Devs Acknowledge Hunt Exploit, Say There Will Be Bans
It’s safe to say that it’s been turbulent times in the Tarokka printing industry. Strahd Limited, the leading producer of Tarokka cards north of Waterdeep, suddenly saw orders decline sharply only weeks after an insanely successful market launch. Heads at Castle Ravenloft HQ quickly gathered and tried to identify their apparent competitor, but were unable to find anyone! They still had the monopoly on the cards, but customers simply didn’t seem to need them any longer.
Struggling for answers, some workers were put on short-time work. Others never showed up again after a meeting with Strahd himself. He later said they quit voluntarily, but we spoke to at least one family member that claims nobody ever saw their relatives again! Sources inside the company said that the tension continued to rise in recent weeks. Some executives completely lost their head (quite literally!) and restructuring into a garlic bread facility failed due to the boss’ inability to test the product.
When all seemed lost, the government stepped in and released a statement yesterday that could save the company:
[su_quote cite=”nitocris83 (CM)” url=”https://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/1242532/console-barovia-hunts-exploit”]We are aware of an exploit being used in the Barovia Hunts that bypasses the intended gameplay and are working on getting a patch out for this as quickly as possible. We will be reviewing playlogs and any character found using the exploit will be subject to possible actions taken against player accounts as per our Terms of Service.[/su_quote]
RIP Hunt Exploit
Ok folks, enough of the nonsense! The Hunt Exploit on consoles is no longer. Cryptic additionally wants to let you know that they plan to punish offenders. Here’s a quick recap of what happened: The exploit allowed to run Hunts without losing any Tarokka Cards and bugging the target in one location. It had been active on PC since the Ravenloft launch and not fixed until recently. Unfortunately the fix also led to leaking details to the console crowd. And as it turned out, the bug was still very much active there. So exploiting Hunts on Xbox and PS4 quickly became the norm.
Exploit Handling Still Hilarious
Cryptic now seems to be have fixed the loophole. While that’s generally a good thing, leading into this article with some humor actually wasn’t by accident. Because the way the devs handle these exploits still remains a hilarious mystery. It was pretty much known and used on PC for months. Yet they were unable to include the fix on consoles initially. And now, more than two weeks after the Xbox/PS4 launch, after everyone and their mother already has exploited Hunts, they finally get an announcement out and threaten with bans.
You’re very much talking about worsening the situation. Because if an exploit is live for that long, it turns into a feature and it gets increasingly more difficult for legit players to withstand. If everyone is doing it anyway, why bother? Of course Cryptic can always pitch their “Terms of Service” (as they did yesterday) and refer to the fact that exploiting is not allowed. But what’s an exploit fully depends on what Cryptic classifies as such. So you pretty much never know. Some players think that if you’re unsure, you simply shouldn’t do it and wait for a clarification. That’s a flawed approach of course, because if it’s an exploit nobody will tell you anyway. And in case it’s not, you might still wait weeks for an answer, not being able to participate in whatever activity.
Low Priority Until Leaked to the Public
That said, the Hunt thing was described as “exploit” by us, so it’s not like you can talk yourself out of it (sorry!). However, had Cryptic dealt with the issue more transparently, it wouldn’t be such a mess. Why didn’t they? Well, because public exploits almost certainly come with a bunch of extra work. You have to fix the bug asap, review logs, and hand out bans. If only a few players know and do the exploit, you only have to silently patch it at some point and move on.
Of course that never works. Over time word spreads and so you’ll have to put in the work anyway. So it would have been much better to inform players at launch that there is a known Hunt exploit that they better not use. What would be fair now is to only sanction players that did the exploit after their announcement. And that doesn’t even consider the fact that only very few players read the forum. If folks tell you they genuinely didn’t know, what reasoning other than “we can ban as we please” do you even have?
Unfortunate Circumstances?
Of course all of that could very well be unfortunate circumstances. Let’s say they knew about the exploit early, but had trouble fixing it on PC earlier. When they did, it was already too late to push the fix on the final console launch, but they still wanted to get it out on PC as soon as possible. Then everything leaked and bang. Sure, shit happens. But it’s not the first time Cryptic wasn’t able to react in a timely fashion, which always raises suspicions that the problem is more deeply rooted with how they generally deal with such incidents.
Anyway, you folks will have to find legit ways to do get your Hunt rewards now! We’ll also keep you posted in case we hear anything about bans or suspensions.
What’s your take on the exploit? How did Cryptic handle the situation? Should players get punished? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!
