Recent Server Instabilities - Bug Abuses, Make Up events and New Policy

Fizzeq_

Ty. Gm's clear now^^.

BullishNiu

' wrote:

Impaled[;3212697']Yes, lets ban people for having a curiosity, right?

I am sad to admit this, but I did try the bug out in a public room, and even used it (to kill a hacker! It was kind of justified!). So, I do not like an out right ban on people who have used the glitch; I think a suspension should be applied only to repeat offenders, which Mr. Saidin seems to be implying.

Exiledking63

[GM]Saidin wrote: »

Attention Soldiers!

We would like to give some details here about some of the issues we had this week and let you know about some of our learning process and how we're going to handle things moving forward!

Read the bottom for the short answers.

This past week we experienced a new kind of bug, one that we had never seen before which had the possibility of Ghosts picking up ranged weapons in Ghost Mode. Unfortunately for us however it took multiple days for us to get the proper reproductions and information on this bug to get it fixed.

When we did get it fixed, we thought everything was going to be fine. However it turned out that during our server restarts yesterday there was a problem with the patching process and we had to roll back the potential fix and figure out what went wrong. Today we figured out what went wrong and was able to patch the game, but before we did our Login Server decided to run out of gas and crash on us. The game was down for multiple hours today and this was unacceptable.

Once we figured out the Login problems, we were able to patch the ghost mode bug. However, Murphy's Law stepped in and created yet another problem with the update process. Some of the servers we had were still running older versions of the game, and specifically the files that were patched for the bug.

We then had to take those specific servers down and manually patch them again to make sure that the bug was fixed finally.


During that time our moderators and other players took it upon themselves to seek out and find people who might have been abusing the bug in game in order to specifically report these people and get them banned.

In many cases, that we have seen on the forums, and through our support these games were private games or were filled with people who "didn't like someone else". IE their sole purpose for collecting the data was that they finally thought they had something they could get such and such a person banned with.

This is the kind of exact situation we want to avoid. We want people to enjoy the game, and we want to punish people that abuse these situations, but we don't want people specifically seeking out others in order to get them banned. Especially for something that we knew was going to be fixed this week.


Because of the extra time it took to get this bug reported and fixed, and because of the general server problems we've experienced, we are only flagging accounts reported for this behavior. What does that mean? It means you're "on notice" so if we see repeat behavior we won't hesitate to issue a suspension.

So consider that a lucky break. We here take full responsibility for the way that we handled this bug, and the server problems that we experienced this week. However, we would like to make it known that until a specific course of action is decided by us, simply assuming people will get banned for this this or this is not appropriate. Leave those decisions to us and then you can yell at us for how bad or good they are, and we can learn.

It's this learning that we did this week with this bug. From now on we will be treating every abusable glitch with a certain set of rules. Those rules look something like the following:

1. Collect and reproduce any abusable bug information
2. Report and work with developers for a fast and efficient solution
3. Look at game data and user reports of bug abusers and take necessary action against the people abusing the bug.

This is a bit fluid however depending on how severe the bug is, and we will not hesitate to take immediate action, which includes bans and suspensions for players caught abusing bugs of this kind of severity.

The reason why this is a bit different than our standard bug tracking is because we need to determine the course of action to punish players who abuse it. These kinds of bugs are a problem, and the players that abuse them are a problem. So while they might just get a warning this time, next time there will be suspensions and bans issued.

So moving forward, we will have more clear direction and policy when dealing with specific repetitive bugs like this one. We want to punish those who are abusing those bugs for their own gains which in turn will reward those players who stay away from this kind of behavior. HOWEVER, it will be us who makes the call on a glitch-by-glitch basis depending on severity, cause, type, cases etc. We'll then weigh out the best course of action and start issuing bans and suspensions accordingly.

So to sum all that up:

1. We apologize for the problems this week with the game, both in server stability and with the Ghost Mode bug. Things should be fixed and stable now.

2. We are developing new policies which will properly punish those who abuse these kinds of bugs in the future and ruin the experiences of other players.

3. We will be holding some events in the very near future to reward players for their lost time and for sticking through with us during this rough week!

In the mean time, don't forget the National Finals for WCG are being held tomorrow, and there will be some great competition happening and being broadcasted live from the NYC Comicon Convention floor.

Click here for the WCG USA National Final Details.


Thanks everyone for the patience and understanding and we look forward to seeing you in Cross Fire!

Great job ...

Urkel2005

Too bad there still isn't ONE measure against that ridiculous amount of hackers...
Hopefully the Halloween patch will finally solve this, or I see many people, including me, leave Hackfire for good...

best regards,
Urkel

[Annomader

' wrote:

Impaled[;3212697']Yes, lets ban people for having a curiosity, right?

Ban people for using glitch to harm gameplay - You will the same way you explain the using of hacks? 'he shouldn't be punished - he was only curious'
Hypocrite.

Urkel2005 wrote: »

Too bad there still isn't ONE measure against that ridiculous amount of hackers...
Hopefully the Halloween patch will finally solve this, or I see many people, including me, leave Hackfire for good...

I wish to believe in that...

anyway... about all glitches, and hack situation I said all in my 'frustration' post...
and I do not want to repeat myself... but I'm disappointed terribly...

number96

today 2 errors in game. failed to connect to server. disconected from server. never happened to me. and now two times in one day.happened in hmx mode and zombie mode.

DR4FT

These people who abused bugs to cheat against other player don't lose their "honorable soldier" ribbon?, but the people who got their accounts temporary suspended for payments issues do lose this ribbon?
(I got suspended for an issue with TokenAds, I paid the chargebacks and still I lost this ribbon.)
I hope you consider giving back the "honorable soldier " ribbon to those loyal CF players who paid there chargebacks. I think this would be fair?

-DR[4]FT-

uDream

DR4FT wrote: »

These people who abused bugs to cheat against other player don't lose their "honorable soldier" ribbon?, but the people who got their accounts temporary suspended for payments issues do lose this ribbon?
(I got suspended for an issue with TokenAds, I paid the chargebacks and still I lost this ribbon.)
I hope you consider giving back the "honorable soldier " ribbon to those loyal CF players who paid there chargebacks. I think this would be fair?

-DR[4]FT-

You can send in a support ticket and they might replace it.. They did so in the past at least..