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How common are Exploits and is it the game designer's fault ?
admriker444
Member Posts: 1,526
I was just curious if this is a common issue among mmorpg's or do certain games just have bad coding flaws ? Reason I ask is because it was discovered that ANOTHER credit duping scheme was going on in SWG. Apparently a csr confronted a player about suspicious activites and the player confessed and showed the csr how to do the dupe. I dont know if this part is true, but the thread then states that the player recieved a good samaritan badge for showing the csr the dupe !
I played Horizons for about 4 months and never recall any obvious exploits there. Same with Eve which I only played for about 6 weeks. Otherwise, my mmorpg experience is limited. Anyone concerned about this for new games coming out ? I mean this duping has practically ruined swg player based economy when players dupe 480 million credits at a time. I can only imagine how many fake credits are out there... check ebay to see.
Comments
Also, what really irks me is that SOE is banning accounts of players that simply RECEIVE duped credits. So basically everyone is afraid to sell a krayt pearl for 3 million even though thats the going rate because it might get them banned. However, SOE rewards the player caught in the act of duping because he showed a csr how it was done. Doesnt seem right to me...
Playing: Vanguard SoH
Played: EQ, Planetside, SWG, WoW, EQ2
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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?
Killer 100%
Achiever 53%
Explorer 33%
Socializer 13%
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I hate to say but the World doesnt revolve around you and i think if you like the game enough you should be able to wait for them to fix the problem. Unless you want people to dupe money so they can buy stuff from you...
And sadly enought, SWG is not the best game in the world so dont expect so much from them. your expectations are a little high.
Playing: Vanguard SoH
Played: EQ, Planetside, SWG, WoW, EQ2
Remember this is the same SoE that was banning EQ accounts because they got hacked. They didn't just change the PW and give it back to the owner. Rather they blamed the owner for the hack and then banned the account. Even after it was shown that their database had been compromised and that Login and PW info was taken by persons unknown they still continued.
Basically it boils down to the fact that SoE CS has always treated their customers poorly. SoE epitomizes Quantity > Quality because of the sheer number of us gamers out there. But eventually it will come around and bite them in the ass.
Well yes it may be the developers fault but not in a horrible way. How many games do you know of that were released and then shortly after there were patches for it? Is it just poor coding? Not really. Sometimes it is and it's usually obvious. But the fact that PC games are played on such diverse systems makes it almost impossible to run right on every computer. Something will always be wrong as there are billions of different configurations for computers. And not just hardware either. There's driver versions, different types of software installed.
It's not just rushing the game out the door that is the problem. Most developers don't have a 1000 employee base to test the game on. Which is what most beta's are for. And quite honestly, people have at least some evil in them. THey'll find exploits someway or another. I don't know of an exploit that was planned. They are always something that just wasn't tested. The Developers just can't test every possible scenario. The vidoe game industry is moving so quickly that for a game to come out perfect with no possible exploits and still have the game engine and it's uniqueness meet up with what else is out there is impossible.
The developers are people too. They make mistakes and can't make a perfect game. And as far as writing bad code? There's only about 2 languages of the hundreds that I know which there is only one way to do something. COBOL comes to mind. There are infinite ways of making a game do something. everyone has their own style and there's no right way.
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Just to add the above, unless you've written a comerical app, you have no idea of the all screwed up things people will do with/to it.
On top of that people are generally looking for a way to cheat in games, many are tech savay and have a general understanding of how your code works, and where possable weakness may be to try to exploit. All games have had exploits at some point, look them up you'll be surpised the lengths people go to.
Yes it's a developers fault, but not always due to "rushing" out the product, it's just not possable to test all things all of the time. Even the ones you never thought of.
-=-=-=-=-
"We're a game that's focused on grouping and on solo play, you know, more group oriented, more solo play..."