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They took away the legitimate way to make AD… they screwed people who farmed alts, and the ADX is a mess. By doing this, people will naturally find ways to make AD, even illegitimately… Myself, I have not known anyone who got banned or had any consequences as a result. It also seems to me, if they knew the glitch was there they should have made a point to say “hey, we know this can be done, but don’t do it…” when the mod was released, rather than how they’ve handled it.
I started ravenloft late on PC so when i started doing hunts i just invited from zone chat. That was a very big mistake right off the bat had some person wanting to exploit it before i even knew how the hunts worked. The rest of the group did not want anything to do with it but that person all ready moved out of camp and made it so the rest could not leave because of wanting full party to exit. We kicked that person and then no rewards at all after the kill even with cards used.
Not sure if they got used or not but after that the next 3 hunts i lost a lot of cards due to someone in the groups always getting disconnected and then we would get zero rewards from that. So now i only go alone to prevent the headache and wasted cards from a player losing connection.
I posted this to the forums but it might get deleted so I’ll post it here too.
I’ve been giving this a lot of thought recently. The Barovia hunt glitch has caused a major upset in your community. Not for fixing it. That was expected, the issue arises from the way your company has and is dealing with the fallout. It seems to the community that you don’t care about us as long as you get yours. You hot fixed the glitch (fair enough) and some found a way around the fix. It took you less than 24 hours to put out another fix stopping the glitch perminantly. That’s fine. We all knew it would be fixed.
What about the bugs that work against your player base? The msp Kabal fight being bugged for as long as it was, Ras Nsi dying but the dungeon not completing being broken for months, the current issue with Ravenloft on the 2nd sister, the red areas not showing in the ground during the sister fight despite still doing damage, the Sunlight sword’s bubble not stopping the one-hit like it should even though we do everything perfect and without mistakes. I could name 100s of others.
Why is it that anything in our favour is patched instantly while things that cost the player base time/money is put on the back burner? I very much doubt that we (the community) will get our scrolls back from all the times your game has glitched. To ban people for your bad coding is to spit in the face of everyone who has put time and effort into this game. I implore you, retract all the bans you are thinking of handing out/have handed out.
Learn from this experience, take responsibility for your mistakes instead of handing out punishments to the community. We have put up with a lot of bad things in this game. We will continue to put up with them as well as long as they are fixed in a timely manner. Please don’t take months to fix new content.
Fix castle Ravenloft as a matter of urgency to show that you do, in fact, care about the people who put money in your pockets.
Our game experience is what keeps us coming back to Neverwinter. The happier your player base is the more money they will be willing to spend. The more functional the content is the less we will have to look for glitches/exploits. I’d hate to have to find a new game because of poor game functionality and bad public relations.
Well said, Liam.
Now, i wonder if your post will be removed? “Reasons” I can think of:
1) it is addressed to the DEVs (not allowed);
2) it’s an insult/flame against the Devs as it implies they release broken content;
3) it implies that the Devs do not care about the players, just how much money we give them;
4) it might even imply P2W in some warped imaginations.
At least, that’s how the forum used to be. It does seem to have improved a little in the last 3 years.
>:8o
It was removed from the forums.
Good grief! really?
Yes really. I got a whole message about it. Titled “YOU’VE BEEN WARNED”
No shock there….the moderator there (being kind) is on an extreme power trip. Was told this individual is female….would bet my next paycheck she is overweight and lonely. Bank on it.
Regardless, whoever this twat is, they claim not to be working for PWE/Cryptic….that they are ‘just’ another player….yeah right, save your bullshit for the gullible.
I can tell you for a fact that one moderator on there is actually overweight and lonely and miserable, and was kicked from their own guild. You are 100% right. As for how much time that person actually plays the game, not very much, they are too busy bragging about themselves and telling everyone else how to play their class.
Liam, what were you warned about, exactly? Be careful if you use the same name/handle here as there. I certainly don’t.
What glitch? I was never notified of a glitch? How would I know there was a glitch? I never received notification, I was never informed, made aware or contacted. Everything seemed to be within normal game play. Hmmmm.
C’mon. Let us not kid ourselves that this was how the game was meant to be played. Glitches will never be labeled as glitches it is inherent to what they are. Also, when “Looking for glitch hunt” is every other comment in Barovia this should at least be obvious the general public recognizes this is not normal game play.
Also this article should recognize glitches are not always the easiest to fix. You have to look what is on their slate, with lots of attention focused on the next MOD. They are trying to continue to release good content. So although it took them a while to fix, it does not justify exploiting a game. Every game has rules or else why have currency at all.
People will always be annoyed, “they are just trying to make money.” Of course they are, because fixing things cost money, releasing new content cost money, and yes even banning people cost money, but it is safer for people to self regulate than be regulated, however when so many people feel it is OK to exploit the game, they need to take matters into their own hands.
