this is the last time i'm going to talk about this, but it seriously just baffles me how people just don't seem to understand that context matters. no team gained an advantage. no items were duped (because they were paid for). the items were all essentially immediately removed from the site. the people who did it literally got nothing out of it.

no one ever said abusing glitches in general is okay. we said that for this specific use case we weren't considering it an exploit. because CONTEXT. MATTERS.

I think it's a matter of perspective. The context here is that you're on staff, and you got to sit down and look at the numbers after the fact, and see objectively that there was no harm done.

As players, all we knew was that another team was exploiting a glitch, which we believed to be against the rules. We waited for official word before doing anything with the exploit because for us, the context was that the site rules strictly prohibit exploiting glitches.

To obey those rules and then find out that we lost a potential* edge in the competition by not rushing to exploit the glitch, it feels like a slap in the face. That's why people are upset.

*(which may have been nothing, because again, we don't have access to the numbers you do.)

[edit]

And let me be clear: I'm not accusing any team or any specific players of cheating or anything. I'm just trying to explain -- from the P.O.V. of a Mischief team member -- why people are upset about what happened and the official response to the whole thing.

I don't understand how me clicking a button, spending SP on an item, and then donating said item is a glitch? The MB was working as intended, AFAIK. It's not like I was getting items for free. The MB picked a shop, and made items available for purchase from that shop. Over the course of the day, I probably bought from the shop 100 times or so, and only bought items that were less than 1000 SP (cause I'm cheap.) The snowman contest was/is the only time I've ever used the Mystery Box in my entire 7? 8? years on Subeta. Now that I know it exists, I might pay attention to it more.

How is using the MB any different than using the pawn shop? I bet all the cheap eligible pawn shop items got purchased immediately, too.

if you clicked on the button very quickly, you would pay for the item but get the same item multiple times. you could amass a large stockpile of a few different items just by spam clicking on the item. the mystery box is supposed to give you one item at a time, then the next item is (likely) a different item at a different price.

Some feedback for next time:

1. Don't reveal the team prizes ahead of time, especially if they won't be awarded until the event is over. Team Nature clearly suffered from this because they had a popular prize.

2. If you show scores, be transparent with how they're calculated. I think most people were convinced that scores were donation totals, which is why it looks like the bottom three teams basically gave up. I think they would have been much more competitive if they had known scores were averaged.

If you don't show scores next time, at least have an indicator that shows teams are making progress. And I don't mean just 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. If you can only see that your team is in 3rd place, and don't see any change until you pass another team, you're going to feel like you're going nowhere. There should be something like what Steam used for one of their summer events, where you can see roughly how far behind you are, so you can say "hey, we're almost caught up!" or "oh no, we're way behind, let's hustle."

3. Definitely do include trophies or prize tiers next time. You may be in last place, but it's a great motivator when you know that pulling ahead and taking 4th place could upgrade your trophy and/or net you another prize.

4. It sounds like the "community pile" was thrown out entirely? So anyone that donated to that was literally deleting their items with no chance of any kind of compensation or reward. I think that's kind of evil, and I don't think that should happen in the future. Either just let teamless player cheer and nothing more, or give them a target point value to hit before they can qualify for participation prizes, but nothing beyond that.

5. Please don't include perma-stocked shops like the snowballs next time. It takes no skill to "restock" there, and you're just begging players to autorefresh the crap out of it. I don't think events like this (and the last snowball thing) should be designed around autorefreshers.

this is the last time i'm going to talk about this, but it seriously just baffles me how people just don't seem to understand that context matters. no team gained an advantage. no items were duped (because they were paid for). the items were all essentially immediately removed from the site. the people who did it literally got nothing out of it.

no one ever said abusing glitches in general is okay. we said that for this specific use case we weren't considering it an exploit. because CONTEXT. MATTERS. I'm kind of iffy on this, to be honest. The exploit isn't exactly "cheating" in the sense that they duplicated items for free, but they still figured out a way to get more items faster, which is something that really counts in a competition like this. Secondly, everyone had something to gain by not sharing the technique with the other teams, so unless staff was going to straight-up tell everyone on the site how to quasi-cheat there's no way to make sure the playing field was 100% even in regards to the exploit. I know I didn't see anything about it in my team's board until the next day, when obviously you couldn't use it anymore because the Box was hosting a different shop. Furthermore, the fact that no one's getting any kind of slap on the wrist over this kind of gives the impression that you don't have to play fair in competition here, and that's...kind of messed up.

What occurred in the Mischief thread was misinterpreted by staff. It's been repeatedly stated that the exploit was discussed in that thread instead of reported but I believe what really happened was that everyone in Mischief was unsure of what the proper protocol was, just take a look at this written directly by Keith about reporting bugs:

so I'm pretty sure many were confused of the best course of action, which is why they went to their teammates for feedback first. Regardless, a ticket WAS submitted. It's disheartening that staff keeps ignoring the fact that a ticket was submitted as soon as everyone could figure out what to do.

