To punish or not to punish exploiters

[Darth Revan]

So the problem is that MA does not enforce its own rules.

I think the problem is that there is no consistency with MA enforcing their rules.
They do different things for different expolits, depending on the serverity of it and how it affects their bottom dollar.
Ranges from nothing to permanent ban.
Their TOU gives them this right though, as it is there so that if they do decide to enforce it, the person has no standing to dispute. It does not say they will always ban exploits, etc, just they 'may' or 'have the right'.
Saying, well MA didn't ban this person for this exploit, etc isn't a reason to cry if you get banned for exploiting yourself.

However, the chances of anything bad happening to you if you exploit is extremely low going by history, it seems like people might as well exploit if nothing happens (or are required to exploit to compete with others).
Where if they set clear guidleines, and followed through (like other games do), then everyone would know its not worth it.

Guidelines like, first minor exploit - 6 month game ban, 2nd minor exploit - 1 year game ban, 3rd minor exploit - permament ban.
Major exploit - 6 month game ban, 2 year event ban, unable to withdraw for 2 years, etc
During this time you could write to support to appeal your ban (and prob not receive a response until after the ban is over).
Those are just examples, i am in no way saying these are what they should be, but you would have some sort of idea as to what IS going to happen.

Now we have circled right around to consistency.

Wake up MA!

 

[TheOneOmega]

Is there a difference in exploiting, abusing anything between real live and a RCE like EU and therfore you can do things in a RCE without beeing punished that in real live you would be punished for? Is this what you mean.

Bingo! This applies to discourse on both moral obligations/prohibitions and liability to punishment (I'll discuss the latter, but what I say can easily be adapted). The liability to punishment of roleplaying an action in a game does not automatically follow from the liability to punishment of performing the analogous action in real life. Capturing a queen is punishment-liable in real life, but roleplaying the capture of a queen in chess is not. Rather, the person making a case for punishing a roleplayed action needs to supply specific reasons for thinking that particular mode of roleplay is punishment-liable. This is a task which may or may not utilize punishment-liability of the analogous real life action as part of a sound argument, but in either case, the point is that the reasoning concluding punishment-liability of the roleplay, not just the analogous real life action, needs to be sound.

That there is a link in RCEs between game play decisions and USD is insufficient to bridge the gap generally. For example, roleplaying the capture of a queen in chess does not become punishment-liable when the game is played with a USD wager, regardless of the reality that 1) A person has roleplayed an action which would have been punishment-liable if the action referenced by the roleplay had been performed in real life, and 2) The roleplay of that action is likely to have real life financial consequences, benefiting the person who engaged in the roleplay at the expense of his or her opponent.

Still what have all this the blame is to be with MA Development have to do with a Person who knowingly uses something not in the intended way to gain a not so intended advantage over other participants, do you think they should keep their gains they had gained by using this exploit?

So everyone can do anything and exploit everything because it is MA fault anyway and because it is MA's fault they should be punished and not the one who abuses the exploit?

Once again, no. If a rule is routinely violated but never enforced, it should either be enforced or removed; otherwise it merely serves to restrict the options of the honest among us. If MindArk notices a pattern of behavior from a player that appears to constitute their knowingly exploiting the game to gain an unfair advantage, an investigation should be conducted, which includes among other steps, communication regarding the matter with the player in question. If, after the investigation, MindArk is convinced that intentional exploitation has occurred, a penalty should be issued to that player, ranging from warnings to removal of event prizes to suspensions (up to and including multiple years for the most repeated or severe infractions). The standard of success is not to catch and penalize every instance of exploitation, as there is an inexorable trade-off between minimizing false positive and false negative investigation outcomes, and we should agree with Benjamin Franklin that "it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer." Rather, the right standard is to penalize enough rule breakers, without harming those playing or striving to play honestly, to deter players from breaking the rules in the first place. If this balance cannot be reached with regard to a particular rule, then that rule should be eliminated so that honest players need not be constrained by it. Hopefully this part is clear to you now.

 

[yeeck]

Although I agreed that they should be punished, but at the same time, there should be a 2nd chance given for them,

 

[Mathilda]

I voted on all 5 options

 

[Raffaele Meiers]

That's a fuller quote of what you quoted above, Raffaele (my bold). I think you should be able to answer your own question with a 'no', if you take that in mind.