Anyways, just my thoughts…
One call out in this instance is you know if you were exploiting it. I can make the argument with the end chest declining was not an exploit. It had an option to decline the rewards. It seems obvious this was not a glitch but a nerf regardless of what cryptic says.
In this scenario it is quiet obviously a glitch. You use cards but they don’t leave your inventory if you do a certain thing. Similar to boss glitches were you walk under the map to avoid attacks. These are very specific actions to reach an optimal result.
Perhaps there approach will be to let violators off the hook for the pre-patch use and only focus on post-patch use before the hotfix. For the consoles. They are all downwind of what happens on PC. Kind of a hard argument to say that we heard about this trick on PC in one breath and in another say you were ignorant that the exploit was patched on PC and therefor the ignorance justifies the exploiting until patches made it to console. I’m assuming its a lot harder to patch content on consoles than on pc as well… at least administratively.
So for those that used the exploit. The only real question is if the punishments fit the crime. If you drive 5mph over the speed limit you are committing a crime, regardless of if you are caught, if the police lets you off with a warning, etc. It is a crime. A priest can do a sinful thing, much worse than you. Using whataboutism will not get Saint Peter to open the gates for you.
I don’t have a problem with the whole ghunt issue….it was an exploit and players abused it. Now it’s time to pay the piper. Fine. Whatever. I do have an issue with ManicGypsy or whatever this cunt’s name is…
Any mention, or reasonable discussion about this issue is instantly censored by this wacko. What the fuck is wrong about being transparent about what happened? The amount of censorship in this game is just staggering. I am so glad we have a site like this one to discuss things about the game….
Fuck you ManicGypsy and the horse you rode in on…..
@slyfox
*”Whatever. I do have an issue with ManicGypsy or whatever this cunt’s name is…”*
ROFLMAO!!
We’re right there with you, slyfox! We’re right there with you!
😀
Exactly my thoughts, neverwinter subreddit is one whole censorship, I got banned for 7 days yesterday for taking part in post about censorship ( I wrote that OP’s post will be removed asap and u cant talk freely talk about game here). HAHAHAHA
agreed i just unfollowed her on twitter. Note her tweet: “People who exploit in video games suck! If you are going to cheat,why do you even bother playing at all????GRRRR” My guess is this chic gets free stuff from Neverwinter and she does not have to work for anything. I just wonder how she gets on her high horse every day?
How about instead of punishing 90% of the community, you reward the 10% who steered clear with something spectacular to make the 90% jealous and keep them on the right path for your future bug/glitches. Maybe even give a new title as well: “Cryptic Brown Noser” or something funny because lots of the 90% collect titles. Is that a reasonable idea or crazy idea?
I like that idea. We already have the ‘Caturday Survivor’ title, seems similar to what you propose
Yes! An account-wide, account-bound claim, per character, of:
a) A Legendary mount of your choice
b) A Legendary Alphonse Knox companion.
That should make those who grinded away (ground away?) for 20 hours a day on an exploit turn green with envy!
🙂
The rewards would have to be pretty substantial to make the 90% care. They got reduced effort in hunting and early progressions which gave them a leg up on the 10% for UES farming which converts to substantial amount of AD. I do not imagine cryptic would ever be able to provide rewards that are that generous. They took away the gateway and gave us a useless companion as a reward. Hardly equal value
Too bad they didnt have time to fix the companion shared bank bug on console while they were in fixing the hunt bug. Lol.
Just a general reminder that while we allow open talk about the game around here, we some time ago agreed to not go beyond usernames. Some comments are close to crossing what we’re willing to accept. This includes, but is not limited to, gender and race-specific slurs. Not only reflects that badly on you as a person, but also takes away from the argument because people might not read beyond your hate. We’re sure there are more intelligent cuss words you can use that do not fall into the mentioned categories.
Cheers!
Its funny that when a person has a legitimate reason to be mad about all the bugs they have in the game and they comment back that “they are sorry that there was an issue with you receiving a legandary mount but the game has glitches and there is no way to tell from the logs what happened “. But they can check the logs on all the hunts ive done. Bullshit. Pwe and neverwinter have more bugs than pub g what a joke. Please take my cash though.
I cant believe I found this gem here. Ive been playing neverwinter for about 2 weeks and in the first week alone i got two 1-day bans on the NW subreddit for stating my opinion about two topics related to mod15. Both which would never be censored in any other mmo subreddit ive been a part of. I literally started to feel like manic is a dickhead from the first week on ive seen his or hers actions. i think thats quite the talent, being that unlikable.
First you bitched about the exploit existing and them doing nothing.
Now you bitch about them doing something about it. #facepalm