Item Removal from Moontide Outfit Exploit

[Sylvaniss]

I was incredibly upset when I logged in and the outfit I'd worked so hard for for the past 6 months is suddenly gone. The Ninja Tortoise outfit that my character had on was completed months before you guys made a screw up in the game. Now nearly half of my wardrobe is gone, not to mention all of the gold that I spent during that time is also gone. I had also used over 100 chromatic thread on the outfits that are missing. Considering this screw up of the moontide outfit was not our fault, I think we should get back everything that we had lost.  

[Didone]

For the method applied to solve the problems created from a mistake of NCsoft employees and for the absolute lack of explanation during this time i suspend my subsciption starting form  now waiting for reply of the simply answer i made on the ticket of 2 days ago. This behavior for me speak clearly about the care  NC soft have of the customer. This generic comunications have the only purpose to take time without giving information on the problems. This is an unprofessional behavior that try to discharge the responsability on the customers it's unfair and tell much about fairness principles that guide you.

[HaraAi]

On 20/8/2020 at 1:01 AM, Hime said:

Hello all,

 

During the maintenance, we removed all items acquired from the Moontide outfit exploit from those who abused it. Unfortunately, some of these same players may have also had their non-exploited cosmetics affected. We are currently investigating the issue. As soon as we have more information and finalize our next course of action, we will provide another update.

 

Thank you for bearing with us.

And what about the hundreds of dollars spent in legit boxes?? All of the outfits have dissapeared!!!! Are you making a refund??? I want my money back! 

[Morrjgan]

And so, for the first time in years I suspended my premium subscription. I don't consider this event an exploit, your error yours the aftermath. I don't go to forums and I was never officially informed.

I don't accept you to blame me for your mistakes, judge, jury and executioner, and put your hands in my pockets just like pirates.

My entire account has been devastated, tons of kgold and other resources gone with the wind, hours and hours day after day online throw in the toilet, real money spent years ago stolen.

 

In the meanwhile, insult to injury, those who use this event since 5 months and maxed all their stuff and gained a lot of money has not been touched.

And all the bugs who damage players form years are always there

And all the player who use the game in a really not legal way undisturbed.

And all the technical issues that makes the game too heavy even if you buy a NASA pc never solved.

 

And I am the one who did something not legal?

 

You really don't see what you are doing?

 

I really hope I will see my account fully restored of everything you maraud me or I can't consider this management ethic and professional and put my money in the game safely.

 

ALWAYS thank you to GMs anyway to be the frontline in this management's messes.

[Nicolee]

On 8/19/2020 at 4:01 PM, Hime said:

We are currently investigating the issue. As soon as we have more information and finalize our next course of action, we will provide another update.

In years of time whenever there has been a problem where things "disappeared" or were made valueless on a wide scale, I don't recall any solution where people felt compensated.  That is, to a large extent,  the root issue of why so many felt no qualms about indulging.  I.e. ncsoft's exemplary behavior in prior situations.

 

Something to think about.  The longer someone has been playing the game, the greater the chance that they would have any of those costumes legitimately.  In other words, the longer you have been a player, the more you are likely to have lost.

 

Only new players would not be likely to have acquired very many of those outfits.

Edited August 21, 2020 by Nicolee

[Gretis]

After 5 months from the first reporting of this bug, do you remove the objects using unspecified random queries that do only damage and then open a post calling it "Item Removal from Moontide Outfit Exploit"?
The real exploit is that you haven't done anything for 5 months.
If the staff had intervened immediately we would not have come to all this 

[Hyakuyas]

Please give me back the pet i bought to other player, you cant even do the difference between pet obtain through exploit and through trade with other player so please give all back, that's stealing :c

I hope in next days to see all my pet back and i hope it will be the case for all other players who also had skin earned with real money and had nothing to do with this bug which has been removed yeah yeah....

I hope you will reconsider your choice and just give all what you take that's i mean obviously the best to do because when you do something this is so messed up xD.

GL Hime xD

Edited August 21, 2020 by Hyakuyas

[Hime]

Hello all,

 

We do not have new information to share at this time, but we want to assure you resolving this issue is a priority of ours. The logistics of this is extremely complicated and need more time to properly resolve this. Thank you again for your patience!

 

20 hours ago, gaby0309 said:

@Hime can u please let us know if buying pets from the marketplace with gold (pets who were probably exploited) and transmuting them into pet pods is fine? are we gonna get the pet pods back? if not do we get the gold and the transmutation cost? 

 

I'm sure that most people are in this situation. could u please give an answer?

I do not have an answer for you at this time, but this is also something we're looking into.

6 hours ago, Gretis said:

After 5 months from the first reporting of this bug, do you remove the objects using unspecified random queries that do only damage and then open a post calling it "Item Removal from Moontide Outfit Exploit"?
The real exploit is that you haven't done anything for 5 months.
If the staff had intervened immediately we would not have come to all this 

Please see a previous post of mine. You can find it the Dev Tracker or my post history.

