steps, we get an emote saying that task is complete, receive X Sathir Trade Gems, some plat, a few AA worth xp. We also get a lockout that prevents any of us from running the same Heroic Adventure again for several hours.

But your post states that bypassing a lockout timer is an exploit.
Suppose my group requests this Heroic Adventure, we zone in start working on the tasks, and suddenly I need to log. I drop from the shared task so they can invite someone else.
An hour later I come back, join another group, and they want to do the same HA. I get the task again, without having to wait out the downtime. Is it an exploit?

Suppose we get the adventure, perform first few steps, get the xp for killing the mobs, get a bunch of vendor and tradeskill drops, even get a Sebilisian Brilliance aug drop, but Guard Kakator does not spawn. So we drop the task, zone out and request it again, hoping we get the named this time. Is this an exploit? Are we REQUIRED to complete the adventure? If so, why the mechanism is there in the first place? Just assign the lockout upon mission request and be done with it.
What if Kakator does spawn, and we kill it, get his loot. But then decide that we don't really need any more Sathir Trade Gems, and rather drop the task and get it again. Exploit? If so, why not spawn the named (and collectibles) AFTER the mission is complete and lockout is assigned?

These are not idle questions, as the way the system is designed, it appears that there are circumstances under which the task can be legitimately dropped and re-requested without lockout, something which your post directly contradicts.

I DO get it about the chest. Opening the chest is the final step that produces reward and assigns lockout, and dropping the task but still being able to open and loot the chest is (in my opinion) THE exploit. But that is not what you are saying. If the wording was "performing action that allows to claim mission completion reward while bypassing the lockout timer", that would be pretty clear cut.

This won't happen anymore, if you drop task because you need to leave and the rest of the group still finishes the task, you will still get the lock out now.

Technically it would not be okay because it is bypassing an intended mechanic to gain access to a specific named mob. The intention is you must wait for the lockout to finish for your next chance at the mob. At least that is how I read it. Whether it would ever be something Daybreak would enforce when that is the limit of the benefit is a whole other question.

End result is Daybreak will be vague until they choose to act one way or another, even then it might be vague for reasons. If they don't they box themselves into a corner for good or bad. So basically no, players will never get a clear answer because that can and would prevent then from doing what they want when they want.

If im hunting for a specific name i will cycle through those tasks untill that rare spawn or collection in that matter. As long as I do not get currency or loots in the process.

I don't actually think they are being vague though.

what you think they are being specific? lol

It's pretty clear as long as you're not dumb or deliberately playing dumb

I don't think that's the intention at all. If it were the intention, then the lockout timer would be applied after completing the step which spawns the collectibles and/or named/ph. It wasn't until shortly before the launch of TDS that the CotF HAs received long replay timers (I'm not sure when they received request timers). My memory may be incorrect, but I thought when they introduced the replay timers to the CotF HAs, they told us we would either have to choose between completing the HA or immediately getting another chance at the named. Searching for comments from Roshen in the 54-page thread, I could only find him saying that we will not get the replay timer unless we complete the HA.

So since it's not a bug that the named/ph and collectibles spawn at whichever step they do, and it's not a bug that the replay timer only take effect when you complete the final step of the HA, then there's no bug to exploit. If there were a way to get the HA rewards that are granted at the same time as the lockout, then that would be a bug.

I, too, would like for DBG to confirm this is still their stance, but I doubt they will. Perhaps they will change their mind about the ability to flip HAs for hunter's and collectible achievements. If they make a statement now, it will make it harder to make that change later.

This is correct- they legitimized flipping HAs ages ago. Besides, it’s not an exploit when identify an issue prior to a patch and live anyways. DBG is to blame, not the consumers.

Whether DBG knew about the exploit or not does not change the fact that it was an exploit and that players knew better. Why people keep bring up HAs as some sort comparison is beyond me.