Official EC-ban thread. Post your thoughts

[Arhangelos]

OK, so it seems they got the ban hammer. I never wanted them to get a permanent ban and you can search for all the posts people did on the forums. BUT in the end of the day I have to admit this is one moment of action the publishers took to ensure the game will not become a whale dessert where a handful few rule by taking advantage of whatever problem exists so they can enjoy the game at the expense of the game itself.

At this point I kinda wonder who are the people that got banned.

BUT most importantly I am happy that although I got kicked a few times without my consent I was wise enough not to re-enter EC and stay away from it because I knew there was going to be some  type of justice. I literally stopped doing EC at some point when they started kicking me without my consent and I even did a post about it, and like 10 minutes later I saw a post that EC was closed.

 

[TaylorS-DN]

no one cares lmao its just a break for 1-14 days only non-p2w ppl got permaban

[Arhangelos]

29 minutes ago, TaylorS-DN said:

no one cares lmao its just a break for 1-14 days only non-p2w ppl got permaban

The truth is that they said "we suspended AND permanently closed accounts" which means they suspended some and permanently closed others. I stand corrected. This sucks.

[PLEASEHOLD-DN]

this ban was just to disturb for a few days

[BigSexyHook-KT]

44 minutes ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

The truth is that they said "we suspended AND permanently closed accounts" which means they suspended some and permanently closed others. I stand corrected. This sucks.

yup thats correct, some ppl from my legion got perma ban, also i heard the BG of some KT-A legion got permaban too and they can't spawn bosses now.

[Arhangelos]

28 minutes ago, BigSexyHook-KT said:

yup thats correct, some ppl from my legion got perma ban, also i heard the BG of some KT-A legion got permaban too and they can't spawn bosses now.

If I understand well that person has his legion transferred (I am Asmodian-KT myself and we already discussed this in our lfg)

BTW, how does this "spawn" thing work and why do they need legions for that?

[Vantheria-DN]

17 minutes ago, Arhangelos-KT said:

BTW, how does this "spawn" thing work and why do they need legions for that?

If your legion owns an altar, there's a chance it can spawn an NPC that allows you to buy tickets for ~40mil kinah that summon the Demaha world bosses (your choice of boss).

[Arhangelos]

1 hour ago, Vantheria-DN said:

If your legion owns an altar, there's a chance it can spawn an NPC that allows you to buy tickets for ~40mil kinah that summon the Demaha world bosses (your choice of boss).

Oh OK that makes sense. In this case I do not see a problem, even if they didn't transfer the legion they can just make a new one and capture another fortress, fortresses go vulnerable every day.

[Squid]

The only bans that matter were the perma bans. Plenty of long term exploiters of this EC bug only got 24 hours while some others got 14 days. I assume they got all the names put em in a hat and picked out X amount of names for each ban length and that is how people got banned.

On top of this the 4 i know who exploited it the most out of anyone i have seen were only given warning so there is that as well.

[PlumbCrazy-DN]

The only question I have is what is the qq about compensation for those who didn't exploit.  You want rewards on top of the rewards you received when you completed your 1 or 2 EC's?

Or compensation for EC being down for 2-3 months?

I can understand for EC being down for 2-3 months, but I don't see how you justify getting double rewards for when the kickfest was going on.  

I had prestige, I ran till I got 2 complete EC runs finished, ie not just go in and get kicked 2 times and say ok I'm done.  That wasn't the exploit.  If I went in for more than 2 completed EC's then thats the exploit.

For those saying they want compensation for the time the exploit was going on is absurd.  You go till you complete your one or two then you done.  If someone just went in and got kicked and said oh well I'm done, then you the special kind of village idiot like mentalflubtarddingus.  

[CopperTop-DN]

My main has a few more hours in his 24-hour suspension.  I guess this makes me an abuser so take the rest of this post with a grain of salt.

