Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

(I'm sorry, from my activity today you probably can tell I'm in a ranting mood... )

My stance on exploits ( I used to DM a long time ago and tried and failed to build my own server) has always been - how widely is it used and does it hurt the community so much that we can let it slip or not. It's incredibly frustrating to see this obviously being such a problem that it keeps the majority from something they enjoy most, playing the character they want looking as they want. Having heard so much about the duplicate item bug I, as a player, never encountered it myself nor know how to trigger it, apart from the sometimes occuring unusable/unsellable duplicate item that sometimes gets stuck in your in your inventory after logging or switching items, which disappears again.
It honestly saddens me and I don't understand why people do it and for what reason, in a roleplay environment where nobody really cares about your prowess and riches. My hope has always been to play somewhere where exploits don't matter because it's widely agreed on that they're so cheap and cheesy that nobody uses them and those who do are simply punished by social means (nobody cares what you're doing and avoid playing with you).

Yeah, I'm frustrated too that the kit is disabled again, sad that it's necessary and won't blame the staff. Fortunately I had the chance to do a big crafting session yesterday on all my characters so I hope this'll be fixed when it's time to buy new gear again.

We definitely have discussed whether this is an instance of "punishing the masses for a cheat that few are using," but we ultimately decided that it is necessary in this case.

Unfortunately, the appearance changer was broken in such a way that even people who weren't trying to cheat could still benefit from the exploit. That set up a situation where more people than we'd like had to make a choice:

Do they turn it in, for the good of the server and so that the exploits can be corrected? Or do they hold onto it, and tell no one, and just accept that it's a gift of the gaming gods? After all, they didn't mean to cheat. And it's not like they ever have had a DM event or a really cool item despite how long they've been playing here. This is the universe correcting the imbalance. Etc. Etc. (Hopefully you can see where it becomes easy to self-justify an inappropriate action.)

This category of "accidental" cheaters is what's ultimately made us decide to keep it off. Intentional, repeat exploiters are easy to catch and ban. But how many people would we end up having to ban if we banned people who just got bit by the Greedy Greed bug? Again, probably more than we'd like in this instance.

So to prevent the temptation, and fix the problem, and enhance the cosmetic situation for all players, we're going to try something new. If we ignore the problem, it would cause issues that we'd have to spend an awful lot of staff time and energy on correcting -- and I personally feel our developers and DMs should be used to enhance and make more reactive the storyline and world we're creating here, not to play "cops and robbers."

Yes, I can completely understand that reasoning, I've sure been guilty of something similar in the past myself. And hey, after all the appearance kit was pretty clunky and frustrating to use anyway, I'm sure you'll come up with something more comfortable to use. The UI of the Maltz/player menu changer with the options of the appearance kit, that'd be a dream!

I don't get it it, was the exploit easily repeatable? or random? I've never heard of anyone able to duplicate an item using the thing.. was this a new bug? Or always there? I feel like it use to work just great.. zero problems.. now it's all wonky.

Just tossing this coin up, buuut, before the belt addition, there were no reports of this afaik?

Maybe...we should rollback to the version pre-belt? I mean, belt options are awesome, but maybe that should be put on hold until this is filtered out so we can keep using our looks that are a big part of rp and immersion? just my 2 eurocents!

Exacerbated.

Valid point then!

Is there any news, if the appearance changer might work soon again?

Thanks for all the work going into this. I think it's clear that a number of players really feel 'naked' without the changer option... I have had to 're-use' last season's outfits... *GASP!*

I look forward to the new system with high hopes of adding skirts, belts, and other goodies, as well as being able to possibly 'store' an appearance to 'apply' to a new set of clothing/armor.

THANK YOU!

So... how is it looking on the apperance kit?

In progress.

Aspect of Sorrow wrote:In progress.

good. i miss being able to play with my barbies.

Im not trying to be obnoxious but I am curious as to what is taking so long. We know what the issue is, (duping), and we know how its being done and why, so why so long to fix it?

V'rass wrote:Im not trying to be obnoxious but I am curious as to what is taking so long. We know what the issue is, (duping), and we know how its being done and why, so why so long to fix it?

Surely its not that bad lol?