Yeah, making assumptions about someones state of mind is clearly too much. Its only natural to be biased towards yourself, we all do this.
It's just a wizardz and goblinz fighting game. If you mess about with layering fair play. If you get rekt later when Blizz swing the bat fair play. If you get away with it fair play. It's just a game to be gamed and won and lost. Exploits are not war crimes, no need to turn it into an idealogical battleground.
I think I might abuse it at least once for fun if I knew about it but I dont think I would continue on doing so. I understand why some people would, as it became an inherent system of the game and if lot of people are abusing it and you are not, you are at sort of a disadvantage, at least in someones mind. On the other hand I am glad that the people that abused it got punished hard, they got what they deserved.
It's just a wizardz and goblinz fighting game. If you mess about with layering fair play. If you get rekt later when Blizz swing the bat fair play. If you get away with it fair play. It's just a game to be gamed and won and lost. Exploits are not war crimes, no need to turn it into an idealogical battleground.
/thread
/thread
I thought it was a relatively interesting thread. I don't think it should be case closed with a simple "play the game" post. Especially when things like this impact the game itself, the players & the community. Blanket 1 month bans, item removals and peoples opinions on the fallout is probably one of the more interesting and impactful threads on this site post launch.
While I agree with the general notion to be less vigilante about it, I think the "its just a game, y u heff to be mad" approach heavily downplays the time and emotional investment many people have in this game. Seeing others cheat in such a fashion can be a huge slap in the face.
I think it should have been a permanent ban, they knew what they were doing.
Its against the rules and messes with the integrity of the game.
Isn't fair to the people who play for fun and enjoy the game as it is!
Don't abuse the system!
Its like baseball and PEDs.
Your not suppose to take it/use it to gain an edge.
They know its wrong and think everyone is doing it so why not them...don't want to be left behind...want to be at my best
But when they get caught they get suspended and they deserve it...
I dont get the "they knew it was wrong, therefore every punishment is fair game" logic"
I dont get the "they knew it was wrong, therefore every punishment is fair game" logic"
So jumping layers to reset Ragnaros to kill him again and again even though it was meant to have a week reset....isnt abusing the system?
They didnt know what they were doing? They clearly did, you dont stumble upon that...same with farming nodes...its there intent to get an edge
Why shouldn't they be punished?
I never said they shouldnt be punished, I said the fact they did something wrong consciously doesnt legitimize every punishment.
Blanket 1 month bans, item removals and peoples opinions on the fallout is probably one of the more interesting and impactful threads on this site post launch.
Right? And exciting! We have people on both sides of the fence. We have the looming threat of my account being banned (it wont be because Blizz will do just enough to appease the masses and only the most notorious offenders will be penalized as usual) and we have a solid point of discussion... I love threads like this. We are having valuable discourse.
I dont get the "they knew it was wrong, therefore every punishment is fair game" logic"
In a competitive environment, the responsibility does not fall on the competitors to establish a fair rule set. Which is why gaming is monitored by some form of commission or referee in professional gaming or competitive sport. There is a notion of sportsmanship, but in any competitive environment players with push the boundaries of what is acceptable until there is a precedent set. For those of us who pushed the boundaries of layering, we got our answer. And for almost all of those who violated layering, we are walking away without being penalized unless we were one of the worst offenders.
So I agree with both ends of the spectrum here to certain degrees.
I've 100% exploited layering but I will 100% not be banned because my layering exploits have been layer hoping to move layers to less populated zones to make killing quest mobs easier. Is this breaking the rules? Probably, but I'm not really hurting anyone either. But again, where is the line? Is abusing layering fine as long as it is self contained and it's not hurting the economy in any way?
Is layering abuse for farming mining nodes or black lotus' bannable abuse? It probably should be, but I don't think anyone will be banned for this kind of abuse.
Blizz has taken it upon themselves (it seems and I guess time will tell if I am wrong) that the only people being banned are the people that exploited raid and dungeon bosses for loot they would normally have to wait weeks to farm. So it seems like the only REAL bannable offense is gaming the layering system if you intend to farm raids or dungeon bosses. Is this better or worse or the same as farming black lotus or other super expensive mats?
I guess it's not for me to say and it's up to big brother blizzard to figure out. But as far as I can tell, and which has been evident since beta, and hell, even bfa, layering was a terrible decision for classic wow.
I personally don't even know what layering is but if it's being exploited and misused and violates the end user agreement, I'd say whoever is doing it deserves what they get. Some folks can't play any game at all without cheating. It's a mental malfunction they suffer from.
I personally don't even know what layering is but if it's being exploited and misused and violates the end user agreement, I'd say whoever is doing it deserves what they get. Some folks can't play any game at all without cheating. It's a mental malfunction they suffer from.
Layering in its current state is not outlined specifically by the ToS specifically. We are left to our own ethical interpretation of the ToS and its implications on layering when deciding what should or shouldnt be done with the system. Therefore people will knowingly abuse layering to different degrees. If you have used layering at any time for a layer hop, you have essentially misused the system. The system was not designed for you to manipulate your layer to gain ANY advantage. But what does Blizzard consider misuse? It took over a year, most of which we have heard "everything is fine, people are over exaggerating" to finally come to the conclusion that the line is dungeon layering. Even though people like me have made quite a lot of gold with layering outside of dungeons and used the system to violate a whole lot of other opportunities, Blizz does not consider that misuse as they do not intend to moderate any of those behaviors.
Business probably drove this decision to some extent.
If they banned people who switched layers to avoid PvP, farm nodes, etc. then they would probably end up losing far too many subscriptions. However, if they stuck to banning people who exploited layering in dungeons or raids, which is a smaller number of players but with much higher impact, then they wouldn't lose as many subscriptions. Also, they benefit by discouraging this type of behavior in the future, while also building more trust from the player base at large that they're doing something to deal with the prospect of characters being decked out in unearned epics in such a short amount of time.
Essentially, they picked a middle ground, and it's not unreasonable. I'm fully behind the 1 month bans, but I think that may only be enough for dungeon content. Bans for raid content exploits should be more severe, perhaps 3 months or even permanent depending on how many times the exploit was used.
Its not vague at all. Every active usage of layering is abuse, as the mechanic is supposed to be working in the background only. Now obviously Blizzard cant know your intentions, so whether you just joined a group to layer or layered as a side effect of grouping up is nearly impossible to tell. To avoid false positives they are as lenient as one could possibly be. But anyone who is stupid and/or greedy enough to push beyond the boundaries of what could never ever be reasonably explained by anything else than an intention to exploit layering had it coming.
Thats it.
Yeah they perfectly know who abuses it and who doesn't, they log even when you go to the toilet. I agree with rijndael that it's a business decission
The people who REALLY abused it and planned it properly though made sure to leave no traces behind. (AH/Trade/Delete toon)
Wouldn't be surprised if Blizz banned a bunch of empty throwaway accounts.
Still no ban fellas. I'll keep ya posted :biggrin: