Deliberate use of a bug for IC gain.

[BardicNerd]

Well, not dropping the militia would mean you'd have those troops instead of us . . . and while it might have just been a text bug or something, if it says the lord is someone . . . well, probably a good idea to check.

[De-Legro]

Other than not drop 3.5k cs of troops into a region which they just took over and which had a lord of unknown trustworthiness? Nothing.

Well they have to play the hand they were dealt as well. Dropping militia into a contested region seems good practice, especially if you are the kind of player that just assumes others will play "fair" I've seen similar bugs before, and generally the misplaced Lord stood down as a gesture of noble good will.

[Dante Silverfire]

What? How would that have prevented the bug from happening? And how were we supposed to know he had the buttons available to a lord? As far as we knew, it was just an error on the region page.

I'm not blaming you for anything. Quite simply you had no idea one way or the other. I was just saying that your realm really had little say in how things went. The main focus I feel should simply be on the actions taken by the player, and whether they were justified in taking them based upon circumstances involved.

Pretty much no matter what action the player takes is unfair in one way or another. Life isn't fair, but the determination should be made before punishment whether the action that the player took was reasonable for them to take under the circumstances. Receiving a large amount of gold via a bug, would mean that reporting the bug is expected and the gold should not simply be spent. But if the bug is reported and the gold is allowed to stay after the bug fix, then the player themselves are not exploiting the bug (in an abusive sense, although it is an exploit of a sort) by using the gold. The player in this case was made lord through a bug. They didn't deserve to have the region, but due to policy of the Dev Team, the lordship was not taken away. The game policy also states that players should play with whatever circumstances they are placed with. The player was not replicating a bug to make gain over and over again but simply changed the region control of his region as the game mechanics allow him to do.

If this repeats over and over again, it is abusive. But even though its exploiting the bug, it is inadvertent and not abusive simply because the player did what I feel most players would do in that situation given the circumstances. My first thought is not going to be: Well let me make sure that my enemies have everything as perfect as they like. My first thought is: Well this is weird, but since I'm lord and the bug has been dealt with, I might as well rejoin my realm.

If Summerdale received a region from Libero automatically transfering without a takeover due to a bug, is it abusive because the rulers don't immediately exchange it back? No. Would you even expect them to do such a thing? No. Dwilight is a testing server and we inherently deal with bugs. (the game is in permanent beta as well) Some of them cause things to be unfair, but it is not unfair play by the players. That is the difference.

[Broose]

If Summerdale received a region from Libero automatically transfering without a takeover due to a bug, is it abusive because the rulers don't immediately exchange it back? No. Would you even expect them to do such a thing?

That's not even the same situation. The region wasn't given to Libero automatically, the player's actions caused it to switch hands.

[Dante Silverfire]

That's not even the same situation. The region wasn't given to Libero automatically, the player's actions caused it to switch hands.

Yes, but non-player's actions made the player a lord of the region. The situation we address is the player as lord. My examples are not meant as direct comparisons, but simply examples of how parts of the game can be considered as unfair, but if we assume that player actions are supposed to fix them, then we reach a problem. In the above situation, would it be unfair play by the benefiting realm to not give back the region? No. The situation here is simply different. The new hierarchy system means that regions are essentially property of the lord, with whom he swears an oath to. So, all that matters is who is lord. A lord is allowed to serve whoever he wishes. The same complaint could be made if just chose to join a different duchy in the new realm than the one he was assigned to. This is "unfair" to the Duke of the original duchy because he "should" have been allowed to appoint his own lord and one that would stay, but now he's lost a region. The only difference here is that many in this threat are looking at the issue only on a realm vs realm level, but instead the game operates on multiple levels and the current game system (new estate system) adds credence to the idea of the region lord being the only point of control that matters.

[Brant]

The Militia was dropped before the referendum in LE completed.  He was not the lord at the time, nor did anyone in Summerdale have any inkling that he would be in the future.   We had the region for a couple of days clean, then suddenly his name appears on the region page as the lord.  We ask for him to be removed via the bug tracker, and the last response there was "Ah, now that, is something to be fixed, though not by me. "  certainly implying that the situation would have been resolved given some time.  Less than 12 hours later, he uses the bug to switch the allegiance of the region.

[fodder]

out of interest... could you have banned him?

[Brant]

No, he was never a member of summerdale.  We couldn't even write letters to him.


