Ultima Online Patch Introduces Economy-Wrecking Bug?

Thanks to PlayMoney for its weblog post revealing a recent Ultima Online patch designed to shore up the economy may have introduced new problems, as "the very same game patch... also [seems] to have introduced a gold-gusher of a bug, allowing some people to conjure themselves up a few hundred million gold pieces in the space of a week." The author references a thread on UO Stratics which includes allegations about "one guy that claimed to have made over 700mil to date on [a particular game server] with this bug", a total of $9947 under current dollar exchange rates if successfully auctioned. Although the other new economic rules "seem otherwise to be working out fine", and this exploit was "fixed last Friday [5th]", the author is concerned that "by the time the new money gets fully circulated, gold will be selling for $7 per million", half of the current $14-per-million auction price.

Comments

Unintended Consequences

[G4from128k]

The reminds me of an Artificial Life example. A scientist was simulating evolution using some little virtual animals. Built into the simulation was an energy cost for moving -- the virtual creatures were supposed to evolve efficient strategies for finding food and mates. The creatures quickly evolved the ability to move backwards becuase this was counted as negative movement which meant negative cost, so that actually gave the creatures more energy.

For every clever policy created by some scientist, game designer, economist, corporate manager, or clever politician, there is an even more clever counterstrategy that someone is bound to discover.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[hattmoward]

I'm surprised that nobody pointed this out, but why would a scientist do something like that? Certainly, energy cost would be calculated by the magnitude of the movement vector, right? I'm not even sure how someone could get it to work in that manner -- it just doesn't occur to me. It'd have to be some pretty bad code, like "Energy Cost" = "Step Cost" * "Steps Forward", but you'd probably have to waste some math on figuring "Steps Forward". Send your scientist a letter, tell him, "a^2 * b^2 = c^2". Don't get me wrong, I'm not debunking your real point, just your example! :) I think that the latter two policymakers are the real problem... isn't "clever politician" an oxymoron?

Re:Unintended Consequences

[Dachannien]

Okay, how about this one: An artificial life project involved virtual agents with a set of linked blocks which had actuators at the joints. The fitness function was for the agent to achieve the highest vertical position possible during the time allowed. Due to a bug in the code, or an anomaly in the physics model, agents evolved that would use their appendages to beat themselves over the "head". Doing so would propel the body upwards for some reason.

Here's another, from my lab: An evolvable agent project involved evolving a controller for a model of a robot based on the cricket insect. The model simulated interactions between the tarsus (foot) and the ground, but not between the ground and the rest of the leg (for the sake of speed - the computations are orders of magnitude more heinous with other contact implemented). So, the GA found that it could obtain a better fitness (faster locomotion) by protruding the femur-tibia joints (think "knee") through the ground, with the feet still resting on top of the ground.

Here's a third example, from my Master's research: A model of a simpler cricket robot was used to evolve a controller for that robot. At one point, there was an issue with the method of integration (Runge-Kutta 4th order) having problems with the high stiffnesses in the equations of motion. The GA exploited this fact, and determined that by inverting the legs (protruding the "knees" through the floor), and holding the feet (modeled as points) firmly against the ground, the numerical inaccuracy would accelerate the robot forward without requiring the robot to move the legs otherwise at all.

If you delve into the guts of genetic algorithm projects, you will find zillions of instances of the GA giving you what you "asked for" instead of what you wanted. (Usually, these anomalies don't get published, as the phenomenon is well known by anyone who has fiddled around in the field.)

Re:er

[Hedonist123]

This seems to lead me to the question, is it right for Origin to be able to do this? I mean, granted it's not good for the game to have this sort of inflation. But, it's not necessarily true that the player did anything wrong. It's somewhat like someone playing the stock market really, really well in real life. Should the government be able to say, sorry, your system worked too well, we're taking the money back? Granted, this is a private company with holdings in a game... I guess I just think it's fun to think about.

hed.