Divine Judgment: The Case of overtyped vs 広島市

[Stoneface]

Grettings Jorb and Loftar, and fellow Hearthlings.

This seems to be quite the hot issue lately, with using/abusing bugs for the sole purpose of launching a fool-proof attack designed to circumvent all REASONABLE defenses that are in place in the game. There was no building of siege equipment, no time delay for Bob to react, nor any real damage caused to the people who saw, JUST YESTERDAY, that you had already personally stated

"From the point of view of the public interest we have also considered the incentives we wish to present to Hearthlings, in part by this precedent, as regards bug reporting and abusing. While we do believe that obvious abuses of game mechanics should imply a punishment, we also do not wish to create a draconian climate where experimentation is outlawed by nature, and where mechanical problems are never discovered on account of never being explored or reported."

----

This strikes me as a case of hypocrisy in the first degree. The players in question, most likely using alts to hide their actual base and characters from your God-Powers and effectively avoid all wrath and any chance of real damage to their actual progress. All while knowing full well to report issues first, and if the issue has been reported, using it to circumvent actual defenses and any reasonable chance to defend Bob's time and work invested into his game assets.

The choice to only nuke a "token" village is laughable at best, and devious at worst. I hope you rule with logic on this matter, because favoritism within the community for abusing known bugs is not a way to keep honest and good players here that will actually report the bug, and then stop using it until it becomes fixed. Someone's weeks/month of work should not be erased due to your lack of conviction on your judgement. Your game was broken, it's okay, that is why we are testing, and paying for it. But since we ARE paying for it, and you will likely lose a long-time paying customer conceivably, it stands to reason that you should stick with your prior statement of punishment for obvious abuses of game mechanics. ACTUAL lasting punishment, since the alt village nuke hardly would set them back, if at all.

Hell, I would love to be able to walk around with impunity from the devs, build a 30 second wooden and rope item with no dry time, and effectively use it as a siege tower while altogether bypassing the siege system that is in place. Instantly. One more time for emphasis, INSTANTLY.

But that isn't fair to the entire rest of the community who abide by the "laws of the game universe".

All in all, it is your game, and I enjoy it greatly. You are responsible for how the world views your decisions, and I know as an independent game dev myself, that you will make the right decisions.

Thank you for creating such a wonderful game, I am glad to work with you and find the bugs, but please. Don't lose potential paying customers because they see you as playing favorites with the worst of the players.

Just my two cents, enjoy your day and thank you for your time.

-Stoneface

[jorb]

Look, we don't like intervening in the game world for precisely these reasons. It always devolves to a bunch of shit that no one is ultimately very happy with.

[Stoneface]

Understandable, but the culprits knew this fact exactly, and thus abused your unwillingness to fix the problem, all the while being able to walk away without so much as a scratch.

[Archiplex]

Look, we don't like intervening in the game world for precisely these reasons. It always devolves to a bunch of shit that no one is ultimately very happy with.

Perhaps we should aim to have simple and clear rules for things like this- apparently it's not enough to expect that people won't abuse bugs or use edge-case mechanics to ruin other people's work.

[pedorlee]

Perhaps we should aim to have simple and clear rules for things like this- apparently it's not enough to expect that people won't abuse bugs or use edge-case mechanics to ruin other people's work.

This.

[Stoneface]

Jorb, just for sake of a solid argument, let's say someone knew how to illegally hack into your game's inner workings. Knowing full well it is illegal, however; they circumvent the law by approaching you from VPNs and botnets, untraceable back to them. In the real world, nothing much could be done let's say to retrieve your data or something the abuser has broken for you. Then suddenly he takes all your work, and all copies of your work. Now you're left starting from square one, and there is no recourse.

HOWEVER! In this world, you are literally the Universe/GM/God, whatever you'd like to call it. You have the power to correct a wrong that you just one day prior said you would not allow to get out of hand.

I rest my case. I don't doubt your judgement, just trying to present it to you in a way that would strike closer to the heart for you.

As I said, I love this game. Just don't let your unwillingness to fix "universe mechanic" problems let you lose money for your hard work on developing this awesome game.

