Important! Warning! Pirates exploiting Summoning to Privateer

They can mean "legal" by law, that is they don't do any real crime. But they have not said that MA think this and "okey" behavior.

 

Hiding in instances?

 

that´s quite a big thing, not for me as i´m not a frequent traveler but i read of several occasions where people missclicked while hunting etc.

on the other hand it´s a small issue for mindark to fix something people are complaining and which is now obviously abused, too.:soangry:
question to MA, why is the trade request and the friend request in the upper-right corner where u usually can´t click by accident but the summon invitation not? easy answer is they have to add another window where u are legally `educated` about the pvp stauts of space and such.

a simple relocalization of the window away from the very center of the screen would suffice, or make it bigger or like a pm window pop-up notifier. so many ways and it´s ridiculous there still was nothing done to end this mess.

 

Yay progress

 

Well, late to the party but one of the first at it...go figure...lol.

Hipster gave me the warning from FOMA when he got hit and almost the same time (litterally 5-10 seconds) I get the summons from the XXXII. Now, this was a shock as I didn't even know there WERE 32 ships in space (I have since learned there is alot more then that) but, due to his timely warning, I turned it down and sounded the warning in the Rangers and spoke directly to Neil and the others, sent word to friends like Kitten (waves) and shouted around Icarus to warn those there.

Over the next 2 days, I got repeated summons, 10-20-30-40-50....and it kept going. Now, you would think they would know I am not going to be sucked into it but, its obvious they are trying to catch someone clicking on the middle of the screen and thus, a misclick on the summons green check mark.

I made a ticket, got the stock answer that "we are aware of it" and what not and the saga has played out as ppl can read in many forums now and I still hear it talked about in warnings in game. No need to rehash it out.

Now, I have two simple questions.

1) Will MA please make it where the Summons screen has a few seconds pause before the green check mark goes live?

The red X can be active from the start. This will allow ppl to close it right away but will also give them a few minutes to not accidentally get summoned away.

2) Please make it where you must CONFIRM ADDITION TO A SHIPS GUESTLIST just as you must confirm a FRIEND REQUEST.

This will kill this kind of stunt from ever happening again. If someone is going to be added to a ship guest list, I think they should agree to it not just be told they got shanghaied onto it. I mean any legit ship owner would never mind this and its a simple thing to do that will help the entire community.

 

Here is mine:
Hi ,
Thank you for contacting us. Please rest assured that we will further investigate this incident and we will keep his/her behaviour under close observation. It is really regrettable that some people are just out to ruin the Entropia Universe experience for others.
We have forwarded this information to our team for further investigation.
Kind regards,
Entropia Universe Support

My suggestions on this issue are adding a remove from guestlist button to the summon Queue and of course, a confirmation queue when added to a GL. Although I like the idea of re-placeing the summon queue so it is not in the ceter.

-hip

 

MA is violating their own TOU with that comment.

It may be "Legal " and "Okay" in one sense, but it's Illegal against the Terms of Use agreement everyone agreest to.. and I would like t pointout the legal loophole here, after all if this is the case then MA's so called "Legality" is violating their own TOU and thus they should be banned from produucing the game.. Otherwise I feel this would be a bannable offense.

The term in question is thus Section 8, Subsection (c) of the Terms of use..

(8)c. You cannot interfere with any other Participants ability to use and enjoy the Entropia Universe.

But them summoning people onto a ship, without their notice or even their knowledge is in direct violkation of the TOU and the EULA that MA itself wrote up. If the player is hunting and they unknowingly get summoned onto the ship against their will then it's a violation of rule 8c.. Because said person is interfering with the pother players enjoyment of the Entropia Universe..

I may not be Mindark, but this smacks of full hypocrical statements by Mindark themselves, and thus if this was the case, then MindArk has thus violated their own EULA by allowing this and saying "Summoning is Legal"..

Summoning and thus disrupting a players enjoyment of the game is nothing short of Kidnapping, and believe me, I've seen two cases in the last 3 months where in Real life, Kidnappers got the raw end of the deal.. One is sitting in Prison in RL for hthe 30 years left, but he's got a 1000 year sentence on top of that. The second who just recently kidnapped a 165 year old, got killed this last week, and the girl got returned to her family, unharmed (though her brother and mother died at the hands of said kidnapper when he killed them and then burned down the house to hide the evidence..

Now even though MA says it's legal, being a hypocrite and allowing it to happen does violate the rules that they set down themselves, and it's a open and shut case.. and I play by the rules.. I have read this EULA backwards and forwards, and this is disrupting a players enjoyment of the game with deception and coercion..

Hypocrite much MindArk? Because if it is, then expect me to boycott this game and expect no further deposits until the problem is fixed. End of story.

 

MA nether said the actions taken by these players are legal and they are not allowing this to happen. Don't know where you got that information from. As for Summoning it is a system for ease of use and regular use of the system is legal but abuse of the system is not, its as simple as that.

