118684-the-economics-of-exploitation-and-you

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Hey guys,
   Recently we had some egg on our face from an exploit that made it into live.  There are plenty of other threads detailing the scope of that exploit and Carbines response.  I wanted to start this thread specifically to talk about the economic ramifications of that exploit.
 
I've had some players mention that the markets on the various servers have more or less returned to normal.  Have you guys found that to be true?
 
In general I feel pretty confident that we were able to identify people who abused this exploit and use the systems that we had in place to remove the offending gold in the process, but other people have indicated they've been unhappy with how this was handled as they were concerned about the buying power these people had compared to them.
 
I thought this might be a good place to discuss those things and I'm going to quote and address a few points from the original thread that I spawned this from in a second but I thought I'd make one thread people could chime in on.	
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I want to draw your attention to a useful conversion factor here: plat has a defined exchange rate with real money. It's trivial for us to calculate how much real money value these guys were counterfeiting with this exploit. There's now enough plat to force the CREDD market up into the range $20=30 plat. If someone exploits what Cougar referred to as "only" 8 plat, they basically created a bogus $5, enough to outweigh the loss of the week's worth of ban time that is the largest listed punishment outside of a permanent ban. And that's according to the currently inflated range. If they exploited that 8 plat early in the exploit's cycle, they drew themselves more like $10-$15. And those are the ones that did so little of this exploit that the phrase "only" is being used to describe how small their offense was.
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			AMP and Ability Points were obliterated from Warhounds market.  Current prices of new items are double previous market value.  These items are still available to people with exploited platinum, while even further out of reach for honest players.	
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I'd like to see two basic figues.
 
1) How much plat was generated by this in total.
2) How much plat was recovered in your cleanup.
 
The reason is, I keep hearing from players that they were able to keep all the items that they bought with the plat, and came out well ahead of where they would have been if they did not participate in the exploit.
 
If the exploiters were punished and all of their stuff was taken away, I would have expected to see QQ threads about Carbine unfairly punishing them.  Instead I see no such posts, and only hear from the players that it was well worth it.  The lesson learned here is to exploit right away the next time one is found.
 
Between the PvP carry plat and the exploit ill-gotten gains, it seems to me that the best way to make money/items in this game is to abuse any and every opportunity, be it exploit, intended, or not.	
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As far as economy goes I think it's unfortunate that Ability and Amp points have nearly doubled in value. From 50-80 and 25-40 respectively. If you're interested in only talking about the economic impacts I'm not very concerned. As long as I can make enough to afford CREDD it's not a big deal to me.
 
The thing I'm more concerned about is the punitive actions taken against players. I feel exploiters in general have been dealt with too lightly. Seeing something like a full Ability/Amp reset to 40/45 and money removal would feel satisfying for me if full bans aren't the action Carbine is interested in.	
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I also don't think it's negatively affected your long term buying power.
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Not weasel-lawyer bullshit. Justice.
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Hope you have a fire extinguisher handy DaOgre.  Without specific numbers and data to back it up, the only real way to know the impact of your "exploiter clean-up and economy reset," is by player perception.
 
... and right now, player perception is that all of the people who exploited are rolling in platinum from their 24 hour lifted suspensions and the economic impact is tangible.	
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I don't think you actually play this game. No one who does would make that statement.
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Hope you have a fire extinguisher handy DaOgre.  Without specific numbers and data to back it up, the only real way to know the impact of your "exploiter clean-up and economy reset," is by player perception.
 
... and right now, player perception is that all of the people who exploited are rolling in platinum from their 24 hour lifted suspensions and the economic impact is tangible.
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In general I feel pretty confident that we were able to identify people who abused this exploit and use the systems that we had in place to remove the offending gold in the process, but other people have indicated they've been unhappy with how this was handled as they were concerned about the buying power these people had compared to them.
 
 
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Hey, woah, shots fired... even weasels have a better sense of justice :P 
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What Eclips said is relevant (the unavailability of items on the auctionhouse).  I do play the game, and I did make that statement and stand by it.  I'm not saying that no one's buying power was affected by this exploit, I'm saying that whether or not we remove cosmetic items and amp updates (and I know we did at least some of this because I was talking with someone from CS on Friday and they were talking about doing just that) from players has nothing to do with your ability to buy things on the auction house.  Your individual buying power doesn't go down and the economy doesn't become inflated because someone gets another item they need.
 
If anything, having one less person who needs amp and ability point upgrades would make the demand for those items go down (marginally) and make your buying power go up.  I'm not suggesting that means not removing these items is a good thing.  I'm just speaking to the specific implication that your buying power was decreased if these items aren't/weren't removed.
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Haha yeah well that's why I wanted to start having some conversations.  I get that perception is bad and I'm trying to gauge both perceptions and WHAT those perceptions are because I'm not under the impression we got ever copper off of everyone or that things were as clean as we'd hope and I'm sure there was damage done.
 
