Rules, flameout, exploits and bans

[Vlada]

Rules, flameout, exploits and bans

August 2012
The SWGEmu Team

3.10 The SWGEmu Team encourages the reporting of any and all exploits. You are required to immediately report and discontinue use of all discovered exploits or face disciplinary action listed below.

• 3.10.1 Exploits include, but are not limited to; all forms of hacking, exploiting and all other actions intended to break, bend or in anyway alter the SWGEmu gameplay experience in favor of one player or against another player.
• 3.10.2 Report all exploits to the Quality Assurance department at https://www.swgemu.com/bugs using the Exploit category or send to quality@swgemu.com
• 3.10.3 As a first offense, there will be a warning issued directing the guilty party to the Quality Assurance department. Offenders are required to immediately disclose all known information about the exploit. Failure to comply with this policy will result in an immediate permanent ban from all SWGEmu services. This ban will include the immediate deletion of all known characters, items, disbanding of guilds if guild leader, and removal of all items being sold by the user on the marketplace

We are all fully aware of what the rules on exploits and exploiting are, but yesterdays events, the agony we went though in our staff channel trying to determine if enforcing those rules is something that will help this project and speed up development in the long run, forced us to revisit some of our rules and after more than 10 hours of going back and forth we did manage to agree on a few things...

• Rules were made during the Old Nova almost 3 years ago, and though they made sense then (the Old Nova was purely a play server outdated code no longer in development), they dont make much sense now.
• All exploits and all circumstances are not the same
• We are still in development and Basilisk is not a production server

Zero-tolerance is the policy for production servers like SunCrusher will be, but we are still in a phase where we need to find and squash as many of these exploits as possible before SunCrusher is launched (or other communities for that matter). Exploits like this could ruin economies quickly, and in a no-wipe scenario, that simply isn't acceptable; I'm pretty sure that most of you have seen evidence of the affects of that already on Basilisk. The good news is we have squashed many of the worst, most glaring, exploits, and continue improving on that front. Basilisk has way less exploits than old Nova and early Liberator had by a long shot.

Still, those who exploit and make no effort to come forward will be punished accordingly. Report exploits. Don't try to hide them.

Because of all this we have decided to change our rules to something more development friendly

3.10 The SWGEmu Team encourages the reporting of any and all exploits. You are required to immediately report and discontinue use of all discovered exploits or face disciplinary action listed below.

• 3.10.1 A bug is defined as an unintended result of a game function that is unintentionally encountered and/or cannot be bypassed without altering the intended gameplay experience.
• 3.10.2 Exploiting is defined as the commission of an action within the game to circumvent or alter the normal functions of said game.
• 3.10.3 Hacking is defined as altering the client to perform functions outside of its normal operation, altering data transmitted between the client and server, or attempting to gain unauthorized access to SWGEmu servers.
• 3.10.4 Report all exploits to exploits@swgemu.com, www.swgemu.com/bugs, support.swgemu.com, or drop a PM on forums or IRC to Devs or QA
• 3.10.5 Offenders are required to immediately disclose all known information about the exploit. Failure to comply with this policy will result in an immediate actions taken against their accounts. Punishment will be determent depending on the severity of the offense and willingness to disclose details of exploit by SWGEmu Staff

Recently, the Flameout bug has been touted as an exploit. In fact, little was known about the circumstanced revolving around the bug. After thorough investigation, the development team found that Flameout itself was simply bugged, and was not exploited intentionally. Any player who obtained Flameout with +100% mitigation would have experienced this bug, thus unavoidably exploiting it if they eat Flameout at all. This is considered a bug that is not 100% in control of the player. In other words, the player cannot avoid the exploit while playing the game legitimately. They took no nefarious action to generate the exploit.

I will contrast it against the Clue Quest exploit that was existent about a month ago. The Clue Quest exploit required the user to conciously make an effort outside the parameters of normal game play to exploit the intended mechanic. In this instance, the player had to bring up multiple interface input boxes before entering information into any of them. This would allow them to receive the reward multiple times. The player had complete control over opening the interface boxes multiple times. They had the choice to only bring it up once, and still experience the full intended result.

In the Flameout bug, however, the player had no control over experiencing the bug. Using the food forced them to experience the bug, regardless of whether they intended to experience it or not. This is akin to the players who have logged in to find phantom buffs applied permanently to their character; they did nothing to pursue this unintended, yet advantageous effect, but are the unsuspecting victims of the phantom buff.

