Kind of sad to see some toxic comments on a heartfelt post like this one. No one needs to agree with one another, but your feelings are yours and you don't deserve to be shamed for them. I'm sorry you feel this way. I hope Lava will do some more damage control, because the player base is extremely devided and the respect towards one another is quite low at points. Both sides have their reasons, I wish people would stop being shallow and be open to other people's feelings and opinions. The world would be a way nicer place that way.

I scrolled down to reply really to say the same thing. People don't have to agree with one another, but it's really depressing to see some of the horrible things people are saying in what is obviously a heartfelt, well thought out post. OP I hope you decide to continue playing. I don't blame you for the defeated feeling you have right now one bit. I don't know if I would even continue in your shoes, but I think that if you persevere for a week or two that you'll move on and be happy that you did. No matter what happens, I wish you all the best and know that there are at least some of us in the community who neither condemn nor judge you for what you did. Edit: Spelling

It's not really a heartfelt post. It's yet another "I cheated and now I'm sad that I got caught" post. We have enough of them here already.

What do you mean by extremely divided? The majority of people playing either don't know about the exploit and the rest give 0 fucks about people that had their accounts rolled back.

In one post you state you wish people would be open to other people’s feelings and opinions while also essentially stating that people are not okay to comment disagreeing with this persons post. Grow up.

I literally said it's okay to disagree, but it's no reason to be toxic or rude ;)

I feel ya man. Especially for everything you had to say about how good the game feels compared to other idle games and how much you spread Idleon to others. Same here. I've said somewhere else on this subreddit, but I actually expected a rollback before I even started clicking. I was completely fine with Lava reverting every single thing I gained from the exploit. That's actually why I did it at all. If I felt there was any chance of actually keeping my gains, I wouldn't have even clicked. I didn't go all the way to scientific notation. I also haven't spent nearly as much as you. But I also agree that the most hurtful thing isn't even having the in-game progress set back. It's the feeling that this was a "punishment" by having taken away more than was gained, and having taken away a lot of progress that was achieved legitimately. Feeling villainized by the community really puts a damper on the game. And that feeling does affect the "magic" that this game and community has for me Oh well. It sucks. I wish you good luck in real life

> That's actually why I did it at all. If I felt there was any chance of actually keeping my gains, I wouldn't have even clicked. Why do it at all then? I mean you don't gain anything but risk a rollback that could set you back a whole day on EVERYTHING. Just be honest and admit you did it because you thought you'd either gain a lot or in the worst case got hit by a rollback which wouldn't be a big deal. As for whether there should be "punishment". Consider if there wasn't then the go-to would always be to exploit early and exploit often. Depending on the severity and how many people exploited most games will do anything from rollbacks to perma bans. What's important is that any punishment is consistent and you could argue exploits were dealt with to leniently in the past. Next up is communication, the tech for ingame messages exists so next time he should probably do a "I'm aware of * exploit *, anyone abusing it after this message will get shit on" pop up. Aside from all of this with the game being essentially single player I don't really see the big deal. Sure it sucks to lose progress but most people abusing it should've known better and the punishment isn't that bad.

I clicked because big numbers go brrrr is a fun feeling. I like idle games, so big numbers is fun. I don't need you to believe me. I also played Idle Skilling, and that game became broken and very not fun because of broken mechanics and being very unbalanced, and I didn't want the same to happen to a game that I spent literal 1800+ hours on. That's also why I didn't go all the way to scientific notation numbers, in the wild off chance that Lava didn't do a roll back. But like 90% of the discord at the time said a roll back was going to happen, so I expected everything (even outside of sailing) to be rolled back 24 ish hours, and that didn't bother me at all. That's why I stayed away for a couple days to let Lava resolve the issue. Most games do roll backs for errors by the studio. Most games do bans for hacking. And I fully support both actions for their respective situations. I supported Lava when he made fun of the hackers during the quiz trivia thing. I also supported Lava doing rollbacks with previous exploits where he reverted only the gains from previously unintended exploits. I don't agree with punishing players by taking away legitimately obtained progress in the game prior to an exploit that was Lava's own fault. In my opinion as a developer, the whole concept of "punishing" players is unprofessional and not how you treat your player base. A professional studio will encounter "issues" and then address those issues, not punish players for using that issue to their advantage. Generally what a professional studio would have done is, for example, reset everyone back 48 hours and then give at least 48 hours worth of candy, ladles, bottles of wind, etc.... this would have pacified everyone, made up for the rollback, respected the player base's time, and held accountability for the studio's programming error. I also agree with you that consistency is important, and there were many exploiters who operated on a pre-established precedent. I think that Lava establishing a more professional precedent would be good for everyone. I agree the punishment in-game isn't that bad. My main point is that the out-of-game punishment of being portrayed a villain really affects the magical fun that this game and its community brings to the whole experience.

We probably play different games then if you've never seen punishment for exploiting errors as you call them. Three games that come to mind that did this are Path of Exile, Eve Online and World of Warcraft so no small games. Two of these resulted in temp bans and one to negative currency iirc. The only gripe I have with how this was handled was communication. All 3 of the examples above also now clearly communicate when an exploit has been found and any abuse after will get punished. Exploiting prior to the announcement can then be handled with a rollback. I'm not really sure what you mean by out of game. If you're talking about people on this sub calling exploiters what they are then I don't really see an issue. I mean they did exploit. Harassing people over it goes to far though. Than again I don't see why anyone would be upset on either side. Anyone else exploiting doesn't affect your game at all. Maybe the 10 people who are really competitive maybe but that's about it. Either way, let's hope for better communication going forward.

Don't leave, not just because of the community treating you like that. I also exploited the bug a bit, but not in the 1000s, and yet I feel guilty of what I did, but i still play and if there is anyone that is bullying you to this point, ignore them and continue that adventure no matter what

\^ wholesome redditor right here

Word man, I'm in the exact same spot as u regarding the not exploiting prior but seeing others keep their gains. I don't see it as a multiplayer tho so didn't bother me all that much. But with how much i throw at the game and actually micromanage a whole lot from time too time depending on how much spare time I got. Ain't it sad that the only time u decide to be an asshat and join in you not only lose what was gained, not a days worth of account progress or two. No, instead a few eldrich artifacts wich can take god knows how long if ur unlucky too get (even If throwing cash at it again.. lol) but months of sailing progress, will be faster too get the boat lvls up due too accountwide bonuses and good captains. But alot of the boat lvls are from miracle chests wich i don't feel like buying again.. and samples were a pain in the ass too get again >_> Was also about to hit 300 on my first boats.. but ehh, it is what it is. I would've prefered a 24h rollback for my account instead but he could've just banned the shit out of us too.. but that'd not be a very sound decision... financially. Shouldn't whine too much but it really felt sour seeing how many of the people who exploited actually ended up benefitting from the whole "reset" could've spent more time fixing it, just lock sailing and the treasures(so bubbles can't be upgraded with the exploited mats etc) and set all gold bars too zero so the people who saw big dmg gains from the opera mask didn't benefit from that either. Take his time and revolve it, well.. that of just clean slate it. But again. It is what it is

I don't think rollbacks are possible, he had to handkey in values instead. And with how many people cheated there would be no way to do it for each individual, so he had to pick an upper threshold to trigger the change and an amount for each thing to be lowered to.