This is being treated like triage.  Stop the bleeding and save the patient then do clean up.  Knowing there's a tangible economic impact is good (because to give Nike SOME credit I haven't had a chance to play since this drop came out).  That being said as someone else pointed out I'm a bit loathe to talk too much about specific ways that we're catching exploiters because I don't want to give any extra tools to those people, so the more I can understand the scope of where players feel we missed the ball, and the more I can understand what types of numbers and data would help settle people a bit the more I can help move things along productively here.
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Eclips that's absolutely true, and I absolutely understand the value of those items and why it's bad that they've gone out of circulation and the concern over legitimate players being able to buy them.  That's why we've been trying to be sure we get rid of all of the platinum so that we don't have those players with inflated platinum and that's more of a focus than people who actually bought those amps (though I realize some people bought items to resell later, but we track all that).
 
TBH I'm not entirely sure what the best way to handle the removal of those items from the auction house.   The people who originally posted them still got their plat so they got paid and refunding them the item and taking the money from them doesn't seem like the right way to handle it.  Creating the items and just putting them for sale on the AH is something we've been pretty clear we don't want to do, but I suppose we could consider a one time thing, but I'm still worried about this potentially screwing over people who've got these items and have been sitting on them waiting for the needle to move.
 
All this is the main reason I'm interested in being sure we stabilize the economy as much as possible, if we can do that then the prices of those items SHOULD go back to normal, and we'll only see the standard inflation we've seen happen gradually over time.	
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I think this is where the players believe that Carbine has this fundamentally wrong.  A rollback was necessary to stop the proliferation of illicit platinum and the laundering / problems that come with it.  At the point in which a rollback would go too far--- a heavy handed ban needed to be sent out.  I believe players first of all don't all the issues that come with the exploitation of game currency, but second most, they want a heavy handed Ban for all of those players who intentionally exploited.  We're getting neither, as honest players.
 
The best course of action would be to either go back and Ban all of the people who exploited say--- 50 plat or more, as that was over 30 minutes of an intentional exploit.  OR fill the rest of the player's coffers with an equivalent amount of platinum / vouchers to bring them up to speed.
 
You realize this was a blatant and deliberate exploit that is not only harming the economy, but more or less going unpunished. It sets a tremendous precedent that Carbine condones cheaters (far more than boosting ever could).  When a company condones cheating and exploiting, you might as well wear a sign on your forehead that says we have no ethical base, so trust us when we say we're not making ANY changes that impact our CREDD selling at all.
 
I don't know man, I think you just dropped yourself willingly or unwillingly into a shark tank full of reasonable and well-educated sharks.  Sharks with economy degrees and jobs that deal with real money, instead of degrees in video game development.
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What Eclips said is relevant (the unavailability of items on the auction house).  I do play the game, and I did make that statement and stand by it.  I'm not saying that no one's buying power was affected by this exploit, I'm saying that whether or not we remove cosmetic items and amp updates (and I know we did at least some of this because I was talking with someone from CS on Friday and they were talking about doing just that) from players has nothing to do with your ability to buy things on the auction house.  Your individual buying power doesn't go down and the economy doesn't become inflated because someone gets another item they need.
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This is being treated like triage.  Stop the bleeding and save the patient then do clean up.  Knowing there's a tangible economic impact is good (because to give Nike SOME credit I haven't had a chance to play since this drop came out).  That being said as someone else pointed out I'm a bit loathe to talk too much about specific ways that we're catching exploiters because I don't want to give any extra tools to those people, so the more I can understand the scope of where players feel we missed the ball, and the more I can understand what types of numbers and data would help settle people a bit the more I can help move things along productively here.
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So here's my concern.  The alleged account actions (removal of all character gold and crafting mats) seem to be a bit cruder than expected.  My expectation is that you guys have a transaction log that records the parties involved and the exchanges made.  Parties include players, vendors, looted NPC's, quests and resource nodes.  You should have full traceability and the ability to track down the alleged money laundering. 
 
If you have this capability, I'd urge you to socialize it because most people will understand that they will get caught.
 
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Better off dialing up the drop rate temporarily and the market will adjust naturally.
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Yeah I'm happy to be in the shark tank, I'm looking to get problems solved not win an argument.
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			economy looks like its back to normal pretty much man	
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Consider this me socializing this.
 
We absolutely have all of this data.
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@CRB_DaOgre
 
To me, this has nothing to do with my personal buying power, nor the current market situation (though I do think those are important things).  To me, this is about setting expectations.
Do you agree that expectations have been set by allowing PvP carry's for plat, and allowing exploiters to keep ill-gotten gains?
 
The expectations that you are setting is that it is profitable to exploit in this game if you are willing to gamble on the length of your temp ban.  You said it yourself that some of these items are worth over 80p now, and you let the exploiters keep MULTIPLE of these items.  So in this case, I would have definitely traded 3 game days for hundreds of plat worth of rare items.
 
Do you see the problem that I have with the actions taken?  Nothing to do with current market, nor buying power, but expectations.	
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			its in the past guys, i think we should all move on now and try and make this community a better place for everyone	
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 lets go there:
 
1. Harvest bots get permabans. People mimicking harvest bots should get permabans.
 
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Largest issue at hand is how wide spread this issue was. Hence they gave everyone a chance due to the player base just dieing instantly. So few people left I wonder if carbine is moving to FTP ASAP or game will just be gone...:( :(
 
I understand cheating is terrible and the market isn't the same. The largest factor you are all missing out here is the sheer amount of players we don't have. You need players to drive these prices up and down. We have none.
 
