Invulnerability fallout and bug/glitch exploit policy

Hey guys -

As I'm sure most of you who have been playing in the last couple weeks is aware, we've had a major bug where players and vehicles were able to get into a state where they would take no damage. This bug was fairly randomly affecting players, and wasn't something that they could reliably activate at will. We are as frustrated as anyone that this bug has managed to linger on live servers for as long as it has, and we apologize to all of our players that it has affected.

That said, despite a bug not being a players "fault", exploitation of that bug for gain in the game or harassment of players while affected by a bug of this sort absolutely is. We take exploitation of bugs in the game very seriously and this week we've had to ban dozens of players for exploitation of this bug, depending on the severity some players received 3-day, 7-day or even in some cases lifetime bans. Some of the players banned we're all the way up to BR100, with hundreds of hours (and in some cases hundreds of dollars) spent in the game. There was a tolerance here for players who may have had the bug without realizing it, we are confident that those who were banned for exploiting this bug were doing so with full knowledge of their broken state.

Our policy on bug exploits is simple, if you are caught or found to have been exploiting a bug/glitch for personal gain or harassment of your fellow players, even if the bug is of no fault of your own, your account may be suspended or banned depending on the severity. If you find yourself in a bugged state, whether that's stuck in a wall where players can't shoot you or in a vehicle that can't take damage, the safe bet is to submit a bug report and redeploy.

Thanks for reading, and once again, we apologize for all the inconvenience this bug has caused the last few days.

-
mh

A lifetime ban for users seems a little too harsh for something that was introduced into the game by yourselves. What were some of the categories of behaviour you could use which could justify such a ban? Was it abusive language, trolling, stuff like that? Just seems odd.

I disagree. Ran into several of these that knew they were bugged, bragged about it in /yell and were killing enemy characters while in the bugged states. Those types, lifetime ban em, they knew what they were doing, exploited the bug and bragged about it.

Thanks for taking care of that Gal last night. PG <3 Higs!

finally something good..and they need to ban everyone who exploit this bug, because it starts to ruin this game..

I would like to point out, that just redeploying doesn't fix the invulnerability bug, you needed restart the game client. I agree that a lifetime ban is way too harsh for this. 7 Day seems fine IMO.

Thanks for taking this seriously. If a player knowingly and repeatedly uses an exploit to ruin the game for others, I think a lifetime ban is appropriate. It sends a strong signal that if you knowingly and repeatedly exploit, there will be consequences. This policy will keep the game enjoyable for the rest of us.

If someone did it briefly and/or unknowingly, no action should be taken. If they knew what they were doing and did it once or twice for brief periods, I think a short ban is appropriate, not a lifetime ban. But if they did it for a prolonged amount of time and/or more than once, that's unacceptable. Fair is fair, everyone knows being invulnerable is obviously a bug, especially high BR players. They should be held accountable for violating the TOS.

You could always be perm banned for exploiting bugs, it has been in the TOS forever..
Why don't you go read the TOS if you need clarification.

Guys are going on 100+ knifing sprees talking smack about their godmode /yell, they totally deserve the permaban hammer.

I completely agree that people exploiting this mistake need to be punished for doing so, even permanent bans.

Remember that it only takes one ******* to decide to play against the spirit of the game to damage what should in theory be a good night for the other 500 people at a fight and as much as I like going on the occasional killing spree or pulling off a lucky shot, I want to be damn sure that both myself and anyone else playing is having as good a time as I am.

Damn it SOE. You cannot (should not) ban people for life for 'using' something that YOU put in the game. Its like banning people for using guns. Or to a lesser degree what get banned for lagging?? It is not their fault for YOU having issues with servers.
Why dont you just suspend them for 3 days as first chance and if they continue, suspend them until the issue is resolved.

BANS ARE NO SOLUTION!

So much misplaced concern over people getting banned. Nobody put a gun to their head and forced them to abuse this bug. Bugs happen; they're mistakes. It wasn't severe enough in frequency to warrant large action like rolling back patches.

I highly doubt lifetime bans were handed out to people who took a minute to realize they were bugged and then either re-logged, redeployed, and/or filled out a bug report; or even played for 1 minute longer.

The thing which upsets me the most about the invincibility bug is not that it happened, but with the way it is being handled. Leaving the bug in the game for an entire week without a legitimate fix, banning those who exploited it, and enforcing an honor system cannot possibly be the best solution. An update introducing an invincibility bug is an extremely reasonable justification to roll the game back to a stable build. A rollback is the nuclear option needed to deal with bugs capable of causing tremendous disaster such as this.

It is unacceptable to make the players and the staff suffer the consequences of unstable updates while trying to fix the problems caused by the update. I hope the developers understand this, learn from the mistakes they've made with the last update, and will do what must be done to never let this happen again.

Completely agree with lifetime bans. Anyone claiming that it was a bug that SOE created and therefore they should not be completely responsible for their actions is the same rationality as someone stealing a bait car and blaming the cops for leaving the keys in it.

I think a better choice would be to stop pushing broken patches instead of punishing players.
I feel like I've been beta testing this game for two years and there's been maybe two patches in that time that didn't break the game.

Fully agree with any Perma Bans ..

Those players who abused it to such an extent to warrant a Perma ban rather than a 3 or 7 day one, fully deserve all they get and will find no sympathy in this house ..

I cannot believe people are asking for LENIENCY for players who knowingly exploited a bug for personal gain. I'm 100% on board with life-time bans for players who knowingly and consistently exploited a bug for personal gain/harassment. Thank you for taking a hard stance with this.

For those of you up in arms over the bans, remember that SOE had scaling bans for people depending on the severity of the exploitation observed. Players who responded to /tells of "hey you're invulnerable" should not be responding with, "LOL SOE MADE IT THIS WAY DEAL WITH IT" and then proceed to pilot a lib for six hours.

Lifetime bans are the ONLY solution to exploiters and prevent future problems with exploits. Everyone saying it's too much doesn't factor in how much harm exploiters can create to a games player base. It only takes 1 exploiter to ruin a entire server's gameplay for that day. They can and will troll alerts, prevent cont locks and make combat on that map a waste of hundreds of players time. Many players just logged off the game not to come back till the exploiters are gone because of them people and some may just cancel their subscription over it. Exploiters are toxic to the player base and we are far better off without them. They are the same type of people who try use hacks they think are undetected by SOE.

If you knowingly exploited this bug you should be banned for life no matter how much money you put into the game as your ruining the game for hundreds of other players who also spend good money on here. It does not matter one bit if its a bug caused by SOE's patch anyone with a once of common sense knows exploiting a game breaking bug in the vast majority of games leads to a permanent ban. It's a exception rather then the rule to let people off with only a 3 or 7 day ban for this kind of exploit and I have to say SOE's being pretty damn nice to anyone they let off with such a minor ban. If you became bugged and just hung around clueless for 5 or 10 mins & tried redeploying to fix it then you should be fine but all the exploiters i seen where in the game a good hour farming infantry with their libs or in vanguards while laughing about it.

It is also untrue that the bug can't be reproduced. There were players making names specifically to troll the server while using this bug. A guy called neverdie was doing this on a video posted here. It's obvious some players knew how to reproduce the exploit to their advantage.

Exploiting. The. Bug.

What do you think people do when they are exploiting a bug that makes you invincible in a game whose main goals are to kill your opponents and take their territory?

don't exploit and brag or you get banned..... i want that as a bumper sticker. but ban them ****** bag cheaters have no place here.

They should add a decal saying "Exploiters will be banned" (with a picture of higby swinging a hammer)