There was a delay due to MA staff being on vacation and requiring time to study the logs before a decision can be made and does not mean MA allows this to happen because of that. MA can not simply act by looking @ support cases in these matters, they need to have physical evidence from the system logs before they can take action for legal reasons.

Suppose a hate group forms on the forms because of someones political views and they all cook up a story to get the guy banned. Then they all log support cases and MA just acts purely on the support cases even though that guy did nothing wrong. They would open themselves up to legal backlash without having any real evidence to back themselves.

Another thing that has been bugging me is players misinterpreting the statement made by MA as meaning "because you did this before we said its not allowed you are ok but do it again and you are in trouble". This statement is so that anyone else that thinks about doing this knows MA's stance regarding this matter and also to let players know they will create a solution to this issue. MA haven't suddenly changed their stance regarding this after they made the statement so its foolish to think MA will not take action against what happened before this statement.

 

I think the biggest problems are:

1) Mindark was aware of the issue for 2 years and neglected to fix the summoning system
2) Mindark all went on vacation without leaving anyone with proper authority to watch over the game, inviting exploits from this kind of player

I don't know how many peds were lost, but a lot of players lost confidence in the game. They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and it's true in respect to players' feelings about the game now. For the past two years it would have taken what... surely not more than a day of coding to add a confirmation window to summons?? It's going to take a lot more energy to regain players' trust in the game. And it's not just space, it impacts the planet partners too when people stop hunting, mining, and crafting because there's a chance they could at any moment be unwillingly transported to a hostile ship in lootable PVP.

 

I got the impression that no further steps would be taken against the offenders, due to the way the statement was worded. There was no mention of individuals being under investigation or anything.

Also.. and slightly off topic

View attachment 7945 View attachment 7946

does anyone else see that? ^_^

 

Well my 2 pecs worth of opinion as a RL business owner and enjoyer of the game is this...

A simple move of code from the Friend Request setup to the Guest List/Summoning system shouldn't take more then one work cycle (less then 24 hours surely) but getting to the point where its at the top of the list might be the cause of such a delay.

However, if its been 2+ years as Neil posted...well that is a whole other can of worms...no excuse for this if indeed it was a "known exploit".

I mean, its not hard to cut and paste code and then adapt it to the place you put it if the two codes are very similar. And simply adding a CONFIRMATION to a request to be added to a starship's guest list exactly like is done with a Friend Request would kill this stunt dead...period..close the book..fergeddaboudit...you are done...

Because any LEGITIMATE ship owner will not mind having to have a passenger or crew member have to ACCEPT being added, nor will there be such a rush that it needs to be bypassed.

The ONLY kind of ship owner that would not want this is the EXACT kind that did this...and this one is so well documented, so well known, so easily confirmed that anything short of complete confiscation of the entire account and removal of everything (and I mean loses ship, everything on the account, etc) is not sufficient to restore the trust of not only the CURRENT playerbase but any and all FUTURE players.

This is spreading out on the internet like a plague now too. And its giving the game, all planet partners, MA and the lot a bad reputation that I feel is not deserved. It is called customer service and spin management.

Its what most business owners understand is limiting the damage done by some dipwad who had nothing better to do than STEAL (and yes that is exactly what they did) from your customers.

If a robber comes into your business, robs your customers and your business...the customers don't really expect you to pay back the money that they lost. But they DO expect you to get the police involved and try to ARREST the robbers and see that they are jailed or at least put into the court system of any country on the planet.

Now, whether you can do this or not is not the point...you, as the business owner, should at least TRY out of simple respect to your customers.

So its simple....

MA needs to PUBLICALLY spank very hard the person in question, without giving too many details of course, and permanently ban and confiscate the account and everything on it. There are simple ways to track things and for pete's sake, they give you personal information and bank account numbers. You don't have to toss that out there but you CAN make it where the person is question (or ppl) don't PROFIT FOR REAL from this AND state for the general public you are doing EXACTLY THAT.

Remaining silent on this matter is EXACTLY like condoning it whether you like it or not. You can argue the semantics till the sun goes super nova and it won't matter one whit.

To paraphrase an old quote,

"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to stand idle."

Notice it doesn't say they are saying the evil is good or right or helping it in any way whatsoever. They simply are not ACTIVELY OPPOSING it.

Thus far...this is EXACTLY the impression that is being given to the public. Saying "We are doing blah blah" about it and then no results being seen is even WORSE because it smacks of hypocrisy and a "we don't care" attitude that I am sure is NOT the case.

But appearance is alot just like reputation is.

Have a good one of both, not a bad one of both is the best advice. If it costs you very little money (even a decent amount) it is worth every penny of it.

Just my not so humble opinion...yours will most likely vary as will your mileage.

I am "Fat Dwarf" Simeron Steelhammer and I wrote, feel, and condone this message...NARF.

 

Mwahahaha

awesome

 

Drop your vote here about this issue: http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/f...me-for-a-poll-Known-Issue-Spaceship-Summoning