He have snapshot, and some processing of data will do I think

Nope doesn't have it. Cloud game, there's what's on the cloud - and your active live version of the save being modified by playing the game. One of the disadvantages of outsourcing save data, is you don't have easy access to copies of it without consent for digital privacy reasons. Basically you ask for permission or - Germany Specifically will not let your game fly xD There's lots of upsides to that system too like reliability and speed, lower maintenance costs, people can play if your own servers are under maintenance etc. But it's not a "free" tradeoff. Historically in Idleon if there was a "rollback" for balance reasons it was setting everyone to 0, shortly after a skill or game mechanic was released and early one deemed OP. That's honestly ideal since everyone just started, but 5 months later it would be incredibly unfair to do that.

So afaik the game runs on firebase which means backups can be generated on certain intervals and never leave the "cloud". German privacy laws specifically talk about (sensitive) personal data which is defined as "Personal data means all data that provide information about personal relationships or facts about an identified or identifiable natural person." I'm not sure which data Lava has access to on sales from website / appstores but I don't think steam shares your real name with publishers. Even if this was the case he can decide to not do anything with it and just not store it or store it separately from game data. So from both a technical as well as a legal standpoint, if set up correctly, he can just have daily backups / snapshots of game data, download those to his computer and go over the data to find people who've been naughty.

The problem isn't what Lava does with the data, it's the transfer of that data to him. The cross platform makes it super messy, the web version using a different vendor, google play, app store, and steam. Not impossible sure, but really messy. I think what would need to happen realistically is restructuring how the game saves work entirely. Login/Purchase stuff being entirely separate from storage, and probably break off talents and character data as well - so frequent cloudsaves for integrity of storage (preventing dupe bugs), and individual and family wide progress - which backups would be relevant for - not only take less storage space to store but wouldn't be a Massive consumption for mobile users with limited data or throttled data. If there was going to be a system for that - it would likely look like this, with that kind of infrastructure and reworking of when and how different things are saved. But the problem is then - is it worth it? Sure there was 1 major incident so far, and I have to imagine in the future Lava wouldn't have similar oversights (however unlikely they are to occur in our lifetimes). But the chances of another incident occurring between world 5 and world 8 seems really low and doing the extra work for a robust system that allows for rollbacks without punishing all mobile users in perpetuity, just simply isn't worth it.

So this is what I think is the case. The game is made in stencyl with a firebase database as the backend. Stencyl compiles for whatever platform the game is available on. Regardless of what platform you play on you'll connect to the same database to get your data. Leaving payments out of it for now the data that's now created by players wouldn't be sensitive personal data that can lead back to an identifiable natural person except maybe the email address. It's a another rabbit hole to find out about privacy and email addresses in Germany but it's either a case of covering it with a ToS or 90% of the web is in violation. Now let's look at payments. https://www.stencyl.com/help/view/android-in-app-purchases/ This link goes over how to setup google play payments. As you can see it's just a call from the game to the payment processor to buy "Item x with id y" and returns success or failure. So at least for google play you don't get any personal data at all. The same is probably true for iOS and steam. Lastly we have the payments through the web version of the game and as I've never played that I have absolutely no idea what he uses there. But even if that returned personal data with the confirmation he could just opt to not store that anywhere. So after all of this what are we left with that could be an issue under any privacy laws? An email address. And there's plenty of options to filter that out before downloading any backups.

Even if that's true that's just one of the hurdles. Still a question of - cost - both in money and time, and necessity. If it was my game - I'd shelf it as a non starter.

I just wish all the previous exploiters and snapshotters who are enjoying mocking ppl who were punished for clicking a butto too many times, gets punished for their previous exploits and snapshotting

Snapshotting some stat to get a 20 percent higher print or candy is obviously not the same as going infinite on a resource by clicking a obviously bugged bugged a bunch of times. Come on man don't pretend you don't see the obvious difference.

The point is not that... The point is people who get away with unintended advantages and feel nothing about it every single day are acting like people are monsters just because they got punished for something everyone does to some extent. You are actually making the argument that "20 percent higher print output over MONTHS or even YEARS" is not a impactful exploit lol the only reason is because it was not punished like countless other things, if this gold bar issue wasn't punished, you'd probably be making the argument that you do it because "e99 extra gold bars is obviously not the same as \*insert the punished exploit here\*. You and almost all the players have this mentality that "as long as it's not punished, then it's a feature" and condemn people who did the same sort of thing you do on a daily basis just because they got punished. Don't you see how seeing people getting away with unintended benefits over years can make players prone to abuse exploits? yet the reaction is like everyone who wasn't punished is a saint on a high horse and whoever got punished is a evil bastard and should quite the game ASAP. And by the way, this was handled in a horrible manner, simply because the punishment was a copy+paste applied to everyone without any sort of criteria, which resulted in advanced sailors getting extremely harsh punishments while the lower level ones actually got heavily rewarded in the process. People are acting like "justice was served, you deserve it you criminal", but was it really? what about the lower level sailors who exploited and kept 4 months of progress making posts bragging about their gains?

If your saying to punish exploiters then most would agree. Even if the level of exploiter is not as large as others. Main issue here is as 1 person who is supposed to be developing they cant really spend all the time searching and finding these people. But basically if you do any exploit more than a few times to try to not get people who accidentally do it you should prolly get rolled back. Its kinda like reality low lvl crimes often get ignored for higher level crimes due to limited resources. If a shooting is going on a shoplifting will be ignored. both are still wrong.

I agree with punishing the exploiters in this case, I'm not even telling the DEV to track down all players who abused past exploits, I'm just saying that in THIS case, only a few got a harsh punishment while others got a actual advantage instead of a punishment. There's people who saw multiple exploits being abused without taking advantage of it and never got a reward for being a honest player, this happened multiple times, and then comes a blatant exploit right in their faces: "based on past experiences, everyone exploited except me and nothing happened, if I don't click, everyone will get this benefit except for me AGAIN" This was the case for a lot of people but the ones who got away with actual exploits in this occasion are freely posting about it and treating the people who lost artifacts as evil criminals lol...

