Sounds like their position is the same as always, it's technically not illegal but they look down on it.

Also, you just wrote the guide already.

(trigger warning: factual claim not backed by extensive statistical analysis)
@Bonjourhippo
Not sure what you mean, clearing the arenas is easy, not boring like FSC, and it makes about 3k each time. Plus all those radiants. Even better if you go with a friend who also has alts and can go 7 or 8 times. Or, so I've heard.

>> Arena Loop because not enough Radiants.
>> OOO says not to arena loop so you have to play the game more.
>> Radiants are still time cash grab rare butt resource that one wants to pay SD prices for.
>> People are gonna arena loop anyways because it's the fastest normal way to get radiants.

What the hell is OOO expecting with their shoddy refusal to buff radiants to prior to stratum 6?
If they don't like people arena/level looping that badly, then they should have fixed the Radiant drops to before this was a problem.
They've adjusted the drop rates before, so what's the big deal?
It's no wonder they want people to play more and longer, all the vets are tired of waiting to heat up 5* gear since 2013.
It's like a catch 22 and everyone's getting shard bombed.

See if it's not enforced the way I see it is that if you break your game trying to do the illegal thing then the GMs have no obligation to help you. However you may be able to get around that by just not mentioning it.

Pretty sure the rules behind any online game is that if you're not negatively affecting other people's gameplay, and you aren't breaking the terms of service, then there's really nothing terrible with whatever you're doing. Hacking infinite money is a no-go because we play the game for the money so we can spend it. However exploiting the system in place because of questionable game design that is not making you want to pay money anyways... I personally will overlook that even if it is a bad thing.
It's the difference between saying "omg look at me i'm selling drugs" to a policeman at a party (who is there to party as well) and being more discrete. If the policeman is there to party as well they won't care if you have pot brownies in the back room, even if they know what's going on back there. They aren't going to charge in and stop people from being super happy fun time because they are there to have super happy fun time. Same sorta logic here... You exploit the good paying gates (i.e., D28 arenas) because radiants are still a problem. It's not fun to farm radiants the "normal" way (for most players at least), so they fall back to doing that. As long as you don't start shouting "hey guys, let's exploit this gate over here in this game and the GMs told us not to YEAH!" it's really no big deal...

Then again, this is logicFangel talking. This seems like the best approach as trying to catch every person doing this is a waste of resources, however it's not how the game is designed.

I'd rather have it be in a "you're not supposed to do it but we have no way of telling" sort of format rather than a "YES GO DO THAT THING" because then end-game players are going to start assuming this is the new default way to play the game (such as firestorm citadel farming currently is viewed) and then get all prissy once new players or players who just want to play the game don't want to farm the arena for the next hour.

If players are caught in the act, OOO reserves the right to ban said players.

I think the issue is catching players in the act.
They clearly don't want players doing the actions but it is rather unclear if they have a system set up to detect it.

The bottom line is doing these actions puts your account at risk.

@Fangel
A player would be negatively impacting the game by artificially increasing their personal wealth in comparison to the market.

A more influential looping-related bug abuse is the black kat encounter during the black kat event.
Incidentally, the "go solo" party dynamics heavily changed the first BK event after the free elevator update.
This was to discourage players from abusing this known bug. It was, in the end, unsuccessful [players still used alts and looping techniques].

It would actually be very easy to check if someone is doing this with programming. If someone is looping, it usually means they're entering the level many times in a short timespan. So why doesn't a programmer put the 3-10 lines of code or so to notify the GMs when someone loops?

They have clear tools to enforce the issue, but if they aren't going to use the tools, I'm not sure how they'll enforce their rules.

Oh, and while that one programmer adds those 3-10 lines of code, could they buff Radiant drop rates? I'm fine with Radiants dropping throughout S6 exclusively, but please make them start dropping at the start of the stratum.

Even if its possible, and its debatable whether its a bug or not, its not debateable that the phantom vitapod is a bug, and using one constitutes bug exploitation.

@Skeptic
Of course, of course. I wasn't implying that it was that simple, and I don't mean an auto-ban system. I mean a notification system, so that, if someone is suspected of looping, then it could be looked into.

1. They are the same levels. If you do this check, you would also detect players repeating missions. They are, however, different instances of the same level.

I don't see what that has to do with it. It has the same name, doesn't it? You could easily slip a tag in there or something. You know, X level of Y depth.

2. "Short timespan" is arbitrary. This is important because different players have different play-speeds. It would be better to log+check history of depths.

True, true. I was aware of that, but, like I said (or meant to say), this would only be a notification system. When I say short, I mean relative. (As in, 6-12 hour segments. You could also do this for the entire gate's lifespan.) Of course, a logging system is more logical, and probably easier in most respects.

I am totally aware that it's not a decent system at all, and I wasn't trying to make one. But I'm saying that, even with a simple system like this, they could get by if they seriously didn't want people looping.

What about someone who leaves the party and comes back?

@Hexzyle

As a note... with the current party splitting dynamics a party member cannot rejoin smaller numbered depths from a current split. It will give a message somewhere along the lines of "you must wait until depth __ until you can join that party". They appear to track an instance of a "run" with all the "splits" and "rejoins", who, when, and where they occur. As long as one player still is on a current depth of the entire instance of the run, the information is available to restrict joins.

I'm suggesting that they currently already have functionality more complex than that... and we don't know if they log these actions. Not all actions that that code would pick up would be "looping", as I described in my last response to Autofire.

There is no way to explicitly stop looping because it would lock out honest players in some situations. They may or may not log the information and review cases of specific players. We don't know. The bottom line is doing these actions puts your account at risk because the player is exploiting broken game mechanics [which incidentally cant be fixed without restricting honest gameplay].