Why is perma banning for exploiting ZOS's broken code okay?

yodased

None of the people who are mad about "exploits" are developers, obviously.

You have literally 0 idea what it takes to create something at this level and the flippant dismissal of their work is hilarious.

You know why they were banned? It sends the proper message to those that come after them. ZOS made the choice to make an example of those who blatantly cheated their way to rewards.

When the cops pull you over for going 100mph in a 55mph zone, do you go to the Kia forums and complain that they made a car that goes 100mph, its their fault you chose to drive that fast?

When you find a loophole in your companies finance software and embezzle money from them, do you say, "you shouldn't have had that bug that allowed me to steal from you"

It's a choice, every single person knew what they were doing was completely against the ethos of the game, against the "rules" presented in every other single situation.

To not only take the time to find this, but then to actively use it to get rewards that are meant to showcase a group of peoples accomplishments is disrespectful to the people who actually took the time to learn and execute.

Childish behavior is not banning people for breaking all the rules, childish behavior is getting mad about it and making threads on a forum complaining your friends got caught.

susmitds

Cpt_Teemo wrote: »

susmitds wrote: »

IMO, for every exploit by every player, PvP and PvE, the blame should be on ZoS, as it exists because of their faulty progamming. We have people abusing system loopholes in everything in life and I personally have no issues with that, as kudos to them for figuring out a way to beat the system.
I consider cheating with external programs bad but abusing a game's own code is perfectly okay to me and have used several of such mechanics in the past in various multiplayer games to varying levels of success, including ESO, especially in PvP. Finding an abusable mechanic IMO and successfully using it, can often be harder than doing it the right way and is downright thrilling.
Animation cancelling is probably the biggest offender, but nobody will ever get banned for it, as they can't fix it.

But exploits can cause massive damage to the game itself as well so its just as dangerous as 3rd parties, look how many people quit SWTOR cause of them letting dupes and in game exploits happen, went from 50 servers down to 3 now

Who exactly is responsible for that? The opportunistic players or the irresponsible coders?

You can't leave an "I win" button in the game and expect players who found it to ignore it. If you follow the e-sports scene, you might know for e.g., in CSGO, time and again, game breaking exploits allowed teams to win matches, which even ended in court in one case, with the court ruling in favor of the exploiters based on this exact logic.

Sandman929

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

But that's the way the organizers set up the marathon. If they didn't want me taking creative steps to get to the end they should have made the barricades much higher.

Royaji

Noone is getting banned for finding exploits. But once you get out of the map and find out that you can attack the boss while it can't attack you it is not hard to put two and two together, report the issue, take some screenshots and port out.

Proceeding to kill the boss though falls under exploit abuse and is rightfully a bannable offense. Leaving a hole in the map is ZOSs mistake. But using it to cheese a trial is yours.

yodased

Sandman929 wrote: »

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

But that's the way the organizers set up the marathon. If they didn't want me taking creative steps to get to the end they should have made the barricades much higher.

This is such broken logic, it's actually pretty funny.

You agreed to the rules of the game, its not creative to cheat, its cheating

Sandman929

yodased wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

But that's the way the organizers set up the marathon. If they didn't want me taking creative steps to get to the end they should have made the barricades much higher.

This is such broken logic, it's actually pretty funny.

You agreed to the rules of the game, its not creative to cheat, its cheating

Yeah, I was making a bit of a joke with that, but that really is the mentality of people who exploit. It's never their fault.

Turelus

Swift_One wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Swift_One wrote: »

I was away from the game for a while, but recently heard the story from a friend who was permanently banned on xbox. He was in a group that got the world's first vet hardmode complete by using that exploit in some trial (vAS I think), where you could glitch the final boss by a door or something. Clearly the achievement, skins, rewards, etc. should be removed from accounts and maybe a temp ban, but permanent? Is it really that big of a deal? I think the toxicity and hate people displayed over this is more detrimental to the game than the exploit. This is horrible coding by zenimax at the end of the day, and permanent bans are way too harsh. Maybe ban the programmers who designed that crap? There are so many other exploits in the game that people use and don't get anywhere near that level of punishment. Basically, it's ridiculous to permanently ban people because of their crap coding.

Almost all online games have rules against cheating and exploiting. This is because regardless of how people personally feel about cheats and exploits using them does have an effect on others enjoyment of the game.
As such almost all online games have a Terms of Service which will state taking advantage of a bugs within the game to gain advantages which are not intended can lead to actions against your account. Everyone who plays ESO has agreed to these terms of service.

