Instanced areas exploit....WTF.

[Lavi]

How is this bannable and not defeating AV with DRK zergs?

 

[Marajade]

How is this bannable and not defeating AV with DRK zergs?

Because one gives people items for way less effort than is supposed to be required.

Wait....

 

[Ewok]

Dudes get ban't because SE was too dumb to check their code.

Priceless.

I'm sure it happens all the time in other games. If anyone here plays Magic the Gathering (card game), they know cards get banned/restricted all the time, due to the designers not catching a bad interaction. Have to remember, there might be what, at most ~20 people handling codes (pulling a number out the air), while there are thousands of players. Something will always slip through the cracks, and will be more likely to be picked up by the player base, then the programmers.

 

[Rappa]

How is this bannable and not defeating AV with DRK zergs?

Technically this wasn't an exploit. kcdrking has been a viable way to do things for years. I guess s-e just never imagined people would throw 10 or more of them at AV all at once. So after they saw it they decided it wouldn't do and removed the ability to do so. If someone found a way to do it NOW after the update, that would be an exploit.

This duping thing is indeed an exploit because it does something that obviously was not intended to be done in the game (turning one item into three items).

 

[Marajade]

I'm sure it happens all the time in other games. If anyone here plays Magic the Gathering (card game), they know cards get banned/restricted all the time, due to the designers not catching a bad interaction.

The issue is that Wizards doesn't ban the DCI numbers of everyone who's played that card in a tournament.

This duping thing is indeed an exploit because it does something that obviously was not intended to be done in the game (turning one item into three items).

The issue is that it's not done by fiddling with your settings to make the game confused, or injecting other code and stuff like the coffer/chest exploit of old. Its just breaking the alliance, and the game adding the item to everyone's pool.

This is very much akin to the wall of justice issue with AV. It was a error in programming, and they fixed it while leaving everyone who used it untouched.

 

[Uzor]

The issue is that Wizards doesn't ban the DCI numbers of everyone who's played that card in a tournament.



The issue is that it's not done by fiddling with your settings to make the game confused, or injecting other code and stuff like the coffer/chest exploit of old. Its just breaking the alliance, and the game adding the item to everyone's pool.

This is very much akin to the wall of justice issue with AV. It was a error in programming, and they fixed it while leaving everyone who used it untouched.

I do seem to remember entire LS's getting warnings for using it before the "fix", and threats to ban them if they did not stop immediately.

Either way, duping, in any game, is "illegal". Duping money in RL is illegal too. I'm sure if SE could track who did it, they would either give out warnings or ban people. However, something tells me SE does not have the capabilities to do so.

Either way, it really doesn't bug me that much. We still have more drops the real way then most shells do through duping, so I don't see why I should be upset about it. 153 35 pieces total, and I'm proud of the fact we didn't abuse this glitch even once.

 

[Bladewind]

I wonder if they were able to see when this glitch was abused, would they ban everyone in the zone when the drops were duped? or just the 3 that received the items? even so 1/3 of them deserved the item as it was an honest drop. If they were planning to ban anyone (which i doubt they are) i just wonder who it would be.

 

[Lavi]

It was my understanding that AV is "glitched" in that it does nothing at certain intervals allowing players to basically freeze it. At 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%, it spits out a few lines of chat at which point it does nothing for those few seconds allowing people to bring it's HP down without any reactions by AV. Normally, if it didn't do that, it shoots off a couple of devastating 2hrs and wipes the alliance, but the "glitch" allows people to bypass that.

 

[Uzor]

There is a glitch that makes mobs do nothing the entire fight, yes, but from what I've read, its a random occurance that no one knows how to trigger, and just occasionally happen. So you can't claim people really abuse that glitch, though, as it would be pointless to disengage and let it recove rto 100% HP, then reclaim in the hope that it would act as normal.

As for AV, I have no idea why SE programmed him so that he don't do anything while he spits out a few liens of text. Odin works the same way.

 

[Courtney]

It was my understanding that AV is "glitched" in that it does nothing at certain intervals allowing players to basically freeze it. At 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%, it spits out a few lines of chat at which point it does nothing for those few seconds allowing people to bring it's HP down without any reactions by AV. Normally, if it didn't do that, it shoots off a couple of devastating 2hrs and wipes the alliance, but the "glitch" allows people to bypass that.

The zerg tactic never relied on locking AV. Some of AVs 2hrs are devastating, and killing it within 60 sec only let it use one, which hopefully didn't wipe your alliance.