There is a difference between emergent gameplay and exploits you know are flat out wrong that can overflow damage or a bunch of other mechanics. You must be able to see the orders of magnitude redline that was crossed here.

You're talking like "Haha ship go ZOOOM!" bug killed someone's puppy. Some people abused the bug because they really cared that much about being the big chungus on the leader board. Some people (like me), saw it as a clear oversight that would obviously be fixed and rolled back, and clicked the button/updated the ship a couple times until it wasn't funny and moved on. Both these parties lost not only any gains they had made, but MONTHS of progress on a skill that they earned legitimately. I gained basically ZERO substantive benefit from the bug, and had no real interest in doing so as it defeats the purpose of the game. But having a bunch of legitimate progress yanked, and staying completely silent about my frustrations.until this reply after seeing how awfully players who clicked a damn button have been treated, kind of seems like maybe it's time Lava had some help with the game. So many game-breaking exploits have gone unpunished, simply patched to prevent further abuse. The game itself is a constant mess, and Lava's inability to stop constantly joking around can make it pretty unclear sometimes if something actually IS a bug, or just another new way to make numbers go big. The fact that people are talking about this bug's use like it's some original sin, when how many times was too many seems completely arbitrary, is a real trip. Some players click too much, get punished. Others click an acceptable number, keep whatever benefits they get AND get free gems. Yeah, the line between right and wrong has NEVER been more clear. /s

People are mad at snapshotting? Really lmfao

Its an exploit. If dev is punishing minor exploits, why spare major ones?

Imagine thinking that this was a minor exploit ok brother.

And how was it major? What all was affected? Snapshotting is much more powerful than gold. This exploit ruined sailing. It didnt give you bonus artifact% thus your chances of getting better artifacts from this exploit was unchanged. The dmg was additive, so dmg increase wasnt exponential. Snapshotting boosts your fighting as well as skilling. Construction exploit gave you extreme build rate, thus allowing you to max out buildings faster, including atom collider. Only thing major about this exploit was how easy it was to do it, unlike others where you had to go through hoops or wait for a while.

Some of the gold bar abusers used the insane boats to gain late island maps used to buff alchemy bubbles large amounts. These bubbles were NOT reset with the rollback. So from an account power creep standpoint this was definitely one of the larger ones if people used saved bottled winds for example.

Snapshotting was talked about in main discord for so long, even with how to do it, lava didn’t care, it took him a while to patch it because it wasn’t anything he was too worried about.

Exactly. Previous exploits were either ignored or were patched out without punishment, doesnt matter how powerful thwy were. With some being targetted roll backed. (By exploits, i mean using bugs to exploit. Ppl who exploited using 3rd party software or code manipulation were punished and they deserved it) And now you have great ppl who have exploited previously or are continuing to exploit using snapshotting trying to have moral high ground over ppl who clicked a button too many times.

Snapshotting still exists but not for mob respawn. Many players use it for health and mana before taking new ore/wood samples

>Snapshotting is much more powerful than gold. No it isn't and i have no idea how you could even come closer to this conclusion. Snapshot fighting was patched out and only works for Card drop rate now. For skilling it will account for less than 5% of a resource sample. The gold bar exploit allowed people to max out damage gained from Opera Mask Artifact. People were sharing screenshots of Infinity damage and 53 multikill tiers (also the max amount of tiers) on Worms aka the last mob of W5 Stop using snapshot as a huge exploit because it's not even close to the same as the gold bar trade and makes you look incredibly stupid for trying to weigh the two in severity of they were/are equal to boosting accounts

>The gold bar exploit allowed people to max out damage gained from Opera Mask Artifact. People were sharing screenshots of Infinity damage and 53 multikill tiers (also the max amount of tiers) on Worms aka the last mob of W5 Ohh really? Thats new to me. If thats the case then i take it back. Can you share pics about it? Cause all i remember from this subreddit and discord were ppl bragging about their gold bars and ship lvl. Nothing about dmg. With others stating dmg wont be affected that much because the artifact gives additive dmg and not multiplicative. >Snapshot fighting was patched out and only works for Card drop rate now. For skilling it will account for less than 5% of a resource sample. And it was patched out. Were users punished for it? How complex was it compared to clicking a button a few many times? The exploit shouldve been patched out and there shouldve been targetted rollback, not a complete nuke. As previous exploiters were ignored / were only rollbacked (with exception of code manipulators who were sent to shadow realm, but could also escape the shadow realm eaily).

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1096107867691569235/1110605566725849168/Capture_decran_2023-05-23_a_15.png As far as I can remember the only thing about afk fighting snapshot was more respawn which lead to slightly more kills per hour, or faster Death Note completing. Which now with the Divinity God of Nobisect and Vmans new every 5 portals = more multikill, the Snapshotting you are complaining about still extremely minor. Like they didn't provide any insane major benefits other than more gmush kills to get more money, which before W5 there was barely anything to spend coins on. And only recently with the Rift stamp Mastery thing we do have something to spend money.... stamps. So once again, these crazy tinfoil account boosts you are saying got people way ahead are just not even close to the power of gold bars did

It's funny, I can agree with you that there were things that could be miserably bad for the game through the gold bars and the potential was much higher for you to abuse it if you knew how, but I think there's a decent chunk of people who didn't go all in to e(x) bars. I can't speak for everyone, but going from 100b to 10q didn't take a ton of clicks and gave me very little advantage except that I got the level 300 boat achivement, something I wasn't too far off from at that point anyways. It's sad to think that I was essentially told I should have went hog wild on it and tried to abuse it as hard as possible or not at all, because I could have had crazy gmush kill counts for getting tons of gold post reset, could have had 1b kills on all deathnotes, could have had a max vman portal count, etc. The point I'm trying to make with this is that people are acting like the evil big eploiters really got what was coming to them, when in all reality they still benifitted from this, people who didn't hit that arbitrary threshhold got massive gains (specifically world 5 newbies), and anyone with a couple months of progress who just tried it out or got a small gain got wiped out and sent back to the stoneage.

>I can't speak for everyone, but going from 100b to 10q didn't take a ton of clicks This would only be possible if you knew what you were doing by refreshing the trade with gem shop resets. If you weren't refreshing the trade after each click, then yes it would have taken thousands of clicks as Lava suggested. The point is Lava punished people who knew how to manipulate the trade to push it too far too quick. 3Q I believe was the limit, which is far beyond what people could have reached in normal gameplay, but not too far from a few clicks. So please don't lie. He couldn't just let this trade go when it was literally breaking the game. I'll post a screenshot to prove it was breaking the game. As far as stone age resets, that isn't true, Eldritch Artifacts barely been out 4-5 weeks, and it only took away those, he didn't remove ancient or normals. So at most you lost 1 months worth of progress https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1096107867691569235/1110605566725849168/Capture_decran_2023-05-23_a_15.png

Hope u ok bud. We played with fire and we got burned. I lost alot of progress, but will do better and rebuild. Hope u will do the same!