The permabans seem excessive to me.  And the whole situation should be something that is explored by the community and NC so that it doesn't happen again in the future.  NC should assume some responsibility in this mess.  I'm glad this thread exists, I'll attempt to be on-topic.

This game is and always has been one that rewards and promotes the very top tier of achievement.  NC created the universe, instilled that universe with constraints governed by the universe and then let the players have at it.  Let the best player/legion/faction win.  That's how it's always been.  +15 is way better than +12.  The race to the very top is very hard.  It very often requires taking every advantage presented by the universe.  If the universe lets you do it, it's legal, until NC either changes the universe or tells you publically that the action is forbidden, while they work on changing the universe.  That's how every other game out there operates.  And that's how NC used to operate, years ago.

So what about bugs, exploits and this current situation?  This game is amazing, this game is also terrible in that there are bugs and imperfections everywhere.  But I hear you say, "exploits are bad m'kay".  That's true.  And they're a violation of the ToS.  And they can get you banned.  Here's what section 18 of Aion's Rules of Conduct states (their caps, not mine):

YOU WILL NOT EXPLOIT ANY BUG IN AION AND YOU WILL NOT COMMUNICATE THE EXISTENCE OF ANY SUCH EXPLOITABLE BUG (BUGS THAT GRANT THE USER UNNATURAL OR UNINTENDED BENEFITS) EITHER DIRECTLY OR THROUGH PUBLIC POSTING, TO ANY OTHER USER OF AION. BUGS SHOULD BE PROMPTLY REPORTED VIA 'ASK A QUESTION' AT HTTP://HELP.NCSOFT.COM.

This is all the ToS says in the matter.  But what is an exploit?  The first rule of exploits is that you aren't allowed to talk about exploits.  In fact, you aren't even allowed to know what the exploits are so you can potentially avoid them.  My biggest problem with "exploits" in general is that NC never clarifies them.  Usually, they silently fix them after some period of time. Some times they just become features.  Never, until now, have they banned for any of them.  Some "exploits" that I've heard people rage about over time.

* Jump shotting
* Slide shotting
* Running more instances than normally allowed after a server crash resets the daily instance count
* Participating in more ranked events than normally allowed following a server crash
* Putting a kisk in a fort
* Doing lunas in a fort.  Or doing lunas in a fort prior to a siege.

The list goes on.  My point here is that what is an exploit to you, it's necessarily an exploit to others, or to NC.  Remember this is a game that promotes clawing to the very top.  If you haven't been slide shotting for the last 10 years, you haven't been having as much fun as other rangers or glads.  At a certain point, you realize you need to do what the other top tier players are doing in order to catch up or stay in that tier.  In the past, not doing so only hurt you. 

This goes back to my original statement.  The permabans are accessive and NC needs to take some responsibility for this situation.  I'm not against all permbans.  There are other terms in the ToS that are very clear and have been applied consistently over the years.  Bot = ban, threaten to nyerk and kill someone in lfg (or PM) = ban, intentionally attempt to bring down the server = ban.  But play the game hard?  You shouldn't be banned for that.  NC also shouldn't allow you to use a very standard game mechanic so much that you play yourself into a ban.

So now we're talking about the EC situation.  Given the range of punishments, it isn't clear what behavior NC found that violates their ToS.  Was it abusing the kick feature of EC?  Was it entering EC more than normally allowed?  Was it something else?  There's no transparency in any of this.  The exact nature of the exploit is still undefined, and the scale by which punishments were applied is also unknown.  What is the take away for next time?  I'm glad I only got a slap on the wrist for my involvement in this situation, but the way NC has chosen to handle it virtually guarantees that something like it will happen again.

