Big drama on NA - Big hack - big punishment!

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If I can interject here with my opinion, LBP does the same thing when handing out ships (minus the ammo exploit). There are a few (Varkham, Mordgier, and myself usually) who will spawn capital vessels for newbies and hand them over. To an outside observer it would appear that these newbies are exploiting when in actuality it would be one of the three of us that are handing out tainted ships to a newbie that likely wouldn’t even know how to check for the exploit much less what the exploit would look like if they tried to look for it.

I doubt this behavior is seen outside of PvP factions since PvE factions don’t need to stamp out combat ships every time a new player joins but I just wanted to add my 2 cents as a fellow large PvP faction admin.

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46

If the ship ID existed in game longer than @Gogzy was in 5AP or was created when he was offline - he’s not the exploiter. He benefits but so did others.

I suspect you can narrow down exactly when that ship ID was created and who in 5AP was around in the playfield when it happened.

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47

Achillies I was wanting to know why you were in my ship and piloting it, it just ran out of fuel and I was heading to refuel it, had you let me know if have gladly let you inspect the ship as I had only received it the day before and had renamed it the day you boarded it, the player who gifted me the ship can confirm this also.
As for you insinuating I’d destroy evidence I resent that as I have pointed out and you should know as you were one of the admin I messaged at the discovery of a op glitch.
The way I seen it yes your admin but piloting a players ship when they are aboard for an unknown reason gives the player a right to ask why they are aboard their ship and is not a sign of guilt. My base had also been powered off which I asked if you had done. I got iritated not defensive and that was cause I knew you could see me asking and felt like you were ignoring me. (Fractured a rib yesterday to so was in quite a pissed off mood as it was).
Tbh as an admin I have alot of respect for you but these insinuations will quickly change that. every encountered I’ve had with admin I’ve been as polite and helpful as possible and would appreciate the same in return.

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48

Ok for a moment just picture it this way,

Dude 1: ‘Hey man can i have that hacked blueprint’

Dude 2: ‘Yea sure!’

Dude 2: ‘here you go’

Dude 1’: Thanks!’

Admin: You have a hacked CV that clearly stated to the Admin was yours and became agitated when an ADMIN was near you investigating…seems strange.

Dude 1: ‘Not my fault, Only the guy who spawned it is responsible’

Now i’m not saying this is the case, but im not saying it is not the case either. Both your responses are saying the player is 100% innocent…are you sure?

We go off evidence, the evidence was there. Its frustrating if totally innocent and just bad luck, but as we have no way to prove for definite either way, we have to go with where the evidence points.

Like i said, it is not permanent, but bad luck or not, you must understand why we have taken this approach in this specific situation.

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Ty for that, I hadn’t considered that. I didn’t spawn the cv, only thing I spawned on gp was an sv I got off the workshop (not glitched) and the banger of a cv I came to gp in (face) also no glitched

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We are looking into these things as well rest assured :slight_smile:

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When have I stated in innocent. I’m saying I was unaware.
Did I recieve the cv? Yes
Why? It was better than the one I had.
Did I know it was glitched? No
Did I benefit? Yes (even tho it was only a day I had it I did use it a couple of times)
Am I innocent 100%? No
Do I think a ban is harsh? Yes

Again I’m not saying I’m 100% innocent by I was unaware, but haven’t you got even slightly annoyed feeling someone was blatantly ignoring you?

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52

Good I’m glad you can look into who spawned ships, may take some time but it will show the only ships I’ve spawned were not glitched in any way shape or form.

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That’s one interpretation. Another is :

Dude 1: That’s a cool ship - I’m going to blueprint it and spawn it!

There does not need to be any blueprint sharing going on. LBP all fly variants of 3 ships at this point. Some get them through steam others just grab them in game by taking a BP of an existing ship. I have no control of who has copies of my BPs. Anyone in LBP can take snapshots without asking for the BP or permission.

In short, my point is that there maybe no malice beyond the original creator of the BP and whoever actually KNEW what was special about it.

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Yea this point is the alternative to what i am trying to say, They both exist…we cannot risk that it is the latter, Im just trying to show the reasons behind the action in THIS situation, again deterring away from what people ‘believe’ should be the appropriate outcome, this is the outcome we believe that considers only the severs and other players interest.

Im not saying you have Gogzy for the record ;)…was just trying to present the other side that could exist, just trying to explain is all so there is no hard feelings when you come back, again its not personal…same situation, any player…same outcome :slight_smile:

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Again, I can only speak for what happens in LBP but that’s not what happens in my experience.

