@rebgav said:
@FateOfNever said:
Funny or not it doesn't matter. And the difference between someone that danced their way to victory and someone that didn't is that the person that danced their way to victory could do content that they could not otherwise do. Someone dancing their way to victory is, presumably, never at risk of death (or, nowhere near at the same risk as someone that doesn't) so they can do flashpoints solo, they can do heroic 4 content solo, so on, making it a different experience. On top of that, you keep saying that it's the game is broken, but it is the players that are breaking the game. It is not 'normal' behavior to dance in the middle of fighting a bunch of enemies. Just because you CAN do it doesn't make it normal behavior.
If they're experiencing the content alone then they're literally making no difference to anyone else's game so I don't see why that is even considered an issue. They could achieve the exact same ends by over-leveling for that content. Outside of competitive multiplayer, I see no reason to make an issue of players playing the game however they please. If they aren't interfering with someone else's enjoyment and aren't altering the game and aren't causing problems for the server then what exactly is the basis for warning or punishing them? Is it an institutional form of "your not playing rite [sic] ," or are the people responsible for administrating the game trying to gloss over its imperfections by banning behaviors which expose shoddy workmanship? Granted, it's not "normal behavior" to dance in the middle of a combat scenario but the game allows it and the developer hasn't accounted for the possibility - the players aren't at fault for finding and using unconventional tactics, that's what emergent gameplay is. If the developer views this as a flaw and decides to fix it that is fine but they should take responsibility for the flaw and accept the repercussions of players exploiting it*, especially in this particular scenario in which there is no negative repercussion for the player nor the larger community.
*Which seems to be the case, given the SWTOR forum post quoted above.
Do you even play MMO's? I'm curious. Because the way you talk it sounds as if you don't. Bioware didn't necessarily just "not account for people dancing in combat" and then it's their fault. Dancing causes the game to break. Period. They are BREAKING THE GAME. They are doing something that makes them invincible to harm from AI controlled enemies. That is breaking the game. I don't understand how you cannot see that as a problem. You are actively saying that someone should be able to go and clear end game content by cheating the system, yes, CHEATING the system, by using an exploit that destroys the design of the game. The fact the matter is is that yes, they aren't playing it right. Bioware owns the rights to the games and as long as you sign that EULA you are agreeing to play the game by the rules that they set out for you, and breaking those rules, circumventing those rules, exploiting those rules, and blatantly ignoring them warning you not to do so gives them the right to ban people.
By playing the MMO, and this goes for all online multiplayer games really, and agreeing to any terms of service that come up, you are agreeing that you will play the game the way it is intended to be played by the rules that the developers/company/whoever's in charge want you to play by, and that by exploiting the game and breaking the system, you are in violation of those systems. It's pretty simple, really. And if you have a problem with this, you should probably have a problem with ALL forms of any kind of punishment of breaking the rules, in games and in real life. "Well, sure you could exploit the game in this first person shooter, but, everyone can exploit the game that way, and the company should have just made it 100% absolutely flawless from the get go."
That also seems to be a problem. You, for some reason, seem to be under the assumption that all MMO's should be flawless, from the ground up, always and forever from the second they are made to the second they die. Which doesn't happen with MMO's. They are too large and there are so many systems at work that something can unintentionally break something completely unrelated.
Now, if you think that no company running an online game should ever force people to sign ToS/EULA to play their games online, that's a different matter entirely. But the fact of the matter is, people signed an EULA that said they agree to play by the rules as the company sets them out. People are BREAKING that contract, and the penalty for that is to be banned (temporarily or otherwise.) That's not shitty business practice. That's business practice, period.
As for exploits like this not having an effect on the larger community - I can't speak for The Old Republic specifically, but I can tell you that stuff like this does hurt the community in a game like World of Warcraft. Why? People there are people that literally make money off of being the first people to clear content. Whole guilds are set up to pull in income by being so good at the game that they can be the first ones to clear the final content/raids in a game. When an exploit exists that nullifies the effort it takes to do that, it potentially hurts people. Is this such a case? No, probably not, I doubt The Old Republic scene is at that level yet, but it does set a precedence that exploiting the game will not be tolerated, on any level. I don't see how that is a BAD thing. If you get caught running a red light because "well no one else was there." you can still be punished for it, or, you can be given a warning for it (and then if you do it again, receive punishment for it.) It doesn't matter that you weren't going to hit anyone running that red light, the fact of the matter is you still broke the law and you have to deal with it. People are breaking their contract with Bioware/EA and they are paying the price, plain and simple. Just like someone pirating a game should be punished, because they are breaking the law. It doesn't matter that "well, no one got hurt" or "No one is really being effected by it." They are breaking the law. And these people are breaking the terms of the contract, and ignoring warnings, and they have to suffer the consequences. I don't see why that is so difficult to understand.
Edit: I will say that the number of people that this actively hurts is probably very slim, if not non-existent, but I won't speak matter-of-factly on the matter either because for all I know there IS something out there that this exploit is, or could be, causing some real harm for/on/in/with. But the problem is that if they completely let this first exploit existing in the game slide, people will try and site precedence on it if any future exploits come up that negatively harm the game experience as a whole, and if the game gets to the level where whole guilds are pulling in advertising money by clearing end game content, then even these seemingly harmless exploits become damaging, and then it just causes even more of a headache for them. It sounds like more of a one-time-warning-no-tolerance policy on their part. People are exploiting their game, and they're taking a measure against that. They have the right to do so. All companies do.
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