Maybe you should be asking your friends why they feel they need to cheat in video games rather than doing it the correct way like everyone else, and why they feel being punished for cheating isn't fair. Exploiters have no one to blame but themselves for taking advantage of the bugs.

The whole point of this post is to address the level if the punishment. You really think a permanent ban fits the "crime"? I can't even call it cheating because it's how they coded it to work.

They can always appeal (or could have) if they felt it was unfair.
Considering many of those who exploited didn't stop at a single run, but went on to sell runs to others and profit off the exploit I feel a stronger punishment was warranted.
End of the day ZOS makes the call, and they chose to put a final stop to these peoples exploits. I won't really give much sympathy to them because they really should have known better, there are plenty of us who play knowing exploits and don't abuse them.

Swift_One

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

This is a game, people are taking it way too seriously. So, by your logic that person should never be allowed in any marathon again

yodased wrote: »

None of the people who are mad about "exploits" are developers, obviously.

You have literally 0 idea what it takes to create something at this level and the flippant dismissal of their work is hilarious.

You know why they were banned? It sends the proper message to those that come after them. ZOS made the choice to make an example of those who blatantly cheated their way to rewards.

When the cops pull you over for going 100mph in a 55mph zone, do you go to the Kia forums and complain that they made a car that goes 100mph, its their fault you chose to drive that fast?

When you find a loophole in your companies finance software and embezzle money from them, do you say, "you shouldn't have had that bug that allowed me to steal from you"

It's a choice, every single person knew what they were doing was completely against the ethos of the game, against the "rules" presented in every other single situation.

To not only take the time to find this, but then to actively use it to get rewards that are meant to showcase a group of peoples accomplishments is disrespectful to the people who actually took the time to learn and execute.

Childish behavior is not banning people for breaking all the rules, childish behavior is getting mad about it and making threads on a forum complaining your friends got caught.

First of all, calm down. This is a GAME. I'm sure the code is very complicated and I'm not mad that ZOS can't get it right. This is just a huge overreaction.

Wildberryjack

Sandman929 wrote: »

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

But that's the way the organizers set up the marathon. If they didn't want me taking creative steps to get to the end they should have made the barricades much higher.

Cheating isn't being creative, it's simply cheating. And if you entered the marathon you agreed to participate by THEIR RULES, so yeah.

Turelus

Swift_One wrote: »

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

This is a game, people are taking it way too seriously. So, by your logic that person should never be allowed in any marathon again

Generally people who get banned from sport who try to get back into it start from the beginning again, working up into the big leagues, proving they've changed.

Your friends can still do that. They can just get a new account AFAIK and start over.

binho

it's probably easier to ban people then fixing the game ...

Itacira

On the one hand, I understand the argument of the marathon. On the other hand, animation cancelling would've been considered exploiting a bug, and they made it a feature so they didn't have to fix it.

ettenmoor

It's called sportsmanship. If a bunch of kids are playing a game, and someone does something the other kids didn't agree on just because of a loophole, that kid isn't gonna get a lot of sympathy.
This incident doesn't deserve mine, either
Length of the ban, maybe debatable.

bearbelly

Swift_One wrote: »

Turelus wrote: »

Swift_One wrote: »

I was away from the game for a while, but recently heard the story from a friend who was permanently banned on xbox. He was in a group that got the world's first vet hardmode complete by using that exploit in some trial (vAS I think), where you could glitch the final boss by a door or something. Clearly the achievement, skins, rewards, etc. should be removed from accounts and maybe a temp ban, but permanent? Is it really that big of a deal? I think the toxicity and hate people displayed over this is more detrimental to the game than the exploit. This is horrible coding by zenimax at the end of the day, and permanent bans are way too harsh. Maybe ban the programmers who designed that crap? There are so many other exploits in the game that people use and don't get anywhere near that level of punishment. Basically, it's ridiculous to permanently ban people because of their crap coding.

Almost all online games have rules against cheating and exploiting. This is because regardless of how people personally feel about cheats and exploits using them does have an effect on others enjoyment of the game.
As such almost all online games have a Terms of Service which will state taking advantage of a bugs within the game to gain advantages which are not intended can lead to actions against your account. Everyone who plays ESO has agreed to these terms of service.

Maybe you should be asking your friends why they feel they need to cheat in video games rather than doing it the correct way like everyone else, and why they feel being punished for cheating isn't fair. Exploiters have no one to blame but themselves for taking advantage of the bugs.