My point is thus:  the social contract says he has to make a bug report, which he didn't.   Fine if he knew about and read the one that was already made, in which case he knew 'that is something to be fixed' was on an open bug ticket.

He should have waited rather than rushing to take the region before it could be fixed.

[ChrisVCB]

Well, not dropping the militia would mean you'd have those troops instead of us . . . and while it might have just been a text bug or something, if it says the lord is someone . . . well, probably a good idea to check.

Just to reiterate... he wasnt the Lord when the militia was dropped... all this "it's your own fault for dropping militia" talk is ridiculous. it was only a few turns later his name popped onto it.

As for ingame roleplay of the bug...he wrote us an IC message when we threw him out saying he'd be back. He was well aware he'd been thrown out both from an IC and OOC perspective. Reverting the region back makes no IC sense alongside this.

[Velax]

Seems a pretty clear case of exploiting a bug to me. Any idiot should have known something was wrong when he suddenly becomes lord of a region that isn't part of his realm, and instead of doing the fair thing, he took advantage of it. Letting him get off scott-free will just encourage people in similar situations in the future to exploit bugs for personal gain rather than doing the right thing.

[vonGenf]

Any idiot

Is it really necessary to resort to insults? What does it achieve exactly?

[Velax]

It was intended to express the fact that it should not have taken a genius to realise something was wrong, as opposed to a deliberate insult against a particular player. I suggest turning your sensitivity levels down a notch.

[Chenier]

It was intended to express the fact that it should not have taken a genius to realise something was wrong, as opposed to a deliberate insult against a particular player. I suggest turning your sensitivity levels down a notch.

I believe the lawyers, or at least the philosophers, use "any reasonable person". It means the same, really, but is less offensive.

We don't want to start needless flame wars here, so insulting people is not appropriate behavior.

[Gustav Kuriga]

What happened is this:

Summerdale invaded the region, which belonged to Libero.  Orris was at that time the lord.  He was captured by Summerdale, losing the lordship.  A referendum to elect a new lord was automatically generated.  Orris escaped from prison, and entered the election.  Summerdale completed the TO.  One day later, there was a message that they had TOed it from themselves.  The election was completed, and Orris elected (and apparently made a member of Summerdale), and installed as lord.  Orris changed allegiance of the region.


My views as ruler of Libero: I think this is, at the least, somewhat suspect, and I honestly do not really approve . . . however, the real bug is not that he was able to change the allegiance of the region, but that the election successfully completed.  When the election finished, I didn't actually think it made him lord, regardless of what it said . . . I was rather surprised when I saw the message that he had changed the region's allegiance.

In my opinion, it's less than honorable, but since he was lord, entirely legal for him to do . . . the bug was that he became lord in the first place, but he didn't try to exploit a bug to cause that.  A bug may have created the situation of him being lord, but my understanding is that this doesn't make him any less lord (which I disagree with, personally, but I'm not a dev, so my opinion matters little).

This is similar to the time when I was elected Ordermarshal of Morek Empire because I had entered the election in another realm, after which the lord of my region switched over to Morek Empire, causing me to win the election due to votes from the realm I had previously been a part of. I eventually stepped down from the position though.

[Darksun]

Did you miss the part about Dev team's not inferring with bugs? That includes imposing or suggesting OUR interpretation of fair play to a player that has encountered a bug. Indeed until the region allegiance occurred how could the team even KNOW a issue of fair play was going to come up? Consider that this is a team that is already snowed under FIXING bugs and converting code over, and now it some how needs to find the resource to examine which players are affected by every bug that is reported and give them advice on how to handle it?

Also the Dev Team doesn't vet Magistrate cases. How exactly did the team "set him up" for anything?

I can certainly read. If that includes any communication on the bug then that's fine. I wasn't aware that you were barred from even communicating that there was an issue to the player population.

Did the Summerdale players even get a link to the referendum? My understanding was it was a Libero Empire referendum that failed to end when the region was TO'd. It doesn't take a player of 4 years to work out that a vote from the OLD realm shouldn't determine the Lord of a captured region.
If that was the case what exactly could the players of Summerdale do to prevent this outcome?

I'm not sure my note came across properly and then subsequent posts continued to spin it. What I was saying was the the Lords of Libero that continued to vote in the election even though it should have ended could also be considered to be complicit in the events leading up to this case and share a portion of the blame for not reporting the ongoing election as a bug and just playing through it - myself included. The player of Orris had no control over this process and reacted to the situation that was created. This should be considered in any "punishment" that is doled out.