I don't know exactly what it was I did wrong, other than top minds all agree on it, and it's non-debatable.  I did kick some people who asked to be kicked.  Kicking people who don't want to burn their single cooldown on an obvious loss is common behavior in EC.  Later I did realize that something shady with kicks was going on but didn't really get how it worked and stopped kicking at that point.  What I did notice, was that I got a lot of pops, and I really liked those.  As a vandal reroll, such an active EC was amazing.  I luna spammed a bunch.  It was a small price to pay to actually get pops.  PvP instances hadn't been this vibrant in the last 9 years.  I didn't care what the root cause was.  I was going to take full advantage of this situation.  When asked later, did I abuse the EC bug.  I maintain that I did not, but I certainly benefitted from the active EC player base that it created.  I'm not coming here to cry about my 24-hour ban, it's a speeding ticket.  I'm still glad I did all those runs.  I'm way ahead of those that did not.

What I don't like is the idea that all situations that NC didn't anticipate, or that were caused by *their* bugs can somehow result in a permaban for those users who did nothing more than *play the game via normal mechanics*.  The people that abused "the EC bug" played EC, a lot.  But playing a lot of EC shouldn't get you banned.  You shouldn't be able to play yourself into a ban.  And you shouldn't have to live in perpetual fear for making the most of NC screw-ups.  Players have been capitalizing on NC screw-ups since NC first started screwing up, that's not a ToS violation.  NC knew about this situation *for weeks* and did nothing.  Literally just sat there and watched.  No communication to the community, no fix or remediation of any kind.  After Justin had had enough, the current fix was implemented in about 30 minutes.

It is the nature of this game and its player base to seek every advantage.  If the game crashes and gives me extra entries, I'm going to use those entries.  If Anomos accidentally spawns 50 times a day, I'm going to attempt to kill him 50 times.  If I find a "lucky" place on a map that seems to have a great enchant rate, I'm going to use it.  Either fix the game or identify exploits publically and tell people not to do them, while you fix the game.  But don't attempt to hide problems and then bow to public backlash, retroactively meting out punishment previously reserved for much different offenses. 

If as a result of the EC fix, they break the ID entry counter (it doesn't deduct for anyone, ever).  NC should expect people to play ID hard.  And I personally think people should be encouraged to play ID hard.  It's a free event for everyone until NC either fixes the situation or publically and repeatedly tells people not to enter ID more than 2 times a day.  Simply using normal game mechanics and playing an instance normally as many times as the game will let you, shouldn't get you banned.

What NC shouldn't do is, nothing for 2 weeks, and then decide on a mystery scale of abuse, to punish people.  That is wrong and NC needs to own up to their end of this situation.  They should turn the permabans into something less perma and roll out new policies and procedures for identifying and communicating exploits to the community.  By default, if not communicated, not illegal.  Play hard and good luck.   

Thanks for reading.  See you back in-game soon.

[PlumbCrazy-DN]

19 minutes ago, CopperTop-DN said:

This is all the ToS says in the matter.  But what is an exploit?  The first rule of exploits is that you aren't allowed to talk about exploits.  In fact, you aren't even allowed to know what the exploits are so you can potentially avoid them.  My biggest problem with "exploits" in general is that NC never clarifies them.

 

YOU WILL NOT EXPLOIT ANY BUG IN AION AND YOU WILL NOT COMMUNICATE THE EXISTENCE OF ANY SUCH EXPLOITABLE BUG (BUGS THAT GRANT THE USER UNNATURAL OR UNINTENDED BENEFITS) EITHER DIRECTLY OR THROUGH PUBLIC POSTING, TO ANY OTHER USER OF AION. BUGS SHOULD BE PROMPTLY REPORTED VIA 'ASK A QUESTION' AT HTTP://HELP.NCSOFT.COM.

 

 

I believe you have some of your answers in your word salad.  I highlighted an issue that I see in your essay.  

Like was said before, EC was meant to complete one or two (with prestige) times before having to use luna to reset the counter before daily reset.  Knowing you are completing the instance more than those afforded times without luna is a exploitable bug.  Same with the luna instance in a fort prior to siege to pop out for easy gp farm, animation hacks or some third party add ons.

That being said, ALL exploitable bugs should be dealt with properly and accordingly by NC Soft.  We all can go back and forth dissecting words to lean in our favor or NC Soft's favor, it means nothing.