I can't even call it cheating because it's how they coded it to work.

That's just ridiculous BS equivocating by people who don't like to deal with the consequences of their actions.
They didn't intentionally code it to work that way, and you know that.
Just because it happens doesn't mean you get carte blanche to take advantage of it when it does. That's why it's called an exploit, and taking advantage of exploits carries a consequence, and perma-banning is not an uncommon consequence in the industry.
If you don't like the prospect of getting perma-banned, then don't exploit coding mistakes. It's pretty simple.

Donny_Vito

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

Your analogy is not completely accurate. Getting "disqualified" would be like getting a temp ban or getting your rewards for the vAS run taken away for taking the shortcut. Taking that shortcut on the marathon run and getting permanently banned from every marathon would be a similar analogy to what happened to the OPs friend.

dotme

Turelus wrote: »

Almost all online games have rules against cheating and exploiting. This is because regardless of how people personally feel about cheats and exploits using them does have an effect on others enjoyment of the game.

This. When an exploiter intentionally bypasses game mechanics to achieve a goal, it can have a negative effect on other customers. (Yes, we're all customers, not just players).

If you behave badly in a retail establishment and you deliberately behave in ways that hurt the experience of other customers, you'll often earn a ban from that establishment. Just because they didn't prevent you from behaving that way doesn't mean it's their fault that you did it.

After witnessing exploiters grab scrolls in Cyrodiil with no action taken by ZOS, I'm probably wrapping up my time in PvP and when I'm finally done, me (and my $15/mo sub) are gone.

Point is, most companies have a desire and responsibility to maintain the integrity of their operation and provide an enjoyable experience for their customer base. If there's a fly in the ointment, it should be removed. It's not personal. It's business.

yodased

Swift_One wrote: »

Svenja wrote: »

Hint for the OP: It's the same reason why people get disqualified from a Marathon if they just climb over the little barricades at the side of the road and take a shortcut.

This is a game, people are taking it way too seriously. So, by your logic that person should never be allowed in any marathon again

yodased wrote: »

None of the people who are mad about "exploits" are developers, obviously.

You have literally 0 idea what it takes to create something at this level and the flippant dismissal of their work is hilarious.

You know why they were banned? It sends the proper message to those that come after them. ZOS made the choice to make an example of those who blatantly cheated their way to rewards.

When the cops pull you over for going 100mph in a 55mph zone, do you go to the Kia forums and complain that they made a car that goes 100mph, its their fault you chose to drive that fast?

When you find a loophole in your companies finance software and embezzle money from them, do you say, "you shouldn't have had that bug that allowed me to steal from you"

It's a choice, every single person knew what they were doing was completely against the ethos of the game, against the "rules" presented in every other single situation.

To not only take the time to find this, but then to actively use it to get rewards that are meant to showcase a group of peoples accomplishments is disrespectful to the people who actually took the time to learn and execute.

Childish behavior is not banning people for breaking all the rules, childish behavior is getting mad about it and making threads on a forum complaining your friends got caught.

First of all, calm down. This is a GAME. I'm sure the code is very complicated and I'm not mad that ZOS can't get it right. This is just a huge overreaction.

I'm chill as can be, not excited. The point is, a game or not, there are rules. You break the rules you don't get to play the game anymore.

Ask Pete Rose.

ZombieFodder

Swift_One wrote: »

I was away from the game for a while, but recently heard the story from a friend who was permanently banned on xbox. He was in a group that got the world's first vet hardmode complete by using that exploit in some trial (vAS I think), where you could glitch the final boss by a door or something. Clearly the achievement, skins, rewards, etc. should be removed from accounts and maybe a temp ban, but permanent? Is it really that big of a deal? I think the toxicity and hate people displayed over this is more detrimental to the game than the exploit. This is horrible coding by zenimax at the end of the day, and permanent bans are way too harsh. Maybe ban the programmers who designed that crap? There are so many other exploits in the game that people use and don't get anywhere near that level of punishment. Basically, it's ridiculous to permanently ban people because of their crap coding.

Let's say there's a bank. Let's say that one day a bank robber stops by after hours. He checks the door and to his surprise it's unlocked. So he goes in grabs a pile of cash and walks out to find the cops waiting. When facing his trial his defence is that the door was unlocked, so it was the banks fault that he robbed the place. The judge laughs, and sentences him to 25 years hard time. The punishment fit the crime. In the case of your friend, all he needs to do is buy the game again and remake his account. If it was an IP ban, I'd understand the frustration, but it's not.

