Just curious if it’s the same issue that I reported long ago (maybe 9 months or longer) or if that one was fixed and re-appeared after some recent patch?
(back when I wrote the support tickets there were several ways to log in Alpha/Omega or several Alphas at the same time - but I didn’t dare to check if it had been fixed, as I considered it an exploit.)
edit: this was without using vm’s or messing with the software itself.
edit: also kind of weird to read this:
Please be aware that while our Customer Support Team has no intention of taking punitive action against those who have used this loophole so far
…
any attempts to abuse this issue in order to gain an in-game advantage over other pilots or place disproportionate load on the Tranquility cluster will be dealt with to the fullest extent of our rules.
So basically, everybody who exploited this until now, has nothing to fear, no matter how they used it and how it caused an advantage for them. Lol. Just LOL.
Of course not. The people who have been botting with Alpha fleets thus far may be forced to buy PLEX to keep going. They wouldn’t want to ban that nice potential chunk of income.
They even call it “loophole” as if it wasn’t totally clear that this is an exploit.
I deliberately didn’t post the exploits on reddit to avoid people raging too hard, because what everybody feared was possible with VM’s (abusing Alphas) was actually possible without any measures.
And now this. Free pass for anyone who exploited it. It’s like an invite to find and abuse new exploits.
I don’t know the thread. All I know is almost a year ago I stumbled upon several ways to circumvent the login restrictions and reported them to CCP support. Can you link the thread so I can see if it’s the same thing? Thanks
It is actually a comment(chain) on the post about the news update, here is a direct link to that specific comment chain:
I assume as it is openly declared an exploit in a news item it is no longer forbidden to share as it is clearly communicated to exist and that they will patch it and if anyone uses it they will punish the exploiters so don’t see any harm in posting this link.
Funnily enough they seem to act much sooner when exploits are posted on reddit to avoid negative backlash of a now publicly known exploit not getting fixed.
The wildcard excuse that can be used any time anywhere. Wonder what will they say once old POS code is finally retired from the game. Maybe they can always blame the hamsters (DDOS attacks) as a new wildcard excuse.
They aren showing acceptance, they are delcaring it an exploit now and telling people that abussing the exploit, will be dealt with according to the abuse rules (aka ban)
They cant ban people for something they didnt know was an exploit, but since they declared it an exploit now, they can now ban people who abuse it.
Its exactly the same procedure as ghost training. They let it run for abit more, gathering more data and getting more people in the trap and then BAM, they throw the ban hammer.
Thats litteraly what they explain right here:
"Please be aware that while our Customer Support Team has no intention of taking punitive action against those who have used this loophole so far, any attempts to abuse this issue in order to gain an in-game advantage over other pilots or place disproportionate load on the Tranquility cluster will be dealt with to the fullest extent of our rules.
This includes but is not limited to the use of Alpha characters to scout for your Omega pilot, as well as using multiple Alpha characters for combat, or to place additional load on Tranquility. "
That is a bit of ■■■■■■■■. It’s been thrown in people’s faces from day one. Clear rules on Alpha use. In people’s faces. And getting around it required going through a ton of hoops.
Anyone who did it knew. It is that simple. It already was a EULA violation.
Sure, but the difference is that it didnt allow alphas to login, along with omega, out of the box. Now it does and now its an exploit to do so.
Thats why they need to come out with a statement like this, because the playing field has changed. It is no longer the same situation as before.
I am in NO WAY defending the people who have taken advantage of this bug. If i were in charge all would be banned. But none of us are in charge and we have no idea what the thought behind this actually is.
Im assuming they want to gather information on how people abuse this, what alphas are used for and all kinds of metrics. To use further down the road, on alpha developments.
And then drop the ban hammer on a large bunch of people, afterwards. Exactly like they did with ghost training.
Actually, while there were different methods, there were loopholes right from the start. The first loopholes, as reported to CCP, required substantial technical skills, later on it got easier and easier. This is seperate, I should mention, from the reporting done on people using cloud gaming platforms to get around matters.
At the end of the day, CCP was clear right off the bat. An Alpha is an account you can only run on its own. You cannot run an Alpha together with an Omega. Only one Alpha is allowed to run for a player. You can have as many as you like (though obviously players went predictably overboard with that, see pubbie alliances these days), but these are the rules.
People decided to break those rules. They had to invest time and expertise in order to do so.
So they knew, they made a choice, there should be a consequence. Not a blanket pardon. Now I can appreciate CCP’s own challenges on a venture level, so that is simply a matter so resource intense that it may very well be prohibitive, and there’s other angles as well. But this is setting a precedent which isn’t optimal.
There always is an innate race between any armor and any next bullet and so forth and so on. But that makes it important to be consistant and clear as well as proactive on handling matters when the bullet wins.
I cannot however see them dropping a banhammer. There wasn’t one with ghost training either. Not in these volumes. And we really are talking volumes, not exceptions.
My point exactly, it didnt work “out of the box” before and it does now. Thats a game changer for CCP.
And yes, there was a ban hammer with ghost training, after they announced it was an exploit and some people even got falsely banned, because they never logged in to stop the ghost training.
The same thing will most likely happen here.
Which i fully support, if people cant play by the simple rule of “1 char or you pay”, im fine with them being banned.
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