Carbine handled it as taking money and items away but still no one will ever be happy. Like most victims they are never happy til the criminal is dead or locked up forever (perma bans).
 
You can't please everyone but in the current state of the game and how carbine PROMISED A SUPER BUG FREE patch that never happened lead to these issues.
 
I offered cougar help from some of the best core players I know to bug test but he just told me off on twitter. Saying he doesn't appreciate the hyperbole but really did the QA do their job?
 
If I did this kind of work people would die in my profession. I wouldn't have a job long and would have many other issues to deal with. 
 
I agree players did wrong here but carbine putting out a product late and promising it to work "bug free" should also be a focus at hand. People need to be held account for their actions at carbine also.	
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But then they would lose a lot of their raider player base, making many guilds not able to raid for the near future and possibly ever. Not to mention the loss in monies from subs/CREDD from those banned for good. It would be basically asking them to cut off their foot to ensure that they appear to have the utmost integrity and honesty and have a hardline "we don't allow money exploits, ever" stance.
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its in the past guys, i think we should all move on now and try and make this community a better place for everyone
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			stop tryin to bully the carbine employees they're trying their best to improve their game, they made a mistake on their end and people took advantage of it. Just like plenty of other mistakes that have happened since launch (you probally weren't around), so just relax. they're doing their best.	
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@CRB_DaOgre
 
To me, this has nothing to do with my personal buying power, nor the current market situation (though I do think those are important things).  To me, this is about setting expectations.
Do you agree that expectations have been set by allowing PvP carry's for plat, and allowing exploiters to keep ill-gotten gains?
 
The expectations that you are setting is that it is profitable to exploit in this game if you are willing to gamble on the length of your temp ban.  You said it yourself that some of these items are worth over 80p now, and you let the exploiters keep MULTIPLE of these items.  So in this case, I would have definitely traded 3 game days for hundreds of plat worth of rare items.
 
Do you see the problem that I have with the actions taken?  Nothing to do with current market, nor buying power, but expectations.
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Yeah I understand the frustration here.  I'm all for setting expectations and that's why I'm trying to focus this specific conversation on what I think needs the most focus right now which is repairing the economy and being sure that the effects of this loss are mitigated.  Personally I think it would be good to be harsher with our bans (but that's probably because I'm the guy whose job is to track down people who cheated so the less of them we have the easier my life :P), but just to set people's expectations for this particular thread that while I can bring this stuff up and make a case for tighter/harsher bans, the primary focus of what I'd like feedback on is some of the awesome feedback I've gotten here on players experiences with the economy after the exploit and what things we should look at (like the aforementioned AMP/ability points because of their low drop rates)
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Well, it goes hand in hand.  When you don't care to punish people for blatant exploitation, and instead want people to focus on helping you fix your mistakes, you're asking a lot.
 
Here's what the people want.  Harsh punishment for exploiters.  The economy can take 2 weeks to fix itself or never fix itself at all, but that doesn't matter if it can be freely exploited.  You're just driving people away (and ironically negatively impacting the economy by taking away players), by doing so.  The very perception of people not wanting to use the economy appropriately harms it.
 
Look, instead of trying to think of the best way to triage the economy, because quite frankly you don't have the manpower to completely fix it, just do a couple of simple things.
 
Either give everyone in the game 500 platinum, OR
 
up the drop rates of all rare items exponentially .  Having to do dailies for over an hour each day for a week just to afford stuff in this game isn't how you want to play, anyway.  Make everything more available while simultaneously removing the exploited platinum would stimulate the economy very well.
 
Having ability points at the equivalent of 160$ USD is just bad for everyone.   People would buy more CREDD if it had more buying power.... not to mention people would actually roll alts.
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Yeah I understand the frustration here.  I'm all for setting expectations and that's why I'm trying to focus this specific conversation on what I think needs the most focus right now which is repairing the economy and being sure that the effects of this loss are mitigated.  Personally I think it would be good to be harsher with our bans (but that's probably because I'm the guy whose job is to track down people who cheated so the less of them we have the easier my life :P), but just to set people's expectations for this particular thread that while I can bring this stuff up and make a case for tighter/harsher bans, the primary focus of what I'd like feedback on is some of the awesome feedback I've gotten here on players experiences with the economy after the exploit and what things we should look at (like the aforementioned AMP/ability points because of their low drop rates)
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Prior to the patch ability points where 60 plat and amps were 25 plat. We had more people playing before drop 3 due to less bugs. So the aren't much that different after all that inflated money.
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			Welcome to Deadstar, lets try to keep it, idk less dead by not banning the top tier raiders. 	
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Welcome to Deadstar, lets try to keep it, idk less dead by not banning the top tier raiders.
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			Seriously dude. That's a borderline confession of guilt or at least an admission that the "top tier raiders" royally screwed Warhound's economy by using an exploit.	
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Classic. Raiders think they are so important they actually transcend basic morality.
 