RABIDxWOLVERINE

If i had to guess its because they found an exploit and rather than reporting the exploit they abused it and possibly shared it which made it a larger issue. I had to learn this the hard way with COD. When they did the prestige token glitch. All my friends did it and they showed me how and rather than report the exploit I took part and I paid the price, which at the time pissed me off but now I completely understand I deserved the punishment handed out. I think the permaban is a bit harsh but thats one way to show your arent F-ing around. COD and ESO are too different to really compare the punishments but what I got was harsh and ultimately led me to quiting COD for a long time. I took pride in my stats and the punishment for my exploit was to reset all my stats K/D, W/L and it showed the world you were a cheater. Not only did they reset the stats but they ruined them. At the time I got in trouble I had some crazy stat lines like 3.8 K/D and almost 10 W/L ratio. After resetting your stats they added 10000 deaths and 1000 losses to your stats so you were in a hole that you would never get out of. They eventually reset it back but I learned my lesson. If you find an exploit bring it to the devs attention otherwise they will destroy your game lol. Learn from mine and others mistakes!

Donny_Vito

ZombieFodder wrote: »

Swift_One wrote: »

I was away from the game for a while, but recently heard the story from a friend who was permanently banned on xbox. He was in a group that got the world's first vet hardmode complete by using that exploit in some trial (vAS I think), where you could glitch the final boss by a door or something. Clearly the achievement, skins, rewards, etc. should be removed from accounts and maybe a temp ban, but permanent? Is it really that big of a deal? I think the toxicity and hate people displayed over this is more detrimental to the game than the exploit. This is horrible coding by zenimax at the end of the day, and permanent bans are way too harsh. Maybe ban the programmers who designed that crap? There are so many other exploits in the game that people use and don't get anywhere near that level of punishment. Basically, it's ridiculous to permanently ban people because of their crap coding.

This is some poor reasoning, and I'll tell you why. Let's say there's a bank. Let's say that one day a bank robber stops by after hours. He checks the door and to his surprise it's unlocked. So he goes in grabs a pile of cash and walks out to find the cops waiting. When facing his trial his defence is that the door was unlocked, so it was the banks fault that he robbed the place. The judge laughs, and sentences him to 25 years hard time. The punishment fit the crime. In the case of your friend, all he needs to do is buy the game again and remake his account. If it was an IP ban, I'd understand the frustration, but it's not.

I think he's using the rationale that there is no consistency on how ESO bans players. You want to take advantage of exploits in PvP? Great, no one gets banned. You want to take advantage of exploits in a PvE trial? Permanently banned. Honestly, it doesn't make any sense when talking about the consistency of how they ban.

Turelus

Donny_Vito wrote: »

ZombieFodder wrote: »

Swift_One wrote: »

I was away from the game for a while, but recently heard the story from a friend who was permanently banned on xbox. He was in a group that got the world's first vet hardmode complete by using that exploit in some trial (vAS I think), where you could glitch the final boss by a door or something. Clearly the achievement, skins, rewards, etc. should be removed from accounts and maybe a temp ban, but permanent? Is it really that big of a deal? I think the toxicity and hate people displayed over this is more detrimental to the game than the exploit. This is horrible coding by zenimax at the end of the day, and permanent bans are way too harsh. Maybe ban the programmers who designed that crap? There are so many other exploits in the game that people use and don't get anywhere near that level of punishment. Basically, it's ridiculous to permanently ban people because of their crap coding.

This is some poor reasoning, and I'll tell you why. Let's say there's a bank. Let's say that one day a bank robber stops by after hours. He checks the door and to his surprise it's unlocked. So he goes in grabs a pile of cash and walks out to find the cops waiting. When facing his trial his defence is that the door was unlocked, so it was the banks fault that he robbed the place. The judge laughs, and sentences him to 25 years hard time. The punishment fit the crime. In the case of your friend, all he needs to do is buy the game again and remake his account. If it was an IP ban, I'd understand the frustration, but it's not.

I think he's using the rationale that there is no consistency on how ESO bans players. You want to take advantage of exploits in PvP? Great, no one gets banned. You want to take advantage of exploits in a PvE trial? Permanently banned. Honestly, it doesn't make any sense when talking about the consistency of how they ban.