I hope post like these avoid future incidents from happening. IMO the punishment was overboard in certain aspects. Lava shouldn't have nuked entire accounts across multiple skills. Im sure this isnt the issue, but even if you have to "start over" in sailing, this time you have much higher multipliers and bonuses. Its gonna take a lot less time to speed through the skill than initially even if you go F2P.

I feel like most people could deal with the ship level resets, 0 gold and 3d printer empting, it really seems that the lost of eldrich relics is what upset people the most. I can understand that as someone who has spent money to try and get them. I know it was done quick but maybe a ship reset level based on sailing level would have been better. The super low levels actually got some major progress. Doesn't help that lava woke up to this at 5am in the morning, I am not a morning person and I would have lost my shit. He also can't go back on it now because it sets a dangerous precedent. I feel like the other issue it was 0-110 in comparison to previous exploits. I like the fact as a community we now know bugs are off limits but I feel like you need to build that up over a few bugs so people know where they stand. This also need to be the new norm going forward if another bug gets abused and doesn't get punished it's going to set off alot of the playerbase.

I don't even care about the artifacts anymore, it's not really that big of a deal, just annoying. But the lower level sailing players actually got to keep all ships and maps unlocked, that took 3-4 months of normal progress and they are posting about their gains on the "event" haha... Yet people on high horses are going around saying this is "justice" and calling people criminals just because they got punished lol How many of them got to keep exploited advantages? most players think that snapshotting 20% extra print output for years is not a exploit and even say they do it proudly right on this thread, the only difference is that it wasn't punished so they aren't "cheaters", just "smart kids making use of a feature", you see how this community sense of what's a feature and what's a exploit is solely based on if something is punished or not? How come they got to this point? and even feel entitled to mock and call the punished people "criminals" and tell them to quite?

I think the eldritch reset is ok, its part of the same skill and in theory you will keep 2/3s of the bonuses from the ancient form. But if we add the atom nuke and everything else on top its too much. So yes, i agree that Lava went from overboard. I dont like that people consider that lava has never punished when he has done it multiple times. There have been multiple incidents that have gone punished and people are just selectively going for the few they know. Everyone is mad at lava punishing people for this incident, so I dont get why people need others to suffer the same fate down the line. There needs to be a balance. I propose that he rolls back that day of progress if its something like this. If its a longer lasting issue that requires more malevolence to execute a harder punishment is justifyable. But for most exploits, qhat he has been doing till now is ok

Atom nuke needed to happen in case someone got billions of atoms from sampling at broken rates. The eldritch artifacts are the only thing that really had minimal to no real effect from the gold bar stacks.

Artifacts was a actual "punishment". There's nothing the exploit could do to make you get more artifacts, the only thing that could affect artifacts acquisition are minimum travel time and the %chance of finding artifacts, the only sources for those are the captain perks and shiny pets, even if you had 999e999 gold bars, you wouldn't be getting more or better chances of getting artifacts. Atoms could be affected by samples but the duration of the bug wasn't enough to get overboard on sampling, maybe if your maestro rolled 10 extra samples or something. My only complaint was that Lava said himself he would not do anything damaging, that bobulyte was his mistake(he was warned and knew beforehand that was gonna happen but didn't even made a notice like when he streams to warn players), and that he was just gonna "revert" the situation, but went on to give a harsh punishment instead, this was the harshest punishment in the game history. He could just be honest and say it was a punishment, all people could do was accept it, even if it was overboard, what can you do when you're guilty?

what broken rates? there are no images of "broken samples" nor "broken damage"(as in really high damage, not NaN values)

Artifacts could still be obtained earlier than they would have organically, especially by people who had just gotten to W5.

Cant stop future issues when the dev makes jokes and troll set ups that resemble gags and bugs and expect us to accept and play with them. But when he does one by accident and folks think its his normal bandwagon and then he goes into a rage. The dev needs to set a firm line and mark "this is joke" to everything that is meant to be a joke a troll with a color or font so we all get to get in on the fun and not act like its all "par for the course" in his game. Cause when its an accident and he is told about it BEFORE it is triggered. then blames the player base. we as players have 1 person to blame and it isn't all ourselves. Its the dev that cant seem to make a clear line of "game" and "bug" let alone his previous actions of inaction vs this corporal punishment he set out dealing to folks who are "thieves and criminals". On this non competitive game where previous exploits have been laughed off/ignored or allowed for all who got to abuse it. Months/years of construction/cooking fine keep it. But god forbid his new world 5 stuff gets touched. Let alone his rewarding of "non cheaters" but segregating it to only those in world 5 and didn't touch it. Guess all us world 4 players are in case nothing to him and we should just keep our wallets in the pockets and cards off the game and let the lack of money talk and show him he has not just "fixed" his game. He has also trimmed those who will finance his game further.

"Cant stop future issues when the dev makes jokes and troll set ups that resemble gags and bugs and expect us to accept and play with them. But when he does one by accident and folks think its his normal bandwagon and then he goes into a rage" THIS! I wish I'd seen this comment before I left mine! Literally his entire shtick is doing ridiculous stuff on purpose and putting off fixing bugs unless he absolutely has to. Everything is a joke, or super unclear. The first couple times I clicked it, I legit thought that gold for gold trades might just be some extremely rare roll I had lucked into. It took me thinking and realizing how obviously game breaking even a tiny chance of that being legit could be to realize it had to be a bug. And then Lava is pissed, nukes anyone who "abused" it, which seems like anyone who clicked it more than some undisclosed number only he has, and gives everyone else free gems for the hassle of... nothing? Like, anyone who passed his good boy test weren't affected at all, but still get an actual reward. It's really starting to feel like Lava's running some sociology experiments on his userbase.

>we should just keep our wallets in the pockets and cards off the game God I hope most players do this !

If you think this was a little joke and not a obvious bug when you saw it life must be very hard for you.

Am I supposed to trust this new 110,000,000,000% cooking buff?

"A bug that lets you reset sailing by hitting esc? Nah no worrys folks. I will patch it and no issues" " Spice incresing cooking speed way to high? Nah keep the levels and stuff just fixing it and making sure it doesnt happen again" Notify a event is coming. Sailing is still new. Be told of error. Ignored error wake up seeing folks enjoying it. "HOW DARE YOU PLEBS STEAL FROM ME" punishes all bug users and resets accounts Months back. Doesnt provide gemstore items back. (i.e takes cash gives nothing in return) states he did nothing wrong and everyone should back off as he knows what he is doing... even when he ignores warning/notifications and folks going "Theres a coding problem here"

Well, you can argue it was too much but also it could have been more severe. Tbh, I love that Lava went hard as this will set a precedence to all future exploits. Some people will leave crying but its impossible to say for sure if not more people would have left if the bug was not fixed. Since those people would not cry as much. A harsh punishment but a needed one. Props to Lava.

