http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=100190

For those of you who didn't know, 2 large, exploiting guilds lost their keep today.

Even after engaging in numerous siege exploits, such as:

- Killing your own teammates near the keep to earn your team points

- Hiding in the walls/walking through them

- Hiding under the floor, beneath the keep

Clan PfB and Sinister were taken out by Adrenaline, a relatively smaller guild, aided by Lords of the Dead,  PRX-CQ, and the Box.

Even though Clan PfB and Sinister had more points, due to their exploitation of the game's problems, they lost, because their keep was destroyed.

This is just further proof, in my mind, that sieging needs to be removed from the game until it is fixed, and then re-implemented at a later date.

Edit: According to some friends who attended the event, both sides were exploiting heavily.

I don't know what's sadder :(

Just shows Funcoms whole "Why test in beta when we can make money and test it post launch" mind set isn't really working too well.

thats sad but i am lucky that some1 is beta testing the game, its gonna be an awesome game when its released next year finally... cant wait for AOC!!!

Originally posted by cagan

thats sad but i am lucky that some1 is beta testing the game, its gonna be an awesome game when its released next year finally... cant wait for AOC!!!

As funny and truthful as this statement is, next year will be too late.

Well, you tell me which is worse.

The fact that all the guilds were using different exploits..

or

...the fact that both sides know all the exploits so well, that they can readily call out and identify each other for using them.

Sigh.

Originally posted by Cymdai

Well, you tell me which is worse.

The fact that all the guilds were using different exploits..

or

...the fact that both sides know all the exploits so well, that they can readily call out and identify each other for using them.

Sigh.

True...

This game just gets worse.

I can t believe people of any common sense can defend this game. It is a total mess, great to see not only s the pvp useless and boring, but exploitable beyond belief.

Originally posted by Cymdai

Well, you tell me which is worse.

The fact that all the guilds were using different exploits..

or

...the fact that both sides know all the exploits so well, that they can readily call out and identify each other for using them.

Sigh.

(Cue that scene in "The Sting" where Paul Newman and Robert Shaw both cheat heavily at poker.)

Ah, but they are "Teh Hardcorez".  They're leeter than you, and therefore are allowed to cheat if it can make them teh ûberleetz of teh universe.

Honestly, if I tire of MMO gaming, it probably will be because of all those hardcore gamers and their leet guilds who move from game to game (insert my usual crime syndicate analogy here), and who treat anyone unwilling or incapable (no difference to them) to indulge in their full-time gaming regimen as their inferior. 

For all AoC's faults, I will praise it for one thing: its two server types, so the PvE servers can be spared the sociopathic stupidity of the hardcore.

Well from the 1st siege, exploits were found and came into public light. FC was quick to reply by adding that they were aware of issues and will be patching the game up pronto. Just a case of waiting for this to happen.

From what I hear 'the box' wasn't even there. But when you put exploiter guilds together this is what happens.

I hope they fix the issues soon, on my server we have similar exploiters such as Eximos, who deserve a good smacking, I'd rather when that happens there is no way they can cheat.

Tomorrow's downtime of 5 hrs for a patch should fix this issue, if not by Thursdays hopefully.

If they were exploiting why were they not all banned?

Originally posted by Bladeinhand

If they were exploiting why were they not all banned?

You ban members of big guilds you run the risk of those guilds bailing out.

Originally posted by fyerwall

Originally posted by Bladeinhand

If they were exploiting why were they not all banned?

 

You ban members of big guilds you run the risk of those guilds bailing out.

So Funcom advocates exploiting? Or just turning a blind eye?

Funcom, though generally good about handling exploiters, can't/won't ban those guilds, period.

The membership alone is probably around 400-700 people.

Plus, while I don't support leniency on exploiting/exploiters, no company would ever sacrifice that much money a month to make their player base happy.

It's the sad truth of the industry.

The exploiting IS ridiculous. On yourtube there is things to download for free to get to level 80 and fly, and have all GM powers in like to seconds. Yeah, I was an AoC fanboy, but I'm starting to be a WAR fan....

Originally posted by Bladeinhand

Originally posted by fyerwall

Originally posted by Bladeinhand

If they were exploiting why were they not all banned?

 

You ban members of big guilds you run the risk of those guilds bailing out.

 

So Funcom advocates exploiting? Or just turning a blind eye?

They did the same thing in AO. It all depends on the size of a guild. If it were a small sub 100 member guild you can bet they would get spanked. Being that these guilds probably hold an amount of players equal to or above the 400 member mark, FC will probably just let it slide in fear of them losing a significant chunk of that servers population.

Originally posted by Cymdai

Funcom, though generally good about handling exploiters, can't/won't ban those guilds, period.

