During the End of Days event in The Secret World, players discovered an exploit that the developers seemed not to have considered. In our latest TSW column, we take a look at what happened and the possible repercussions. Join the conversation in the comments!

Simply put, you can basically lure Mayan undead into a safe zone, automatically killing them and, so long as you dealt damage to them first, you would get points or credit for the kill. I actually saw this occurring at the Morninglight Camp in Kingsmouth, and it had me scratch my head for a bit wondering what was going on till it dawned on me that these enemies were dying almost immediately upon hitting a force field around the camp.

Read more of Victor Barreiro Jr.'s The Secret World: Mayans, Exploits, and Repercussions.

"During the course of the contest however we noticed that some players were able to exploit the mechanics and reach impossible amounts of points which in terms altered the rankings to unrealistic results.  This of course is not what we had in mind with this contest so today we decided to change the way we get out rewards for the event:  Everyone who participated in the "End of Days" event receives both the title as well as the pet today.  You can get your rewards over the claim window"

So what are we crying about again?

I wonder why people call this an exploit and why they think people should be punished.  If a game designer makes a system work a certain way, that is the game developers fault, not the players for figuring it out.  easy to change and keep the player safety issue intact, just say that anytime a forcefield or game mechanic kills a monster, no player can benefit in any way, just change the code.

kudos to funcom for realizing what they had was a bad game design and rewarding their customers instead of trying to punish them.

While is agree this was the best way to handle it... two wrong does not make one right.

The people who abused the glitch should thank their lucky star that funcom need good press more then they needed to enforce the rules. I would guess they will take a much more rigid stance the next time.

I put that link with Tarib's statement yesterday in the thread where a dude calling the game a mess, complaining about the event and the exploit :)

This was the easiest solution for FC I guess, to give both the title and the Hatchling to everyone. I fall in your first category btw ("pleasant surprise (for those who participated without worrying about the rewards)" )

And for the Funcom wasn't clear whether you had to kill a Mayan undead to count or simply be logged in during the event. line: I have an alt who only did the first tier (kill Xibalban and deliver the remains), he too received the title and pet. Probably even just logging in was enough, since I saw lots of Hatchlings yesterday in Kingsmouth :)

I wonder what kind of future impact their approach will have. If exploits don't achieve the expected results, then are people less likely to try and take advantage of the exploits? It is a sure thing that trying to punish people doesn't stop anyone from exploiting mechanics.

I don't think the force field was the problem per se.  While standing in the Morninglight camp, I saw one person using the force field but the mayans were spawning so rapidly that he killed one about every couple of seconds. Since the design was set to respawn another Mayan on the death of one, it wasn't a matter of poking one and running for the fence as much as finding that spot where you could kill hundreds in a matter of minutes.  No big deal that they figured that out, but I have yet to see where exploits are allowed in any game so there is nothing to complain about if you got caught doing it.

Good job handling it IMHO.

Originally posted by hardicon

I wonder why people call this an exploit and why they think people should be punished.  If a game designer makes a system work a certain way, that is the game developers fault, not the players for figuring it out.  easy to change and keep the player safety issue intact, just say that anytime a forcefield or game mechanic kills a monster, no player can benefit in any way, just change the code.

 

kudos to funcom for realizing what they had was a bad game design and rewarding their customers instead of trying to punish them.

Still wondering? all right. By the way devs themselves called it an exploit. So i guess that should end the debate about whether it was an exploit or not.

Pulling a harbringer and insta killing it with help of a ward which otherwise takes full raid to bring down is an exploit plain and simple. Only because coding is at fault doesn't give free reign to players to exploit that faulty peice of coding.

It was exploiting "kill areas" like wards and forcefields etc, if you laid down an aoe they would keep spawning and you'd tag them all and get all the loot.

Funcom realised that it was as much their fault for forgetting to make them immune to wards and the rewards were nothing more than normal mob farming. 

They made the right choice really, if this was Arenanet it would have been permaban city for abusing dev mistakes :P

also tawess there were no rules about how you were supposed to fight the zombies, other zombies died in forcefields too.

Originally posted by emikochan

also tawess there were no rules about how you were supposed to fight the zombies, other zombies died in forcefields too.

There are usually a part of the EULA and ToS that states that you are not in any way shape or form to abuse bugs you find and that doing so can lead to the termination of your account.

So that is why i said they were lucky that Funcom decided to be nice.

Seen this many times, as i was leveling up in the academy on the savage coast map.

But honestly i didnt kill the mayans for the pet nor the title, both are pointless and neither realy help you in game. I did it for the xp, loot, and coins to buy things off the vendor. The loot i recieved realy helped my bank account and crafting. I killed most my mayans from doing end of days quest and the quetzal bird.

My personal opinion is funcom did the right thing here, but they shouldnt have given anything to the ones using the "exploit". Though they could have removed those barriers ;)

Originally posted by tawess

Originally posted by emikochan

also tawess there were no rules about how you were supposed to fight the zombies, other zombies died in forcefields too.

There are usually a part of the EULA and ToS that states that you are not in any way shape or form to abuse bugs you find and that doing so can lead to the termination of your account.

 

So that is why i said they were lucky that Funcom decided to be nice.

Not realy a bug or exploit realy, part of the game mechanics. They could have removed those fields for the duration of the event. Perhaps next time. More cheesy than breaking the rules.

loved the event, went primarily for the achievement list which was not related to the K'in collecting which was possible to exploit.

Very happy I got the reward pet on top of the achievement list reward.

Got enough K'in for Quetzal bird without exploiting anyway

Originally posted by hardicon

I wonder why people call this an exploit and why they think people should be punished.  If a game designer makes a system work a certain way, that is the game developers fault, not the players for figuring it out.  easy to change and keep the player safety issue intact, just say that anytime a forcefield or game mechanic kills a monster, no player can benefit in any way, just change the code.

 

kudos to funcom for realizing what they had was a bad game design and rewarding their customers instead of trying to punish them.

You are right, to a sense. Exploits are normally over-sights on the developers part. With big games, which MMO's typically are, content is created with the 'spirit' behind on how its meant to be tackled. This includes play zones, to raid bosses. So, when someone finds a means to 'exploit'  the intended spirit they are often punished for doing so.

for example, I don't like to cheat, but I DO like to compete. For about 3 days I was farming Mayan's just to get my clothing, pet and do the raid bosses. But when I was checking the leader board I was so mind-blown by how many points people had it was unreal. For example, in 5 days I had legit kills at 867 the number one spot was at 7000+ I was playing for perhaps 8 hours a day as I typically do with something new and I couldn't fathom how they were doing it. So I knew something was up, this killed all motivation for me to compete because I do not want to cheat/exploit etc to win.

Lesson learned at the end of the day and I don't believe exploiters should be punished right off the bat, I think they should be warned, after all its cheeky and any economy adversement corrected. If its continued, then out comes the ban hammer.

In this case, no economy damage was done, but the spirit was lost and for something that was meant to be kept in 'good christmas spirit' I felt Bah-Humbug to it all.