"I cheat. But I raid. So you're my hostage, Carbine"
 
Now we're just waiting to see if Carbine has Stockholm Syndrome.
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Well... isn't this awkward.
 
*sigh*
 
Obviously anyone who abuses an exploit should be banned, regardless of the game's perceived problems with PvP. 
 
I'm not sure why Top Tier Raiders have anything to do with your PvP issue.
 
Unless of course... they happen to be people you know. :)	
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Welcome to Deadstar, lets try to keep it, idk less dead by not banning the top tier raiders. 
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Well... isn't this awkward.
 
*sigh*
 
Obviously anyone who abuses an exploit should be banned, regardless of the game's perceived problems with PvP. 
 
I'm not sure why Top Tier Raiders have anything to do with your PvP issue.
 
Unless of course... they happen to be people you know. :)
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Seriously dude. That's a borderline confession of guilt or at least an admission that the "top tier raiders" royally screwed Warhound's economy by using an exploit.
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Welcome to Deadstar, lets try to keep it, idk less dead by not banning the top tier raiders. 
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You realize entiy was hit very hard also. Don't act like top raiding guilds haven't been cheating for months. They even exploited for amps and ability points before this exploit. This is just the first exploit you all realized that has happened in game. This isn't new stuff people.
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Everyone does it! That makes it okay!
 
Um... no...
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This is rich. To date NO ONE has complained about being punished too harshly. But get a discussion going about there finally being appropriate punishment and suddenly you hear the little bleats of fear, that flutter of trepidation that should have stopped people from abusing the exploit in the first place.
 
Da Ogre has - perhaps inadvertently - confirmed they have the data necessary to detect every single account that abused this hack. Something which should have been obvious to the people exercising it. And they did it anyway. That is the environment that existed beforehand and Carbine has done jack over squat changing that impression with the 'wrist slap of doom'.
 
There is no way out of this but the right way, Da Ogre. The people who want to believe in you can't trust you because Carbine refuses to visibly man up, and the people who know your system of consequences is toothless are just waiting for the next crack to drive a wedge into.
 
You solve both problems with the same decisive action.
 
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Lastly, FWIW, I've never heard someone say "We can't ban that guy, he's a raider", or even implicate anything similar to that. 
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Seriously, you didn't know until this conversation that people were keeping hundreds of plat worth of high value items?  I know this comes off as rude, but more so, I'm just surprised.
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I agree it doesn't make it okay at all. But point being if no one is raiding what does wildstar have left to offer? PVP doesn't happen.......................
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It's great to get feedback like people feel as though punishments aren't harsh enough, but I can't necessarily do anything with that feedback (other than pass it along).
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I don't know what there is to discuss here.  Either you have the data and the manpower to eliminate all the players, gold, items, and x that were obtained incorrectly, or you don't.  Either case, if you do have the data, ban all of the people, remove the items, and artificially supply some of the more scarce items that suffered the biggest impact here (AP/AMP points, CREDD, etc).
 
If not, then just admit it.  We obviously can't do a rollback at this point, but we can make the honest players happy.
 
1.  Ban the cheaters, period.  If they just dabbled in the cheat--- 2 weeks minimum.  Heavy Handed.
2.  Stimulate the economy.  Honest players feel like the cheaters prospered and that their buying power has gone down vs their increased buying power.  Fix that by stimulating all the honest players with platinum, OR upping the drop rates on lots of desirable things.
 
Keep in mind, the more platinum people have, the more platinum people will get from CREDD.  There are PLENTY, and I mean PLENTY of gold / platinum sinks in this game, and very few ways to generate it.  If you up the buying power of CREDD, you get more people buying CREDD, and more people spending it on the economy.	
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I started playing W* in mid-july.  After reaching L50, I started to farm non-prime L50s for money/drops.   I farmed 4-8 hours, per day, routinely.  This allowed me to get my last four amp and ability points, the best mount upgrade, 31 points in cooking(if you're not a cook, I put 50p easy into this.. simply to not have to grind in lowbie areas), CREDD each month, any non-bindable purple I wanted(including a couple GS drops), the ability to craft my own 4 slot blue items before the crafting change(dual cores used to be around ~75g per, and most crafts do NOT yield four slots-I made 5 of these items), and when drop 3 hit-the ability to buy any rune changing items I wanted-regardless of price.  If i had to guess, i've probably made around 6-700p total in my time in this game(feel free to audit my records, nothing to hide). 
 
I doubt i'm the best farmer in the game, so-i'm certain others can boast of similar/higher returns in shorter time.  
 
To estimate, total time farming is ~500 hours(this was derived from estimating 6 hours per day from Sept to drop 3).   This is not counting july/august at all, since i had to level to 50 twice (faction change, have 0 alts).   Plus, a fair amount of time keeping track of my own items to sell(sorry, no way to estimate time spent here).  Yes, I have the time to do all that and have no shame for it.
 
From my point of view, any money gained through an exploit, is a direct conversion to my time.  I realize that by probably not being "the most efficient" money gatherer in the game, that it is simply my perspective...but the time others gained by doing next to nothing..isn't nothing.  
 