[Christokhan]

I have a simple suggestion to resolve some part of this issue:
Pick every outfit and accessoires from the exploided outfit-chests and send it to every character, yes not every account, every character. 
That would calm down the players that spend real money to get those. 
To sort out which player got what and when would be imo way too much work on your side und nobody could seriously demand that. 
But those people, that spend real money to get those outfits need to get those back, there is no room for debate! That is, of course, that some 
overcompensation and the outfits must be unable to salvage into threats, but would be ino a step in the right direction.
The other issue is the removal of every other items. 
I think it would be too much work to sort everything out 100%, so a simplier solution would be necessary. 
Maybe a Package with 25-50 accountbound pet packs per account, or something like that, might be worth considering.
 

[SmokeSauce]

23 minutes ago, Christokhan said:

I have a simple suggestion to resolve some part of this issue:
Pick every outfit and accessoires from the exploided outfit-chests and send it to every character, yes not every account, every character. 
That would calm down the players that spend real money to get those. 
To sort out which player got what and when would be imo way too much work on your side und nobody could seriously demand that. 
But those people, that spend real money to get those outfits need to get those back, there is no room for debate! That is, of course, that some 
overcompensation and the outfits must be unable to salvage into threats, but would be ino a step in the right direction.
The other issue is the removal of every other items. 
I think it would be too much work to sort everything out 100%, so a simplier solution would be necessary. 
Maybe a Package with 25-50 accountbound pet packs per account, or something like that, might be worth considering.
 

That's similar to my suggestion I put on my thread: 

(Post #3 is my suggestion on how they could fix this mess while keeping everyone happy, both players and devs)

[Bl4de]

I have suggestion too. Voodoo magic! Use voodoo magic!

Only that can help to fix this mess ;)

[Saitooooooooo]

3 hours ago, Hime said:

Hello all,

 

We do not have new information to share at this time, but we want to assure you resolving this issue is a priority of ours. The logistics of this is extremely complicated and need more time to properly resolve this. Thank you again for your patience!

 

I do not have an answer for you at this time, but this is also something we're looking into.

Please see a previous post of mine. You can find it the Dev Tracker or my post history.

@Hime I am so glad that u are actively reading this topic, please do the right call and restore the pet pods, since people paid more than 80% of the crafting cost in soulstones+gold for them pretty much. 90% of my clan mates are just waiting for your final decision so they can decide if they will keep playing the game or move on. I really think that the playerbase can't suffer another loss, the queue for dungeons are long and the game's been bleeding players for a while. It costs ncsoft absolutely nothing to restore the pet pods and it will just make the players happy. 

[Bl4de]

23 minutes ago, gaby0309 said:

It costs ncsoft absolutely nothing to restore the pet pods and it will just make the players happy.

It would cost them dearly if they do that. Obviously this game uses pay to progress as motivating factor for players to spend money. Devaluation of second most important item for that progress is very demotivating for targets of this concept (read: players that spend money). Just imagine it like this: Why I was / should spend money on this when ncsoft is / will give it for free anyways.

[SungoddessRabbit]

5 minutes ago, Bl4de said:

It would cost them dearly if they do that. Obviously this game uses pay to progress as motivating factor for players to spend money. Devaluation of second most important item for that progress is very demotivating for targets of this concept (read: players that spend money). Just imagine it like this: Why I was / should spend money on this when ncsoft is / will give it for free anyways.

New pet tier will come new talisman. plenty of things to drain the petpods down. oils are still the bread winner item

[Bl4de]

6 minutes ago, SungoddessRabbit said:

New pet tier will come new talisman. plenty of things to drain the petpods down. oils are still the bread winner item

Well everything will "drain" eventually. Even oils would. That does not change fact that company that lets something like this to happen (ie. let some players obtain for free something that others had to invest money / work) is not really good motivation for players to invest either real money or work in future.

[Kelvinator]

There are plenty of pay to win items for ncsoft to milk their players even with pet pods being "free". You are forgetting all the pay to win things they have introduced over the years that have barely been made farmable in the game: soul, heart, unity stones, certain psyches, gems, just to name a few. Let's not forget the new ancient system and slate system, while these are not really p2w features as of now, we all know Fusion stones and runes will be available on F10 in one form or another. My point is that nc soft still has plenty of things for whales to buy even if they just turn a blind eye on people "exploiting" the "bamboo event". In fact, I have managed to sell 20k gold on F9 during the last few weeks; something that doesn't normall happen, so they might have even gained more profit because of this "event".

