Please stop punishing legitimate players, while the exploiters avoid consequences

I'll try be brief.

Many guilds on the server are relying on the Ssra instance being available in order to legitimately defeat the Emperor to continue Luclin progression.

Shutting down the instance at this point means that these people are being collectively punished for behavior they had nothing to do with.

While at the same time the actual exploiters at fault have basically no negative consequences
(1) They are not being punished directly for these exploits.
(2) They still have the rewards from their exploited kills
(3) They can use those rewards from the exploited kills to do VT while most of the rest of the server is stuck unable to do so, since we took the time to key for Emperor legitimately.
(4) They just refreshed their cooldown when the instance was taken down.

Why will they ever stop exploiting when every time they do so they basically get rewarded by being able to keep the loot and any negative consequences fall on the server as a whole instead of them personally?

Think of it this way, devs. how would you feel if DBG said "we caught one of your coworkers stealing. But we aren't going to send them to jail or fire them. Instead, nobody at the office will get paid until the investigation is complete. Except your payday is tomorrow and the person who caused it just got paid yesterday."

That is what you are doing to us.

signed

I'm so glad this is being addressed finally. i cant believe there were zero other threads on this, heck they should have been top 5 threads by gosh.

I agree with the OP. The server shouldn't be punished because of one or two guilds. Just suspend them for a few days or a week while you figure it out.

AoS woke the sleeper, OGC brought down SSRA. The history of this server is rich, and the future looks bright.

Meanwhile on Lockjaw...

"Hey Drathus, your turn in ST tonight, good luck on those SODs bros and if you get any Shroud rots, please let me know..."

"Hey Sil, NP! You guys need any Clawed Guardian Bracers?"

"Hmmm let me ask!"

Agree with OP

^^^
I thought exploiting was against the EULA. If memory serves the exploit is supposed to be reported, and not used.
I understand money is more important than anything, but a suspension doesn't seem out of line. And removal of any items gained via exploit would also seem appropriate.
When exploits are openly admitted and being bragged about by those using them on the forums here, with zero penalty, it just looks like a big joke.
In fact, it only encourages people to find and use more exploits in the future, because why not?

No ones flocking back to lockjaw. If anything lockjaw should stand as evidence of what taking a dump on the server community yields.

At this point in the game everyone knows what is right and wrong. Everyone from the guild leaders down to the guild membership. Stop putting bandaids on these issues by punishing the rest of us.

If you're caught cascading expeditions or exploiting geometry or other things ban the guild for 3 days.
If you get caught again make it a week.
Again? Make it longer.

If anyone here thinks membership of a guild will follow a leader or be associated with other members that get them banned they are mistaken. It might cost dbg some subscriptions but for the most part people just want to play the game. They will find new homes.

People flock to some of these guilds because, whether it's shady or not, they are pulling in gear that most people didn't have access to a decade and a half ago.

This server has a lot of content left to play through. The harder people make it for the community to enjoy stuff the quicker the downfall of phinny will come.

I don't know what's worse: The Phinigel players who constantly harp about LJ/RF being dead servers or the LJ/RF players who pretend they are not.

Well let's take a look at the facts:

1. TL dominates Ragefire with an iron fist; FI dominates LJ with an iron fist - both during classic where there are limited targets to satiate the bloodlust of their members to raid. Instead of dealing with it for a year or so until the game opens up a bit more, people get butt-hurt and cry for instancing servers because... entitlement (THANKS OBAMA!).

2. Dima and others were hurt that they weren't top dog on the server, so they "summon the juggernaut!" and try to start a revolt again "teh man - FI" and get dominated further. They then leave to Phinny, the land of uncontested loot. TL gets bored of dominating RageFire and decides to try out Phinny where they can both dominate the open world scene AND get uncontested loot in instances.

3 When both guilds leave, their former home worlds become peaceful sanctuaries of harmonious bliss with the exception of Darkwind then taking the place of TL but getting ousted by up and coming guilds. Oh and FI's capability of continuing to down content lure members from remaining guilds which tend to make things a bit difficult on said guilds when there is a low volume of players to back-fill from.

Anyway, I digress; It seems all of your "issues" with your original servers followed you to a new server. Except instead of dominating open world content, they pull shady tactics to get keys, pull bosses to zones, exploit z-axis to pull bodies into rooms that people aren't keyed for and ruin it for everyone else.

