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My|MindArk said:
Players are locked during an investigation. This is a standard practice while we investigate a situation. Further punishment will be given to those who we find guilty of this exploit!
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My|MindArk said:
Any locked accounts auctions of rugaritz, dunkel and finders has been canceled.

Most those that are cleared of suspicion have gotten their accounts unlocked.

For those who we found guilty, we've retrieved all items from the boxes from their accounts. Their accounts remained locked and will be given further punishments.
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I'm afraid you are acting on the loud voice of one or two players and punishing other players that deposited money in the game.

Let me tell you what happened from my point of view, it was somewhere in the evening when it all started, drop rates for rare Ziplex finders seemed to be higher than normal. I was not interested and wished all the best for those who got in the "wave", however in the morning at about 9am local time this was still happening, which meant in mind that this cannot be a bug that people were "exploiting" given the duration of the thing. Of course I jumped in the train, I do use P20's finders, I also used P160 so I could use some, given the fact that I had some Mining Strongboxes stacked. There was no way on knowing that they were bugged other than some "Could not execute" error message or something like that which I honestly believed that it was happening due to everyone opening those mining strongboxes

Accusing players of being "guilty of this exploit" and "and will be given further punishments" I find it irrational and triggered by forum with one specific player posting mostly. You can actually see early the #3 reply in this thread "They refilled the pool too much" and a lot of different people stating that it's not a bug or exploit, whereas only a couple keep posting "Bug" or exploit, mostly the same people.

I was not about to post anything but I feel like I stole something from the game using other mechanics than the designed ones and you are on their side instead of accepting the fact the the error has been from the games/developers side, we did not do anything in particular for these boxes other than OPENING them, with our mouses, with our keys, from the money, that we deposited. Of course it seemed like a good deal and there was no way of knowing that it was a bug. I am not an exploiter and I'm being offended of being called one.

There was no way for us to know that it was a bug because on many occasions weird stuff has happened and there was no official statement about it, which would make it a part of the game.

If you take from us the stuff we looted then I would expect you to also take back the HUGE amounts of Redulite some avatars got on both occasions where only Redulite was dropping in an area where it was supposed to be very rare (as per in game item description). Was that a bug? Was that ok? Why is this not ok? By the way, I believe some of that Redulite is still being crafted even these days, though the thing happened years back.

Stop guilting other players for your own mistakes!

If too many Ziplex finders have dropped during this event which you now mentioned that it was not intended, then find a way to compensate for the mistake you've done, not punish the players, which in this case also deposited.


Depending on the result of your investigation I might have to scale down on my mining activities thus not risking being called an exploiter in this game.

LE: Here's an idea, make the Ziplex finders looted from Mining strongboxes in this timeframe soul bounded.

@My|MindArk @Ludvig|MindArk
 
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Drekrin12 said:
@zeusrocktropian
Mate commoon, we all knew something was up regardless of how may boxes we opened. I,m just annoyed it's taking so long to sort out:D Don't be a crybaby:D
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Something was Up? Yes
Something was Wrong? not really.

Been in this game for much too long to see this as someone was saying in the forum "clearly a bug", "clearly bugs" happened heaps in the past with no official communication about it which meant it was ok. Apparently this was not.
 
zeusrocktropian said:
Something was Up? Yes
Something was Wrong? not really.

Been in this game for much too long to see this as someone was saying in the forum "clearly a bug", "clearly bugs" happened heaps in the past with no official communication about it which meant it was ok. Apparently this was not.
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I guess there are lot of people from ur soc on "cooldown"

0b9479fa7d7128cd99fabd1347d81a14.gif
 
This could have been a nice marketing strategy from MA that made people depo in order to buy keys... Why does it take 20 hours and 2 forum thread for them to do anything? Isn't it weird? Afterall not even a server restart happened, neither a VU. Some one just push the wrong buttons at the office and rushed to the beach again. Weird as f#ck that no one control this rare drops.

Now they return keys and boxes and everyone that depoed for keys now need to suck it up. ahaha Good one guys! Bravo! Keep them coming.
 
There was an unfortunate glitch in the systems last night that made Mining Strongboxes loot only Rares, we have been able to hotfix the issue for the time being.

Due to the fact that this will impact economy and will put it at a risk we cannot let players that looted Rares from Mining Strongboxes keep the items, this also includes the rare minerals. We are working into compensating the affected players.


This should've been the official communication, do you guys need a PR official?
 