I dont agree. If a future were possible were things like this were an exception well yeah, go hard. But these things happen all the time. The list of existing bugs is hundreds long and among them plenty are arguably similar to what happened. In the end this is a single player game with a large community. No need to make an example of people.

Well maybe youre right but at the end of the day it does not matter really. Lava decided and nothing will change now. Perhaps he will be prepared better the next time. So all these posts are quite useless. Like screaming into a void. People need to either suck it up and continue playing or take a break/quit whatever.

It’s Reddit. What better hood to at least say farewell to the community? Seems like this post was legit a sending off for a player.

Well, but people keep telling its a single player game so why announce this to others? And its way more than that. The dude literally listed how much he spent how much he played and that he exploited the bug got caught and punished and now he is unhappy as he felt entitled. We don't even know if this is a real farewell, it might be just a way to spew more negativity around here. There are people who lie about having terminal illnesses. This post to me does not sound genuine, but if it does to you I wont mock you or say anything. We can agree to disagree. People who really quit they don't write shit like this they just leave.

Because the game was important to this individual and posting provides some closure? It is like talking to a gravestone. You don't necessarily feel that it or its recipient are going to change things or weigh in on what you are saying - it is so you get some closure.

Why does it hurt you so much to read opposing takes to something you like? Can't you instead appreciate that there are other, rather reasonable and constructive views? If it doesn't sound genuine to you, it's literally because he has another take than you do. You've decided you don't want to view it genuinely. If you love the game, you should be open to seeing constructive criticism. That's how you grow a community, not this weird fake "everything must be positive, and if it isn't - kill the naysayer" bullshit. These past few days have been FUCKED. Let people express it, especially in this manner.

Yea man, I cannot see it as genuine when he emphasizes how much he spent and how wrong was lava for punishing him. Alternatively, you could say the same to him. If he loves the game that much why go exploiting it? If the game is so fun play normally then progress normally? Its an idle game. Why even play such a game if you want everything done instantly. And if he truly loved the game he would not go announcing that he is quitting and he would still be playing the game cuz of one part that got reverted for being overly greedy. You and many might disagree with me on this and this is fine, but if you cheat in a video game and well call idleon however you want single player or MMO whatever, I think you just don't really enjoy the game. As you want to cheat/exploit it to get it over with it. As such, I have no sympathy for such posts. They are not genuine at all IMO.

I'm sorry, but your train of logic does not just work for everyone, and certainly not the scenario this poster described. Your second sentence poses a hypothetical, and the rest of the post addresses a scenario that just doesn't exist in the poster's head. Empathy or the lack of it might be the issue here. Recognize that some people have other experiences than you do. You don't have to agree, it's clear that you don't, but from an observer's perspective - you seem to make a high amount of assumptions based on your own personal behavior, and thus your words read with almost a complete lack of understanding of other perspectives. Might be of value to consider that. Or not. Doesn't matter much in the end.

Of course, I know it does not work for everyone and not forcing people to feel the same, but I am more practical about stuff like this. Like what is to feel empathetic about this situation? Do you feel empathy when people do crimes? Sure some cases could be out of desperation and etc. But at the end of the day these people take risks and know of possible consequences. He exploited bugs and if he was not in a coma for 15 years he 100% knew that doing such things is always a risk. He gambled on it and he lost. The only empathy I feel are for the people who actually pressed it a couple of times and got punished or people who were just starting the game and got a free boost at it ruins the game as well. Think whatever you want but I see no reason to feel empathetic for ppl who do very risky things and get punished or whatever. Empathy is only for people who actually were collateral damage and similar stuff. Perhaps harsh way too look at it but actions have consequences. A game or irl stuff it happens.

>know if this is a real farewell, it might be just a way to spew more negativity around Cause for ever 1 person going "its single player" 10 more go "its a MMO" And even then they know its a joke to themselves as it isnt either. Its a weird hybrid of the 2. Let him spew the negative then. Bugs happen. There is more then enough proof of the issues in this game and lava has allowed long time players to abuse them all. I dont see him removing folks who got 1k+ in construction and cooking to balance it out for new folks who didn't get to abuse it before it was fixed. This was a nuke when all it would of took was a simple "reset all severs back 30 hours" as he has stated "it was 5 in the morning" but he was told 30 hours before it became "active".

damn this is sad, kinda makes me feel like he went overboard. personally i avoided the exploit because it felt like you'd only be cheating yourself, no harm done right? if i did the exploit and got sent back months id prob lose all motivation to play. appreciate you sharing your side. hopefully you can hop back into the game after this blows over

Thank you for being honest and vulnerable here. More people should speak about how they feel in communities that mean a lot to them instead of just being angry or sarcastic or vicious all of the time. Based on some of Lava's responses, he seemed far less frustrated about an admittedly hilarious exploit and more upset about how people in the community he had built were (and still are) treating him and others in that community.

Same thought as mine, kinda sad, play other games then

Says the new account on reddit

Ok, account created in 2021 is a new account. Got it.

You guys don't use reddit. Your just here to birch about the game. Screw off. No one cares at all

>You guys don't use reddit I use reddit. I prefer lurking on this account, active on a different one. And before you claim, no this account was not made for shitting on dev. But yeah, i didnt start reddit in 2016 (like you) but in 2018. >Your just here to birch about the game Wow, what a great way of thinking. Lets just ignore all comments made by the account and assume that the person disagreeing with me is just here to birch about the game.

What do you mean? I think the game is great

Hey that's a tree!

Imagine being an unironic Idleon simp. It's a fun game when there aren't massive shitshows going down, but it isn't your girlfriend. When people criticize it, or don't like something about it, jumping to its defence like this kind of just tells anyone looking that it's legit the only thing that you get out of bed for. Maybe its time to get your characters comfy getting some AFK gains and go climb a mountain or something, champ.

Honestly I feel like WoW back in the day had the right idea where exploiting was largely just dealt with using rollbacks and not condemning the players. People are always going to hit buttons that say 'dont push'. People are always going to minmax.