While people aren't "flocking back to Lockjaw", we're doing just fine for ourselves in our open world, contested content. I just find it absolutely ironic that people place blame on FI and TL for ruining the home worlds but it seems like Phinny has more drama caused by those people that left than RF and LJ had during their short experiences there. At least on RF and LJ, people who didn't like what was happening had some recourse in that they could at least try to take matters into their own hands. I guess Phinny is at the mercy of Day Break Games. Good luck with that.

Do Devs even care looking at the forum ?

FI dominates because they zerg everything. At least there are a few of us that do things the right way but I think DKS does a little zerging too.

99% of the people on Phinny do not care about who kills what in what order or what other people do in either open world or instances. Until it impacts them by getting the instances shutdown. RF/LJ aren't peaceful realms now because the bad elements left, they are peaceful now because they don't have enough of a population left to step on each other's toes. Both of them combined couldn't support Phinny's raiding population. Four RF/LJ servers couldn't support Phinny's raiding population. Our population is so strong going into Luclin they have to try and figure out a way to up the trader limits. RF/LJ would have never have had that problem, even if they hadn't opened up Phinny.

Phinny's complaints are nothing compared to the early days of RF/LJ drama. They are a pale shadow compared to what it would be like if only RF/LJ existed. Phinny is an overwheming success that has left most of it's population very happy, at least when it comes to raiding. There will always be the small, vocal cadre of individuals who care about what the other guy is doing, but the 20 or 30 people here who care don't represent the population of the server. Most of the server doesn't bother to pay attention to the exploits of others. They just want to kill their mobs.

I never started a guild to actively compete there. In fact, I never started actively recruiting until about a month in. It was more or less a joke of our cothbot in Citizen, Gulfein, the Modest Man. In the time I was there, it was a lot of fun to lead the server firsts and fastest kills of Nagafen on Vox on any server. I personally enjoyed the rush to 50 on both servers and turned down requests from multiple guilds on both servers to join them in one form or another, including yours.

One of the only saving graces you had competitively was one or more individual multi-boxing 12-18+ wizards for raids, all in perfect unison. One parse I remember you didn't even have anyone in the top 12, it was sheer numbers. You gotta do what you gotta do to feed the masses.

Comparing Phinigel versus Ragefire and Lockjaw is night and day, the quality of life is much better. I think we can all agree it's a better atmosphere when a few people can't monopolize content with massive box crews.

With my synopsis on the servers, they will likely go the way of Fippy and Vulak. Ragefire will be the frontrunner, and Lockjaw will lag behind. You'll eventually fold the guild or pay to transfer to Ragefire when you run out of people to recruit, which will happen a lot quicker than it did compared to Vulak.

Phinigel will be the most successful TLP to date, because it allows people to freely enjoy the content on their terms, in era, without outside interference. Hopefully the necessary bugs are resolved to the point people can progress as much as their guilds allow it. Perhaps a TLP roundtable or an exclusive TLP beta would help, as test does not have the restrictions normal TLP has, so not all scenarios can be tested.

Good luck though. Lockjaw was a good experience, and I'm honored to lead dozens of people from those era of progression servers, including many from your guild. It was an excellent experience to know who your real friends are.

+1 Kahna.

This should have been resolved by banning the offending players for a week, and warning the server not to exploit bugs. They do it again, another week ban. (And make it an account-level ban, no running off and playing on another server during that time) Punishes the guilty without causing those not involved to miss out on scheduled raids because some players behave badly.

IF the offending players are NOT banned or punished, that speaks very poorly of DBG. They have policies in place and need to enforce them.

The devs do read the forums, and they do care.

All except that Prathun guy. I've heard he needs 'to act like his job title and be a GM, not some guy that shows up and everyone thinks is a joke.'

Yes. I heard rumors that the very few people to have ever (I do mean EVER) been removed (gkicked) from Faceless found their way into your crew over there! Thank the maker that they found a place to be themselves and good luck to you sir!

I hear even his wife feels the same way, and was going to show it by turning it into a depreciating cross-stitch for him.

Ah yes, the mystical 72 man Wizard/SK/Monk armies all controlled by Darth or Yawg (neither of which even know HOW to multi-box). Also, parsing in classic was a joke, especially on DPS races where you have 72 people in raid and 220 from other guilds all standing around.