Some people were able to accomplish in hours/days what took me MONTHS to do.   Additionally, any person that was allowed to keep an amp point, an ability point, a mount speed increase, a rare mount, CREDD,or virtually any high value item, is now WAY ahead of ANYONE who does not actively farm for profit.   
 
I know raiding usually gets the spotlight in terms of progression, but economic progression is just as important, more so imo, since raiding does not exclude someone from needing money in-game.
 
The only respite available to me was knowing that (like ANY OTHER MMO I've played) cheaters get banned.  Period.
I have never in my life seen a scenario where cheaters were asked to turn themselves in.  Ridiculous.
 
My buying power might not have taken a huge hit in the long term, since most prices are stable now(not amp/abil pts).  This is simply because of the amount of money I already have and the economic progress I've already made-not because it doesn't matter.  Anyone else who didn't exclusively spend time trying to profit(legitimately), is now far behind in economic progression due to cheaters.   Short of bans/full removal of gains, this won't ever be "fixed".
 
Hope this helps. 
 	
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			I'm going to be brutally honest, if I'm not happy with the outcome of this I'm going to quit and I'll be sure to let folks know why.	
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In all honesty there is only one valuable thing for sale: game time. The rest is either redundant, clearly useless (all that gear no one ever buys) or uneeded to play the game (AMP points and runes to some extent, they're so underpowered). If I were a dev I'd rather be worried about the lack of usefullness of my auction house instead of trying to appease people who will never be happy no matter what you do. Sure there's been an exploit. So what? There's nothing worth buying it - except game time. Right now the volume of trade on this game is incredibly low and even crafting materials can be bought at vendor price. This is the real lesson which should be learnt from that exploit. The markets mostly remained stable because 98% or more of the items are just vendor trash. Even purple gear never sells. So meh.
 
IMO the exploit isn't an issue at all since CREDD prices stabilized. Anything else is irrelevant. Exploiters won't have to do dailies for a while to repair gear and get the strain hoverboard. I mean, what a big deal... I don't like cheating and I don't like exploits but in this game gold exploits are a non-issue. Content exploits are since it's the only way to get (sadly untradable) upgrades.	
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In all honesty there is only one valuable thing for sale: game time. The rest is either redundant, clearly useless (all that gear no one ever buys) or uneeded to play the game (AMP points and runes to some extent, they're so underpowered). If I were a dev I'd rather be worried about the lack of usefullness of my auction house instead of trying to appease people who will never be happy no matter what you do. Sure there's been an exploit. So what? There's nothing worth buying it - except game time. Right now the volume of trade on this game is incredibly low and even crafting materials can be bought at vendor price. This is the real lesson which should be learnt from that exploit. The markets mostly remained stable because 98% or more of the items are just vendor trash. Even purple gear never sells. So meh.
 
IMO the exploit isn't an issue at all since CREDD prices stabilized. Anything else is irrelevant. Exploiters won't have to do dailies for a while to repair gear and get the strain hoverboard. I mean, what a big deal... I don't like cheating and I don't like exploits but in this game gold exploits are a non-issue. Content exploits are since it's the only way to get (sadly untradable) upgrades.
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So let us sit down and decide which exploits are ok and which are ban-able then shall we?  
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The thing that confuses me how a few players are the voice of everyone? People were punished and they legally can't tell you who. What a witch hunt this is becoming here so carbine kills off more players. Yes they cheated but carbine said they did X and Y. At this rate no one will be left playing since everyone will be banned for just looking the wrong way.
 
Seems 5 players here are telling carbine to post everyone's name on a wall so they can shame them. Cheating happens in every video game. They will find some but not everyone since its impossible. For them to waste the man power going back though players accounts will surely not add up on the weekly payroll. More time they should be going after new people exploiting and cheating. Maybe better QA testing so these issues don't happen? Lots of solutions needs to be set up for the future but more or less accountability at carbine is a HUGE issue also. 
 
Yes carbine maybe made mistakes but stop judging from the side lines when you are not the quarterback. Its always easy to say ohh I would do this and that when you didn't experience it.
 
Have fun on the witch hunt. I was on wildstar today saw so few people I fear this game's time is limited. 	
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The thing that confuses me how a few players are the voice of everyone? People were punished and they legally can't tell you who. What a witch hunt this is becoming here so carbine kills off more players. Yes they cheated but carbine said they did X and Y. At this rate no one will be left playing since everyone will be banned for just looking the wrong way.
 
Seems 5 players here are telling carbine to post everyone's name on a wall so they can shame them. Cheating happens in every video game. They will find some but not everyone since its impossible. For them to waste the man power going back though players accounts will surely not add up on the weekly payroll. More time they should be going after new people exploiting and cheating. Maybe better QA testing so these issues don't happen? Lots of solutions needs to be set up for the future but more or less accountability at carbine is a HUGE issue also. 
 
Yes carbine maybe made mistakes but stop judging from the side lines when you are not the quarterback. Its always easy to say ohh I would do this and that when you didn't experience it.
 
Have fun on the witch hunt. I was on wildstar today saw so few people I fear this game's time is limited. 
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The thing that confuses me how a few players are the voice of everyone? People were punished and they legally can't tell you who. What a witch hunt this is becoming here so carbine kills off more players. Yes they cheated but carbine said they did X and Y. At this rate no one will be left playing since everyone will be banned for just looking the wrong way.
 