John Blakely Senior lead for EQ2. Link
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
-=-=-=-=-
Achievers realise that killers as a concept are necessary in order to make achievement meaningful and worthwhile (there being no way to "lose" the game if any fool can "win" just by plodding slowly unchallenged). -bartle
Bartle: A: 93% E: 55% S:3% K: 50% The Test. Learn what it means here.
You all probably know I was argueing against Kriminal99 about banning. I agreed with everybody else that people who use exploits even though they know its an exploit should get banned. I am against the practice of banning people who recieve duped items or money. I've heard the stories also but I don't know if SOE is really doing it. If they are, thats a whole lot of bs and they deserve to lose subscribers.
My problem with your arguement, admriker, is about how easy you are making the coding sound. I had my hand a very minute part of coding when I dealt with NWN Aurora Toolset. The scripting in there is like a teardrop in a lake compared to coding in a MMORPG. It was easy to make a small mistake in the scripting but imagine what coding a MMORPG would be like. Bugs will happen and the only way to find them is for people to bump into them. Now we just need all those people to inform the developers and stop using them.
As someone already said, it is the devs fault for writing bad code. My favourite exploit of all time appeared one patch in AC1. Through some sort of button spamming as you travelled through a portal, mages were able to shoot of spells as fast as they could press the mouse button. You had uzi fireballs. The monsters had a hard time that week, before the problem was solved
The players of the game shouldnt really be taking advantage of coding faults, and the blame is partly on the community that ruins the game through constantly trying to exploit. That said, it is still the devs fault
The definition of of an exploit varies. Credit/item duping and other such technical faults are definitely what I would call cheating through exploits. But in AC2, the devs found that players were able to aggro mobs, then jump over a low fence or rock so that the monster couldnt get them. Providing they were a missile or magic character, they could then just stand back and kill it from safety? The devs solved this how? Not by improving AI so when a monster cant get to its quarry, it runs away or something, but by giving all critters a ranged attack. This really sucked, because it ruined tactics. If you aggroed a mob, it didnt follow you, it just shot at you! I think that leading on mobs, and trapping them is a skill, not an exlpoit.
I just thought I would throw that story in there
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
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MMORPGs: Treadmills that make you fatter.
www.silkyvenom.com <-- a good site for Vanguard information
Exploits usualy come in ways that the coders never imagined. There is no sure fire way to know what code will do every instance.
How is someone suppose to knw they should try to:
Grab an item from your inventory
Try to hand it to a MOB
Turn off their computer
Reboot, load the game
Kill the MOB
Turn off their computer
Reboot, load the game
Loot the monster
This is teh sort of crazy sequence that goes into a lot of the exploits. There is just no way code could have been tested for this kind of thing.When you write a very complex, multi-threaded, multi-server application, you just can't conceive of all the things that might transpire.
Bugs like this are nobody's fault, but when they are found, they need to be fixed.
But, it also can be said, that if somebody is using this exploiut to dupe items or gold, they know they are doing it. There is no way you do not know that this is an exploit. So, you get banned.
The problem isn't people doing strange things to the code. That's what "discovers" the exploits. The actual issue of the exploit being there is the lack of proper coding. Yes, trying to equip a piece of ham seems ridiculous, but if someone tries it and it crashes the system, what is the cause of the problem? The cause is that the developer didn't put in a check to make sure idiot users only tried to equip weapons, rather they skipped over it because they didn't think anyone would really try and equip a ham as a weapon. 95% of the exploits found if developers took the time to use proper coding methodologies (bounds checking, error checking, etc...). The thing is, those are long and time consuming, so they're skipped over. I will say that you can't really blame the devs, they are only human. Following a well thought-out coding standard is like being drilled in the military, only you usually don't have a drill instructor yelling in your ear to do it, so it gets ignored.
I agree, a player trying to equip ham should not crash the game. That is truly a coding problem the developers should have fixed.
Most exploits don't come from simple things like that though. They come from players doing stuff like turning their PCs off at certain times and stuff like that. It just isn't possible to check for every conceivable event.