Any video game is not a democracy.  We own nothing in it. 

[Miniweaver-DN]

https://aionpowerbook.com/powerbook/KR_-_Update_December_26th_2018#Instanced_Dungeon

1. If you get kicked from the Alliance inside the Neviwind Canyon, 1 more entry will be added to your character.

1 hour ago, PlumbCrazy-DN said:

The only question I have is what is the qq about compensation for those who didn't exploit.  You want rewards on top of the rewards you received when you completed your 1 or 2 EC's?

Or compensation for EC being down for 2-3 months?

I can understand for EC being down for 2-3 months, but I don't see how you justify getting double rewards for when the kickfest was going on.  

I had prestige, I ran till I got 2 complete EC runs finished, ie not just go in and get kicked 2 times and say ok I'm done.  That wasn't the exploit.  If I went in for more than 2 completed EC's then thats the exploit.

For those saying they want compensation for the time the exploit was going on is absurd.  You go till you complete your one or two then you done.  If someone just went in and got kicked and said oh well I'm done, then you the special kind of village idiot like mentalflubtarddingus.  

Thats an exploit right there. Choosing what game you can finish. You are given 2 entrys, completed or not. 

[Haniya-DN]

There's been a lot of speculation about what warranted a permaban- the most prevalent theories I've seen floating around are that the people who were perma'd already had 2 or 3 strikes on their account, or they were the ones doing the kicking. What I'm more interested in is what other steps are going to be taken after this because as far as I'm concerned, all of the temporary suspensions don't actually affect anything- it's like if someone robbed a bank, went to jail for 1-14 days, and then when they go home they still have all the money in their house to spend as they please. What's even worse is that EC is still locked, so it's not as though the people on their forced vacation are missing out on anything while the rest of us play catch-up. 

2 hours ago, PlumbCrazy-DN said:

The only question I have is what is the qq about compensation for those who didn't exploit.  You want rewards on top of the rewards you received when you completed your 1 or 2 EC's?

Or compensation for EC being down for 2-3 months?

I can understand for EC being down for 2-3 months, but I don't see how you justify getting double rewards for when the kickfest was going on.  

I had prestige, I ran till I got 2 complete EC runs finished, ie not just go in and get kicked 2 times and say ok I'm done.  That wasn't the exploit.  If I went in for more than 2 completed EC's then thats the exploit.

For those saying they want compensation for the time the exploit was going on is absurd.  You go till you complete your one or two then you done.  If someone just went in and got kicked and said oh well I'm done, then you the special kind of village idiot like mentalflubtarddingus.  

Yes, I believe the people who didn't exploit should be compensated and/or rewarded in some fashion. Like I said above, the people who exploited and are only temporarily banned will still have all of their gear, materials, and enchantment stones. Anyone who played honestly is still going to be just as far behind as they were before the banwave. Punishing abusers and rewarding the people who didn't exploit sets a precedent that cheaters will never win or come out on top. But leaving things as they are just makes everyone go "hmm, a few days off doesn't sound so bad in exchange for full gear- I guess next time I'll cheat too!" or "you know, if I could go back in time and spam EC? I would." 

[Neleth-KT]

Someone on KT got 14 days banned well lucky for him it's not perma I hope he learned his lesson

 

[Unbeatable-KT]

The one that deserves a ban here is NCsoft.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems at least half the population abused this bug, no? This is a complete speculation, and one that most people I've talked to in the past day have agreed on.

So as a company that finds it easier to just ban or suspend half the population, here are my questions that you should have taken into consideration before making such an irrational decision.