Seems 5 players here are telling carbine to post everyone's name on a wall so they can shame them. Cheating happens in every video game. They will find some but not everyone since its impossible. For them to waste the man power going back though players accounts will surely not add up on the weekly payroll. More time they should be going after new people exploiting and cheating. Maybe better QA testing so these issues don't happen? Lots of solutions needs to be set up for the future but more or less accountability at carbine is a HUGE issue also. 
 
Yes carbine maybe made mistakes but stop judging from the side lines when you are not the quarterback. Its always easy to say ohh I would do this and that when you didn't experience it.
 
Have fun on the witch hunt. I was on wildstar today saw so few people I fear this game's time is limited. 
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Firstly - thanks for taking on some responsibility and opening up this thread for discussion, I appreciate it and I'm sure others do too even if our posts don't seem to at times! :)
 
What I really don't understand is that people at CRB haven't seemed to grasp how everyone apart from the exploiters and a select other few have been shat on from a great height.  I'm going to try to explain in some extremely simple terms below.
 
Player A exploits and gets thousands of plat.
Player B has an AMP point up for 50p
Player A buys this and uses it
 
Problem 1 : Nobody else can buy this now because some exploiter has and used it.
Problem 2 : Player A to our knowledge after their punishment still has that AMP upgrade.
 
Player C sees the CREDD market and Economy going Ape and lists and AMP upgrade for 200p
Player A buys this.
 
Problem 3 : Player A to our knowledge after their punishment still has that AMP upgrade.
Problem 4 : Player C now has 4 times the money they should have and doesn't have this removed from their account and the correct value or item given back to them.
 
This case applies to EVERY single person who sold something when the economy went tits up for want of a better phrase!
 
I don't know how you dealt with the removal of plat but if you didn't take away all of the sellers plat and give them the "going rate" at the time they have ALL benefited from selling in an exploited market.
 
Problem 5 : Player A speaks to Player D "stick an auction up for this and I'll buy it for 50p" - This is not a trade or a mail but it is laundering of the money and my point above that if all these transactions weren't backtracked too that money can easily return to the exploiter.
 
As for the prices...I still think CREDD looks a bit higher than it was before this hit on Jabbit but I could be mistaken as I didn't buy any but I don't think it returned to it's "normal" level to my knowledge.
 
Edit: I think around 20 ish may be right for Jabbit not sure though.
 
I'm not overly fussed about the punishment side of it (that's you're call) and it's not why this topic is here...BUT you need to ensure that exploiting is not seen as a good chance to gain against the punishment like criminals in the real world...most of them serve a pretty small sentence and have all the money they stole or gained in carrying out the criminal act.
 
A bed, no bills, free food and living with a few muppets for a while to come out rich...aint right is it!!!
 
Final Edit: I would really like to see per server how much plat was injected into the economy and how much you actually took back.  For obvious reasons such as if you only managed to take back 10% of it then all that money is being sat on and allowing people to manipulate the economy and purchase the goods they wish to purchase meaning the honest players has been shafted again as they can't compete.	
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Asking exploiters to be banned is far from a witch hunt.  It's asking for common game justice and accountability on the part of Carbine.  Further, don't exaggerate.  Banning cheaters isn't suddenly going to kill the game's remaining populace, NOT banning them is.  People don't like to play with exploiters.  People like dude above don't like their 6 months of progression invalidated by exploiters, or played off like it was nothing as phmb did.  I know nothing actually matters because this is a video game and *cupcake*it who cares, right?  But in the scope of the people that care about the game, have invested time into it, they don't want it to devolve into nothingness.
 
Further, as an added point, banning even 100 cheaters now, permanently, is nothing compared to the 100s to 1000s of people that won't pick up a game that caters to exploiters.  I don't share this opinion, but I have others who do, and that's the opinion that they simply won't play a game that condones exploiting.  Further, it just adds another black mark to Carbine's list of management faults, and a soft stance on exploiting is a very big mark indeed.
 
Finally, it was their choice to forgo a rollback for tracking people down, and thus the only option we have. No one here really cares about naming and shaming specific players, as long as justice is served.  This is no witch hunt.  People don't care about names, and yes we ALL agree that CRB should do a better job of preventing it in the future.  However, they still need to do a good job of cleaning it up now.
 
Finally, let's not distract from the real issue at point.  I think we all know someone who cheated and who deserves to be banned from this exploit.  We all know people who we would probably miss playing with, but that's the risk they took when deliberately exploiting. I know that its kind of rough to see even people who have posted in this thread, or people who have been trolling this thread, to be put on the chopping block, especially when they're your guildies, in your case, but this isn't just a harmless exploit.  This was a deliberate and malicious exploit, for great personal gain at the indirect cost of others.
 
