Question regarding the recent bans (Map scyring to force div cards)

I get why people are enraged but honestly this does not seem like a bannable offense to me. From what I understand all used mechanics worked as intended and there was simply an oversight concerning the combination of these mechanics. I find it kind of annoying that we, as players, have to think about which interactions (that work as intended, to be clear) might be illegal and get us banned. This is not a bug, hack or any violation of the ToS. Why is it expected that players who find a combination like that evaluate themselves how much money is an unfair amount and then act accordingly lest GGG swoops in and bans you?

I want to make very clear, that I am no money-making strategist like these people. I don't have the time to put into a league. I do my mapping, am happy when I get my 2 hours of gaming in most days and that's it. I might make 100 Div over the course of an entire league. So again, I get why people get annoyed about others making so much more money. And I too feel like what happened was extremely unfair. But that the use of working mechanics could even be CONSIDERED a bannable offense is crazy to me.
What if I ever play a homebrew build and some whacky combination of passives, uniques and skills deals WAY more damage, than one would expect? Might I get banned for this, just because GGG deems it to be too strong?
I have been in the community for a very long time and remember the time I discovered CoC. Back then it had no cooldown and you could just spit out as many spells as you could deal crits. It was a glorious mess of projectiles and obviously dealt absurd damage. It felt like christmas to discover this. These quirks and discoveries make the game fun to me. But honestly if I would find a skill I could use without cooldown nowadays and just trigger that bad boy 50 times a second I'd be scared I was exploiting by GGGs definition. And I don't think that is a fear a regular player should be having.

In most other games I play the line is very clear. You glitch yourself into a wall in a competitive shooter and attack people who can not see you? Clearly not intended and bannable. You find a skin that is harder to see infront of certain terrains than other skins? It's in the game and works as any other skin should. You are clearly allowed to play it, but the devs might nerf it in the future. Imagine simply picking a skin and having to worry about being banned 'cause it is harder to see. In any other game that would be madness yet in PoE we applaud when these people get banned?

I also understand, that some people were talking about intend and I see that point. The group in question knew fully well, that the combination of mechanics were not intended to yield these amounts of profits. Which is a reasonable point. But again, drawing from other games, this happens quite a bit. Frequently with the release of new content. Where new characters, weapons, factions or what have you are way too strong on release. This was a prevelant problem in LoL if memory serves. In the first week everybody was playing the new champ because they were extremely overpowered. These people (and in this instance, that included me) know that their champ is way too strong. They know it will get nerfed in the next week and they know that the devs did not intend for it to be this dominating. And that is why they play it, as long as they can.
So there is a clear intention of using something, that currently does not perform as the devs intended. Yet I would never dream of asking myself in that situation, whether or not I could get banned for that. Nor should I, if you ask me.

I do not want to start a riot here and I would love civil responses. Help me understand the ban. I get freezing the generated currency and support it. I also get why this had to get fixed asap. But why the ban? Am I the only one feeling worried about this? Maybe there is something about this, that I am not seeing. I am open for discussion and opinions.

I would say the first action says a lot. Was it to share something good they found with the community? Or hoping to squeeze the most out of it before it is found?

Absolutely correct. The intend was selfish and, if we want to judge it, bad. I am not debating that. My question is whether or not this should be bannable? If I find an item well under value on the market I will absolutely buy it, before I tell others about it. Making money and being selfish is not exactly noble, true. But it is part of the game.

A lot of people got just as rich if not richer last league for doing a strat that was also the result of everything working as intended and noone was banned. Lots of people made 6 link shields and weapons and sold them for profit and nothing happened to them.

There were a bunch of topics debating the importance of exploit early, exploit often and I for one think it was about time GGG did something about that philosophy. Right now the general idea is rather than not do something unintended that is 100% getting patched you should do the opposite and exploit it.

It isn't that hard to understand. Why is it exploit early, exploit often? Because you know it will get patched. If it will get patched you know it is unintended. If it is unintended and you exploit it you should get banned.

So, as a rule of thumb, if you discover something that you can only assume will get patched once GGG catches wind of it, it is in axploit and a bannable offense.

Noone is getting banned if you go from a 15Div/hour strat to a 20 div/hour one but when you are suddenly making 500 you know exactly what you are doing.

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SquierHSS wrote:

I also understand, that some people were talking about intend and I see that point. The group in question knew fully well, that the combination of mechanics were not intended to yield these amounts of profits. Which is a reasonable point. But again, drawing from other games, this happens quite a bit. Frequently with the release of new content. Where new characters, weapons, factions or what have you are way too strong on release. This was a prevelant problem in LoL if memory serves. In the first week everybody was playing the new champ because they were extremely overpowered. These people (and in this instance, that included me) know that their champ is way too strong. They know it will get nerfed in the next week and they know that the devs did not intend for it to be this dominating. And that is why they play it, as long as they can.
So there is a clear intention of using something, that currently does not perform as the devs intended. Yet I would never dream of asking myself in that situation, whether or not I could get banned for that. Nor should I, if you ask me.

