The Division developer Massive Entertainment has begun punishing players who've used the latest discovered Incursion exploit to obtain ill-gotten high-end weapons and gear. And the punishment is severe.
Ubisoft Community Manager Natchai posted on their forums "We are working on fixing the exploit. Obviously it is against our Code of Conduct and the team is looking into what can be done in terms of punishment for those who've exploited. If you want to review our Code of Conduct: http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php...ode-of-Conduct"
This particular exploit find use in the newly released Falcon Lost Incursion. Players found that using the Survivor Link and Mobile Cover could be used to workaround the entire Incursion. This lead Division players to find the APC without setting off any alarms and entirely unaccompanied by any other AI enemies, destroy it, complete the Incursion, grab their new loot, and best part is they could do it repeatedly! Without waiting for a weekly reset, the APC would just continue dropping great gear every time.
Well, the team at Massive came to an agreement on what to do about players who have used this exploit: Drop the Ban-Hammer on those poor souls.
The Code of Conduct that Community Manager linked to does indeed state that "Exploitation of any new or known issues or bugs is forbidden and may result in account suspension or revocation" and it seems that they meant it. Agents who used an exploit faced suspension, any who continued after suspension risked facing the Ban-Hammer.
Of course these players haven't just sat back and said "well that was fun, but wrong so I'll just have to start a new character." No, social media is all abuzz with about it. I won't be quoting anyone but go have a look yourself.
This seems to have set off one hell of a conversation, all surrounding the question: Who is in the wrong? Massive for banning players who were using an exploit, or the players who broke the Code?
On the one hand, they did break a rule. A huge one at that. On the other, why would just these players be punished? Exploits have been in The Division almost since launch, and they've mostly been patched out, while players got to keep their loot. Remember Bullet King and his friends, anyone? But this one was the straw that broke the camel's back?
Many say that it's Massive's fault for leaving the bug in, not properly testing for that kind of thing, and I kinda agree with them. Bug tests are a huge part of any MMO type game, and if you let one slip, it shouldn't fall on the players to police themselves. That's like saying stores don't need security officers and such because stealing is wrong and people won't do it. if there aren't measures in place to prevent misgivings, there's no guarantee nobody will act on it.
In my opinion, there should be something done to the players who've used this exploit to score better gear and get a leg up on other players, but a ban is too much. I believe they ought to be placed in a bracket for others with the exploited gear and let them duke it out, much the way other games place cheaters into lobbies with other cheaters, doomed to endlessly out-cheat each other, like a mad game of cheaters' chess.
What do you think? Do you think the ban was deserved or too much? Do you think Massive could've found some other punishment? Let me know in the comments below.