It just isn't possible to test every possible thing that a human might do in and to the game. It isn't feasible. A group of 100 people couldn't do it in a lifetime. But, when things do crop up after somebody has done them, they should be fixed in a timely manner.
Checking for stuff liek this is much easier when it is a single player game. But in an environment like an MMORPG where it is server client communications, there is just too many variables.
I want to back up, TaskyZZ. These exploits are never easy stuff like the equiping of the ham example. It usually had to do with coding being used in way nobody could have thought of happening. Bizarre set of events need to happen in order for that to happen and following a set standard of coding will not catch that stuff. What amazes me is people believe that coding is so easy but in actuality its extremely difficult to code without many bugs.
People who exploit bugs sicken me. Most games are so complex that it is difficult to work out all the bugs and exploits and fifty thousand people will find an exploit that fifty testers may never have found. Exploiting bugs can completely ruin a game. That is why I left the original Diablo.
Well yes it may be the developers fault but not in a horrible way. How many games do you know of that were released and then shortly after there were patches for it? Is it just poor coding? Not really. Sometimes it is and it's usually obvious. But the fact that PC games are played on such diverse systems makes it almost impossible to run right on every computer. Something will always be wrong as there are billions of different configurations for computers. And not just hardware either. There's driver versions, different types of software installed.
It's not just rushing the game out the door that is the problem. Most developers don't have a 1000 employee base to test the game on. Which is what most beta's are for. And quite honestly, people have at least some evil in them. THey'll find exploits someway or another. I don't know of an exploit that was planned. They are always something that just wasn't tested. The Developers just can't test every possible scenario. The vidoe game industry is moving so quickly that for a game to come out perfect with no possible exploits and still have the game engine and it's uniqueness meet up with what else is out there is impossible.
The developers are people too. They make mistakes and can't make a perfect game. And as far as writing bad code? There's only about 2 languages of the hundreds that I know which there is only one way to do something. COBOL comes to mind. There are infinite ways of making a game do something. everyone has their own style and there's no right way.
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I should rephrase, I was talking mostly about SOE. How many of their mmogs have this same problem? Nearly all. And the fact that they don't take the blame for it and punish the players is BS. In defense to the person who posted about his vendor, why should he have to take down his vendors and not recieve his income? No, the world doesn't revolve around him, but he does pay 14.99/month to play on his account. Will SOE refund or credit his time lost because of their inability to put out a fix in a proper amount of time? Of course not. He is expected to stop playing and basically his character is out the loop.
In RL are we expected not to buy and sell things because of people making counterfeit money? No, of course not. Our economy goes on, and it's up to the criminal justice system to find and punish the wrongdoers. If I sell someone a stereo, and they pay for it with counterfeit money, and I can't tell the difference, do I get punished? No of course not. With the exception of the dupers, the players are the victims, SOE is the police, and they are judging and accusing people wrongfully.
All I can see coming out of this for SOE banning people for receiving duped credits that they didn't know of is a big fat class action lawsuit. I can see SOE having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to repay the price of the game and the subscriptions for banning people without due cause.
It's SOE's lack of customer service like this which makes me lean to the side of not purchasing EQ2 or any other of SOE's products because of their poor reputation. I don't care how good the game is, to me customer service is a major factor and unfortunately game companies fail to realize that the customer should come first because if it wasn't for us, they would not make money.
And no SOE developers are not people too, they are dumbasses who work for the devil
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33.333333333333336% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?
Killer 100%
Achiever 53%
Explorer 33%
Socializer 13%
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Taskyzz & Otlano (I know your comments were somewhat different, but I'm lazy):
First of all, problems can come up from trying to equip a ham, I know, because I've crashed a game I beta tested doing that. That's what beta testing is for, to pick out those problems.
Most exploits are from oversights like what I mentioned, I just picked an easy example. For the life of me I can't honestly remember a single exploit that evolved from the player shutting down his OWN system. You might corrupt some of the files for the game, but I don't see how you could possible hurt the game. In the case of an MMO, it'd be like going link-dead, and in a regular game it'd cause problems to the system itself, not the game.