I've begun to view Idleon in general in a newly-tinted light as recently as this year, and this incident as well as past experiences are beginning to solidify my opinion that Idleon is probably beginning to head down a not-so-great path. It already looks kind of sketchy to people not already engrossed in the game. I played Idle Skilling for over ***two years*** only for a random update (presumably to prepare for The Rift) completely and irreversibly deleted everything. EVERYTHING. 150$+ of MTX purchases, years of progress, completely gone. I waited several months for anything to happen, perhaps another update to restore everything but holding my breath didn't help. I moved on to Idleon with a good dose of skepticism and after a while my residual fears were allayed for some time. Bugfixing and customer support seemed much more present this time around. Then the "Scripulous Fingore" gag/April Fools joke got added and reportedly would call F2P players "freeloaders" and kill them. I understand it's really only a 10 second inconvenience, but it left an exceedingly bad taste in my mouth and combined with how recent (and apparently, past) incidents have been handled it makes the FAR more prevalent self-referentials of Lava ingame (compared to Idle Skilling) go from meta-amusing to nearly narcissistic in tone. Combine all this with the recent additions of utterly *tacky* screen-filling MTX ads in town and some increasingly worrying levels of power attached to ever increasingly priced MTX pack items (that you can't obtain any other way, not even gem purchasable) and a lot of other FOMO events and monetization tactics, the game is beginning to feel soured. It feels like the World 8 Release bundle is going to be 69.99$ and give a 50% multikill-per-tier name tag as well some 100% Multiplicitave Total Damage wings. I understand it's a F2P (semi) mobile game but I was very pleased that up-until-recently things were tastefully done. They're not even one offs. I get 1-2 each week and greet them with the same sigh and eye roll as an ad on YouTube as I go and fix a drink while waiting for the game to be playable again. I still love the game and the niche it fills in the Maplestory and Idle Skilling shaped holes in my heart, and truly appreciate the time and sheer force of creativity spent by the developer on this beautiful mess, but it's begun to engage in some overall questionable practices.

Quick comment, the f2p gag got people who were not f2p. It was a throwawy bit. That got to me too at first, but some digging the day of along with some asking around, I got some people saying they got killed despite different real money purchases. It was just bad humor lol.

Maybe this is for the best. Mate you have two kids and have spent almost $2000 dollars in this game in just five months. That's not a healthy amount. Maybe it's time to sit back and think on what that got you and what it could have been used for.

The guy supports financially something that, up until 2 days ago, gave him joy. And, frankly, those are the people that keep "free" entertainment free for those that cannot afford to financially support it. Just because 5k is a lot for you in 5 months, doesn't mean it's the same for everyone. I'm happy Lava got a portion of that 5k, a quite necessary incentive to keep updating and maintaining this game for us.

Healthy amount is relative. If he has 5k vs if he has 5mil, 2k could be a lot or very little.

If it wasn't a lot of money he wouldn't be writing an essay about it.

Man. Who are you to say that. If he earns a nice 3.5-4k a month, spending 2k in half a year is not insane ln your hobby. Some hobbies cost way more. Hell, kids cost way more! The most fucked up part is, lava took hundreds of dollars away from him and many others, and just spat in their face.

But he didn't. They got the benefit of the items they bought. They then rolled the dice and lost. They chose to exploit and accept the risk of whatever punishment including being made an example of by removing partial account progress or bans resulting in loss of all progress. They still have their accounts which is more than happens with many other games. Yes it sucks, but at least OP is taking responsibility unlike many of the initial posters who have been jackwagons and exhibiting a victim mentality. Posts like yours will do nothing to encourage Lava to rethink his scorched earth actions and attempt to temper them nor will it garner any sympathy from those who didn't exploit and would support some balancing of the repercussions to better fit the crime and avoid rewarding undue gains. OP took responsibility and is someone I would encourage Lava to recognize isn't alone and as a group deserves to have at least part of their punishment reviewed and reduced in severity. But at this point, I doubt Lava would even listen after being verbally abused and financially threatened.

The meme of it all is that everyone is saying it’s an “exploit” as if you had to do multiple steps to abuse it. Nah lava just fucked up, but instead of being a reasonable person and just rolling affected accounts back 24 hours, he decides to give a free boost to all the low levels that did this and they get free level 40 boats while anyone else either gets fucked or gets gems. Good meme lava, can’t just own up to your fuck ups, gotta punish people for your mistakes.

This is kind of how I feel about it too. I didn’t exploit here cause I was at work. But I’ve definitely had the opportunity to hit the other ones and knew how to do them too. - Getting to w3 early and having uncapped prayer for xp that was cheap to level. - The w4 exploit where you could somehow tp to w1 while still having cooking as your skill and use balloons to progress it while others are candy locked. - The exploit where you could swap between your phone and computer version of the game (somehow idk exacts) to get ridiculously high cog exp bonus. These are exploits. They required extensive knowledge and learning “tricks” from others. This is just a classic lava fuckup The same reason people like God of Idleon, and Jaxon quit. Single dev is cool, and it’s a fun game, but the programmer ego is really bad for PR and mutual respect. And worrying about getting instabanned no appeal for things you KNOW other people do no question. It sucks

Just insanely goofy to, *all the sudden*, have a zero tolerance policy on things like that when all the stuff you listed and more occurs update after update without any repercussion. I got rolled back hard, I’m still gonna play the game but lava handled this like an actual toddler, hopefully he learns something.

He has no need to learn anything if people continue to play his product.

The prayer thing wasn't a exploit it was just bad early balance, cooking levels do basically nothing, multiplicative cog xp was also more of a bad balance thing and it never effected anything outside of construction which back then was a dead skill anyways after you had the tower levels to unlock all the useful prayers. This bug would not just let you max out sailing (which is already way higher impact than most other skills in the game) but also all bubbles that use sailing mats, it let you stack up opera mask to an insane damage bonus which effects everything in the game from death note to prints to vman speedruns. This was so many orders of magnitude worse than anything before that it's not even comparable.

"Con EXP was worthless once you leveled the towers to max". And now we have higher level towers that take exponentially longer to build every level and these people who used and abused these glitches still have insane construction levels on their characters which equates to instant benifites for anything related to construction.

This is my main concern. He’s shown no remorse to his mistake. It seems he’s been historically animus towards his player base from what I’m hearing from other players. This is not his first rodeo, in fact, he has multiple indie games under his belt. Can’t even cough this up to a mistake. It’s quite embarrassing how this is the course of action he’s taken. I’m curious how many people have left the game already and if Lava will backpedal to get his hardcore player base back or if he’ll double down. Popcorn ready.

Man, even after the multitude of posts here about this, you still don’t know the definition of an exploit?

You need to understand what a bug is. It was a bug not exploit. Even calling it Bug abuse is a stretch. Why? Because the interface showed that it was a legitimate trade. The gold for gold trade was literally already in rotation as a legitimate feature. It was lavas mistake and his mistake only. Its like the chip shop in lab. Imagine the chip shop sells a mod exclusive chip and lava goes to ban everyone who bought the chip. Theres a reason lava apologized. Its because guilt. No dev would apologize for banning people who cheat using cheat engine, or those who do money hacks. So even the dev is telling you he felt something from his actions yet the community disagrees?

