Tomorrow’s Patch Targets Botting, Exploits

After the exploit we reported two days ago had been live since… well… ever, going public did what going public does: It gets stuff fixed.

[su_quote cite=”NW.45.20150618a.6″ url=”http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9469863″]Heroic Encounter rewards will not change if the reward cannot be accepted for some reason.[/su_quote]

This is at least a partial fix for the HE rewards and since there is no PTS up with the patch, there is no way to tell whether Profession Packs or all Lockboxes and rewards in general have been fixed as well. We received a lot of heat for posting the exploit, but after this development it’s safe to say that releasing exploits is exactly what needs to be done to put pressure on the devs. It might not be pretty, it might not be fair, but numbers are numbers and those of the inventory exploit paint a clear picture once again.

The exploit was live at least for 15-18 month, probably longer, has verifiable been reported four and two weeks ago and got fixed within three days of going public. Of course the fix could have been scheduled to go live tomorrow without our report anyway, but past handling of similar situations indicate otherwise. Fixing exploits in Neverwinter is not a matter of knowledge, it’s a matter of priority. And as we’ve seen the community indeed has the power to influence those priorities.

As a reaction to the fix players started to buy out all Unified Elements and the price more than doubled. You should expect a countermovement, because exploiters will still throw the rest of their stockpile out there and those that are looking to profit will quickly repost, but overall we hope you followed our list of implications and have gotten your UEs while they were cheap. The development we should expect is the one of Lesser Bonding Runestones, which climbed from 18k to 50k after the Simril exploit got fixed.

Second, the famous profession bots will run out of service as well, because Leadership will no longer be accessible through the gateway.

[su_quote cite=”NW.45.20150618a.6″ url=”http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/9469863″]Leadership: To help combat botting Astral Diamonds, Leadership has been disabled from Gateway. It will still remain usable in game. We’ll post a more in-depth blog about this tomorrow.[/su_quote]

R.I.P. Destroy Enemy Camp
R.I.P. Destroy Enemy Camp

This as well is a typical Cryptic/PWE approach of dealing with bots. They nerf. Let’s be honest here: Probably profession bots were the number one source of rough ADs in the game and they needed to put an end to this. But sadly as always this comes at the expense of the legit player, who will now be unable to do Leadership at work, from their smartphone or whatever.

Bots will adjust, legit players can’t. In the end bots might even make as much AD as they used to while the players take another substantial hit in their wallet.

j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

5 thoughts on “Tomorrow’s Patch Targets Botting, Exploits

  • July 22, 2015 at 5:51 pm
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    well i guess nobody can say posting exploits is bad. quickest fix ever

  • July 22, 2015 at 6:28 pm
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    The problem still is stuff cost to much and it is to hard to earn AD in game in mod 6. I can play the game 1 hour or 8 hours a day, the game progression changes very little. They need to reintroduce ways to make AD in game or make rp drops far more significant. Encourage people to play!!!

  • July 23, 2015 at 12:13 am
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    leadership not possible via gateway? that’s the last bit I needed to erase my character. my children may play again but less and less with time.
    thanks for the articles and infos. you were especially clear and informative.

    People tend to solve their issues when the issues become unbearable. organizations too. going public about the exploit was the only possible action to push them into action.

  • July 23, 2015 at 4:45 am
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    Wonderful news about the UE fix!

    Leadership tho is going to be a pain for me.. I tend to do them on phone while going to work, now it’s not possible anymore 🙁

  • July 23, 2015 at 5:35 am
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    Well, the issue is that this hits players disproportionately, and as with any other such issues, only serves to make the competitive advantage of bots over players greater.

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