It’s closer to:

Dude: "So what do I do?"
Me: "Spawn on M32"
Dude: "How?"
Me: "What do you mean how?"
Dude: "How do I select M32?"
Me: "It should give you an option for M32 or Earth"
Dude: "Oh…so M32?"
Me: "Yes. M32"
Dude: "Ok. Now what?"
Me: "Light side or dark side?"
Dude: "What?"
Me: "Are you on the light side of the planet or the dark side?"
Dude: "How do I tell?"
Me: "Is it bright or dark?"
Dude: "I think it’s bright"
Me: “Ok, landing to pick you up”

5 minutes later

Dude: "How do I get in?"
Me: "Use the elevator"
Dude "Oh…now what?"
Me: "Sit in the chair"
Dude: "How?"
Me: "Press F"
Dude: “Oh, cool.”

10 minutes later we’re back in pirate world

Me: "Ok. Spawned you a CV. Name it whatever you want"
Dude: “Cool! Thanks!”

The next 15 minutes is the new guy ramming his CV into other ships in an attempt to break everything for the lulz.

And that’s the LBP new joiner experience with CV’s ending up in the hands of someone who doesn’t even know how to warp much less understand turret mechanics.

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56

a funny read :wink:

I know this situation exists, we are slightly going off and a tangent here.

99% of the time this is cool

the 1% time it is not (if hacked BP :wink: ), Unless they are a total noob (which we can see) the player who spawned will be banned and the player who accepted will be banned (less time)

We do not see your discord, who know what might have been said, Its the responsibility of every player joining a faction to be aware they are liable to punishment not just as an individual, but also as a faction member.

when has ignorance ever saved anyone lol? :wink:

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Thanks for putting it that way, I can see what ur were getting at and I respect that, just hope that ban isn’t for to long.
I know myself I didn’t spawn the ships or bases in question and if you guys are checking the IDs you will see that, I understand this will take time as 5AP is a large faction.
No hard feelings :slight_smile: and I apologise for getting frustrated with you.

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Exactly, and Masago did build some cool looking ships. I personally have no patience for ship design, so I used whatever the Faction gave me.

You can even tell in the towers I built… most of them were basically walls with guns on them lol.

I think everyone loves to hate on us for being ‘the big Pirate faction’ and we were constantly accused of things we didn’t do - and then one guy went and actually did do something wrong and caused the rest of us a huge pain in a sensitive place.

Even when we had those 26 turret bases deleted, we had though we had done everything to Achilles specifications, as he had shown us exactly how to make them look, and then we ‘thought’ we had done them up to his standards, and then the next day they were deleted anyway.

We were quite upset about that, and also felt a bit ‘singled’ out for whatever the reason. There were also times when we reported factions for things, and no action was taken

Or - I report something with screenshots and it turns out to be not true to a visual glitch, and I get a ‘benefit’ of the doubt and warning not to falsely accuse someone again. Then someone else makes a false accusation against us, and they get +RP for making the report.

Because of those two instances, we’ve felt very targeted by the Admin.

Now, no one will argue that what Masago did was wrong not in anyway; but I also think everyone’s forgetting all the fun and action we generated because of us holding Gold -

  1. The amount of CV battles that happened in Orbit.
  2. The massive land battles we had.
  3. The fun RP opportunities.
  4. The organized ‘blockade’ attempts.
  5. The unification of Alliance

All these things, and possibly more only happened because we took and held Gold. And as Mord points out, it wasn’t really all that of a beneficial thing anyway. Why the heck we did it is beyond me anyway, we had guys fueling and ammoing those turrets everyday anyway, so why there was even a need to use ‘hacked’ turrets is beyond me.

So in summary, I guess what I’m saying is let’s try and remember there was a lot of fun and good that came out of what we did. We faced a lot of false accusations simply because we were the big guys on the block, and then one or two guys messed it up for us all so ‘we’ could get a little advantage.

For those who say I benefited greatly, well I had roughly 3 million in credits going in, now I"m around 4.5 million. Any and all benefit I got in terms of ‘pixels’ was wiped out as I stored most of everything I needed in my tower to defend the base.

What can’t be wiped out is all the fun and tense moments I had defending the base against massive SFA CVs. I can still remember sitting there mining a meteor, and then next thing I see is 6 massive CVs flying overhead, all on their way to assault our base.