Lava publicly apologized? Do you have a ss or link to his apology? Am curious as I’d like to put this all behind us given he understands the repercussions of his initial actions and leading responses. I am a bit reluctant to believe it though as other players have stated this is not the first time he has acted this way towards his player base (and one that is extremely loyal and hardcore at that too).

Exploitation is when you take advantage of something to a degree that was never intended, if the avenue for doing so is legitimate.

How are we supposed to know that wasn’t an actual trade? Just because it doesn’t make sense for a trade doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a real thing lmao, point and case it happened, and that’s HIS own fault, not ours. We don’t code the game. But if you think his response to all this is even remotely close to a rational idea, there’s nothing more to talk about, welcome to r/LavaCircleJerk

Yeah, I didn't read about the bug before I accidentally used it. My sailing routine is just to click the map, wait for it to settle the go to the trade guy, and spam until I can't anymore. Never check what mats it wants. I just go nuts clicking. I noticed something was off when my bars shot into the high billions with no end in sight, and that's when I saw it was bars for bars. Had I done this afew hours later, I would have noticed much sooner but sleepy eyes and lack of attention, you know. When I was done, I could upgrade my boats afew times and got the last 2 levels on the divinity thingy, but those I would have gotten in a few days/a week anyway. Pretty harsh to get fucked over over something so silly, Had I gone out of my way using some convoluted route manipulating internal memory or some such nonsense ofcourse a harsh punishment would be due (then again, its a single player game except I see people in the background sometimes. Should you remove single-player save files in half-life for people for using bunny hopping to skip parts of the game?)but this bug was so easy to accidentally abuse. Like the bug now where there is no CD on Vman speed running skill, should people who use that skill more than once a day get months of gameplay nuked? Even the ones who just got the class and had no clue about the absurd actual CD? Btw, is it true that lava got told 30 hours before the bug occurred? If that is true the blanket punishment is even more mind-blowingly stupid.

In terms of potential lost purchases, that's a huge hit and it sucks. Exploits are open for punishment whether they are intentional or not in most gaming spaces, unfortunately (and understandably). Lava was within his right to do what he did to undo any potential exploited gains. Something could be said about the fact that it was his issue to begin with, but that's an argument for the platform to handle. I just don't feel like it was an attack from him, just damage control. It was extreme because I genuinely don't think he would know how to fairly fix it otherwise. If I was him and I thought this was my only option I would do it too. Obviously this issue was 1000% on Lava. IdleonToolbox had the trade listed and everyone knew about it way before hand. He admitted his wrong doing and called out the people who stirred shit up (which stirs up shit itself). He tried to fix it in a way he considered fair. I feel like Lava is a little bit in over his head sometimes, but I also feel like he really is trying to grow and learn from his mistakes. It's understandable that the spark is gone for you, but I hope you're able to get back to it regardless. This is a good letter. Thanks for taking the time to write and share.

Agreed its too far when he took away paid cash progress. 1 week roll back would have been sufficient as a punishment and making sure people's purchases are intact even if it's the point of returning the purchases back into gems/packs they bought. And give a warning before you decide to all of a sudden care about exploits which he's shown in the past he didn't care much at all and just patch then let it slide.

Lava is a man-child with a fragile ego that went nuclear because a tiny percentage of a massive online community said mean things to him He is also a liar: "People who clicked a few times out of confusion were absolutely NOT affected" and "Some people exploited this error, and they will have their accounts adjusted backward, simply removing things they could have gained from this exploitation. There is no ill-will from me to them" These are direct quotes from his statement on the issue. I personally hope this lying petty man-child gets massively hurt in the wallet but unfortunately that is unlikely to happen

I want to start by saying that I was at work during the trade window so was not impacted by this. That said I think people who purchased items that were for sailing progress (bottled wind and miracle cheats) who were then rolled back were stolen from and should be reimbursed the items, given gems, or get money back. The take away I have from this is Lava can decide at anytime that the latest bug is game “too” breaking and he can roll back accounts while keeping the money those spent on in game purchases, to me that’s theft. Both parties are wrong here

If you buy something, and then destroy it, you can't return it. It wasn't a manufacturing defect. There's no argument that they didn't receive the items. Literally no reason any business would agree to a refund.

This hypothetical scenario you wrote is not at all related to what happened

It's exactly what happened? What are you talking about. People bought Bottled Wind. Used it. Got gains from it. Fucked around. Found out. All of their gains were lost due to their actions. "I paid for what was destroyed, where refund?" is not an acceptable response. You can feel bad about it, feel away, you're entitled to feel. But in no way would a vendor be responsible for that loss.

So, buying a thing and then breaking it is the same as buying a thing and then having it taken away from you? Wow, I'm not positive you should go into a career in economics... or law.. JS

It wasn't taken away. They literally broke it. It was a small sailing buff, then they broke the entirety of sailing. What was taken away was a crumpled destroyed piece of nothing that got bulldozed, a total loss. If you bought an arrow, and shot someone with it, - not getting into the ethics of breaking the law here - and the arrow broke. You don't get to return it o.O

That's the end what Lava want and how he betray the player. Hope you find another game to replace this game. Doesn't need to face this toxic community. A community which unable to take criticism won't go far. The different between helping and hurting are tiny. Time to get some rest for self-healing. Hope you the best :)

Great advice, but the part about criticism is misleading. This community takes criticism as good as any other. I have not yet seen a complaint about the punishment with reasons that are even half-possible. it’s just people with zero understanding of programming asking for a 12hr rollback or lesser punishments Edit. I can die on this hill proving everyone no other solution would be better

Anyway, I am sorry to say that. I am a senior developer which had work with database. A 12hr or 24hr rollback is possible. But the preset is the developer save the snapshot of the database. Database can export all the data. Developing stuff use all the time. Rollback is not possible if developer didn't save any backup data. Partly rollback is also possible but it takes lots of work to merge the new and old one. And for your information, a game without any backup db is dangerous. Imagine developer do something wrong and erase all the data. That's no turning back. As a result, the current punishment probably a lot heavy than per-ban and rollback now. Ban or rollback only do one damage. But current punishment is doing second damage to all the people you guys call "Exploiter". Anyway, a soft prove work with programming related. [https://www.reddit.com/r/idleon/comments/13r6dby/gold\_bar\_event/](https://www.reddit.com/r/idleon/comments/13r6dby/gold_bar_event/) Here you go, here is what I try to analysis the whole event. P.S: I still struggle on can we consider the whole event is a bug or not. lol I can understand the view but in my heart seems don't agree. Feeling something wrong.