However, a few players took the Flameout bug to a new level, by using it to continuously farm high-end content, knowing that it was not working as intended, and would make them invulnerable to damage. Furthermore, they engaged in player versus player combat, giving them a completely unfair advantage over their opponents. Without agreement from all parties involved, this behavior is not tolerated. On top of this, they failed to report this bug in a timely manner.

We define a timely manner as being within 24 hours after being able to readily reproduce a bug.

As staff, we have to remain objective when considering a circumstance where exploits are being considered. Even if the person is a highly suspected and past offender, we need to treat the individual as though he or she has no history when we are determining guilt. However, past offenses may be considered when determining punishment.

With all this in mind we have offered our latest offenders a chance to reduce their sentences if they disclose all the details of the exploits/bugs they were using, which of course they did.

So we gave them a choice:

1. Two months forums ban + two months Basilisk ban
   
2. Two months forums ban + Character caught exploiting permanently confiscated (with all its belongings, credits, structures, etc)

Their choice is their own and we will not disclose that, but I'm sure you will find out soon enough on your own.



To avoid situations like these SWGEmu team wants to remind everyone that this is till a development project and that all exploits need to be reported as soon as they are discovered.




~ The SWGEmu Staff

[Johnnyburma]

Thanks for the update, Vlada

[Ykir]

Wow. Good job.

[Relic61]

Dunno about you, but when I take out the trash, it doesn't come back. Just sayin

[Vlada]

Dunno about you, but when I take out the trash, it doesn't come back. Just sayin

Yes, but you live in a finished house, we on the other hand are still trying to build ours. What looks like trash atm can be used to reinforce a wall of the house later, so better to keep it around just in case.

[calous]

good post, seems fair.

[Toglco]

How do you guys feel about the player bounty hunting? I understand that a fix has been made and will be on Basilisk with the next publish, how do you feel about players who continue to engage in player bounty hunting before the next publish comes around?

[Onilwyn]

Yes, but you live in a finished house, we on the other hand are still trying to build ours. What looks like trash atm can be used to reinforce a wall of the house later, so better to keep it around just in case.

Very well said and big kudo's to the emu team for all their hard work

[roodypooh]

#2 is an easy work around....but thanks for letting the cat out of the bag on that one.....so now everyone knows if you are going to exploit on one toon make sure you transfer all items you loot and your good weapons/armor/credits etc etc to 2nd character before you get banned so when they delete all your stuff one the banned toon all your good stuff is on a different character....ty for letting everyone know what to do for the next time to avoid a 2month ban. lol

[Vlada]

#2 is an easy work around....but thanks for letting the cat out of the bag on that one.....so now everyone knows if you are going to exploit on one toon make sure you transfer all items you loot and your good weapons/armor/credits etc etc to 2nd character before you get banned so when they delete all your stuff one the banned toon all your good stuff is on a different character....ty for letting everyone know what to do for the next time to avoid a 2month ban. lol

Actually that was a one time deal, punishments will vary depending on the crime, but one thing is for sure, simple toon removal wont be done again. That one is off the table.

[PRONG]

Thank You Thank You Thank You to TheAnswer, cRush, Vlada and anybody else involved in those discusions yesterday. It did alot for the morale of the huge influx of 2012'ers who have no idea of the history/drama of certain players in this project.

Thank you for putting up with a community that is mostly selfish, whining,complaining and ungrateful and clueless, while you guys, work for free, in your spare time..so that we may play a video game for free.

[Ploute]

Okay so here is the real question, what about the BH bug with the Terminals?

[Ykir]

Thank You Thank You Thank You to TheAnswer, cRush, Vlada and anybody else involved in those discusions yesterday. It did alot for the morale of the huge influx of 2012'ers who have no idea of the history/drama of certain players in this project.

Thank you for putting up with a community that is mostly selfish, whining,complaining and ungrateful and clueless, while you guys, work for free, in your spare time..so that we may play a video game for free.

I read a lot, old posts, current posts, etc. Years of being a forum ***** has taught me to take everything with a grain of salt. That being said, it was easy to understand that there was a history of "things" with certain individuals. Easy because when multiple sources say the same thing and the subject only talks smack instead of defending himself the answer is obvious.

Seriously though, your comment about 2012'ers only served to make you look like someone who feels entitled, and is bitter at the same time that there are new kids on the block with opinions.

Anyhow, nice to meet you. This was just my .02¢. The things that go on in this forum is the same stuff that went on in live, here there are just a lot more whining.

[bigevil]

This was a published FYI. Lets keep the unrelated side banter and name calling out please.

Thanks.

[Ykir]

This was a published FYI. Lets keep the unrelated side banter and name calling out please.

Thanks.

Okay, sorry. Thanks for all that the team does, btw.