-Stone

[Patchouli_Knowledge]

HOWEVER! In this world, you are literally the Universe/GM/God, whatever you'd like to call it. You have the power to correct a wrong that you just one day prior said you would not allow to get out of hand.

He does have creation/destruction powers, but the problem is that he is not omniscient. From what I can gather, he doesn't have a tool that grapevines conversations, list actions of each individual characters, and records of their last locations, which is an issue since he has to go into incident only based on what he knows.

(and I disagree with the punishment to the Bob Dole incident)

[higherark]

Look, we don't like intervening in the game world for precisely these reasons. It always devolves to a bunch of shit that no one is ultimately very happy with.

I think the only point of real contention we have here is that ainran have not received just punishment. As jordan himself stated earlier - it does not appear as if they were affected much at all, especially not in any comparable fashion to the damage they inflicted on bob. I don't feel comfortable with a group of exploiters being able to escape punishment for a technicality of using alts in an alt village. If such were the case, and it became an established precedent on rulings, we would see a great deal more of people exploiting and ruining the game for others. All without any real reporting on the issue.

I am not sure what sort of compensation you have in mind for bob, but I do hope your willing to take your punishment further. The forum trolls have already begun propogating the idea that you can exploit anyone after the odditown ruling. Such an idea would gain a great deal of traction if this ruling isn't taken to ainrans front door.

[MightySheep]

but Stoneface, we can reasonably say in hindsight that Bob dole clearly "failed to secure" his area by preventing this sort of tactic with double wall/gates

how can you say the attackers are guilty of anything if Bob didnt even defend against this, he might as well have just invited them in

[Jiochan]

Grettings Jorb and Loftar, and fellow Hearthlings.

This seems to be quite the hot issue lately, with using/abusing bugs for the sole purpose of launching a fool-proof attack designed to circumvent all REASONABLE defenses that are in place in the game. There was no building of siege equipment, no time delay for Bob to react, nor any real damage caused to the people who saw, JUST YESTERDAY, that you had already personally stated

"From the point of view of the public interest we have also considered the incentives we wish to present to Hearthlings, in part by this precedent, as regards bug reporting and abusing. While we do believe that obvious abuses of game mechanics should imply a punishment, we also do not wish to create a draconian climate where experimentation is outlawed by nature, and where mechanical problems are never discovered on account of never being explored or reported."

----

This strikes me as a case of hypocrisy in the first degree. The players in question, most likely using alts to hide their actual base and characters from your God-Powers and effectively avoid all wrath and any chance of real damage to their actual progress. All while knowing full well to report issues first, and if the issue has been reported, using it to circumvent actual defenses and any reasonable chance to defend Bob's time and work invested into his game assets.

The choice to only nuke a "token" village is laughable at best, and devious at worst. I hope you rule with logic on this matter, because favoritism within the community for abusing known bugs is not a way to keep honest and good players here that will actually report the bug, and then stop using it until it becomes fixed. Someone's weeks/month of work should not be erased due to your lack of conviction on your judgement. Your game was broken, it's okay, that is why we are testing, and paying for it. But since we ARE paying for it, and you will likely lose a long-time paying customer conceivably, it stands to reason that you should stick with your prior statement of punishment for obvious abuses of game mechanics. ACTUAL lasting punishment, since the alt village nuke hardly would set them back, if at all.

Hell, I would love to be able to walk around with impunity from the devs, build a 30 second wooden and rope item with no dry time, and effectively use it as a siege tower while altogether bypassing the siege system that is in place. Instantly. One more time for emphasis, INSTANTLY.

But that isn't fair to the entire rest of the community who abide by the "laws of the game universe".

All in all, it is your game, and I enjoy it greatly. You are responsible for how the world views your decisions, and I know as an independent game dev myself, that you will make the right decisions.

Thank you for creating such a wonderful game, I am glad to work with you and find the bugs, but please. Don't lose potential paying customers because they see you as playing favorites with the worst of the players.

Just my two cents, enjoy your day and thank you for your time.

-Stoneface

Why is everyone calling Hiroshima an alt town? I have been living there since the start of the world. So fuck off.