Dupping - any word on roll-back?

[Qaladar Bragollach]

Now that's a workable solution. Though it would hurt the legit sellers who have some already made... not too much.

I don't know of any legit sellers who are hoarding a large number of them. The most I have seen anyone selling on my server is 6.

[gggrant]

I think anyone that proposes a "compromise" or "workable solution" should share the burden of those innocent who are harmed in any way. I suggest that they have all their tradeskills reset to zero and all their inventory wiped out if their "compromise" or "workable solution" or any variant is adopted and executed.


I currently do not have any AAAA's in my possession. I have created one for personal use since this entire mess started. None of these compromises or workable solutions would directly affect me. When a surgeon cuts out a cancer, they usually take some of the unaffected flesh around it to ensure that all of the cancer is removed (if that flesh is not considered important). While removing the players and their AAAA's who exploited could be likened to removing a cancer, your compromises and workable solutions involve treating some players who have done nothing wrong as useless lumps of flesh. I find this attitude objectionable.

[Catweazel]

The only people who can save the current market are Customer Service at SOE. Technically (guessing) it is possible to do many things in terms of tracing owners / account holders or whatever of AAAA boxes currently in the game. Just because it is technically possible doesn't make it an obvious solution for CSR's.

My petition has been closed - a senior GM in CSR has told me that they have addressed the issue and taken appropriate action. Based on the people I reported, that means they have done nothing, as these people are still selling large quantities of AAAA boxes that they put on sale during and since the dupe.

As far as I am concerned personally, the current market is done (finished) for as long as it remains tainted. That timeframe would be when there are no longer any boxes for sale or they are being sold by known tradeskillers. Whether this is a few weeks, a few months or forever is pure guesswork. The only people who have the answers to this are unlikely to provide them.

Only the people who know (SOE) can determine whether it is worth adjusting future (unannounced) recipes to offset the current broken market. IMO that would appear to be the fairest solution and one in which no-one gets hurt or surgically removed in error. Time will tell.

[Gaell Stormracer]

I think anyone that proposes a "compromise" or "workable solution" should share the burden of those innocent who are harmed in any way. I suggest that they have all their tradeskills reset to zero and all their inventory wiped out if their "compromise" or "workable solution" or any variant is adopted and executed.

I currently do not have any AAAA's in my possession. I have created one for personal use since this entire mess started. None of these compromises or workable solutions would directly affect me. When a surgeon cuts out a cancer, they usually take some of the unaffected flesh around it to ensure that all of the cancer is removed (if that flesh is not considered important). While removing the players and their AAAA's who exploited could be likened to removing a cancer, your compromises and workable solutions involve treating some players who have done nothing wrong as useless lumps of flesh. I find this attitude objectionable.

So, you'd rather let the patient (the Tinkering market for AAAAs) die of "cancer" instead? Excellent suggestion!

My suggestion: rename the old AAAAs, then create a new recipe that involves combining something like a sprocket ONLY in the "broken" AAAA -- and have this recipe be NOFAIL, BUT require an unmodified Tinkering Skill of 252 (to match the trivial on the final combine on an AAAA).

Benefit: no "real" tinkerers will lose their items.
Drawback: unscrupulous "real" tinkers could still collude with the dupers.

[Itek]

Drawback - The two AAAA i bought 4 months ago, when i was thinking about joining a Demiplane guild and getting lost blood augs, would be useless for me to now give to my friends (none of whom are gnomes) who ARE in a Demiplane guild (they did Hatchet LAST NIGHT) because I have no use for them (as I'm currently wearing 6 pieces of Spiritmind, READ: Ashengate Raid gear).

So your compromise puts me out about 250k plat and my friends out two Last Blood augs.

Will the check be forth coming ? Will you simply walk over and delete 250k out of your bank and 400 hp/mana worth of gear you are currently wearing ?

Complex problems do not have simple solutions. If you think you are good at finding them please examine the knapsack problem and get back to me with a simple (polynomial time) solution. (Knapsack = NP-complete = unsolved for 50+'ish years.)

[Zopharr]

RNG and Bloods

My idea is to rename all AAAA in the game, give a bit of warning so that people with a stone ready to go can use it, to Ambleshift's Basic Combining Device.

Would that it were that easy. My guild seems to have bad luck on Last Bloods. We generally get only one from clearing Demi Tier I (Tier II we're doing better) and two nights ago we got only one after killing four ToB bosses. We had, IIRC, nine straight Ghost/Snow kills before we saw one in Razorthorn.

I was on "the list" 121 days before I got the last Last Blood I received, and will not be surprised if it is Halloween before I get my next one. And I had to show an AAAA to get on the list.

Renaming all existing AAAA works well if one operates on the assumption that no one buys an AAAA until they have a Last Blood or a Bazu Stone. Thatm however, is not a good assumption and Last Bloods can drop an a frustratingly slow pace, even for guilds doing ToB and Demi.

[Meanwhile we've had the "Blade of Forgotten Faith" drop on each of the last three Ture kills, when us SKs are just hoping that he'll drop the ****ed hoop. Go figure - stupid RNG.]

Garshok

[Zopharr]

As far as I am concerned personally, the current market is done (finished) for as long as it remains tainted. That timeframe would be when there are no longer any boxes for sale or they are being sold by known tradeskillers. Whether this is a few weeks, a few months or forever is pure guesswork. The only people who have the answers to this are unlikely to provide them.

Only the people who know (SOE) can determine whether it is worth adjusting future (unannounced) recipes to offset the current broken market. IMO that would appear to be the fairest solution and one in which no-one gets hurt or surgically removed in error. Time will tell.

