I believe Brad McQuaid is not at all interested in us players having a great time or not, instead it is just a purely economical issue. They have designed EQ to be time consuming - that's how they earn their money - so getting loot should be difficult - anything that speeds up the process is threath to profit; It is really not our responsibility to debug your program - since that is what you are saying. Any bug that makes it easier for us to get an item is not really our problem and it doesnt bother me at all if somebody does exploit such a thing. The program is full of strange things, mostly they hurt us more than they hurt you. I believe it evens out :p
just my 2c's
Brad McQuaid on Exploiting Bugs
Brad McQuaid posted on the developer's corner about Verant's policy on exploiting bugs. The full text is inside.
Hello all,
Recently I've not only received emails specifically regarding the Conquest guild issue, but also about exploiting in general.
First, some people are confused as to what an exploit is and how they're to know what an exploit is. Some are also afraid they might accidentally exploit and then be disciplined.
An exploit, quite simply, is using a bug in the game to your advantage. Most of them are obvious: attacking NPCs that are stuck, or the ability to duplicate items or money. But we do realize it's not always easy to tell.
To this end it has been and will continue to be our policy to warn people when they are caught exploiting. It basically works like this:
1. You are caught exploiting, you receive a warning and the exploit is explained to you.
2. You are caught exploiting again (this includes either literally being caught or caught and we have evidence you were aware it was an exploit -- in other words, premeditated exploiting) and you are suspended for a period of time.
3. You are caught exploiting yet again -- you are banned.
A second issue that's arisen is the question: why do we care if people are exploiting? Are we just upset they're not playing the game the way we wanted them to?
The answer is honestly "no, that has nothing to do with it." The following is an email and my reply to it which I think more clearly explains why we cannot allow bug exploitation in EverQuest:
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Mayer
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 7:30 AM
To: bmcquaid@verant.com
Subject: Question
You guys seem to be holding players responsible for doing things the game allows but you don't intend to happen. You are labeling as "exploits" anything that is possible, but doesn't fit into the game as you designed it.
Then I guess I failed to communicate the issues very effectively, because that is absolutely NOT what we're doing. We are labeling exploits as we always have, that being using bugs to your advantage in-game. Conquest used spell stacking bugs to their advantage and they used a safe zone (an area where a pathing bug made it such that an NPC wouldn't pursue those it was mad at) to their advantage.
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that in effect you're saying "look, we aren't perfect, we can't code a game that is 100% free of loopholes because nobody can, but you should as players be able to infer what we intend, and if you do things that are clearly going against our intent, that's an exploit and you'll be disciplined."
Yes and no. We're saying that taking advantage of bugs is NOT ok. And we're saying that 1. knowing you're exploiting a bug and 2. where and to what end your exploiting, are both factors in determining how we react to a player or players who are exploiting.
Whew. I've never heard a game company essentially say that the players are responsible for the developer's programming, design, and implementation errors. No offense, because I realize it's a bitch to run a game like EQ, but it seems absurd to me to expect players to do anything but try their utmost to use every single tool you give them, deliberately or accidentally, to succeed. After all, the only point of EQ, beyond chatting, is to level up, and the only rewards beyond the social come from leveling up and killing things. You put umpteen thousand people into a world and tell them "go forth and kill MOBs," and by gum they're gonna do it. You can't reasonably then expect them to adhere to something like "oh, and only kill MOBs the way we intend for you to kill them!"
No, they're responsible for not taking advantage of bugs in-between the time they're discovered and when we have a chance to fix them. And we've always had this policy. UO certainly has this policy, and I think AC does to an extent now. And I'd submit the majority of persistent, massively multiplayer community based games in the future will have these policies. Why? Well, because what you do in a community based game like this affects other players. If you take advantage of a dupe bug, you can hurt the economy, and ruin the play experience of hundreds if not thousands of other players. If you take advantage of a pathing bug and kill a monster to obtain loot that you really shouldn't be able to, then the guy who did work harder to obtain that same loot without exploiting is not going to feel very entertained. Rather, he's going to feel frustrated and perhaps even regret that he did it the 'right way'. It's the same as in real life -- society is generally NOT ok with taking short cuts (especially at the expense of others). Insider Trading is not ok. Cutting through a parking lot to avoid traffic is not ok. Embezzling and stealing and cheating to advance oneself at the expense of others is NOT ok. And so why the heck should it be ok in the communities and societies that are being developed in online computer games? Because it's a game? Does my sense of accomplishment and are my feelings about right and wrong somehow less valid inside a virtual reality than they are in the real world?
No man is an island, and that includes a person in Norrath.
From reading all of the public info on the Conquest incident, it seems to me that these guys simply took advantage of holes your programmers left in the game. If an NPC can't summon or move for X seconds or due to Y geometry, um, tough titty to you, Kitty--fix it. If you leave it in, you can't ethically blame someone for taking advantage of it. It's your responsibility, and you'rs (Verant's) alone, to make the game unexploitable.
Agreed to a point, and expanding on that, it's Verant's responsibility to make sure we are offering an entertaining and fair play environment for our customers. And so we fix bugs, and we also crack down on players who would use bugs to cheapen the playing experience of others.
And I disagree it's unethical to blame a player for taking advantage of a bug. If a person leaves the door open at their place of business, thereby creating a hole in the company's security, yes, it's the person's fault for doing this. But that doesn't mean it's ok for someone to come along and enter the building, taking advantage of the open door. He gets blamed too.
Now, if players change the code, hack it, or abuse other players, disciplinary action seems warranted. But to even bother suspending players whose only real "crime" seems to be to take advantage of coding problems on your end--well, you're asking way too much of your customers.
But taking advantage of coding or data problems can in some cases ABUSE OTHER PLAYERS, which is the point I apparently failed miserably to communicate, because it keeps coming up, not just in your email but in others.
Once you create the world, it isn't yours any more, just like when a novelist writes a book. If someone wants to interpret The Stand as an allegory about French cooking, there's nothing Stephen King can do about it. Yeah, an online game isn't as passive as a book, but it's the same concept. You guys seem to be holding on way too tight. Who cares if they "exploit" the flaws in the programming? Turn off the zone, fix the flaws, and go on. Every single exploit you guys identify should be seen as an opportunity to improve the game or refine it--that's good, and it's your right. But to discipline players for finding your mistakes… man, that's pretty low.
Again, reading a book is not a shared, community based experience. Misinterpreting a book, and for a better analogy, cheating in a single player game does NOT hurt the play experience for others. But, and this is the key point here, cheating in a shared community based online experience DOES.
thanks,
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Brad McQuaid
Vice President, Premium Games
Sony Online Entertainment/Verant Interactive
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