Squadron limit break (Ungarmax) can be used in regular duties by any job

[Tridus]

They'd be hard pressed to justify bans when they knew about it for months and didn't address it. That's the thing. While the line between "exploit" and "creative use of game mechanics" is fuzzy, if you know about a problem and don't address it for a couple months (until it blows up on reddit), what message are you sending during those months?

More likely you see slaps on the wrist and not much else. Now, about that rampant botting problem...

[Taika]

They'd be hard pressed to justify bans when they knew about it for months and didn't address it.

On the other hand, this is exactly what they did with the Salvage dupes too. It had been used for over a year before they proceeded with the mass bannings. I'd much prefer another wave of those than sending out the message that exploits can be freely used if not fixed right away. Of course, the ideal situation would be to both fix the issue and punish the players involved asap.

[Alistaire]

They'd be hard pressed to justify bans when they knew about it for months and didn't address it. That's the thing. While the line between "exploit" and "creative use of game mechanics" is fuzzy, if you know about a problem and don't address it for a couple months (until it blows up on reddit), what message are you sending during those months?

More likely you see slaps on the wrist and not much else. Now, about that rampant botting problem...

And bans aren't the only way to address it. Previously they've just stripped gear and achievements relating to logs where it was used. That sends a much better message, not just to the people abusing things, but just as importantly to those that don't: You shouldn't have to feel pressured to use an exploit or fall behind because those that do will end up losing what they gained from it.

[Tridus]

On the other hand, this is exactly what they did with the Salvage dupes too. It had been used for over a year before they proceeded with the mass bannings. I'd much prefer another wave of those than sending out the message that exploits can be freely used if not fixed right away. Of course, the ideal situation would be to both fix the issue and punish the players involved asap.

Again, the line is fuzzy, but I tend to find something like duping is a more obvious "this shouldn't work" than "I used a skill implemented in the game and it works." It's also pretty questionable business to ban a huge pile of your customers for using said in game skill outside of where you intended it to be used.

And bans aren't the only way to address it. Previously they've just stripped gear and achievements relating to logs where it was used. That sends a much better message, not just to the people abusing things, but just as importantly to those that don't: You shouldn't have to feel pressured to use an exploit or fall behind because those that do will end up losing what they gained from it.

Yeah, that makes the most sense to me.

[Taika]

Again, the line is fuzzy, but I tend to find something like duping is a more obvious "this shouldn't work" than "I used a skill implemented in the game and it works." It's also pretty questionable business to ban a huge pile of your customers for using said in game skill outside of where you intended it to be used.

Do you really think it would be possible for someone to genuinely think that using a 50% half-a-minute (extended) DPS buff (which has to be separately set for use in that content) for the whole party would be anything but unintended and cheating? I think that's pretty much as likely as players "accidentally" splitting into smaller parties and thinking "hey, they must have meant for it to be ok to do this and get more loot because we're so smart to figure this out!".

They banned 1000 players for Salvage dupes, half of them permanent, I have no idea if the number in this case would be more or less. But from my personal perspective, it would hurt the company's reputation more to encourage cheating by leaving it unpunished.

I'm glad for the Yoshi P comment and hope they'll continue to be open about how this will be handled, and try to send a message for the players that using exploits will not go unpunished.

[Tridus]

Do you really think it would be possible for someone to genuinely think that using a 50% half-a-minute (extended) DPS buff (which has to be separately set for use in that content) for the whole party would be anything but unintended and cheating?

Frankly? Yes. I'm a software developer and I deal with end users all the time. People tend to grossly overestimate how much the majority of the userbase of any piece of software actually understands it.

For this one, I don't think the entire party even needs to know about it to benefit from it. Not sure exactly how it was triggered, but it sounds like someone could do it for everyone. The other people wouldn't necessarily know anything except "someone did something and now I have bigger numbers."

There's no doubt some of them knew exactly what they were doing. There's also no doubt there's a bunch of others who had a friend tell them "hey, use this trick!" and had little to no understanding of what they were actually doing except that it worked. Banning the latter group is mostly just going to get you a revenue hit without doing anything about a "cheating is okay" mentality, because they never had the knowledge to understand that they were cheating in the first place.

SE's own statement on this makes it pretty clear that they don't see everyone who used it as actively trying to cheat.

I think that's pretty much as likely as players "accidentally" splitting into smaller parties and thinking "hey, they must have meant for it to be ok to do this and get more loot because we're so smart to figure this out!".

Apparently the Phantom Train trick is okay, so how do you tell what is okay and what isn't? Players aren't mind readers. There's always going to be people looking for the edge cases to see what works and what doesn't. Especially in a case where SE themselves say it was possible to trigger it unintendedly with a macro that was otherwise legitimate to use.

They banned 1000 players for Salvage dupes, half of them permanent, I have no idea if the number in this case would be more or less. But from my personal perspective, it would hurt the company's reputation more to encourage cheating by leaving it unpunished.

I'm glad for the Yoshi P comment and hope they'll continue to be open about how this will be handled, and try to send a message for the players that using exploits will not go unpunished.

The funny thing about banning cheaters is if the number gets too big, you can't ban them all, because it affects the bottom line too much. Put that on top of the statement saying they recognize that unintended triggering of this was possible, and I wouldn't get my hopes up for a mass ban wave if I were you.