I know it's difficult to code without a whole lot of bugs, but that's the reason you develop coding standards and follow them. Besides, a good intelligent developer will work around having to be so strict. I can't think of an MMO example, but if you develop an internal program, you can avoid some security/checking measures by working with the target user group and IT staff.
We are a long way off from anything being bug or exploit free. As code for games and software becomes more and more complex there will be more and more bugs and ways for people to find holes to exploit. This is hardly a problem that is restricted just to MMORPGS but instead can be found everywhere. The focus should be on how quick bus are found and fixed instead of expecting anything to be completely bug free.
Am I the only one who suprised to see that Krim's not posting an "it's the devs fault, you should take the cred and run" response??
The simple answers is, Devs make mistakes like all of us, and if a bug occurs allowing an exploit and they announce it, then don't do it. But my question is, how would u know if u recived a duped item or cred? And if u didn't know you can't be held liable for that. They can take the duped item back at most..
If someone explained that already and I missed it, sry, I'll try to pay better attention next time
Of course its the devs fault. Had they put a little more time and effort into QA there never would have been an exploit to begin with. Not to mention the fact that as long as they think they can get away with just blaming the players for their greediness, laziness etc they have no motivation to produce better games. This is why it is VERY important that players realize it is the developers fault.
Naive people here continue to try and forgive the developers for mistakes claiming they are only human blah blah blah. The point is they could always do BETTER. These people would be greatly surprised how small and insignifigant bugs were left in a game that ONLY depended on fixing exploits rather than running around blaming players because the market demanded it. As long as they have no reason to fix it, IE customers allow themselves to be duped into believing it is their own fault developers will never have any motivation to create half decent (as in less buggy) games.
It is the players purpose to find ways to excel in the game, and an exploit is simply an excuse for developers to smack down anyone who excels too far too fast. Sure one or two may actually be obvious because they are so often declared exploits, but in truth it is always defined to be "using a bug" and a bug is only whatever the developer didn't intend. This gives them the ability to ban whoever they want, whenever they want, and it is important players realize this as well so they do not continue to risk their time and money on games from which they could be banned at any instance. Their is no common sense behind it, no fairness. But for some particuarly dense people it will take being banned just for defeating some developer or gms friend and getting banned themselves to realize the danger of this vague definition.
This persons example is perfect to demonstrate what I mean when I say it is the player's purpose to excel in the game. What are the players supposed to do? Not conduct any transactions until long after the market has been drained of duped money? In order to not benefit from the exploit at all they would have to not do anything for quite a while. Is this what players pay money for? Is it ethical in a competition for the judges to force someone to lose because he wins too often? What is the point of playing if the competitor cannot try his best and is not allowed to do to well? Hacking is the equivalent of breaking the rules in a real life game or competition, not exploits. Exploits are just when someone beats you using an unexpected strategy and being the sore loser that you are you scream "HEY YOU CHEATED!" One day people here will have to learn to admit when they are wrong.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------PROBABILITY(YOUR STATEMENTS BEING MOTIVATED BY FEAR(I>U)) > .5
i wouldnt say its the devs fault noone can tell what the human mind will think of to do fwith freedom in hand
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Exploiting game mechanics can very well be against rules as long as it is stated as such.
If a game company states that exploiting an unforseen mechanic is against the rules, then it is cheating.
If it is not against the rules, then it is just an exploit. No matter how bad the exploit ruins the game, if it is allowed by the game company, it is not cheating if not against the rules.
Unfortunately some people are so competative that they dont care about what was intended or how it affects others and so it is up to the game company to enforce their rules.
Exploiting is in every game out there, wether it is exploiting bad AI coding or glitches in terrain or duping. Untill games and people are perfect they will exist.
Personally I will exploit little things to get past something boring or seemingly impossible, but I try to avoid anything that directly affects others in mmorpgs.