My|MindArk said:
You have already found out the following in this thread by others, but I just wanted to let you know that we are currently doing temporarily bans to some avatars due to a pending investigation regarding exploitation of Mining Strongboxes ❤️
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(y) (y) (y) (y) (y)
 
zeusrocktropian said:
Depending on the result of your investigation I might have to scale down on my mining activities thus not risking being called an exploiter in this game.
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That was exactly my tought too ...
They are taking "actions" to thoses who deposited money, but ... still having SEVERALS mining bots mining 24/7 for over a decade now ... and still no actions at all on thoses accounts =)

But yeah let's wait for their "investigation" and results out of it, im quite curious what will be the end of the story of all this ;)
 
Fanan said:
This could have been a nice marketing strategy from MA that made people depo in order to buy keys... Why does it take 20 hours and 2 forum thread for them to do anything? Isn't it weird? Afterall not even a server restart happened, neither a VU. Some one just push the wrong buttons at the office and rushed to the beach again. Weird as f#ck that no one control this rare drops.

Now they return keys and boxes and everyone that depoed for keys now need to suck it up. ahaha Good one guys! Bravo! Keep them coming.
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Indeed 😁
 
zeusrocktropian said:
Something was Up? Yes
Something was Wrong? not really.

Been in this game for much too long to see this as someone was saying in the forum "clearly a bug", "clearly bugs" happened heaps in the past with no official communication about it which meant it was ok. Apparently this was not.
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Even if it happended in the past dosn't make it right today.

You now know to not risk it any "hopefully not" future cases.
 
With all being said, have only 3 questions.

What happen to the person who turned the mining box on for rares?
Can it be done anytime? Let's say for a few minutes and then down again?
Are they not supposed to be random?
Also why some players are announcing MA spammed events, before anyone from actually MA.

And would like some official answer from the company itself, not from some knights of the reason and integrity.
 
Y'all I am new and this is the first "kerfluffle" I've seen. I am not a miner and did not participate in the ziplex spree, I am not directly affected by what happened and am too new to see the ramifications of any indirect consequence of this event. So this is from a new-player perspective, as such I've followed the thread carefully and would just like to share my thoughts.

What seemingly happened was, Ziplexs are dropping from mining boxes more than intended, more people open them hoping to catch the wave, seems like a totally normal and natural thing. Imagine if you were a hunter, and you see people constantly hitting big globals or small hofs on some mob like feffoids, would you not proceed and shoot some feffoids yourself, if you could? How is anyone supposed to differentiate between "this is awesome! great loot! MA charity day!" and "this is clearly wrong, something's messed up, not working as intended"

To that point, someone posted that the number of ziplex looted/found in 24 hours quickly surpassed all of those found the prior year. As a new player, I wouldn't know that. And if I was opening mining boxes, and got a ziplex I'm not going to stop what I'm doing, see how many were looted, see how many were looted the prior year etc, no I'm going to open another box. There's also no way of knowing as it's happening what it's going to end up being. If only 5 players opened boxes that day and only 10 ziplex's were found, is it still a bug then?

I'm not trying to defend those that tried to overtly capitalize on this bug. I'm trying to come to grips with how I'm supposed to decide if the "loot" (it's not really loot right? It's a purchased asset), but how am I supposed to decide if what I'm getting is too-good and problematic.

While I'm not a miner and this doesn't impact me, I will say it hits close. What I've done as part of my diving-in to Entropia experience, is buy 1k of each seasonal strongbox. And if in my opening of summer boxes I found a summer ring, better believe I'm going to continue opening them (for 1: because I just got a ring!!, and 2: because it was my plan to open 1k. I did 1k Christmas, then 1k summer). If another ring drops, another box is getting opened. Now at some point I absolutely would think "somethings going on here" and stop, but where that number is, I couldn't tell you. Also the way in which I opened them - I'm not entirely sure I would even know while it's happening? I just held down space bar the whole time for my box opening, I wouldn't have any way to see as the opening is happening, if I got 1 ring or 10 rings of 200 rings or 0 rings. (Got 1 athenic adjusted btw).

Totally get and respect that there was clear abuse, but that feels like the benefit of hindsight. Because again, in the moment, in a relative vacuum, how would an unconnected individual know that what they're doing isn't right at the time? This is probably one of the best summations in this thread and a quick shout out to Krill for the analogy:
Krillzoo said:
If you put a dollar into a vending machine and it gives you two dollars back and a soda, it's a bug. If you stand there for two hours feeding the machine dollars, you're exploiting the bug. Pretty straight forward.
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Speaking ONLY to the first instance, are you responsible for giving back the extra dollar? It was not your fault the machine gave it to you, it's the service technician. You take that dollar say thanks to the machine and be on your way. Whole-heartedly agree that if you pursue with malicious intent to abuse the system, you are exploiting the bug. But I don't see how you can punish individuals who tried to catch a wave. I almost feel like they should've just picked a number (# of ziplex looted less than X 'no problem, our fault, enjoy', greater than X rewards taken back, boxes returned, greater than Y more severe etc)

