2 of my friends got banned after obtaining the Vee's from the glitch. One of them used 2 Vees, and the other didn't use any. OOO shut down the vendors so they could not be sold, and my friends didn't want a bunch in their inventories. they turned to the only place they could to get rid of stuff - the auction house. They put them up in large bundles at super low prices...under 10 crowns each. 24 hours later, next time they tried to log in, they got messages saying they were permanently banned. Has this happened to anyone else who ended up with lots of Vees?? They had no idea it was wrong to take advantage of a glitch, and banning seems completely unfair. OOO should at least have WARNED people about this! Any ideas on how to get this reversed? How many other people has this happened to? I am new, and didn't know about the Vee's/glitch, so didnt' get caught in it, that's why i can post. If you have friends who have been banned, please shout out and advise what to do!!
Why Are So Many Players getting Banned after glitch 2/23??
The ToS has a paragraph on bug abuse.
Do not abuse broken game mechanics! - Sometimes bugs or oversights in the game design may occur. An example would be a situation that allowed a knight to generate free money within the game. If a bug is found, you are expected to report it immediately and not take advantage of it. Exploiting, publicizing or encouraging others to exploit bugs, design oversights or other issues is not acceptable.
Shows how much people read the ToS. They even have an example of generating free money within the game and how that is wrong!
Funny thing is, OOO warns everyone about this.
The bad part is that hardly anyone reads the ToS. Like how the post above mine mentions. knyack knyack knyack
Sooo, are the Bans being placed on those who have 100+ Bolted Vees or those who have Bolted Vees?
A lot of people clicked on it at least once, they weren't going to ban everyone but I've heard of people getting hundreds of thousands and then selling them.
If OOO is doing what I think they're doing, they're laying the hammer down on whomever purchased the Vees in abusive quantities (is that even a thing?) from the supply depot during the slip-up, and not anyone who happens to buy them after the fact.
They could have taken this a step further by just out-right taking the massive walls off the Auction House and leaving whomever got theirs legitimately intact, as I'm more than possible they have the means to do so.
But, like others pointed out, the ToS stands for a reason.
While OOO does need to show everyone that exploiting is bad, this exploit doesn't really break the game for anyone except merchants who were trying to sell this Prismatic Vee before... and ill-advised people who saw a good deal on the ah but never knew about the glitch in the first place.
When OOO bans the exploiting players, they possibly harm their existing community and I bet some of those exploiting players are really hardcore and determined to get the best deals possible, which is no fault of their own. This can cause a chain effect, because when some people stop playing, others follow.
If OOO were not to ban the exploiting players, Vee's continue to get distributed and I doubt this broke the game at all.... unless there's an item limit of say 128128 then yeah sure, that is game breaking for the server and possibly the player with who knows what. Players in the future however, would be encouraged to exploit whatever they find (and you typically don't want unfair exploits in a multiplayer game).
So you can harm the devs or the players either way.
Now if you want to tackle an ethical minor part in all this... The ToS quote does not like encouraging others to exploit. But honestly. You want your friends to know what's happening and you want the best ending possible. As much as you would encourage a friend to sell sealed swords or ancient gear, would you not encourage your friend to take advantage of a good Vee deal? To me, this is harmless. Vee's weren't even that big in demand. And they're accessories. CE prices are still at 7k cr. Heck. Have you ever wanted millions of Ecto Gels? It's good fun to see something outrageous in the ah.
I don't know what OOO should've done, I'm just glad I'm not one of the unlucky ones this time.
A few friends gave me 15 Vees total because I wasn't there for the bug (which is now a feature hue hue).
So far, I gave two away for people who asked for one.
Am I gonna get banned?
[PANIC INTENSIFIES]
I wonder how the situation would have turned out if it was another item(ex. Silver Keys, Auras, Guild Hall Furniture, etc).
Asked around a few of my friends. Survey says the ones who bought off Supply Depot were slammed with an automated ban both in-game and on the forums, while those who obtained them by other means went off freely.
I bought a Vee for 2k just to be fair, so if I get banned I'll be fustrated.
my reaction to people thinking that getting 750 bolted vees (or really anything) for 0 CE isn't something that could be considered a glitch
oh well, nothing of value was lost
"nothing of value was lost"
Except for the ability to freely scroll through certain pages in the AH.
RIP Auction House 2014, filled with 50 pages of Bolted Vees.
"Why Are So Many Players[...]"
"2 of my friends got banned[...]"
Since when is 2 "so many"?
@Xyka
Survey is wrong.
Well could there be a feature in the game where you can just delete your items?