 

While letting players obtain hard to earn items for free might demotivate players from investing more, this so called fix is certainly even more demotivating. I personally am not a huge spender but I have always been willing to put in the money on well designed outfits, in spite of me always hating to have to gamble through troves and rng boxes to get the one outfit I want. Now I have lost most of these outfits thanks to their incompetence. If they are not restored this week, I intend to just drop this game and never touch a game by NC again.

[Yo Katarina]

@hime its not only moontide outfits please change your post ! youre not even reading our comments " all are complaining with there petpods including us, those items are bought in legit way"! time effort and including $$$ spent the game investigate what? its nonsence your, technician made it just tell them ti reverse it back ! almost 90% of players in the game did the exploit!  thats your technician stupidity ! go slap your workmates who did this will solve problem! your just making it complicated. 

[Sariesa]

Im still angry about this People not doing their  work properly at NcSoft.

Its sad that the people behind Ncsoft west ( and i dont mean hime and the  other poor guys in the Forum)  cant do ANYTHINK to avoid using bugs or cant change errors in the codes from Korea.  And the People where in charge for the Tickets done a sloppy work becouse people told them months bevor the streams and forum post happpens about the exploit an other stuff an they done nothink to avoid it or report it to korea befor it escalated. PEOPLE sell the kostüms and pets for months from the exploit.

 

Korea should give Nc west more help and allow them to do stuff like delet a npc or change little stuff in the game code so becouse its sad we get for nothing little patches but if somethink serious happens they can only look at the problem and  nothing more ...

 

performence is so bad that playing at 64bit makes no sense at all even with a good pc but with 32 bit you get fast crashes even in raids. AND i still hope for UE4 to make thinks better ...

but with everythinks happens so far i will wait to like people at ncsoft... i quit my Premium Mempership today and if you can so easy delete my thinks i buy for relife mony  .. i shoud spend it better elsewhere.

 

i will play anythink else and wait for some changes or hope it happens somethink worth to play this game again.

Loved in the past this game so its makes me really sad korea only want to milk it and dont do somethink for us.

 

all of us should just sit back and wait for it... :) if you know what i mean

[Khaen]

At this point, your excessive purge has created more damage than the initial exploit. 

 

A roll back should have been the first option, ASAP. The flood of pet pods were extensively saturated into the market and playerbase within the first week. Countless soulstones were exchanged, and countless people spent hours farming and then selling them. All the gold that were obtained from trade. How many people now go around with maxed out pets and are allowed to keep them? What about pet gems? How many dungeons and raids were run with the additional boost? And now our paid for outfits are wiped. The least game disrupting factor in this entire exploit, yet most disastrous to the paying player in terms of costly RNG box gambling. 

If you weren't going to roll back during the first few days, then you shouldn't do anything destructive and damaging in the weeks after. 
It's such a muddied mess now that most people I know are sitting back to watch the dumpster fire. 
You could rollback, to the recent maintenance. The beginning of Aug is the cleanest but you'll have wasted almost a month of everyone's time. The compensation would have to be appropriately excessive to appease the masses. 

Although nobody seems to bring it up, we are still in a pandemic. People will remember you for what you do, especially in these times of stress and virtual socialization. This would be a crappy way to present NC's contribution to Covid support. 

Also, I find it extremely ironic and dubious that the emote bug was reported and a client update was available within hours.  

[Bl4de]

Even today i see ppl selling pet pods for 70g, which means that this "purge" actually did nothing good. Ones who abused it most sure knew to mail all to another character or account.

[Krommissar]

You had no problem deleting a bunch of our items, including ones obtained in your gambling boxes or through many months of gameplay, but when people are holding you to account, it's suddenly very complicated and difficult to undo your game killing mistake?

 

You could have walked away from this the bigger man and let players reap the rewards of your own mistake instead of meting out a punishment that ultimately hurt even players who didn't "participate" in the "event".

 

How many subscriptions is your "solution" worth to your team? Have any of you bothered to take out as much as a calculator to figure out how much money are you going to lose long term on this?

 

You people seem to have forgotten that no matter how much you're going to call people "consumers", they're still customers at the end of the day, and they *will* leave if you keep treating them like this.

[Sevenor]

Better be a good ass solution after 4 days having passed already.

[AnnyFox]

 

 

The game goes from bad to worse, the market in 2021 will bring dozens of new triple A games, which will be in a poorly optimized game, and with stupid decisions by the company itself. all the money I put into this game went to waste, thanks NcSoft. to the players the last one to leave turns off the light, thanks

Edited August 22, 2020 by AnnyFox

[Rmccn08]

Wow good job. Sure wish you took the same initiative when it comes to server performance.

[Kazuma Draken]

5 hours ago, Rmccn08 said:

Wow good job. Sure wish you took the same initiative when it comes to server performance.

lol there going to optimize it by making sure you have a 30min log in time and 10min loading. but the fps will be a nice crisp 120