Zerging is an accepted tactic, precious few DLs would have died without it. It's just that SE have decided it's not the way to beat AV and have blocked it.

I doubt that anyone who was getting 3x drops in Salvage etc believed that it was anything but a glitch.

 

[Neisan]

Uh, Bahamut V2 can be zerged for the same reason, because he stops and chats people just zerg him down through the times he stops to talk. And yet only AV was fixed, why? Because AV is SE's poster child, that's the only reason he was nerfed and nothing else.

EDIT: Oh, and not a glitch.

 

[Urat]

Well if you think about it...

The mobs deserve to get owned. What kind of notable mega boss would sit and chat away in the middle of a fight?

Fuck yeah I'm gonna smack him upside the head a few times if they can think they can get away with insulting us in the middle of a fight =o

On the instance note:

Just because the programmer forgot to add a ;, put one to many spaces, or misspelled a word out of the 20 thousand in the script, doesn't make extorting it ok.

Just cause you can mpk a guy while he's fixing his lu shangs rod and make him screw up and lose it, doesn't mean it's ok. And MPK is obviously a form of a problem in the script. (If it wasn't then tha means SE intended it to be possible which means they'd be okay with it and then they would be fine with us mpking people, but they dont, aren't and will ban you if you do)

Thus:

Just because there's a problem with the script somewhere, and it can and will happen, does not automaticly make it totally ok to extort this. Any glitch that you extort gives them the right to ban you. In fact, through the ToS, they don't really need a legit reason to ban you.

But because a banning is a decent amount of paperwork for GM, and is an annoying process for them, they will only ban you for something major. You won't get banned for falling off airship on purpose.

But duping items, flooding market with them, getting away with 1/3-1/2 the work, and severly hampering the economy?

Hell yah they'll ban you if they find out. No questions asked.

 

[Uzor]

Well if you think about it...

The mobs deserve to get owned. What kind of notable mega boss would sit and chat away in the middle of a fight?

Fuck yeah I'm gonna smack him upside the head a few times if they can think they can get away with insulting us in the middle of a fight =o

On the instance note:

Just because the programmer forgot to add a ;, put one to many spaces, or misspelled a word out of the 20 thousand in the script, doesn't make extorting it ok.

Just cause you can mpk a guy while he's fixing his lu shangs rod and make him screw up and lose it, doesn't mean it's ok. And MPK is obviously a form of a problem in the script. (If it wasn't then tha means SE intended it to be possible which means they'd be okay with it and then they would be fine with us mpking people, but they dont, aren't and will ban you if you do)

Thus:

Just because there's a problem with the script somewhere, and it can and will happen, does not automaticly make it totally ok to extort this. Any glitch that you extort gives them the right to ban you. In fact, through the ToS, they don't really need a legit reason to ban you.

But because a banning is a decent amount of paperwork for GM, and is an annoying process for them, they will only ban you for something major. You won't get banned for falling off airship on purpose.

But duping items, flooding market with them, getting away with 1/3-1/2 the work, and severly hampering the economy?

Hell yah they'll ban you if they find out. No questions asked.

Being a programmer myself, I HIGHLY doubt its one too many/few ;'s, one too many/few spaces, or a misspelt words.

In all honesty, you can program everything right, and still have something glitch on you simply because the code does something extra you didn't predict, or opens a hole you didn't predict and didn't notice (as everything seem to be working alright), and which you then don't fix.

Everything in programming isn't misspellings, forgotten letters or added zeros.

Programming is somewhat complicated, in that if you use functions which other functions call (sorry, its 3:20 AM atm, and I forgot what that's called), changing one function can break something else. Hence why when SE changes something somewhere, it affects other parts of the game unrelated to said thing, simply because said thing calls the same function. This are stuff that's, when you use a very long complicated code or program, are unpredictable.

 

[Urat]

Being a programmer myself, I HIGHLY doubt its one too many/few ;'s, one too many/few spaces, or a misspelt words.

In all honesty, you can program everything right, and still have something glitch on you simply because the code does something extra you didn't predict, or opens a hole you didn't predict and didn't notice (as everything seem to be working alright), and which you then don't fix.

Everything in programming isn't misspellings, forgoten letters or added zeros.

But you get the gist of my comment.