From what I've read, the ziplex spree was a mistake, it was MA's mistake, and it was a bug, their bug that people exploited in the sense of "took advantage of". So them saying players are "guilty of this exploit" seems disrespectful, scapegoating, and mislabeled. MA is guilty of the bug that players exploited is more accurate. Maybe this is a language barrier thing, but language matters, especially when money is involved.
My|MindArk said:
Players are locked during an investigation. This is a standard practice while we investigate a situation. Further punishment will be given to those who we find guilty of this exploit!
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Again, I don't have a dog in this fight. I was not impacted apart from the "ooooooo's" and "ahhhhhhhhh's" of watching this unfold, and just want to share a new player perspective. If I have facts wrong, I certainly apologize and mean no disrespect or offense to anyone.
Cheers and have a blessed friday everyone.

edit:typos mostly
 
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Krillzoo said:
If you put a dollar into a vending machine and it gives you two dollars back and a soda, it's a bug. If you stand there for two hours feeding the machine dollars, you're exploiting the bug. Pretty straight forward.
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Actually you are putting 1 dollar and reciving 1 dollar worth in goods, as MA states that markup are not their responsability.
 
Arthur The Hunter said:
Even if it happended in the past dosn't make it right today.

You now know to not risk it any "hopefully not" future cases.
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But... It did. Given the fact that no official communication came up saying "hey... that wasn't suppose to happen", it means that it was part of the plan for ppl to mine redulite with level 13 amps.
 
But people got away with this in the past! Why am i suddenly the one getting punished!?

i only jumped on the clear bug and abused the piss out of it for easy $$, Its mindarks fault not mine for the buggy game!

Enjoy the bans i hope they were worth it.
 
This is too funny 🤣 I can't get over it...

1. Boxes drop good loot so people deposit and open them
2. A full 24 hours goes by (on a weekday/workday mind you)
3. MA = locks accounts of a ton of people and says we are going to severely punish the exploiters, you should have read a forum post from a random person who said not to do the very thing said $cash - keys - boxes are made for to open (then they could have easily noticed the mass influx of deposits or rare hofs or forum posts or support cases and put a stop to it as well right?)
4. Currently even this very minute STILL for a DECADE!!! 1 guy is cheating us all on a scale 10,000x worse than what a bunch of ziplexes could ever do with 1000 alt bots mining LA 62, every single server on ark, and many many more. But he's still here.

REALITY = from all past "happy hours" with nothing done and until MA permanently bans this 1 guy and all his alts I can't see people not taking advantage of an exploit they come across (not that this is an exploit its obviously a MA mistake.)

- the obvious thing to do here since MAs software made a mistake is to apologize, take back all items and give boxes and keys back, ban the 1 guy bot mining 1000 accts for a decade now and let us have a great economy and retain more players. Done deal.

- this coming from a guy who opened 88 mining boxes right at resource mayhem and lost 1200p in MU because legacy boxes dropped a million ziplex finders (i didnt cry about it, increased loot happens all the time and MUs change) and I collected 84 more mining boxes and opened them again because I got to same point. I'm all for taking the loot I think they should and I think legacy shouldn't have dropped so many either it hurts the amp economy.

But to punish us with a 5 day ban is just silly. Not stopping it immediately if it's a bug and taking our deposits no problem is silly. But to blame the players is the silliest of the sillies and takes the cake.
 
I avoid to write this, but some of you was and some are my friends and I belived everytime that you are smart people but I was wrong.
In RM was a same problem, when big names in game get a 3 days of " free to live a real life".
That big names was missing for 3 days.
That was the signal that MA change the road boys.
Some of them come and apologize and some was same "smart" like you and come and dont give a .... about that.
At the end all was 3 days FREE.

WHAT DO YOU EXPECT RIGHT NOW?

You will serve the punishment to the end.
MA is making from you guys a lesson to teach the rest of us what to not make.
Some wanted justice, others more cycle, etc.
MA is now active and give all of that.
Do you wish more?
Stop writing and accept this.
Stop crying like babys and be a man.

You wish more from this game....now we are served.
Dont act like that....show respect and accept the ''L''.
Dont make you name more dirty.

You are served. What you want more?
With you start a new way on Entropia.
The way of punish people
Read again and again Tos and EULA.
And when reading , open you eyes very big

Dont make it even worst ....
 