Staff has not handled this entire issue well at all. It's also unreasonable that Mischief was reprimanded for discussing and "not reporting" when it was already stated that it is everyone's responsibility to report. Staff came directly into the team thread to comment on the issue, but really it should have been announced in a public news post to EVERYONE. The way that was handled, and continues to be brought up even in this thread, really made it feel like staff was pointing fingers at Mischief team members only.

I also feel that staff is being fairly rude in their responses to us. Come on guys. This is really unprofessional and should not be tolerated.

thank you for your well stated response. to me, I don't even care that no one is getting a slap on the wrist. I just want someone to say "hey this is wrong, don't do it in the future"

What's to say, though, that someone wasn't just trying to get as many items as fast as possible and didn't care about the price? When I was clicking through the MB, prices seemed to always be less than 10k... what if someone (I know there are people on Subeta with OBSCENE amounts of SP) didn't care how much they spent and just rapid clicked to get items without realizing what was happening? If I weren't so cheap, that's exactly what I would have done. I would have held down CTRL (to ensure each item bought opened in a new tab) and just clicked the bejeesus out of the button. Once I had like 50 tabs open, I'd sift through the items to see what I got. If you have ever played DragonCave (DC) people do this all the time on holidays when special eggs are released. Just hold down CTRL, click anything you are interested in acquiring, and then check through the pile of newly opened tabs once you're done.

If someone (like myself) had used this method, they could have purchased 50-100 items before realizing some items were being bought in multiples, since the tabs are opened without being viewed and the goal is to be as quick as possible.

I am sure that out of all the people did this and then realized what had happened, someone likely reported it, since the MB was equally available to everyone the day it have eligible items.

I don't doubt this may have happened, but it doesn't explain every situation. Some people knowingly did this knowing exactly what they were doing. I'm not sure if control clicking would have worked, I feel you would have gotten different items if you weren't fast enough.

I don't think anyone should be punished, but people knew this wasn't how the mystery box was supposed to work, did not report it, and continued doing it.

Thanks.

And yeah, that would be good too; I just wasn't sure if someone had said that in a different thread or something :/

WoW! this right here, makes me sick to my stomach, in thinking nothing was made or said via ticket at the time. I am so disappointed right now.

I think he means there's no incentive for them to participate any more than just a single donation. there was no chance of them winning the contest or seeing any of their donations do anything. I think. :P

Shouldn't popular team prizes benefit the team??? :o I mean, if people join a team specifically for the prize (though I'm not saying they would), they'd join the one with the best prize. So honestly the team prizes being revealed pre-event didn't seem to have much of an negative/positive impact on team-joining.

The community pile wasn't thrown out, the people who donated to that got Aspen's ice skin, just not the team/winning prizes. The point of the it was so that people late for signups could still donate to get a small prize out of it.

I'm also pretty sure refreshers were allowed at avalanche emporium because you were still spending money at a shop that didn't have wait times. And also to donate prizes. Although I'm not positive, but people were discussing it and giving out links to browser extensions for it on a lot of the team boards.

I agree that staff should have let everyone know publicly. But I think the only reason it seems like they're pointing fingers at Mischief is because Mischief are being the most vocal about it. Of course you guys have a good reason to, being that you and Stick Together were in close competition but ultimately none of the teams realized at the same time, and even then there were people offline, and none of the players necessarily notified their team-members. For example, in team BFF's thread they were saying no one even notified them, instead only posting in the largest team's threads about it. So everyone is feeling a little left out of the loop because of it. Tbh, I think the reason the staff may be sounding rude atm is because they've had to repeat literally so many times that in this context only they do not consider it glitch abuse.

autorefreshers are always allowed, they cannot detect them. events need to stray away from doing repetitive actions until something comes along that can detect or disable them.

the thing is, if anyone had gained an advantage through it, our position on it would have been completely different. the only reason we responded the way we did is because of that outcome. i guess i figured you guys would trust us enough to know that.

I understand that completely. I just don't understand why it isn't being called what it is. taking an advantage of a glitch. that is what happened isn't it? even though it doesn't impact the outcome, it doesn't mean people did not take advantage of a glitch. I'm not asking for any punishment to happen. I just want someone to say that not reporting it and continuing to get items from this way was wrong.

I know it was stated clearly. I think it was a critique for future events? I know why it was done though, so people wouldn't bandwagon and join the winning team. maybe a team can be made for latecomers or something... idk. I kinda like the idea of achievements for participating x amount of times.... but ehhh idk about that either. to me, there's no best way to do it because each way to set it up has its pros and cons. I could go through all the possible ways with you if you want and we could discuss them. I'm great at pointing out flaws. the MC for participation prizes was a great decision. they were very affordable too, I'm sure many people appreciated this. I joined the team with the name I liked the best. it sounded the coolest, everything else sounded a bit too sappy for me :P