Why there is no bigger discussion about Grotesque Soul Bans?

[kamil1210 108]

Grotesque Souls were relased on 27 january.  Players could get them from Treasure Hunter or doing slayers tasks. Players could trade them on GE, between players and in general store. 

 

GE medium price was: 7000 

Store price was: 2100

Real market price (player to player) was lower than 2100. 

 

Some players found out they can buy souls from other players and sell souls to general store for good profit. 

 

Couple hours after relase  Jagex  removed ability to sell souls to General Store and banned players for bug abusing who were selling souls to shops.

 

Jagex mod said on reddit about bans:

To clarify the stance on the Bug  - we've never allowed promotional items to be sold to the store

 

In past there was TH promotional items that players could sell to store:

pinata sombrero: https://embed.gyazo.com/057875982bfeb5d0ea13b59f5fa4c26b.gif

pinata plushie: https://embed.gyazo.com/0873bb48f653f90e28f275cb59f568ab.gif

relased: 14 December 2015, still sellable on 02.02.2016.

 

 

So there was no way for player to see it that selling Grotesque Soul to shop was bugged because it followed rules of old content that was 100% legit at time of Souls relase.  

 

This  create situations where players can be banned for playing new content and be banned because of jagex mistakes. 

 

Why there is no bigger discussion about Grotesque Soul Bans? 

[Sy_Accursed 1554]

I don't see much to discuss in this one.

 

The fact you could make giant profits by buying from ge and selling to gen store due to jagex over-valuing item was obviously not intentional and therefore a bug.

People abused said bug and got banned for it.

 

Just because you have previously been able to sell to stores doesn't magically negate the fact it was very obvious that it was not intended for players to be able to make giant cash stacks for doing nothing pretty much.

Anyone with a bit of common sense could see that being able to make millions or even billions for no effort due to there street value being hugely lower than store value was not intentional behaviour of the content. 

 

There is no risk of being banned for playing new content - the only risk is if you are dumb enough to go out of your way to exploit something that is very obviously too good to be true.

And it's not like jagex banned people who happened to get a few souls and dump them in store - it was people who intentionally went out of their way to buy souls and dump in store for massive profits despite the fact it was very obviously broken.

 

What you can be banned for is discovering something that is so op in terms of getting something for nothing that it is obviously not intentional then actively going out of your way to keep doing it.

[Cheat 42]

This does seem ludicrous as basically the issue is Jagex just massively overpriced this piece of almost useless content.. 

[kamil1210 108]

The fact you could make giant profits by buying from ge and selling to gen store due to jagex over-valuing item was obviously not intentional and therefore a bug.

People abused said bug and got banned for it.

There is no risk of being banned for playing new content - the only risk is if you are dumb enough to go out of your way to exploit something that is very obviously too good to be true.

 

 

Making big gains in short time is not something that can indicate ban.

1. Recently jagex relased new skill. Some people had 200m xp after couple of days, XP rates were abnormally high. No one was banned.

2. "too good to be true" is very subjective. For players with 10m gp:  5m gp/s is high For marchanter with phats and 2,1b it will not be as high. 

3. Power creep is how jagex handle game. Every content is better than previous.

 

Just because you have previously been able to sell to stores doesn't magically negate the fact it was very obvious that it was not intended for players to be able to make giant cash stacks for doing nothing pretty much.

 

If something was 100% legit in past then players should be safe to asume it is safe with new content. Otherwise every new content could give you ban.  

[Sy_Accursed 1554]

 

The fact you could make giant profits by buying from ge and selling to gen store due to jagex over-valuing item was obviously not intentional and therefore a bug.

People abused said bug and got banned for it.

There is no risk of being banned for playing new content - the only risk is if you are dumb enough to go out of your way to exploit something that is very obviously too good to be true.

 

 

Making big gains in short time is not something that can indicate ban.

1. Recently jagex relased new skill. Some people had 200m xp after couple of days, XP rates were abnormally high. No one was banned.

2. "too good to be true" is very subjective. For players with 10m gp:  5m gp/s is high For marchanter with phats and 2,1b it will not be as high. 

3. Power creep is how jagex handle game. Every content is better than previous.

 

Just because you have previously been able to sell to stores doesn't magically negate the fact it was very obvious that it was not intended for players to be able to make giant cash stacks for doing nothing pretty much.

 

If something was 100% legit in past then players should be safe to asume it is safe with new content. Otherwise every new content could give you ban.  

 

 

1) Invention is a tricky one. You could argue they should've done bans or a roll back quite legitimately but at the same time it does have some key differences.

First up being players sunk items and money into getting that xp, they weren't generating wealth from nothing so it does have a slightly different context.

Secondly being the aim of invention was to sink items and it did do that quite well.

Plus of course it would be a death warrant for the game if they went and banned half of the most high profile players and equally would really ruin invention (more than they did anyway) for everyone if they rolled us all back to day 1 once they spotted the mistake.

 

2) On no planet is paying a couple of hundred gp at ge and then walking over to gen store and getting 2.1k anything other than too good to be true. Especially when they item stacks enabling you to take pretty much as many of the item as u can possible afford in 1 go.

It was like 1000% return rate, that is too good to be true.

 

3) Power creep is a feature of updates, it is not a feature of limited time promotions designed to award a few cosmetics.

 

And no players should not assume making 1000% returns is legit just because you could previously sell items to a store.

If you went to a cash machine irl and it started spewing out all the notes inside it at you would you just take them all and go "well cash machines gave me money before so there's nothing wrong here"?

No, you'd recognise something wasn't working right and it shouldn't be giving you all that money.

 

By all means if you find old content that is giving you 1000% returns go nuts, it's been there and while and nothings happened to it. But when it's brand new content and it's giving absurdly good profits for not really doing anything you should be able to think huh, this probably isn't working right.

[Miss Lioness 631]

In additional, these 3 items: Grotesque Souls, Piñata Sombrero and Piñata Plushie were made at the same time by the same developer. The reason why the Pinata items were not abused is because the player-to-player value was in the several millions gp larger than the store value.

 

Another reason Jagex sees the ban as legitimate is because of the 'huge' GP influx/creation due to stores.

[Kimberly 1129]

I don't think it's fair that the users who did this were treated as bug abusers. We discussed this a bit in my clan not too long ago actually. Someone made a good point that in order to rollback effectively, a ban would have to be issued anyway. Most seemed to agree it was necessary since the gp generated was never projected for the game's economy. I can see the logic in that, yet the players still have bug abuse on their account history now.

 

It's just not right. It's a shitty situation where there was no perfect solution, but still. It rankles. Ignorance is not an excuse for bug abusing, yet buying and selling to stores has been so long a part of RuneScape that it's hard to imagine every participant did so knowing it was an unintended feature.

[Miss Lioness 631]

I don't think it's fair that the users who did this were treated as bug abusers. We discussed this a bit in my clan not too long ago actually. Someone made a good point that in order to rollback effectively, a ban would have to be issued anyway. Most seemed to agree it was necessary since the gp generated was never projected for the game's economy. I can see the logic in that, yet the players still have bug abuse on their account history now.

 

It's just not right. It's a shitty situation where there was no perfect solution, but still. It rankles. Ignorance is not an excuse for bug abusing, yet buying and selling to stores has been so long a part of RuneScape that it's hard to imagine every participant did so knowing it was an unintended feature.

 

I agree. While there is an overall influx of GP into the economy, the profit for the people whom were doing this was far lower. Perhaps 1/20 of the gp they generated, as they had to buy them from other players.