Ryzom

This is not about DP. Lucas got rid of his DP easily. It is about being called an Exploiter by a GM and the intentional deleting of more then 20 threads by 1 or more moderators here when asked why. GMs should be calling people exploiters, and they as CSRs and company reps should be held accountable for their poor customer service.

Lucas was in no way exploiting. Exploiting is when you knowingly and intentionally comit acts that are against the rules of the game and its design.

He was playing the game as it was made and nowhere is there posting on the boards, that I know of that says you are not suppoed to be in the prime roots until your x level. Theres nothing in the manual that says you are not supposed to be in the prime roots until your x level. The most I have seen or read is the caution that says there are patrols and to be very cautious.

The fact is if the developers did not want people in the roots harvesting until a certain point they simple should have shut off the portals not have yourr GMs call people exploiters becuase your developers lack forsight.

You do not delele threads becuase you simply do not like them and it addresses some truely horrible customer service on the part of your GM.

You own up to your mistake and apoligize. Thats good business practice and thats what it means to be an adult.

Own up to your mistakes, apoligize for for deleting all the threads and reprimand that GM. It is not the first time he has made some extremely rude comments to players.

pandorae wrote:The issue that we have (excluding Lucas' personal interest) is not the DP. The issue is the direct slander of a player by an authority figure followed by repeated efforts to keep this thread away from the eyes of the Windermeer community. We would like to know (a why Lucas was accused of cheating and (b why this topic was so actively suppressed on the forums yesterday. These are not unreasonable requests.

Other than accusations by Lucas, there is nothing showing that anything happened other than an explanation he didn't like. Present a screenshot stating the accusations your making, I know I would have one if an incident of this nature occured. I also would never have presented it in a public forum. The fact that Lucas did both, makes it appear to me and probably any reasonable player, that this is merely a whine where you feel the need for approval by like minded folks.

The Prime Roots, home of the kitin armies that nearly exterminated all of our races, are not to be trifled with (I wont get into how tribes and bandits wander freely, that part makes no sense). I can almost imagine how the conversation actually went down, and it wasn't what the player wanted to hear. Slanting it and bringing it into a public forum does not change the fact it was merely whining about making the game as intended by cranking up the difficulty where it should be. Other than the out of place door guards (Kincher) the roots is properly difficult now. Because you did take advantage of this, doesn't mean repeated attempts to access the PR and incurring a substantial Death Penalty is a GM matter in the first place.

One would question why a GM was called in the first place, there was nothing WRONG here. I wonder how many people that were stuck or had real issues had to wait while he had to deal with this. Someone with a bad player build, complaining that now he had to play in an area he was qualified to play in and wasn't happy about it, is not a GM issue.

Pandorae, I doubt anyone would make a statement about a player bragging in region or elsewhere about how easy the roots were didn't occur. There is no reason to make the statement unless this was a player that did this type of thing, surely the fact he brought petty things to a public forum without proof shows he is this type of player. Though I applaud defending one of your soldiers... I think this whole debate of little more then an unsubstantiated whine.

billg1 wrote:This is not about DP. Lucas got rid of his DP easily. It is about being called an Exploiter by a GM and the intentional deleting of more then 20 threads by 1 or more moderators here when asked why. GMs should be calling people exploiters, and they as CSRs and company reps should be held accountable for their poor customer service.

Lucas was in no way exploiting. Exploiting is when you knowingly and intentionally comit acts that are against the rules of the game and its design.

Own up to your mistakes, apoligize for for deleting all the threads and reprimand that GM. It is not the first time he has made some extremely rude comments to players.

Sometimes your friends can make you look even worse... Another factless accusation personally directed at one of the most mild mannered GM's I have encountered in my months of playing SoR truly, discounts anything you have said, or will say in the future...

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Ultimate Harvesting Guide

One of the things I have learned over the years playing MMOs is that there are always 2 sides to every story.

Whenever someone brought accusations to the boards about the statements and/or actions by another player or GM, it was required that they also bring along the log of what was said and/or screenshots.

Right now we have the statement of 1 player that went somewhere he shouldn't have, continued to do so after a patch dropped high level spawns in the pathway, accumulated death points as a result, and expects a GM to do something about it.

The discussion of whether it was an exploit or not is moot.

Show me the proof that the initial conversation happened............

bgrifter wrote:Either you're being intentionally dense here or you're grasping at straws trying to justify cheating.

The problem with this statement is that it's naive. How is going to the prime roots cheating? How is a basic notion of fairness dense?