1) You bring millions of dollars in revenue each year, yet you can't afford one active person to be always online to intervene in such times? (such as shutting down the servers for maintenance and escalating to the developing team to come in and fix the issue). I've played other much smaller MMOs that intervened much faster with such issues where as you guys had a whole tropical vacation before something got done. Mistake #1

2) Knowing the fact that more than half the population exploited the bug, you decided to suspend or ban those people 3 months later rather than taking care of the problem then and there. Not only should you have had an almost immediate response and action to prevent further exploitation like I mentioned in the first point, but you waited for quite some time until you decided to do something about it, and that was to take EC out completely. The question then stands, knowing the fact that it wasn't an exploitation on a minor scale which involved only a few individuals but rather more than half this game's population, don't you think a rollback would have been more appropriate rather than ban or suspend half the population? Mistake #2

3) Instead of owning up to your mistakes of taking care of the problem, you did the finger pointing to your gaming community. Along with the finger pointing came banning and suspending of half the population. I couldn't care less about your financial stance as a company even though to be completely blunt it must be a highly uneducated person running your financial department to allow half the server to get suspended/banned and to take that big of a hit with the loss of earnings. No. What's more important to me is this game's health status as I am an active player in it. Have you stopped to think about what banning and suspending half the population would do to an already dying game one that has had dozens of servers upon release and has finally reached 2 half empty ones? Sure most of the suspended players will come back, but I can guarantee you most will also lose momentum and it would thus further promote inactivity and the game's further decline. Keep in mind, the only reason this game is still alive is because of the major patch releases and players coming back with that high momentum at the start. You've managed to kill that too. You are the root of your own demise NCsoft. Mistake #3

 

Here is a food for thought. If a student fails a class, who's to be blamed for the student's failure?

If 90% of the people passed, then it's the student's fault (ie. not studying, bad method of learning/memorizing, etc). If 50% of the people failed, then it's the professor's fault (ie. not a good teacher in terms of relaying the information to the students, or perhaps his teaching is not to the same level as his testing, etc).

Now use that analogy to this situation. If only a few individuals exploited this then sure, they are to be blamed for exploiting that bug and actions should be taken such as suspensions and bans. But since more than half the population exploited the bug, then NCsoft is the one that needs to take the blame.

I'm not a judge, but with all that said, NCsoft and their staff are the ones that deserve a ban, or if anything a 14 day suspension at least.

[Rakesh-DN]

43 minutes ago, Unbeatable-KT said:

I'm not a judge, but with all that said, NCsoft and their staff are the ones that deserve a ban, or if anything a 14 day suspension at least.

I don't think we'd notice.

The whole thing is kind of a mess, but hey at least it gave us something to talk about other than the enchantment rates, right?

[AnonymousCoward-DN]

 

 

 

 

2

7 hours ago, PlumbCrazy-DN said:

Like was said before, EC was meant to complete one or two (with prestige) times before having to use luna to reset the counter before daily reset.  Knowing you are completing the instance more than those afforded times without luna is a exploitable bug.  Same with the luna instance in a fort prior to siege to pop out for easy gp farm, animation hacks or some third party add ons.

EC was meant to be able to be spammed.  Usually, it costs luna, but due to a bug and someone kicking me, they wouldn't take my luna.  Should someone kicking you from an instance result in a denial of service for that instance?  This doesn't even really seem to be about the number of runs.  There are plenty of ppl who did many runs but weren't suspended at all.  It appears to be all about the kicks.  And there's a scale.  Kick 4 times, 1 day, 400 times perma.  Or whatever.  But again there's no clarity from NC.  Is it bannable to do extra free runs after a server reset?  Is the inability to properly track instance counters an exploit, a non-exploit bug, or just something that happens?  It depends on who you ask, and that's the problem.

Some people think weaving is an amination hack.  Apparently NC does not, but they've never said it.  It wouldn't really be fair to look back a few years and ban tons of sins for doing it.  If NC had taken action *much* sooner, nobody would be this upset.  The same bug would have existed, and nobody would have been punished at all.  But NC decided to do nothing.  Maybe because for a time it was contributing to a vibrant EC community and luna resets, who knows.  NC's inaction encouraged the continuation of the situation.  They bear more responsibility than zero to ensure the game runs smoothly and bugs/situations are dealt with, without this level of fallout.