1Ring secretly wants people banned :p
but in all seriousness I think they purposely made the vees glitch in order for people to be aware of the terms of Service. Turns out we can't learn the lesson that the CE glitch taught us or some of us throw self awareness out the window.
Am I gonna get banned for having bought 250 ones off the AH? :c
OOO shouldn't ban people because they did a mistake. This is not a glitch or an exploit. This is poor programming/software knowledge AND NOTHING ELSE. It's not like it was game-breaking, sales flash are out of our reach and are 100% controlled by OOO.
Winterfest had another type of glitch that people found and that I reported since no one did... and fair enough I'm still here ranting about Radiant... And they have fixed it for later missions. This WAS a glitch/loophole inside the game design. OOO price tagging something at 0 ce ISN'T a glitch nor an exploit at all... It's just clumsy human mistake (and a bad one)
What should've been done: Take all the prismatic bolted vee that appeared in the last frame time and give everyone 100 ce as apologize. Case close.
This is not a glitch or an exploit. This is poor programming/software knowledge AND NOTHING ELSE.
Eh, glitches/bugs are caused by poor programming. It was a glitch. It was abused. That's against the ToS.
I don't think permabans are justified here, though. It was too widespread.
Heh so when they make a mistake and leave it up for 20 minutes they ban the people who had the vees in their inventory but don't ban the people who quickly sold them for irl money.
But when I make a mistake and mail an item to the wrong person then "nothing can be done, sorry mate!"
I got a friggin' screenshot to prove that haha. Another nice screenshot I have is of a game master mailing a friend "you better return those dang bolted vees before I ban you." Threatening people, is apparently your way to roll.
This isn't really fair now OOO, is it? At least ban everyone. Or leave everyone alone. Don't ban a few because they happened to have them in their inventory, I see players out there going their merry way because they sold their vees for irl money hence they didn't get banned.
At least own up to your mistake, don't be immature and just kick people. You're sounding like a 12 year old.
@ Krakob we are not talking about coding or programming but putting number in text box... at the right place. Someone swapped 2 box, this is human mistake and nothing else, it's not even poor programming. It's a brain fart from someone at OOO desk and they are banning people for it. Which is very wrong.
OOO could've handle it way better and they never makes mistake... it's the player fault for taking advantage of something that OOO control that was FREE? How could you know you would get ban. It doesn't make sense at all.
OOO is mad and are kicking ppl that shove it in their face. That's how I see it at least... I know ppl with over 10k prismatic bolted vee, I got 100 through mail and 20 by a friend and bought 7... they are cheaper than scrap metal... IDK... it's OOO fault and nobody else. No matter how you see it, it's a human mistake. Not a glitch
Edit: And who can guarantee me it's not one of OOO employee that did this to get prismatic bolted vee?? This is also a possibility... Who knows? You? A GM told you? -_-
It's fishy IMO
True enough, but it's still a matter of abuse and anyone who has agreed to the ToS (i.e. everyone who has ever logged on) should be aware that they are not allowed to abuse such things.
Edit: And who can guarantee me it's not one of OOO employee that did this to get prismatic bolted vee?? This is also a possibility... Who knows? You? A GM told you? -_-
I'm pretty sure that anyone with administration abilities (any dev or GM) can just use commands to put stuff in their inventory. That's an absurd theory.
Well when something is Free people tend to go overboard with it... and it's quite normal. You can't blame people for getting free stuff by someone.
It's like you holding a sale and HOP on Saturday night at 11PM you go "we are now offerring free rhum n coke" obviously everyone will go on it and after 18 minutes you go "no free drinks anymore, and anyone who got too much needs to GET OUT!"
It's quite absurd. Abuse or not... OOO should just erase all prismatic bolted vee and apologize and give 1 prismatic bolted vee to anyone who has it and give cr back to everyone who bought some. But it's too late now to do damage controlling
It's GW2 all over again!
Anyways, those who took advantage of the promotion deserved punishment, but I'm sure as hell a permanent ban is overkill. They should have just ban them for a month instead while "confiscating" all their V's, it is OOO's fault afterall and everyone knows what happens when an opportunity like that shows up.
A little unrelated, but I heard of people using autoclickers to get thousands of them and then vendoring them. Yeah, it's 1cr each, but that's still a sudden instant generation of cr.
@Krakob:
I don't think permabans are justified here, though. It was too widespread.
Yeah. I can understand if they temporarily banned people who got an unrealistic amount of them (hundreds, thousands) from supply depot then modified their inventories.