Whether the current market is "done" is highly server dependent.

Here on Quellious I think we've dodged this bullet. We haven't dodged all of them - the Blue Diamond duping a few months back comes to mind - but this one, yes.

Garshok

[gggrant]

So, you'd rather let the patient (the Tinkering market for AAAAs) die of "cancer" instead? Excellent suggestion!

My suggestion: rename the old AAAAs, then create a new recipe that involves combining something like a sprocket ONLY in the "broken" AAAA -- and have this recipe be NOFAIL, BUT require an unmodified Tinkering Skill of 252 (to match the trivial on the final combine on an AAAA).

Benefit: no "real" tinkerers will lose their items.
Drawback: unscrupulous "real" tinkers could still collude with the dupers.

If I have cancer AND it is operable, the surgeon cuts the extra flesh from me, he or she does NOT vivisect my neighbor. All of the so called solutions presented would not affect me, but every one of them contains the potential of harming the innocent.

[Maevenniia]

Considering some of the borderline personal attacks on page 2 of this thread, I'm amazed this thread wasn't locked yet. that's what I get for going on vacation

There is NO simple solution to this mess. The exploit was fixed, but teh clever little buggers (CLBs) laundered their ill-gotten goodies by multiple trades or by storing them on corpses, or who knows what else....

The only siggestion I can make is that SOE decide how many AAAA/Tae ew hide sacks is "too many", and delete all items in excess of this number that any toon may be holding. Make sweeps once a week in teh bazaar for teh next 6 or so months to catch any CLBs who thought they could wait the purgings out.

Say the magic # is 11. It's likely very rare that any legit Tinkerer makes more than 10 AAAAs at a time, given how much effort it takes to farm some components, so this would hopefully minimize any harm to the legit tradeskillers. Unfortunately, any folks who were naive and thought they were getting a fantastic deal and bought lots and lots of these items would lose considerable plat, but no solution is gonna be perfect

[Itek]

Mae -

Clever. And almost would work. But I can think of two instant problems.

What if some guild stockpiles the AAAA and awards them when they award Lost Blood loot rights ?

Secondly, you'd have to EITHER announce the rule "thou shalt not have more than 10" or keep it a stealth rule.

Keeping it a stealth rule makes it infinitely more likely to catch a cheater. However I think we can all see that having secret Customer Service rules no one is aware of is similar to having a secret police force / star chamber, and I doubt it would go over very well once word got out.

(Not to mention the first time some unlucky soul who has been farming CT for weeks and makes a ton of bag attempts for skill ups and profit gets banned being a NIGHTMARE.)

If the rule is out in the open, it won't stop the CLBs for a second, and it just puts a semi-hidden landmine out there for legit tradeskillers.

Guy-who-missed-4-months-of-Cultural-Change-Announcements: "Hey, my account got banned last night right in the middle of trying to max out tailoring, what the **halfling** is going on?"

Itek: "Lemme guess, Hide Sacks from CT?"

Guy-who-doesn't-read-sticky-topics-at-top-of-forums-for-two-months: "Yeah, how did you guess?"

Still waiting for the knapsack solution.

[Gaell Stormracer]

If I have cancer AND it is operable, the surgeon cuts the extra flesh from me, he or she does NOT vivisect my neighbor. All of the so called solutions presented would not affect me, but every one of them contains the potential of harming the innocent.

The difference between me and thee lies in the definition of "the patient" - and in the readiness to abandon the situation as a lost cause.

[Maevenniia]

Yup Itek, I never claimed my solution would be perfect either.

I repeat, there is NO "simple" solution. I don't envy SOE this task, at all.

[Rinikku]

My suggestion: rename the old AAAAs, then create a new recipe that involves combining something like a sprocket ONLY in the "broken" AAAA -- and have this recipe be NOFAIL, BUT require an unmodified Tinkering Skill of 252 (to match the trivial on the final combine on an AAAA).

Benefit: no "real" tinkerers will lose their items.
Drawback: unscrupulous "real" tinkers could still collude with the dupers.

I like this idea... the cheaters probably don't have a tinkerer.

[gggrant]

I like this idea... the cheaters probably don't have a tinkerer.

/sigh
That is not necessarily a safe bet.

What would be a safe bet is that if any of the solutions proposed were to be implemented, it would not remove all the duped AAAA's from the game, let alone all the duped containers. The solutions proposed also have negatively affect innocent players (in all probability people that aren't even aware of the duped containers).

What do you think should be said to those that are harmed and had nothing to do with the duping? "Sucks to be you."?

Here is an idea that is guaranteed to remove all duped containers. We perform a complete rollback of everyone and everything on all servers. That way we can say, "Sucks to be you." to everyone and everyone can say it to us.

[Itek]

Here is an idea that is guaranteed to remove all duped containers. We perform a complete rollback of everyone and everything on all servers. That way we can say, "Sucks to be you." to everyone and everyone can say it to us.

Yeah, that's a player-wipe (P-wipe for short). Someone in the thread previously mentioned that as a ridiculous over-reaction to the issue.

Oh, wait, that was me.

PS Yes, I get that you are being humorous, as I was. I've been on MUDs where the duping was so bad a P-wipe took place. More than once (thankfully never more than once on a single MUD) in fact. Make no mistake I loathe dupers and exploiters. I just have never heard of a good solution other than a very diligent staff (customer service in Pay-for-Play games like EQ) doing the herculean task. To say I have little faith in the CS policy(makers) at EQ is to say I have a suspicion the sun will continue to rise in the east every morning for the rest of the month.