In LoL the problem resets each game so it is much less critical, everyone is on a level, if boring, playing field. Imagine instead by playing a hero in a certain way (maybe with a certain buy order) you found that your damage in the next game was 1% higher on all heroes and you could do that every game. If you do that more than a few times to make sure it works before reporting it, you should be banned.

I think the ban was deserved. Many players find tactics to get X amount of divines/hour. Imagine you getting 20div/hour. That would already put you at probably like 0.1% of players.
What that group did was a strat that might've yielded them 1000divines/hour. The amount was obviously not intended and clearly was an exploit that they should've reported and not used for their gains.

And as far as I know you can have crazy amount of damage using some whacky combo and at most it will get nerfed. Never heard of this kind of bans before since having infinite damage wont yield you crazy amount of currency anyway.

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Fidtz wrote:

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SquierHSS wrote:

I also understand, that some people were talking about intend and I see that point. The group in question knew fully well, that the combination of mechanics were not intended to yield these amounts of profits. Which is a reasonable point. But again, drawing from other games, this happens quite a bit. Frequently with the release of new content. Where new characters, weapons, factions or what have you are way too strong on release. This was a prevelant problem in LoL if memory serves. In the first week everybody was playing the new champ because they were extremely overpowered. These people (and in this instance, that included me) know that their champ is way too strong. They know it will get nerfed in the next week and they know that the devs did not intend for it to be this dominating. And that is why they play it, as long as they can.
So there is a clear intention of using something, that currently does not perform as the devs intended. Yet I would never dream of asking myself in that situation, whether or not I could get banned for that. Nor should I, if you ask me.

In LoL the problem resets each game so it is much less critical, everyone is on a level, if boring, playing field. Imagine instead by playing a hero in a certain way (maybe with a certain buy order) you found that your damage in the next game was 1% higher on all heroes and you could do that every game. If you do that more than a few times to make sure it works before reporting it, you should be banned.

I think that is a valid point. My LoL comparison is not ideal. Though truth be told, it is hard to find any good comparisons to PoE and its mechanics. I get the point though and you are right. The effects are not localized in this instance and have an impact on the economy as a whole. Which is why I agree with the freezing of the currency and quickly disabling the interaction.

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Impiousbe wrote:

A lot of people got just as rich if not richer last league for doing a strat that was also the result of everything working as intended and noone was banned. Lots of people made 6 link shields and weapons and sold them for profit and nothing happened to them.

There were a bunch of topics debating the importance of exploit early, exploit often and I for one think it was about time GGG did something about that philosophy. Right now the general idea is rather than not do something unintended that is 100% getting patched you should do the opposite and exploit it.

It isn't that hard to understand. Why is it exploit early, exploit often? Because you know it will get patched. If it will get patched you know it is unintended. If it is unintended and you exploit it you should get banned.

So, as a rule of thumb, if you discover something that you can only assume will get patched once GGG catches wind of it, it is in axploit and a bannable offense.

Noone is getting banned if you go from a 15Div/hour strat to a 20 div/hour one but when you are suddenly making 500 you know exactly what you are doing.

That is precisely the mentality I am trying to understand here. Because I do mostly agree with you. Yes, we need to do something against the "exploit eearly, exploit often" mentality. It is not good for the game. Yes, these people knew the mechanic was gonna get patched once GGG realized what they did. But what I disagree with, is the ban.
Because again, they were technically just using mechanics that, in combination, yielded WAY more currency, than GGG intended. But they did not do so by violating any clear rules. They did not hack or manipulate gamefiles in any way. They did not bug out certain mechanics, toggled their internet for weird results or whatever else. They only used mechanics as the devs intended them to work. The problem is in an unforseen combination of these mechanics.

So again, I do not think this is easy to understand. Because in no other game would my knowledge of the fact that something will get patched result in me fearing a ban. It seems to me that the whole argument is "they knew what they were doing". And I am not disputing that. I just think it is not enough for a ban.

My opinion boils down to this:

If something is blatantly unintentional, and if that something is also incredibly harmful to the league economy, players should know better than to deliberately farm it. Use your brain, protect the game.

Surely GGG did not intend to have a team of players farming 15,000 div per day with single divination card drop focus. That's an absurd premise.

This is common sense. There shouldn't be much debate. These players knew what they were doing, and then proceeded to buy up mirrors and T0 uniques. There is absolutely nothing to defend the players here on. They abused the system at the expense of hundreds of thousands of other PoE players. Not cool.

They get zero sympathy from me, and they ultimately know they were wrong for what they did. Take the 3 or months off, they deserve it.