But at the same time, if they just pick a certain number of them as a limit and say anyone who purchased at least this much was clearly trying to exploit the issue, then that's understandable too.
I'm curious to know what the lowest number of purchases were that qualified people for a ban.
@Shamanalah:
.justanumber:
You know what else was a bug? Volcanic Pepperbox charge pulling enemies in towards you instead of away. That was just a number as well. The supply depot flash sales were automated, by the way. Could have been either an input error where something was left blank and it defaulted to 0, or the script updating the supply depot glitched momentarily and didn't update the price until a few minutes afterwards.
I can say the issue was short enough that I was busy in another window at the time and when I came back, I saw guild members freaking out about how there were tons of them for free (and when I checked, it was already worth 750e).
.exploit:
it's the player fault for taking advantage of something that OOO control that was FREE? How could you know you would get ban. It doesn't make sense at all
So you're saying that this game company INTENDED to create a window where all players online at the time could receive an uncontrolled amount of an item for free, then unannounced a few minutes later, bump it to 750energy?
When I switched back to the window, I saw someone talking in overhead chat about how the price changed while he was clicking and he 'used 75k' (cr?) by accident.
If they wanted to give this item away, they would have mailed it out to everyone via server commands, in a controlled way, so people couldn't just autoclick 10k+ and generate CR for no effort.
It was clearly not intended, and players took advantage of it.
No matter how you see it, people who 'bought' hundreds of them directly from supply depot weren't being innocent about it; that's being greedy and exploitative in nature (which is normal when you're thinking economically in games) but being that way when it comes to unintended functionality is also known as 'exploiting a bug', and that's against ToS.
lol @ an conspiracy theory:
> Employee causes a serverwide issue trying to get a single item IN-GAME.
it'd take a really stupid employee to come up with something that dumb to try to gain "profit" for himself with fake items. it's not even a good item.
>You're sounding like a 12 year old
Please tell me you are being intentionally ironic. Look man, i dont agree with permabans, but people can and will appeal the severity. Let's look at this logically ; a mistake was made and something obviously unintentional showed up. People jumped at the chance to fill their inventories to the tune of hundreds od thousands (for what point i dont understand, but hey, not the discussion).
Break the rules at home, your parents punish you. Break the rules at your job, you get fired. Even if your employer makes a mistake, and leaves a full bank deposit in your desk, CASHMONEY, instead of going spend happy, would you not ask first? God knows i would.
Common sense goes a long way, but in a game loaded with early teens and pre teens, its sorely lacking, and understandably so. I agree with bans, but i think perma bans may be a bit harsh in this situation. That said, not my game, and hey, i knew better than to abuse the glitch.
Did anyone report the glitch?
I saw no thread in the bug report, but that doesn't mean that people ingame didnt send in some bug reports.
I just hope i don't get banned, i have some Bolted Vees that a friend MAILED to me, i didn't ask for them or anything, if i could give them to a GM i would, honestly, i will also go remove the 2 i used with Bechamel.
I got a friggin' screenshot to prove that haha. Another nice screenshot I have is of a game master mailing a friend "you better return those dang bolted vees before I ban you." Threatening people, is apparently your way to roll.
this is the part where i tell you that if you're going to make statements like this, you should probably also be prepared to substantiate these statements by producing the screenshots you claim to have - mostly about the mail your "friend" received from GMs
in response to skepticraven
i will say that i personally reported and turned in about 60k bolted vees within the first 20 minutes of finding out about the issue from within my guild, and submitted several bug reports about it - atropos and cronus were more than friendly about the whole situation and acknowledged that they would be cleaning things up over the course of the next few days where they could
that being said, the fact that they waited 48 hours before banning people kind of implies that everyone had a grace period to own up to having done this without any repercussions being handed out. those who are arguing that OOO's being too harsh now, the only response i have to that is that anyone who expects OOO to basically walk them through their moral compass to determine which direction they should go probably needs to take a few weeks away from the game to get that worked out - they made the choice to click "confirm" on the purchase menu, and they made the choice not to obviously realize there was something going on that shouldn't be going on. i guarantee that if you ask the people who were banned over the issue, they had more than just a few hundred and that those who buy them off the AH are essentially off the hook as long as they didn't mass click the freebies in the supply depot
the magical part about this is that everyone's expecting OOO to maintain 100% transparency on bans and things of that nature when quite frankly, that's the business of OOO and whoever they ban.
@Seiran
Let me put it this way.
I see 750 bolted vee for 0 ce (not 1, not 2, but 750) and I click confirm to check if it is a bug. I find out it is true, I have 750 bolted vee. I submit a report and I have 750 pris bolted vee just because I verified a bug.
