EVE General Discussion

I'm actually going to talk to you like an adult here, so lets hope it works.

The difference between an exploit and an unintended and undesirable use of game mechanics is that an exploit allows you, through various methods, to break a rule of the game. I will use an example from another game: Alpha Centauri, a great game, had a bug where if you gave the keyboard command for an airdrop, it would only let you do one per turn (as intended). If you used the mouse command, you could do as many as you wanted. That's an exploit, despite you doing nothing really wrong (hell many people who only used the mouse were unaware this limit was supposed to be there).

On the other hand, a perfectly intended use of game mechanics - self-destructing missiles with a fusion or greater reactor - is incredibly overpowered and lets you wipe out stacks of units in a way that wasn't really thought though well. No part of it breaks the rules - it does damage to all surrounding units, just as intended - but it's really overpowered and something you patch out or make a house rule against.

The key reason this is not an exploit is no rules were broken. The system functioned exactly as it was supposed to. Manipulating the price of an item is and always has been allowed (and is commonly used for margin scamming, or convincing people to sell stuff at a reduced price or buy it at an inflated price). Blowing up your own stuff to collect the proceeds is and always has been allowed. The issue is that once you combine the two, you get a situation that breaks no rule, but is highly undesirable (the generation of LP at a very low isk cost). If the mechanism allowed you to generate LP for free, there would be an argument it's breaking a rule of the game. But it didn't: every LP point you got cost you a specific amount of isk.

Since this is undesirable, the devs will naturally patch it out. But because it was perfectly legitimate when done, it's clearly not something that people should be punished for. When it comes to confiscating the products of the scheme, I think it's clear that shouldn't be done as well - it would be an unfair punishment - unless the amounts generated were so vast the health of the game demanded it. That's a factual question that we can disagree over, but from my understanding of the market this is not a gamebreaking amount. For the vast majority of the time when these five were dumping, implant prices weren't artificially low: they merely were at their historical average instead of the spiked post-inferno price. This is a lot of money for these involved - sadly, I am not one of them and must be content with my vast guidance system riches - but it's not an amount that will seriously affect markets or devalue LP.

I'm actually going to talk to you like an adult here, so lets hope it works.

The difference between an exploit and an unintended and undesirable use of game mechanics is that an exploit allows you, through various methods, to break a rule of the game. I will use an example from another game: Alpha Centauri, a great game, had a bug where if you gave the keyboard command for an airdrop, it would only let you do one per turn (as intended). If you used the mouse command, you could do as many as you wanted. That's an exploit, despite you doing nothing really wrong (hell many people who only used the mouse were unaware this limit was supposed to be there).

On the other hand, a perfectly intended use of game mechanics - self-destructing missiles with a fusion or greater reactor - is incredibly overpowered and lets you wipe out stacks of units in a way that wasn't really thought though well. No part of it breaks the rules - it does damage to all surrounding units, just as intended - but it's really overpowered and something you patch out or make a house rule against.

The key reason this is not an exploit is no rules were broken. The system functioned exactly as it was supposed to. Manipulating the price of an item is and always has been allowed (and is commonly used for margin scamming, or convincing people to sell stuff at a reduced price or buy it at an inflated price). Blowing up your own stuff to collect the proceeds is and always has been allowed. The issue is that once you combine the two, you get a situation that breaks no rule, but is highly undesirable (the generation of LP at a very low isk cost). If the mechanism allowed you to generate LP for free, there would be an argument it's breaking a rule of the game. But it didn't: every LP point you got cost you a specific amount of isk.

Since this is undesirable, the devs will naturally patch it out. But because it was perfectly legitimate when done, it's clearly not something that people should be punished for. When it comes to confiscating the products of the scheme, I think it's clear that shouldn't be done as well - it would be an unfair punishment - unless the amounts generated were so vast the health of the game demanded it. That's a factual question that we can disagree over, but from my understanding of the market this is not a gamebreaking amount. For the vast majority of the time when these five were dumping, implant prices weren't artificially low: they merely were at their historical average instead of the spiked post-inferno price. This is a lot of money for these involved - sadly, I am not one of them and must be content with my vast guidance system riches - but it's not an amount that will seriously affect markets or devalue LP.

you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about holy ****

Crap. Falcon pilots, you are all gonna get banned.

So are all the titan pilots.

Oh, and every member of a tech holding alliance.

And anyone who takes part in large, alpha based fleets.

And anyone who collects a huge bounty, then kills himself with his alt to collect said bounty.

Lets not forget the people who get rich off of the things like this that happen *every single expansion*.

I'm sure I am missing a category, but if that rule read the way you think it does, then 75% of the player in this game would be banned, including you I would bet.

Initially that is exactly what was happening though ...

To repeat. When you kill a ship in faction warfare (belonging to the enemy faction) you get loyalty points awarded equal to the value of the ship + cargo. These freighters that were being killed on alts were awarding loyalty point payouts (for the kill) that also counted in the cargo that had dropped in space (and thus could be added to a future kill and payout). That really is double counting and is creating (if not isk) then loyalty points that can be turned into isk (from thin air.)

That (as I understand it) was the bug that got fixed early, but I didn't see any note in the op post suggesting that LP has been removed from the game - its even referred to as "seed" (or foundation) LP for the continuing scheme.

This has been the endgame since the launch of EVE. Market manipulation and speculation is what we do day to day. This isn't a new thing for me or others, this is regular gameplay. This one just combined a few different mechanics into one larger system. But if you aren't patch speculating on each new CCP addition to the game, then you are really missing out on a cool part of EVE.

Hey Goons, got some spare change for me ?


Nice work !