Does it really not occur to everyone else that the economy matters a lot less than banning the cheaters?  The focus here does not need to be about preserving the populace or keeping cheaters / exploiters around, it needs to be about attracting new players.  The economy is best served with a massive amount of players feeding it, rather than trying to repair it from exploiters.  People aren't attracted to games and studios that condone exploiters. (Funny, its starting to sound like one of the major complaints about arenas in this game!)
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carbine didn't approve of anything THEY BANNED PLAYERS. So where do you get these crazy ideas they did nothing...
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Hey guys,
   Recently we had some egg on our face from an exploit that made it into live.  There are plenty of other threads detailing the scope of that exploit and Carbines response.  I wanted to start this thread specifically to talk about the economic ramifications of that exploit.
 
I've had some players mention that the markets on the various servers have more or less returned to normal.  Have you guys found that to be true?
 
In general I feel pretty confident that we were able to identify people who abused this exploit and use the systems that we had in place to remove the offending gold in the process, but other people have indicated they've been unhappy with how this was handled as they were concerned about the buying power these people had compared to them.
 
I thought this might be a good place to discuss those things and I'm going to quote and address a few points from the original thread that I spawned this from in a second but I thought I'd make one thread people could chime in on.
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Hey guys,
   Recently we had some egg on our face from an exploit that made it into live.  There are plenty of other threads detailing the scope of that exploit and Carbines response.  I wanted to start this thread specifically to talk about the economic ramifications of that exploit.
 
I've had some players mention that the markets on the various servers have more or less returned to normal.  Have you guys found that to be true?
 
In general I feel pretty confident that we were able to identify people who abused this exploit and use the systems that we had in place to remove the offending gold in the process, but other people have indicated they've been unhappy with how this was handled as they were concerned about the buying power these people had compared to them.
 
I thought this might be a good place to discuss those things and I'm going to quote and address a few points from the original thread that I spawned this from in a second but I thought I'd make one thread people could chime in on.
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Hi DaOgre,
Thank you for this. As far as I can see, CREDD has only marginally increased on Jabbit and I understand this is where the focus has been. However, all items of interest have seen a surge in price after they were all bought during the exploit (eg sign of fusion - eldan used to be below 25g, now at 35-40g a 60% increase). Given that Carbine is being very light touch on this (ie doing next to nothing as I understand there was no claw back on outflows from the accounts), one should not expect the economy to come back to normal. This is pretty much where it stops in my view regarding the topic you are willing to discuss. I do not have much to add on the other topic that would not be obvious or would not have already been described by other users.
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@CRB_DaOgre,
 
I understand that the forums were down for half of yesterday, and that you are likely busy working, but I'm hoping you are not done with this discussion.  Please see my previous post (as well as the others), as I'd like your take on it.	
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Hi DaOgre,
Thank you for this. As far as I can see, CREDD has only marginally increased on Jabbit and I understand this is where the focus has been. However, all items of interest have seen a surge in price after they were all bought during the exploit (eg sign of fusion - eldan used to be below 25g, now at 35-40g a 60% increase). Given that Carbine is being very light touch on this (ie doing next to nothing as I understand there was no claw back on outflows from the accounts), one should not expect the economy to come back to normal. This is pretty much where it stops in my view regarding the topic you are willing to discuss. I do not have much to add on the other topic that would not be obvious or would not have already been described by other users.
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Thanks for adding this info...as I wasn't too sure about CREDD but as you say it's all of the items that were bought up and haven't / probably wont return to the prices they should be because a full and total reversal of what happened has and probably will never happen which means everyone who didn't exploit or sell stuff at hyperinflated prices has been screwed over as they have less plat to now spend compared to all those who did.
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Personally, I wouldn't want to see somebody banned over this either.  What I would have liked to have seen though, is major repercussions for those that participated.
As it stands, it was profitable.
 
 
To make this simply a break even situation, you would have had to remove all plat made off of the exploit, and if it didn't total the amount they made from it, then start removing the items purchased since the date they started their abuse.  That gets you to square one.  That is to say, no punishment, simply back to where you were before you started exploiting.
 
To actually punish the players that took advantage of this exploit, you would have to take the above a step further, actually including a way to punish the player, meaning that they would be worse off now, than the time at which they started exploiting.  That would be something like taking an extra X% of however much plat they made off of the exploit, resetting their amp and/or ability points.  Whatever you want really, just some sort of actual punishment to show that you do not tolerate this behavior.
 
EDIT:
The point of this is that not only did the players not get punished in my opinion, but they actually didn't even get set back to square one.
 
EDIT2:
@CRB_DaOgre
Most of these talking points are for you, and I'd love to get some feedback on how you feel about the above.  I know this is my perception of the situation and it may not be reality.  I will not be offended and want you to show me where I'm right and where I'm wrong if you are allowed, and I'd also like to know your personal opinion on the above.  I know that what I'm hearing from people could be completely wrong, and perhaps players really were punished (beyond breaking even) aside from a temp ban.
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			I have a specific question. Two, really: WHO are "those people" and why are they hiding behind a front guy that's not allowed to be in the know?	
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Personally, I wouldn't want to see somebody banned over this either.  What I would have liked to have seen though, is major repercussions for those that participated.
As it stands, it was profitable.
 