Agreed, but ZOS has started to set better ones each new ban.
They've been clear now that repeat offenders go for good, some minor issues like the SP bug in Morrowind or the XP issues in IC we're suspensions for most, perma-bans for repeat offenders.
However in the case of the trial exploit people repeated the abuse of it and even went on to sell runs of it to others, this was beyond using it for a quick skin run, they actively helped others exploit to further increase their gains.

Sandman929

This comes up every so often and there's lots of back and forth about fairness and consistency and "it's their fault I did this" and so on.
It's all very simple. If you find something or hear about something in game and think to yourself "What? This doesn't seem intentional", seek out an answer regarding it's validity here or using in-game reporting.
If you're at all concerned about possible "unfair" or "heavy handed" consequences to your account, don't do that thing.

zaria

OneKhajiitCrimeWave wrote: »

@Swift_One

While ZOS aren't going to have open discourse about the decisions they made there is a reason many of the perm banned ended up that way.
Some were selling skin runs to abuse the exploit and make large amounts of gold rather than directly reporting the bug and not exploiting it for personal gain.

Some were setting up bot macro's to basically automate the exploit and make money from skin runs (i spoke to one such person who bragged about it and then sulked when they got perm banned).

At the end of the day if you discover what happens to be a blatant exploit and you decide that instead of reporting it you use it for personal gain (to complete said HM trial for example) then accept the fact that:

1. ZOS will find out about it.
2. ZOS will look at the data of your HM clear (which will blatantly show exploiting)
3. ZOS will most likely then hit you with a ban/other punishment when it's fixed.

This is not rocket science. Don't be an exploiting scrub. If you can't do content then don't exploit through, it's that simple.

This.
Its an story from WOW, some player got an item from an game master because some issue, however GM gave the wrong item, he gave an GM only item who would kill anything including raid bosses in one hit.
So that did he do? Play as normal, do a bit more challenging stuff?

No he was so smart he gathered his causal raid guild went to an new raid who was not cleared yet and went in on the hardest difficulty and cleared it on an very short time.

He got an perma ban, guild got an timed ban. Note that he did not hack or anything he just got an idiotic OP item as GM did an mistake, still his problem then he used it for high profile exploit.
Pretty much everything in an MMO is logged.

BuddyAces

My favorite threads. Exploiters whining and trying to place blame on something but them. Someone link a pic of a salt shaker please.

CrisXD

yodased wrote: »

None of the people who are mad about "exploits" are developers, obviously.

You have literally 0 idea what it takes to create something at this level and the flippant dismissal of their work is hilarious.

You know why they were banned? It sends the proper message to those that come after them. ZOS made the choice to make an example of those who blatantly cheated their way to rewards.

When the cops pull you over for going 100mph in a 55mph zone, do you go to the Kia forums and complain that they made a car that goes 100mph, its their fault you chose to drive that fast?

When you find a loophole in your companies finance software and embezzle money from them, do you say, "you shouldn't have had that bug that allowed me to steal from you"

It's a choice, every single person knew what they were doing was completely against the ethos of the game, against the "rules" presented in every other single situation.

To not only take the time to find this, but then to actively use it to get rewards that are meant to showcase a group of peoples accomplishments is disrespectful to the people who actually took the time to learn and execute.

Childish behavior is not banning people for breaking all the rules, childish behavior is getting mad about it and making threads on a forum complaining your friends got caught.

Fair.

Turelus

BuddyAces wrote: »

My favorite threads. Exploiters whining and trying to place blame on something but them. Someone link a pic of a salt shaker please.

This is a TES game forum, we need to keep it relevant.

Skyrim Salt.

killahsin

perma-banning being ok for using known bad coding glitches as exploits would entirely depend on intention. If your buddy absolutely intended to do what he did then for sure perma ban.

NBrookus

I played a game where the devs decided they couldn't punish anyone for exploiting bugs, because bugs were the devs fault. It was a hardcore game with full loot and you lost skill when you died.

Last I checked, they were down to 300 players, almost all of which were busy dupe exploiting and using exploits to grief any new players that might stumble into the game.

ZOS should come down harder on people that knowingly exploit broken mechanics and skills.

Hurtfan

Cut out all the other crap, this is simple

Dude knew the rules, dude effed up...dude is perma banned.

Donny_Vito

BuddyAces wrote: »

My favorite threads. Exploiters whining and trying to place blame on something but them. Someone link a pic of a salt shaker please.

Hard to tell if you actually read the OP or just trying to troll....or both.