When you have an entire wall, no, office building, of script, chances are pretty high that somewhere, something, somehow will go wrong =/

 

[Caerloc]

Uh, Bahamut V2 can be zerged for the same reason, because he stops and chats people just zerg him down through the times he stops to talk. And yet only AV was fixed, why? Because AV is SE's poster child, that's the only reason he was nerfed and nothing else.

EDIT: Oh, and not a glitch.

Thats not why Baha can be zerged. It doesnt hurt, but it isnt the reason.

 

[Kaeko]

lol the great kaeko admits to have done it for his morrigans lmao.

Sorry to necro bump someone's post but I need to get more posts to not get my account here deleted.

I only have 2 pieces of Morrigan's - head and body. I got both in 2006 pre-starter box. I'm actually the first NA to ever get a Morrigan's Robe and 2nd player ever. This is like years before this exploit was well known. Not that I personally care whether someone's item was a "dupe" or not, but mine wasn't.

I knew the exploit, tested it a couple times - admittedly attempted to benefit from it in maybe 5 attempts (I rarely do Salvage - maybe once a month) and no 35s dropped. I don't lot anything in Salvage either way since the only other useful BLM piece is the legs and I never do Silver Seas, but I would have been glad to participate in an attempt to help some friends.

I'll pretty much test any exploit at least once just to see what it does. If I had personally known it worked on Sandworm I probably would have done it but alas I didn't. So I actually never benefited from this bug besides the amusement of understanding it. I personally have no issue with anyone that used it though, so I don't mind being grouped with the guys that got huge benefits from it - only difference was they knew and got something and I knew and didn't get anything.

****************************

Personally my take on this if anyone cares is that if you attempt to do something like this, you should realize you are risking your account. Throw out the morality arguments and it comes down to risk versus reward - you risk potentially losing your entire account versus possibly getting extremely rare Salvage drops in triplets.

I knew the risk every time I used it, though it was extremely sparingly, and understand that if SE decides to do a massive banning that eliminates like at least 10% of the Japanese Endgame population + some NAs, I'll probably go down as well. That's my choice and if they ban me I won't be complaining - with the exception that they only ban some users and not all.

Players have taken similar sorts of risks on various 'exploits' and 'bugs'. I remember testing out Goblin Footprint on AV years ago and knew very well if someone calls a GM and the GM happens to agree with them, I can get temp banned. Similar thing with those LSs that used the WoJ. They know the potential consequences of using clear exploits even though they don't involve 3rd party tools.

I also remember stealing a Kirin from the RMT via the ??? claim bug (which ironically still works) back when RMT ruled sky - I think a lot of the player base wouldn't mind this sort of action but it's equally bad in a GM's eyes. There are a ton of abusable exploits still working in game... SE just doesn't fix them. This Salvage one was over 2 years old and they took forever to either act or figure it out - to the point where so many people abused it it's almost difficult to punish players without it affecting their total player base significantly.

On a more moral basis,

I personally feel that it is SE's job to fix their bugs - especially ones that were out for such a significant period of time. It's not like this bug wasn't reported numerous times well before the fix. It was OPENLY talked about and discussed on numerous JP BBS. It could have certainly been fixed before it blew up to the point where it was. I believe this for any bug that you can pull off in game without 3rd party tools, meaning even a PS2 user could do it.

Obviously SE's ToS says differently and it's a bannable offense. That's fine and, again, I know the consequences - but it doesn't mean I agree with it. One's "moral in-game code" doesn't have to be molded entirely by the BBS. That's similar to someone molding their entire real life morality on the Bible or the Koran. Morality is more complex than pointing at a rulebook and saying that's the true bottom line.

****************************

For the morality nuts that want to please SE, feel free to report these at least 3+ year old, clearly abusable bugs.

1) Wall of Justice STILL works after like 3 years. You can essentially duo any mob in Al'taieu other than JoL and AV with this strategy - including the 3 tier 2 jailers and Om'Yorvas. It's ridiculous. It also works on a few select areas in the game where there is a similar terrain layout. SE obviously knows about this because they fixed AV. Their solution was to fix AV and not the actual bug, but if you care about exploits, this is clearly abusable.

2) ??? Claim bug was never fixed. If you touch a ??? that gives you multiple lines of text and requires you to press ENTER to exit it - example being Kirin's ??? - you can gain claim on someone else's pop. Scenario being if you touch the ??? and read the text, then do NOT press enter, leaving you in that state of reading text, and then someone pops Kirin... There is a chance that Kirin will pop red to you, not the alliance that actually popped it, allowing you to effectively cock block or steal the pop NM. Most notably works on JoL and Kirin.