I enjoyed that immensely, and all I can do is hope we can somehow get those moments back again.

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61
  • 5AP culture has been rotten. No “Good Fight” upon win or lose. It always “rub it in your nose” after a victory or “excuse excuse cheat-accusation excuse” after a loss.
  • 5AP has multiple instances of rule breaking. That was taken into account in the ruling. This includes blatant warp camping a few months ago, repeated breaking of faction rules ultimately resulting in 5th transitioning from Trader to Hunter to Pirate, and other infractions including building illegal bases which were then deleted from Gold.
  • Rather than take responsibility for these problems, it is always one excuse after another.
  • A couple days ago, Raven had a good discussion about fixing the culture of 5AP and turning it into a respectable faction.
  • In this thread, we wee Robobob saying similar things about how this can turn into a positive.

We will see if the 5AP excuses continue to fly.

We will see if 5AP continues its rotten culture.

We will see if 5AP chooses to build on those gains made a few days ago by Raven and make this an inflection point.

Perhaps this will be known as “the purge” – the point from which 5AP operated as a respected faction.

We will see.

If they choose to continue the excuse-wielding, cheat-accusing, rotten culture, then I will continue to be a massive thorn in their side. The faction must atone for their sins and change.

I have hope based upon Ravens words a few days ago and Robobob’s words in this thread.

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62

We had many instances where we have proven that we are good sports Ivanov. Yes, we definitely didn’t like the fact that you’d snipe and run from us, and we tried to goad you into a fight, and that didn’t work. You are allowed to have your opinion, I only hope we can change that. I’ve personally fought with guys in faction to get their attitudes in check, so we will see what happens from that.

I either wasn’t around for this warp camping your speaking of, or wasn’t aware someone was doing it, or I would have raised hell.

Like I said before, to our best knowledge we made sure all of our bases were up to Achilles standards, as he even showed us how they should look and they were deleted anyway. Believe me or not, but to this day none of know why that happened.

I know you don’t respect us, but many other factions do. What I won’t do is go out of my way to earn your respect, I don’t see why I should have too. But if we can get along, and cultivate a good culture as a community so everyone can enjoy the game - I’ll work towards that.

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The only 5AP member I have ever seen be insufferable in chat after a fight is D4ARK5SID3 or however you spell that lovely person’s name.

And I fully support their presence in 5AP because (s)he is super easy to antagonize and we all find it hilarious. That person needs to log in more.

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64

And finally some words from me:

First of all I am surprised how mannered this all is gonna happen. One guy has still some serious problems with it but other than that I welcome the most friendly reaction here.
After that stress yesterday I thought I wake up with some serious dramas.
Thank you for that!

So yeah, as Achilles said, it is not permanent. The devs already have a fix prepared after I escalated it yesterday.

Every “passive” guy who got banned and wonder why: you had these hacked blueprints in your ready to spawn factory (yes we can see it). So to stop you from spreading this and obviously assuming you knew what you were doing you got banned too.
And just a remember: you better don’t let me find such things during my patrol

Overall our policy is that we don’t ban people permanent for hacking / exploiting since they actually helped us finding these issues. They are most likely banned till the fix is applied by Eleon.
(Well there are exceptions of course and some serious misbehavior can indeed cause you a ban forever - we have some)

So I hope it reflects everything in a good way, lessons learned and people understand that HWS is not just a random, big server which just wants more and more people and let people do whatever they want.
I saw till now an overall attitude of “sorry” and it “won’t happen again” which is great.

'Cause we want that you play here as your “home”, you can trust, like and come back.
Most of this is possible with your help - the community.

Thank you all.

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65

For the sake of preserving sanity, and ensuring that the innocent parties do not have to deal with the hassle.

Could we have something stated that chat of the incident be restricted to forums? Currently there are a number of people trolling 5AP in the global chat, and all of the innocent parties in 5AP do not deserve to have to put up with that.

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Hello all. I’m a DSH/5AP member and am just learning of this (…been away…).

Personally, I am 100% against using exploits and cheats and I fully support the action that was taken. I can see why some may feel it was harsh, but I think wiping gold planet will be good for everyone (I expected this to happen shortly anyway and perhaps this should be a regular thing).

It would be good, as others have said, to move past this and not punish the innocent who are only guilty by association. If I had learned of this I would have urged us to remove any cheaters. The vast majority of our members are good people who are here for the long haul and want to see the game, and the HWS server, prosper.

I hope that we will all be treated fairly going forward.

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