If 1,000 people does that you already have 750,000 bolted vee in the game with only "1 confirmation clicks"... Yes abusing is the issue. But what is abusing really? it's 750 pris per 2 click, it's more than abusing in 1 click so that's why I think banning isn't reasonable because there isn't a fine line of "abusing"... I know someone who have 10k and are giving them away in quizes and trivia (at a rate of 20-40 per question). 10k is about 10-15 confirmation and it can go quite easily in an adrenaline rush of "FREE STUFF" *CLICK* *CLICK* *CLICK* and you are in the 10k...
What is abusing at 750X items per click... Also how come it isn't 1,000 the max accessory you can carry? Why is it 999,999? You can blame the customer or you can blame the company for lacking security and management. There's a 2 side to each coin.
- Shamanalah
1.Thoranhippo says : see what bothers me with this issue is that this wasn't a problem back then but the bolted vees are. OOO didn't handle this situation correctly and as usual the result is unfairness and the victims are the community. Game threatening glitches are taken way too lightly by OOO in general while petty issues are dealt with too unappropriately. Simply removing the bolted vees and apologizing was the right thing to do.
Okay so I turned them in via support ticket (after buying too many from the AH), and they warned me in the future that if I see a bug like this to report it immediately and don't take advantage of it (advice I will take to heart for sure). So if you guys have any in your inventory, file a support ticket, before it might be too late and something bad happens.
https://www.spiralknights.com/support/?locale=en#requests_new
I did the same and got a similar response(only difference is I legitimately bought two from the sale and so they sent me an extra 2 back via mail).
This is a responsibly factor on both sides. Three Rings messed up, and we expect them to own up to it. At the same time, we messed up, and Three Rings assumes we'll own up to it. Doing your part to fix this incident is the best thing we all can do.
Considering past events with people abusing the UV tickets from shard bombs and the CE market abuse from that one person with glitched crowns... how can anyone be surprised that people tried to abuse this also?
Only difference is now people are actually getting punished.
-Edit-
Back when Blast Network came out and the revive option didn't take your energy I had a guildmate perma banned for abusing that which is a lot more mild than this... so what do I think about this? Well this is what I think... enjoy your permabans.
I actually missed this glitchy flash sale.
Retequizzle:
that being said, the fact that they waited 48 hours before banning people kind of implies that everyone had a grace period to own up to having done this without any repercussions being handed out.
Actually, I thought that was more due to them waiting until Monday (start of the work week) to get everyone together and figure out what to do 9__9;
@Shamrock:
What is abusing at 750X items per click... Also how come it isn't 1,000 the max accessory you can carry? Why is it 999,999? You can blame the customer or you can blame the company for lacking security and management. There's a 2 side to each coin.
If we go with that scenario of an insanely stacked reward for a single purchase, then yeah, it's difficult to tell who's "abusing" or not. Because there is NOTHING in the game that even vaguely compares to buying anywhere near that many of any item at once. Heck, for months, the game had issues even letting people trade 10 items at a time. It's not a very good example.
For this situation, wasn't it that 1 supply depot purchase gave you 1 Prismatic Bolted Vee, except the price was 0? Most people (doing an honest purchase where the price is 750e) would buy 1-2 accessories.
At the point that you realize "OH THIS IS TOO GOOD" and start spamming clicks to stock up over 100 (or for people using autoclickers, 1k+), that's clearly abuse.
Anyway, all I'm saying is that I think there should have been some punishment for this. Whether or not permanent ban is the right punishment, I'm not debating that. I think permaban was a bit heavy-handed myself.
@Shard bomb abuse vs Prismatic Bolted Vee abuse:
Maybe they didn't realize people would do this back then? Were those UV tickets bound? Did they affect the game economy?
I don't know; I actually wasn't interested in shard bombs back then, though I heard of/saw many people who happily gained 50+ tickets back then.
Prismatic Bolted Vee though... they were unbound, could be vendored to NPC for 1cr each, and flooded the Auction House to the point that you couldn't search for "prismatic" anything for the sake of browsing anymore.
Actually, I thought that was more due to them waiting until Monday (start of the work week) to get everyone together and figure out what to do 9__9;
debatable, because i can't remember if cronus is the head GM or if it's hyperion. but either way, i don't think they would need to go get a majority vote on banning individuals who didn't have the forethought to realize that this might not be an intended function of the flash sales. maybe for lesser circumstances where they clicked once, and then ended up logging off before they could contact support, but even then that's a small window of time for those particular sets of circumstances to occur (i believe the time it took for the bug to be fixed was 18 minutes, starting from the time of the first "purchase")
@ Seiran (hey I'm off school! XD)
It was 750 prismatic bolted vee for 1 click... it wasn't 1 for 1... that's why there are sooooooo many. It's not someone who used an automated mouse clicker (which I have, for Minecraft... quite useful!).