The membership alone is probably around 400-700 people.

Plus, while I don't support leniency on exploiting/exploiters, no company would ever sacrifice that much money a month to make their player base happy.

It's the sad truth of the industry.

Yeah, but what will happen when those exploiting guilds start attacking guilds playing by the rules -- and winning as a result of the exploiting?

I saw the result of that in Pirates of the Burning Sea.  The British flipped three French ports at once using an exploit, which resulted in three simultaneous port battles.  The French had enough people to just fight one battle, which they won, but could not defend the two other ports.  The problem with all this is that the British not only used the exploit after the developers identified it as such (and unwisely described its process, as though someone still ignored how it was done), and a few days before a scheduled patch would solve the matter.  The French faction took to the forums to get the devs to return the ports.  The dev excuse to not give the ports back?  "But the port battles were won honestly."  No kidding.

A large chunk of the French faction cancelled right there and never looked back.  And the exploiting British were the first to leave that game for the Age of Conan open beta.  I wonder where they are playing now.

My guess is that the devs will take action against the exploiters when they are more trouble than they are worth -- i.e. when the exploiters start driving more subscriptions away than what they keep bringing to Funcom.

Same scenario all the time, though.  They always act too late.  Besides, if such guilds start playing the blackmail game with you, threatening to quit if they can't have the run of the server, their way, how committed are they really to your game anyway? 

Woah hang on a sec, 2 weeks back people were saying FC were heavy handed with exploiters - anyone remember all the threads? Well cough... "the box"

If anything was done wrong here then people will be punished.

They will ban hundreds of people if they need to. Companies do this, Jagex did not long ago as well as Guild Wars last month.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Well from the 1st siege, exploits were found and came into public light. FC was quick to reply by adding that they were aware of issues and will be patching the game up pronto. Just a case of waiting for this to happen.

From what I hear 'the box' wasn't even there. But when you put exploiter guilds together this is what happens.

I hope they fix the issues soon, on my server we have similar exploiters such as Eximos, who deserve a good smacking, I'd rather when that happens there is no way they can cheat.

Tomorrow's downtime of 5 hrs for a patch should fix this issue, if not by Thursdays hopefully.

What I want to know is did Funcom act quikly by banning the accts. of the said exploiters? This is my mindset in a game there is no excuse for an exploit what so ever and the folks that did it deserve a stiff warning and a ban for about a week or depending on the severity permanantly banned.

Originally posted by Battleskar

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

Well from the 1st siege, exploits were found and came into public light. FC was quick to reply by adding that they were aware of issues and will be patching the game up pronto. Just a case of waiting for this to happen.

From what I hear 'the box' wasn't even there. But when you put exploiter guilds together this is what happens.

I hope they fix the issues soon, on my server we have similar exploiters such as Eximos, who deserve a good smacking, I'd rather when that happens there is no way they can cheat.

Tomorrow's downtime of 5 hrs for a patch should fix this issue, if not by Thursdays hopefully.

 

What I want to know is did Funcom act quikly by banning the accts. of the said exploiters? This is my mindset in a game there is no excuse for an exploit what so ever and the folks that did it deserve a stiff warning and a ban for about a week or depending on the severity permanantly banned.

Im sure that they were investigate properly. For example out of the siege side of things there was a bug in a raid where the boss dropped 26 Silver, what was happening was this was going to every member of the raid instead of equally divided. This was farmed alot by some guilds giving them the money to advance keeps and such. FC investigated and some people / groups were warned / banned. My guild found this out, we contacted a GM who then confirmed it was an exploit, we let them know exactly how it was done as it happened to us and they put a stop to it.

Same thing will happen with this situation. Walls that were damaged could be walked thru, there was a bug letting people spellweave as a death to gain points and there was lot of rez camping going on - basically things that weren't suppose to. I would think that if this bugs were already known from previous incidents (last week) and were taken advantage of again, then punishment will be dealt out for sure.

The thing is its taking them a little bit of time to get the patch ready for this, as its not an instant fix. Which is partially why I think the patch held of last week in order to spend time to fix it up properly will come this week coming.

The community wont stand for it, nor will Funcom, I've met personally the Q&A team and members of the Customer Service, they wont tollerate this kind of thing. They are aware of issues with the keeps, such as gaps in walls where they go up to terrain features and will patch things up properly.

Just like when the first raids were done in some area`s FC monitored it, just like when the first sieges happened last week they monitored it, as they are continuing to do so.

if the bugs were known previously and done again im sure there will be consequences, if they are new bugs then its a first.. ``new`` anything after will have consequences. The result of the fight had its own consequences for those that cheated too.