EVE General Discussion

In general nothing is an exploit until CCP says it is.

But once they do, you'd best listen. Claiming ignorance or continuing to use it because you think you can't get caught is a ban wave waiting to happen.

Just sayin'

Mr Epeen

Significant retroactive action has been taken in the past, where some unintended game mechanic has been used to gain advantage, when CCP became aware of the issue and declared the Exploit.

The definition of an Exploit means that there are some clear examples which you shouldn't touch with a barge pole even if CCP haven't yet declared it (or aren't aware of it); any form of dupe should be avoided, penalties which become bonuses and bonuses which apply when they shouldn't are also clear candidates.

There are other reasons for siphons not being all that great. They can be spoofed, for one.

Conversely, one could argue that people like you should have to attack and take that territory. Instead of just anklebiting with poorly designed deployables.

So what the OP is saying is that CCP actually realised that what people were telling them was true: that it's a pretty bad idea to have the API report false information.

The API is still working as intended.

The Siphon isn't. And it was a stupid idea in the first place.

You've definitely got a good point about smart player engineering. There are a lot of ways to use the API to gain an advantage over other players in Eve, although I wouldn't go so far as to call them exploits as well. The only thing I can't get past is that CCP specifically said that the API was supposed to hide the Siphon Unit's activity so when it showed up instead, it was clearly broken since it went directly against what CCP said it was supposed to do. At that point is when it passes into the realm of exploiting: taking advantage of a broken feature for personal gain.

Just one problem: they said it would work in a certain way in a thread asking for critique and suggestions, after which they redesigned some of the functionality. So pretty much everything they said is subject to having been changed before it went live.

The piece of (non)functionality complained about here isn't in the patch notes, for instance…

As much as null blocs don't need that extra money I do have to agree here. Even if it is an exploit, it's one you can't really hold against them because finding it unintentionally still leaves you in a position where you can't un-ring the bell. This is not like finding an obscure exploitable ship fitting or combination for instance and then just refusing to use it since there are so many other things you can still use legitimately. Your options here are kill the siphon unit (a mechanic allowed by the game) or let it steal from you forever. This issue can not be summed up so simply as "people exploited = severe punishment now", this issue is not so black and white and is why I use my current signature.

If you are checking something in API and happen to notice the siphon unit, it's pretty much impossible to pretend you didn't see it and the only way to follow through with pretending you didn't see it would be to let is steal from you indefinitely and if they did pretend not to see it, would they be justified in asking for reimbursement for not taking out the siphon unit? I think a fair minded person would have to say yes.

While there may be some concern as to how long this was known before it was brought forward only CCP knows for sure if and when a report was filed about the issue. If it can be shown that some people have known about the issue for some time and kept it to themselves, then some form of punishment is probably in order but I suspect this could not be definitively proven. Because siphon units can be found and destroyed legitimately it seems it would be very difficult to distinguish between siphon units found legitimately and those that were tipped off by API info. If you think it can be done please share.

While I suspect there are probably some who have been less then forthcoming with this info, I think you'll just have to swallow this one and GRR [insert alliance/coalition name here] will have to wait for another day.

e) What happened to c) ?