I'll give you that attacking mobs with a ranged spell from a distance when they cant attack you is borderline cheating. This is -only- because somehow the assumption carries in these kinds of games that the monster is always supposed to be able to attack you too regardless of any strategy to the contrary and that you must die a percentage of the time if you are to make progress. I'm sure you'll agree that this notion appears unreasonable when worded that way.

Unfortunately, worded this way, the "root" spell is an exploit too.

Part of the game -is- to kill mobs and stay alive. If you find a way to do that that works within the game rules using a standard, non-hacked client, in my mind it's not an exploit, it's playing the game.

As to your argument that "everyone said it was", don't forget basic principles of logical reasoning here. Many people saying something should be an exploit does not make it an exploit. Technically and legally, Nevrax is the only entity which can declare an in-game behavior an exploit. Just because they declare something an exploit doesn't make it fair. EVERYONE needs to know that, say, going to the prime roots is an exploit unless <blah>. It's highly unfair to just arbitrarily label patterns of behavior "exploits" just because the design failed its purpose.

Now the GM in question and the guy, I wasn't there. I do think that being in the prime roots is hardly an exploit. I understood people racked up millions in DP to get in there, why shouldn't they benefit from all that time spent?

Any game has lots of rules and systems in it. It is the height of unfairness to expect players to be aware of unwritten rules, or to put behavior in an game and expect players not to take advantage of it. This is a -game- after all. If the devs want to label something an exploit, they need to let us know, or expect to lose us as customers when we find out something clever we did is considered cheating with no forwarning.

vguerin, bgrifter, tinpony, alystra, WELL SAID!!
I was thinking: Why is this being brought up here, and since it was brought up here, where's the proof?

Obviously GM's would not, and should not handle any in-game decisions here in a public forum.

Laharl

qwipso20 wrote:I'll give you that attacking mobs with a ranged spell from a distance when they cant attack you is borderline cheating.

You have got to be kidding. That is so blantantly cheating you should be banned just for thinking it is a grey area.

In all my dealings with the GMs, they have always been positive (although never 'rewarding' in the character sense - except for some stuck issues, I always have to 'deal' with the bugs/problems myself ), which is why this situation leaves me with a bee in the bonnet.

Personally, I don't believe that Lucas is the type of person that makes up stories. If he was told he was 'exploiting', then he was told just that. What we ALL know is that the thread was closed without discussion, and that numerous follow-ups (until this one) were deleted. The community can regulate itself, and I find us, overall, to be quite mature in our thinking and presentation.

Harvesting in PR was NOT exploitation. Deleting/locking honest threads IS an exploitation of power/ability.

As for Lucas, we pretty much told him what was the case in GC... TS, buddy. And I'm not talking teamspeak here. He, of course, will not get recourse from the GMs on this issue. He has to improve his Jungle skills (as Zoraii) so that he can use that to work off future DP.

HOWEVER!

When bringing an issue to the GM, it is incumbent upon them to interpret the personal griping from the larger matters. Some people WILL encounter these problems along the way, and it is with foresight, that the devs, CSRs release information about patch changes in advance so that players have some time to modify their playstyles to accomodate the modifications. If I recall correctly (but never count on it!), there was no clue that the PR were going to be a kitin mess until AFTER the patch was instantiated. That does leave players like Lucas at a severe disadvantage imho.

A lot of us enjoyed going to the PR, and getting ganked frequently even BEFORE the Kitin patrols, because it was a challenge even then, and let's face it, the graphics are some of the best in the game - it was worth it even to just sit there and do nothing!

What I fear most is that this begins to mark a turning point in the relationship between the players and the devs/GMs/CSRs. They have been utterly FABULOUS so far, and I don't know what's causing the rift precisely at the moment, but IT HAS TO BE FIXED. We're all in this together, in an effort to make this the most satisfying RPG out there.

Mookse::

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Cerest
Community Liaison



I would take this as maybe they are a bit busy elsewhere?

It seems to be a matter of semantics. If the GM had not used the word exploit, and instead said something like, "You're not supposed to be able to harvest here safely. Stop dying and go somewhere else." Would there still be complaints? Of course, because a patch changed the way a person was used to playing, he racked up 1.5 million death points, and then called a GM to complain.

See! I just /can't/ take a day off, that's all there is to it. Let me first tell you that the person who deleted the above mentioned thread has been talked to. Secondly, let me say that if you ever have a problem with a GM, you can submit an email ticket to mailto:?subject=&body= and it will be looked into.

I'm not going to take sides and say who was right and who was wrong in this instance, but I will say that posting it on the forum is not the proper way to go about it.