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The time it took for something to be done has to be critizied. Mindark clearly needs to have better control of the game. Seems to me like Mindark needs to step up and go out with a ingame warning if they cant shut the game off when big bugs arrives.

I get scared how little control Mindark has of their game. Or lack of commitment to the game.
 
ProActive Mango said:
The time it took for something to be done has to be critizied. Mindark clearly needs to have better control of the game. Seems to me like Mindark needs to step up and go out with a ingame warning if they cant shut the game off when big bugs arrives.

I get scared how little control Mindark has of their game. Or lack of commitment to the game.
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All reputable platforms have a support team that investigates bugs as they are reported and watches the support queue and other online channels for trends that could lead to large disruptions of service or breaking bugs.

Typically they then call in the devs who work on a hot fix and things are resolved within a couple hours of detection.

MindArk doesn't have this structure, nor do they have competent support and community relations staff.

This is more so a failure of MindArk than it is about some players who took advantage of it.

The solution is simple, remove the loot, give back the keys, boxes and move on. I don't think punishment, other than for the dev who let this change ship is warranted.
 
So mindark ... guess is time to end with this loot wave you put in place since 2016 and hardened over next years
People finaly learn it how is work

Why not back to system where skills / tools and place make diference? , end with caps
Its not first time happen "happy hours" or "massive exploit in lootbox waves" and if you keep this lazy system going happen again
and ever time its happen you going lose chunck you smaller playerbase

Have fun boys.........
If you care about mu so much you need do craft overhaul and rebalance whole economy , stop with flood UL items but i know its to hard for entropians understand why its need happen
 
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shaun117 said:
But people got away with this in the past! Why am i suddenly the one getting punished!?

i only jumped on the clear bug and abused the piss out of it for easy $$, Its mindarks fault not mine for the buggy game!

Enjoy the bans i hope they were worth it.
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I Think it is good that they finally act with punishing those that abuse bugs to gain profits, but I get a feeling like this time it was handled way quicker and more decisively by them than usual only because not many (or at all) of the top players was involved in this bug abuse.

This felt like a low hanging fruit that they acted on so they easily got appeal from the masses without risking any top players. As long as not any top cycling player gets a brain fart they can show more confident in punishing players with quicker decision time.
 
Once i opened 1k easter boxes and got exactly zero eggs. MA said it's not a bug and it's normal... :)
BTW what do you think about the case of rare tokens was raining during the assault event?
5 day lock for opening boxes, and only 3 day lock for exploiting RM mission... unfair
 
when finally an EVENT for Miners comes all players surge to ruin the festival
such an envy community :)
 
GGG said:
Once i opened 1k easter boxes and got exactly zero eggs. MA said it's not a bug and it's normal... :)
BTW what do you think about the case of rare tokens was raining during the assault event?
5 day lock for opening boxes, and only 3 day lock for exploiting RM mission... unfair
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In RM they locked them for 3 days, reset the mission so they loose the point to be able to get that rare.
Who wanted to get that rare need to do again all that stages from that mission.
Lost of peds in MU, lost of time .
This time is just a take back of that items and a bann for 5 days. Nothing more
But the funny part is there is 2 names who also cheated in RM.
Lets see how will end for them this time.
One of them is a very "active" player, premium items on him, etc.
If they give him more "free time" or just a perma-bann.....now you will know MA take this very seriosly and start a new era.
Will be very funny to see what happen next.
I bet the boys on first atempt will be let free soon and no big punishment will be given , but the others 2.....well there is another story to watch
 
Just to give use guys a glimpse of how bad this was i was just given information from someone who did open 40 boxes only! 40, he obtained the following from 40.
Over 150 ped in plastics
Around 120 ped rugaritz
5 P160 finders
7 p85 finders
10 p50s
Multiple p20 and p30,
And this was someone who on the list was a very minor offender.

Think about the major culprits on that list that did not stop.

He mentioned the figures i just posted arent 100% they maby off by 5-10% but i figured that i should post this information regardless just to show the level of profit/exploitation that was going on by people that claim how should i know if it was a bug or exploit.

I got the ok to share this info from him providing i dont name and shame. So use this as you will.
 
It just occured to me, when I opened my boxes, they were "hard" to open. I would get a lot of "Could not execute" messages before a succesfull open. I assume that at the time, MA was aware of the bug and trying to stop it. When MA mention they are doing an "exploit investigation" I guess they are reffering to this, the mining boxes were NOT meant to be opened but if you spammed long enough they would eventually open. So all the posts/arguments in this thread saying "I just bought keys and opened boxes:(" are bullshit. Enjoy your bans:)
 
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