3) Medusa wall glitch - small bug to bypass an annoying barrier. If you come in at the right angle, you can bypass the Tidal wall that blocks entrance to Medusa's chamber. Allows you to bypass the annoying gate breach process.

4) The small exploit everyone knows about Salvage where you DC or warp out just before entering to clear the 6 person requirement without costing points. There's no way SE doesn't know about this but they don't seem to care. In my opinion if they don't care, then why even have the 6 man requirement? It's annoying as hell.

5) The good old Fafhogg MPK Malboro trick still works, just nobody ever uses it anymore. Works regardless of Blockaid. When a bunch of mobs are placed on top of each other at the exact same position, or similar position, the game like arbitrarily displaces them. You can see this in game occur naturally sometimes when a ton of mobs pop and are slept at the same location. You can bring that Demonic Rose near the Excalibur ??? pond down to Fafnir, and keep messing with it's position to get on top of Fafhogg. Because the Malboro model is so large, it makes it easier to displace other mobs. Fafnir does the dance, flails happen, MPK works regardless of Blockaid.

Some of these are pretty annoying cockblocking exploits. They are all old as hell and SE has to know about them - they just don't seem to think it's worth their time to fix. But still, if you want to play the morality card to it's fullest aren't these just as bad?

 

[Lavi]

The zerg tactic never relied on locking AV. Some of AVs 2hrs are devastating, and killing it within 60 sec only let it use one, which hopefully didn't wipe your alliance.

Zerging is an accepted tactic, precious few DLs would have died without it. It's just that SE have decided it's not the way to beat AV and have blocked it.

I doubt that anyone who was getting 3x drops in Salvage etc believed that it was anything but a glitch.

From experience with other mobs that chat during fights, they do tend to stop attacking during those periods so I don't think it hurt.

Zerging wasn't what I was getting at, it was using the pauses in attacks to make zerging effective. If it didn't pause like that or have chat interlaced into the fight, it would probably get off a few AoE more than just a single two hours. A zerg feeds thousands of tp to the mob in a matter of seconds and for only a single AoE 2 hr to get through occasional doesn't seem all that realistic unless something else is going on.

I doubt anyone thought zerging AV was a legitimate tactic either. Every LS that could zerg AV did zerg AV immediately after the update. You know why? Because they knew it would get nerfed. So it basically equates to "Hey guys, I found a broken method we need to exploit before it gets nerfed." In both instances, those are clear violations of the ToS and yet, everyone expects the latter to get banned while the former did not.

 

[Neisan]

Zerging a mob still isn't a violation of the ToS... SE themselves admits it is a legitimate tactic, or at least a well used one. The problem was zerging AV, which circumvents their super secret 'normal' way of killing him involving zooming at the day of the week and 2 houring randomly for no reason.

EDIT:

Thats not why Baha can be zerged. It doesnt hurt, but it isnt the reason.

Thanks for the clarification, thought it was a similar situation.

 

[Dayner]

But you get the gist of my comment.

When you have an entire wall, no, office building, of script, chances are pretty high that somewhere, something, somehow will go wrong =/

not really ,if its a syntax error , the compiler can easily pick up these kind of error and tell you in which line and which part is where got the problem

unlike logic error tho ... its take days or even week to find them and fix them , in this case , its most likely a logic error

 

[Tyrath]

From experience with other mobs that chat during fights, they do tend to stop attacking during those periods so I don't think it hurt.

Zerging wasn't what I was getting at, it was using the pauses in attacks to make zerging effective. If it didn't pause like that or have chat interlaced into the fight, it would probably get off a few AoE more than just a single two hours. A zerg feeds thousands of tp to the mob in a matter of seconds and for only a single AoE 2 hr to get through occasional doesn't seem all that realistic unless something else is going on.

I doubt anyone thought zerging AV was a legitimate tactic either. Every LS that could zerg AV did zerg AV immediately after the update. You know why? Because they knew it would get nerfed. So it basically equates to "Hey guys, I found a broken method we need to exploit before it gets nerfed." In both instances, those are clear violations of the ToS and yet, everyone expects the latter to get banned while the former did not.

Its not an exploit just because people know its gonna get nerfed. It got nerfed because like Neisan said AV is SE's poster child. They let people zerg Baha2 and don't bother nerfing it. It is a perfectly legitimate strategy. SE just doesn't want people killing AV.