 
To make this simply a break even situation, you would have had to remove all plat made off of the exploit, and if it didn't total the amount they made from it, then start removing the items purchased since the date they started their abuse.  That gets you to square one.  That is to say, no punishment, simply back to where you were before you started exploiting.
 
To actually punish the players that took advantage of this exploit, you would have to take the above a step further, actually including a way to punish the player, meaning that they would be worse off now, than the time at which they started exploiting.  That would be something like taking an extra X% of however much plat they made off of the exploit, resetting their amp and/or ability points.  Whatever you want really, just some sort of actual punishment to show that you do not tolerate this behavior.
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Been thinking about posting, this post made me decide i should. This kind of thinking seems a bit popular and is just wrong based on my own experience.
I simply want to share what happened to me in the hopes that it turns around the sentiment that carbine was too kind to exploiters. I haven't got all the information and only know what happened to myself for sure.
 
I got suspended. I didnt actually use the exploit but i knew of it. Because i knew of the exploit i knew that bloodbriar, popular for boosts etc, would probably be extremely cheap and available in large quantities on the AH. So i spent the afternoon/evening doing STL farming and putting up buy orders for bloodbriar. In the end i got around 10 000 bloodbriar for just over 20s each.
The next morning at 6AM i received an email and i was suspended for 72H.
I sent in a ticket guessing they simply did a search and blanket suspension for everyone with X amount of money/herbs/seeds come through their inventory. After about 24h i got unsuspended and logged back in. I noticed that i had about 30p less cash than before, and all of the bloodbriar (including 500~1000 i had bought previously, on hazak) was gone.
That meant about a total of 50 platinum loss for me, money i had previously farmed from thickets and runic modules that wasn't .
 
I sent in some more tickets, spent some time asking for reversal/clarifications but Carbine said that they took what they think is in line with what i did.
If carbine's intention was to take abusers back to square one, they would have reversed those AH trades and refund the money i invested in bloodbriar. Instead they deleted all the bloodbriar and went a step further by deleting another 30p.
 
Of course i'm just another unknown person on this forum, i could be saying anything just like the people that said they got back into the game without losing anything. I believe carbine is against naming and shaming so if carbine wants to they can confirm my story, or refute it if they disagree with what i wrote here.
 
All i know is that i lost 50plat for a relatively minor thing (compared to the people who made 50p/hour using the actual bug). I believe the people that actually abused the bug are punished a lot harder.
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I understand your frustration here but like I said I don't decide how punishments are handed out or what the policy on that is.  I've been poking around a bit and I'm going to try to get some numbers for you guys, but ultimately the people who are making those decisions are more tuned in on WHY those decisions are made.   I absolutely understand the frustration about people seeming not to have been punitively punished for exploiting and that not being much of an incentive for them to have not cheated.  All I can say is I've been asking around about it.
 
If you have specific questions here that you feel aren't being answered I'd be happy to speak specifically to them.  Thanks!
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This is based on the assumption that there are people who still have a huge quantity of plat out there to buy up CREDD.  I haven't actually seen evidence that this is the case, though it's possible that it is.  One of the problems with CREDD though is that people can post it at whatever price they think is fair, so if there's an expectation that the value of CREDD has increased then you're going to see the price people have listed it at changing significantly (Though that doesn't mean people are actually BUYING it at this price).  While we did see a spike in the moving price for CREDD on the day of the exploit, the moving price for it while higher (by about 3 platinum), has already started to repair itself.
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Been thinking about posting, this post made me decide i should. This kind of thinking seems a bit popular and is just wrong based on my own experience.
I simply want to share what happened to me in the hopes that it turns around the sentiment that carbine was too kind to exploiters. I haven't got all the information and only know what happened to myself for sure.
 
I got suspended. I didnt actually use the exploit but i knew of it. Because i knew of the exploit i knew that bloodbriar, popular for boosts etc, would probably be extremely cheap and available in large quantities on the AH. So i spent the afternoon/evening doing STL farming and putting up buy orders for bloodbriar. In the end i got around 10 000 bloodbriar for just over 20s each.
The next morning at 6AM i received an email and i was suspended for 72H.
I sent in a ticket guessing they simply did a search and blanket suspension for everyone with X amount of money/herbs/seeds come through their inventory. After about 24h i got unsuspended and logged back in. I noticed that i had about 30p less cash than before, and all of the bloodbriar (including 500~1000 i had bought previously, on hazak) was gone.
That meant about a total of 50 platinum loss for me, money i had previously farmed from thickets and runic modules that wasn't .
 
I sent in some more tickets, spent some time asking for reversal/clarifications but Carbine said that they took what they think is in line with what i did.
If carbine's intention was to take abusers back to square one, they would have reversed those AH trades and refund the money i invested in bloodbriar. Instead they deleted all the bloodbriar and went a step further by deleting another 30p.
 
Of course i'm just another unknown person on this forum, i could be saying anything just like the people that said they got back into the game without losing anything. I believe carbine is against naming and shaming so if carbine wants to they can confirm my story, or refute it if they disagree with what i wrote here.
 
All i know is that i lost 50plat for a relatively minor thing (compared to the people who made 50p/hour using the actual bug). I believe the people that actually abused the bug are punished a lot harder.
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