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EVE Devs Dissect, Explain Massive Economic Exploit
In December we discussed news that a major exploit in EVE Online had just been widely discovered after being abused by a few players for up to four years, creating thousands of real-life dollars worth of unearned in-game currency. Representatives from CCP Games assured players that the matter would be investigated and dealt with; a familiar line in such situations for other multiplayer games, and often the final official word on the matter. Yesterday, CCP completed their investigation and posted an incredibly detailed account of how the exploit worked, what they did to fix it, how it affected the game's economy, and what happened to the players who abused it. Their report ranges from descriptions of the involved algorithms to graphs of the related economic markets to theatrically swooping through the game universe nuking the malfunctioning structures. It's quite comprehensible to non-EVE-players, and Massively has summarized the report nicely. It's an excellent example of transparency and openness in dealing with a situation most companies would be anxious to sweep under the rug.
EVE is a large, single universe. It's adversarial at almost every level, and ... only the most trivial things can be done solo.
... well, frankly EVE just isn't particularly deep in that part of gameplay.
... 4, 5 years now, and I'm still not bored with it.
The market is entirely player driven - barring a few very limited exceptions, everything there is player made and traded.
What it's not, is it's not a PvE experience - they're looking at improving the PvE content in March, but as it is right now, if you want to go 'compete with the system' then
What EVE is is a massively multiplayer PvP game. It's got a lot of 'strategy game' type elements - whilst you fly your own ship, and don't control much else, there's very definitely supply lines, logistics, intelligence, espionage, diplomacy, tactics, unit experience and morale. You don't necessarily get to be 'commander' but the really good corps and alliances are those with strong and effective leadership teams, at every level, but only when supported by competent and intelligent pilots.
It's very open ended - you don't get told to 'go do this quest' or 'go level up' - this doesn't suit everyone, but once you grasp that it's just a case of 'go and do something you find interesting/fun/profitable'... well, that's the start of a giant space playground experience. I've been playing for
EVE has a single universe, and a notable penalty for failure. Those two things mean that 'something like this' can have far reaching consequences across the universe and gamedynamics. It's not really like someone item duping on a PvE server, where ... well, actually that guy over there cheating doesn't have much impact on your game. The magnitude of this exploit is such that alliances can rise and fall with the amount of cash in question - and when an alliance falls, there's another player on the receiving end of the sackbeating.
... well, takes a lot of fun out of the game.
... year or more ... internal affairs is scrupulous about it, because the vast majority of CCP employees are as much EVE addicts as the player base.
To use an analogy, no one really cares if you've got god mode on in single player Doom. Maybe you find that more amusing, but no one really cares. Face off on someone in a deathmatch though, the fact that they're invulnerable and you're not
And yes, they're quite careful about the devs thing, because of that scandal. If they _hadn't_ mentioned it, then the question would have been asked. From what I've seen over the last
Smart developers do not have an adversarial attitude towards the people that pay their salaries.
Who pays their salary more? The odd 150 cheaters or the 150k non cheaters expecting the cheats to be banned? They'd lose more customers if people got the idea than cheating wasn't kept in check than they lost with that round of bans.
There was a bug in the way items were produced, making free items.
The economy reacted accordingly by decreasing the market cost for these items.
Items that need these free items were also accordingly cheaper.
When discovered, the costs of the free items and the items requiring them shot up due to market speculation and decreased supply.
The economy in general will have some bumps, but will eventually recover.
The perpetrators have been shot.
EVE provides a realistic, persistent world that is NOT totally controlled by the people that programmed it.
Game events depend on the players in many more ways than a simple MMO like WoW. (Not that WoW is simple but in comparison to EVE it plays like a kid's game in the simplistic play.)
It's more like the difference between driving an R/C car and an airplane. The Car (WoW) is more 2D in the gameplay. You're restricted to forward, back, left, right. All the characters pretty much play the same. With EVE, the sheer complexity of the skills and economic systems makes the gameplay extremely rich and absorbing.
In fact, that's the downside to EVE. It, like all MMO's becomes a timesink of immense proportions.
One of the best features is the fact that dying can bring with it immense setbacks, wiping out months/years of work and finances. That's an ever present edge that most all other MMO's lack. Keeps you glued to your seat during firefights. :)
As for the complexity? The game has one of the best tutorials and new-game experience of any game I've ever played. They know it's complicated (but then so is life) so CCP has gone to great lengths to make it EASY to learn how to play. It takes time and talent to play well. :)
If anyone is wondering what POS is short for, it's "Player Owned Station".
Personally I think the article reads a lot better if you instead use "Piece Of Shit":
CCP Games explains the scenario from the ground up, detailing the POS game mechanics for those unfamiliar with the industrial side of the game, and pointing out how the POS exploit worked.
The proper order in which to evaluate a POS is essentially breadth-first traversal....
POS Reactors are complex beasts, but not quite so bad as POS Control Towers.
and so on.
Quoted from the "incredibly detailed account" linked in the OP:
Reactors always need inputs, right, guys? Right. Let's save cycles here and just not evaluate this reactor! I mean, it'll never get evaluated and thus never come online, right? ... Right?
Oops.
So, presume you've run a few cycles of your POS. Your reactor is humming along nicely. It has produced stuff this cycle. It has produced stuff last cycle. The Control Tower is running all of your stuff in the right order. Everything is fine. Until something unexpected happens.
The user cuts off all the links to the reactor.
The Control Tower, crazed by its optimization logic, careens through the production code. Wide-eyed, it reaches your reactor first. In its addled eyes, it sees only that the poor reactor has no links.
The Control Tower speaks.
"We can't stop here! This is bat country!"
Onward the Control Tower drives, speeding towards the silo at the far end of the reactor's link.
The reactor has not been evaluated. It does not know that another cycle has passed. It still remembers, fondly, grazing on inputs during its previous, un-bugged production cycle. Without this information, the silo goes ahead and adds another cycle's worth of goods to its stack.
Free stuff has entered the system.