The problem here is that your notion of identifying cases which are quite clear is
worlds apart from an epistemology that actually tracks truth, but is quite convenient in terms of justifying premature calls for collective punishment. If you try to bracket off the current context and think about the playerbase from a more neutral perspective, I think you will see it is
manifestly not the case that we all know how loot works, judging by the fact that there is not even widespread
agreement between players over how loot works. There is no broad consensus on whether loot instances are independent and identically distributed, loot waves exist (and if so how they function), global loot pools exist, personal loot pools exist, etc. Even information stated by MindArk regarding how loot works is interpreted with a wide degree of latitude on a regular basis.
This is relevant because the type of outlier outcome which occurred here is plausible
predicted by some loot theories. For example, one
common loot theory is that loot computations (sometimes multiplier rates, in this case we'll posit item drop rates) are filtered through a superposition of temporally-situated waves; often three waves (small/medium/large), but it could just as well be a bigger number. On this hypothesis, one would
expect uncommon times at which the phases of enough waves align that the type of outcome we observed is the proper functioning of the loot system, due to the phenomenon of
resonance. For such a wave theorist (who also had a lot of patience), prior to seeing MindArk's statement that the outcome was unintended, it could have been entirely reasonable to open boxes during such a window of perceived resonance. Indeed, it could have been reasonable (and still could be in the future) to
wait for such a window to open a dump-ton of boxes.
Loot theory is just the one presumption you've made explicit. You've made many others implicitly. Was an individual watching their drops as they opened their boxes, or clicking through while paying attention to something else? If they noticed their drops, did they have good reason to know they were different from other non-bugged occurrences of drop heterogeneity colloquially referred to as "happy hour"? Etc. Etc. This is the problem with trying to attribute blame on a collective level. You don't actually know any of the case-specific details until you
learn them with regard to a specific individual. It's generally not possible to find an objective metric like "10 boxes is fine, 11 boxes is too much." You gain confidence in policy violation when a lot of different pieces of evidence come together, and that's usually difficult or impossible for the playerbase to do without the tools at MindArk's disposal.
For that matter, what
should an honest player do in the face of uncertainty about this type of occurrence? It's not obvious to me. It's easy to say that if a player knows with virtual certainty that their performing actions would constitute an exploit, then they should not perform those actions and should report the bug. But what if the individual places, say, 50% credence in an outcome being a bug and 50% credence in it being an occurrence of resonance or happy hour or an unknown event? It's far from clear that an honest player should be expected to forego a plausibly-legitimate strategy, when to do so would be a
terrible pragmatic mistake if the occurrence turns out to be within the bounds of developer intent. "Don't do it if you think it
might be a bug" seems unattainably restrictive in just about
any game,
let alone a sandbox in which player creativity is supposed to take center state in the formation of individuals' user experiences. The chilling effects of such a metapolicy would be
ruinous for the Entropian spirit. Perhaps the most reasonable course of action to jointly minimize policy error and pragmatic error over a sequence of such cases would be to juice the living daylights out of the opportunity if you want to but also report it, and state in the report that you'll keep the items obtained in Storage for a week or two rather than circulating them through the economy, just in case the opportunity is later announced as a bug and MindArk decides to do some sort of rollback? That's still a lot of preemptive responsibility to expect all honest Entropians to take, and it really feels like we shouldn't have to deal with this at all.
" are bullshit. Enjoy your bans