[GenericUser13790]

51 minutes ago, Unbeatable-KT said:

The one that deserves a ban here is NCsoft..

We can ban them, uninstall haha.

But I agree.  It was stated that the devs have been aware of the bug for some time.  But that 'some time ™' has never been defined.  I, personally, think the bug was active since the EK server was established.  My thinking of that is that I saw many EK folks running a shit ton of EC per day.  To the point of more than 6+. I would run EC on a bunch of my 80s and saw the same people time and time again.  I think after 2-3 luna resets at 80 luna, it goes up to 120 or 160 a reset.  That being said, that would be a hell of a lot of luna per week.  

[FivePointEight-KT]

1 hour ago, Unbeatable-KT said:

The one that deserves a ban here is NCsoft.

-snip-

I'm not a judge, but with all that said, NCsoft and their staff are the ones that deserve a ban, or if anything a 14 day suspension at least.

I agree, I mean the timing is just bad. Why have an Enchant-O-Rama event that requires massive community participation and then ban them, and stop them from paying for stigma and enchantment stones and discourage them to do so if they come back. Dumbest thing ever, it could have waited.
We got 300,000 points yesterday and today we couldn't get enough for 400,00 reward. We will be lucky to even get Daevanian essence x2 which is 900,000. Everybody loses, both the community and NCsoft.

[DarkDesire-DN]

The issue is they didn't shut down EC right away, they allowed the abuse to continue.
They timed their ban wave few days after a heavy p2w event started, that's shady as hell, give us your money and noooooooooooooooow ban!!!
NC doesn't care about Aion NA, only reason we're alive is cause it doesn't cost a lot for them to just translate and move content here , oce the profits dry up it's gonna bye bye server, you can see their "compassion" for their other games
Ec is off for almost 3 months now?  That's just plain laughable like really how incompetent are those developers? or wait, yeah, they don't care LOL

Meanwhile we can't even get proper survey for stone compensation for the last 2 GP seasons.
Rewards for prestige are outdated as nyerk, only reason to get prestige is if you want to pvp and be competitive.
And the list can go on and on, but it's not their fault, it's the players fault for still playing the game.
Game is dead, it's not dying, when you log on forums and see this big of a shit show you know it's RIP.

[Squid]

@DarkDesire-DNGame going strong it aint dead. How many people said this game is dead and still around to see it kicking 5 years on  Myself included.

[Svaite-DN]

1 hour ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

@DarkDesire-DNGame going strong it aint dead. How many people said this game is dead and still around to see it kicking 5 years on  Myself included.

What kind of drugs you use, share maybe? Left with 2 deserted servers is "Game going strong" and "see it kicking 5 years on"?

[Aly-DN]

4 hours ago, Unbeatable-KT said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems at least half the population abused this bug, no? 

*snip*

No. Lol. It wasn't even close to half! 

In fact, it was a lot less than I thought it was going to be. The population was noticeably down the first night, but not even close to half. I am sure it felt that way to some people if the majority of the people that they knew abused the bug. It was the exact opposite for me. Only one person that I normally play with was banned and they will be back tonight. Last night about half of those with a ban were back and many more will be back on Sunday.

Though I agree that NCWest loses for allowing the bug to go on for as long as they did.

 

4 hours ago, Rakesh-DN said:

I don't think we'd notice.

The whole thing is kind of a mess, but hey at least it gave us something to talk about other than the enchantment rates, right?

 

 

[DarkDesire-DN]

1 hour ago, HealingSquid-KT said:

@DarkDesire-DNGame going strong it aint dead. How many people said this game is dead and still around to see it kicking 5 years on  Myself included.

Uhm, going stong is what Korean servers are and maybe EU.
EC bug going around for 3 months that shows how dead it is.
The excuse Cyan gives is what I tell my clients when I just didn't have time for their projects and had more important ones to finish
Just standard company lingo to give people something.