I saw 10k prismatic bolted vee with a 100k cr bid on it in AH and was laughing soooo hard...
That's the switcharoo... 750 prismatic bolted vee for 0 ce instead of 1 prismatic bolted vee for 750 ce...
Edit: Even with an automated mouse clicker you could grab a lot of then but the sheer number of pris bolted vee in the game is HALLUCINATING. I know too many ppl with 10k+ to even call the blame on the player. It's cheaper than scrap metal... There are over MILLIONS of prismatic bolted vee in the market and no one gives a **** about it. Let's scoop them from honest ppl and let it all on the server...
Edit 2: I don't wanna flood the forum so here's a linky link (link that direct you to a new tab ;) )to a Thread talking about it, read the early comments
oh jeez, that's really messed up if that's true :|
gg
We should all just be happy that we aren't banned ourselves.
I contacted the GMs about this via a support ticket, and here is what they had to say about those bought off the auction house:
Fehzor - Today at 11:31am:
Is it considered exploiting the game to purchase the several hundred prismatic bolted vees off of the auction house cheaply?
I bought some presuming they were considered legitimate as they were not deleted in the first place. I do not wish to exploit the game, but if there is to always be a surplus of this item in the game due to the bolted vee incident, then I would like to partake in this surplus like the presumed bulk of the other players and potentially turn a profit off of it. To dis-include myself from "the legendary bolted vee incident" would be to dis-include myself from a bit of Spiral Knights history, just as vendoring the spiral bomb mask I got when the coliseum was released would be. That said and as I stated above, not exploiting the game should take priority.
In the past, players were allowed to keep their spoils without consequence- for instance, those that profited off of others exploiting the game via expending their gains on Unique Variants were allowed to keep those Unique Variants, despite having attained them through illegitimate means. This is the basis for which I am making my judgements, but would rather just ask than pay the price for my poor judgement later.
Clotho - Today at 11:59am:
Greetings,
Thank you for contacting us. Our Terms of Service do indicate that it's illegal to take advantage of a bug and that we expect players to report issues like that they come across. However we also understand that it can be confusing where this line is or even if something is a bug.
Please keep them in your inventory while we look into this, do not trade them away or put them in storage. We'll update with more information as soon as we're able. Thank you in advance for your patience.
Here's something I saw someone say on trade chat, "OOO should ban themselves because they made their mistake."
Here's something else I heard, "They should just admit their mistake and stop banning people for their problem."
...Wat. I won't bother explaining why since the forums has smart people on it, nor can I be bothered to read these walls of text. This just goes to show how pathetic a big part of the playerbase is. Don't even get me started on The Gift of Autumn bug from back in November.
Just to be clear, if you bought vees or were given them you weren't exploiting a bug, you were making a transaction. It's not against the ToS to be gifted an item.
Guys I got perm-banned for buying 696,969 Pris Bolted Vee's!! Dam you three rings & all you game masters for abusing your power! All I did was click the button about 930 times! Please unban me I am just super dumb <69.
It sounds like OOO is still deciding what they consider a breach of the ToS in this case, so until they do, I wouldn't state definite advice like that in case players view that as true and then OOO decides all vees of illegitimate origin are a violation of the ToS. Irl, possession of stolen goods is still a crime if you have knowledge that they are indeed stolen (and let's be honest, pretty much everyone is aware where these vee's came from).
I filed a support request as well to get them all removed from my account. Thank you for the advice, Untrustful.
First time getting banned
Did you try to ask for unban 69 times or just 1?
i bought 240 from the AH and i think im gonna be banned...
I contacted Support, and while I didn't get banned for buying off the Auction House or accepting mail with attachments of the Vees, they strongly urged me not to sell, trade, or put the Prismatic Bolted Vees in storage.
So, if you plan on buying and selling these with profit in mind, you are treading on thin ice.
"They had no idea it was wrong to take advantage of a glitch"
...That's probably where it went wrong.
You say your friends didn't want a bunch in their inventories, but if they didn't want so many, they wouldn't have tried to purchase so many from the supply depot in the first place.
In any other game, taking advantage of a developer mistake (those things that are too good to be true) is profiting off an exploit, and in those games, they reserve the ability to punish (or not punish) people as they see fit.
:/