Maybe you should ask this TheOneOmega because he thinks it is the responsibility of MA to be blamed and shamed when their customers abuses bugs and exploits to their own advantage and not the ones who abuses the bugs.

Or like Cirrus said:

IRL we have laws.
And for EU we have the ToU.

It seems to me that what is said in this ToU, is that possible exploits must be immediately reported when they are discovered, and in no case exploited.

 

[Raffaele Meiers]

IRL we have laws.
And for EU we have the ToU.

It seems to me that what is said in this ToU, is that possible exploits must be immediately reported when they are discovered, and in no case exploited.

Bingo! This applies to discourse on both moral obligations/prohibitions and liability to punishment (I'll discuss the latter, but what I say can easily be adapted). The liability to punishment of roleplaying an action in a game does not automatically follow from the liability to punishment of performing the analogous action in real life. Capturing a queen is punishment-liable in real life, but roleplaying the capture of a queen in chess is not. ...

Rules are rules, in chess capuring/beat the queen is allowed and is not roleplaing but following the rules of chess, in EU it is not allowed bei ToU to abuse bugs so abusing them is against the rules. End of discussion.

 

[jetsina]

Once again, no. If a rule is routinely violated but never enforced, it should either be enforced or removed; otherwise it merely serves to restrict the options of the honest among us.
...
...If this balance cannot be reached with regard to a particular rule, then that rule should be eliminated so that honest players need not be constrained by it. Hopefully this part is clear to you now.

Yup! Quite often, though, it isn't even mentioned by MA that they consider something to be breaking a rule at all. That also restricts the honest among us (that notice something) compared to those who either don't notice something or don't really care, given the negative consequences are likely to be outweighed by the advantages of doing something.
The strategy then becomes: Oh, I didn't think about it. It was possible, so I did it.

Great game providers also have a respect for their own product that I feel is lacking with MA. This also provides a breeding ground for another word - yay!

 

[TheOneOmega]

End of discussion.

Probably for the best. We seem to be making little progress.

 

[Raffaele Meiers]

Probably for the best. We seem to be making little progress.

Yes it seams you cant convince me that rule breakers should keep their illicite earned gains and receive a friendly pat on their shoulders for abusing a RCE service.

As with your chess example which showed that you you do understand that rules are rules and have to be obeyed. In chesss you can beat a queen, allowed by rules of chess, in real live not. In EU you are not allowed to abuse Bugs, ToU say it is like this so it is clear that because of the same reason you can beat a queen in chess you are not allowed to abuse bugs in EU, the rules of the game respectively service state it like that and in the same way as a chess player has to obey the rules a user of this service has to obey the rules of the ToU of this service.

 

[TheOneOmega]

Yes it seams you cant convince me that rule breakers should keep their illicite earned gains and receive a friendly pat on their shoulders for abusing a RCE service.

As with your chess example which showed that you you do understand that rules are rules and have to be obeyed. In chesss you can beat a queen, allowed by rules of chess, in real live not. In EU you are not allowed to abuse Bugs, ToU say it is like this so it is clear that because of the same reason you can beat a queen in chess you are not allowed to abuse bugs in EU, the rules of the game respectively service state it like that and in the same way as a chess player has to obey the rules a user of this service has to obey the rules of the ToU of this service.

It appears that the discussion has not ended after all.

In all seriousness, you're quite right that I won't be able to convince you of anything. The chess examples were not offered as an analogy to the TOU, but to undercut the thrust of your skeptically posed question

Is there a difference in exploiting, abusing anything between real live and a RCE like EU and therfore you can do things in a RCE without beeing punished that in real live you would be punished for? Is this what you mean.

You've also failed to come to terms with my actual position on the importance of obeying rules, despite being corrected several times. If you genuinely want to be open-minded enough to be convincible, I think it would do more good for you to reread my prior posts than for me to keep pumping out new ones. The information you'd need is already there.

 

[jetsina]

Once going down the wrong set of tracks, some people simply cannot back up.
So, there's a post I find good on the new AMA thread by My with the title "Hello again..." that MA should please provide a list of known bugs and guidelines as to whether we are ok or not to use those bugged bits. It's post #2, so right up at the top there...
I think that would be part of a way forward....