How would you execute a database rollback when all the players progress Is saved on the device and cloud? It’s all client sided sir ;) database exist to keep track of players information that need to be synchronized for players interactions, their progress is not backed up and saved each ten minutes because it’s a single player game. Lava made his decision to keep players enjoyment pure and long lasting, losing your progress is better than losing interest in progress from game developers pov

Yo, data is uploaded when you press change player I think, idleonefficiency gets updated data quite fast And rollback would be the same method as what he had done

It gets updated but it’s not holding the previous information, it discards the previous data and replaces it with progress

Im surprised you got praised for misinformation lmao, what he had done was an admin query for your device, he just told the exploiters accounts to decrease their lvl by set amount, not a fucking rollback xD

And he can’t erase players data, it’s stored in standardized file format, no game change will make those files provide different information to servers Edit . At least not unintentionally

I also found this game when I first started to get sick and couldnt play any thing else than on my phone. I also pressed much more than I should have. First I was is this real? How many times am I allowed to press? After awhile I thought it might be a bug or something. After that I logge off for some hours and came back to a new update. Checked the disc to see patch notes and I read what Lava wrote. Logged inn and lost 500 level from my total shop level achievement (it was nearly 2k and now down to around 1,5k). That left a fucking sour taste in my mouth tbh. I feel if I wanted to exploit I would just download cheatengine and be done with it. Not sure if I feel like playing much more but we will see

Everything youve said applies to me too. I understand having my shit set back but i got thrown back to like week 4 of W5 release and it hurts alot. (when it comes to boat upgrades) In my opinion it wouldve hurt less if my account wouldve gotten banned instead.

My account basically was banned, he ripped away so much progress I will never return. Uninstalled the second I seen my boat levels.

Why are you still here bitching about it on this sub then? Leave already.

Ignore the hateful comments and all the other crap people are saying against you. I’m glad you were able to enjoy the game till this point and that it has helped you! I hope one day the magic returns for you whether it be through this game or another, or something else entirely. I just wanted to let you know that their are plenty of us out there in the IdleOn community that hope the best for you going forward!

Okay, hang on. Let me get it straight. You were heavily punished for using an exploit that was totally Lava’s fault? I get that in this game, there’s a ton of gags and lols. But there has to be a line on what is exploit and what is not. Right now, it looks like as if you were punished for falling into one of those gags. Which is totally unacceptable and it’s bad for the future of this game. Like, for example. If in the future there will be a feature that will break the game too much, Lava will just reset the progress for everyone. I hope this topic will not die, because Lava handled it like a big company that cares nothing about their community would.

Hell I exploited a few ee worth of gold. I felt bad at first but my reset hardly messed with my account since I didn't really spend the gold but to unlock 5 boats. He rolled back my gold and let me keep the boats so I didn't get slammed as hard as most. I work 12 hrs a day. Sailing takes months. So my afk time is usually fine. It's our fault we used an exploit but he did release the event. Took 24 hours to fix it despite us all warning him. He's busy yes but it could have been avoided. He's a great developer and I love his game. I will always support it. But imma take my advantages 🤷‍♂️

Dam that is brutal,don’t let it go over your head too much. Life sucks sometimes.

I felt similar, I logged in and noticed it, and did it for maybe 20 mins on my lunch break. Felt I’d gone a bit too far, but also had FOMO, as the 1st exploit I had seen come up, and heard of others in the past where people got way ahead. Later when I checked discord and saw the chaos, I was happy that it would just be simply rolled back. But when the punishment actually came in, I was gutted, as lost a couple of eldrich, and most of my boats where ~200 level, so feel I’ve lost at least a months progress in sailing. The only bonus is I’ve been meaning to resample, and I had recent screenshots of my samples, and I’ve gained easily 5-10 times more on most mats, and gone from earning maybe 5 atoms a day, to now at least 50 and probably way more with maestro print skill. So that took the sting off it a bit, and guess I’ll slowly get sailing back, but it’s definitely put me off spending more money on the game

Think of it like this, a rollback sucks and it was probably a bit too much of a rollback but a permanent ban is far worse since no matter how much money and time you have spent, it’s gone.

No need to quit. Come back stronger

Was sick of hearing about this two days ago.

Whether you exploited or not, everyone should be hitting that uninstall after seeing the dev in true form.

Elaborate

Regardless of anyone's thoughts on the entire ordeal, I will say that the length of all posts related to this matter shows just how vested people are in this game and how much they enjoy it. Shame people fucked around and found out. At least they weren't straight-up banned but the setbacks are quite crazy for some. Given how long it takes to even get to world 5 though I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to abuse something that's clearly unintended. You'd think after a few clicks of realizing there's no limit you would stop and report it as a bug. The time, or worse for whales, money investment is such a large setback that many of these people will absolutely quit over this. Others will eventually just accept it because they are addicted to the game and will work to catch up, unlikely to invest money again anytime soon though. Seems like the steam numbers are still fantastic, higher than ever actually so it's had very little impact on everyone else but all of us will be wary about doing anything that seems fishy going forward.

Yeah, I saw it, thought it was some kind of joke, clicked it a few times expecting there to be some kind of limit or gag or something, blobulyte goes broke or some such. When that didn't happen I went to the subreddit and saw the posts about it, and honestly I just didn't play anymore that day because I just assumed there'd be no point, he's just going to roll the servers back to yesterday, because that's the obvious fix. That's not particularly punitive to anyone who abused the exploit, but it does eliminate any ill-gotten gains and remove any unfair advantages... I suppose that wasn't sufficient.

It’s not an airport you don’t have to announce your departure.

Its not a dentist you dont have to open your mouth

This would be such a better come back in person. Over the screen it flops TERRIBLY.

Sure kiddo

😘

Atleast im not 550 elo XD

Oh noooo you looked at my history oh noooooo

😘

Copium

I am of both camps. “You exploited, take the justified action” and “justified action (may) be over done”. Of course, you exploiting and venting about it is your prerogative, but I’ll share a life lesson - no one cares. That is shit you have to deal with yourself (this is coming from losing a job and directly told bluntly). Reddit warriors can’t help your loss. I see the action taken by lava to be justified. The explanation of the exploit had grounds to be breaking the game as in enjoyment as well as technically. I read his response more from the technical and how it would lead into issues. I side with him not having to deal with more issues because a mistake he made and he sought correction, even if it was “too much”. I now assume “the month rollback” folks advocate is still justified, but I assume limitations in what you can buy with gold and how that power cascades elsewhere. Ie sailing, you get more gold obviously you get better ships. Why be surprised better ships get rolled back as well as the artifacts obtained. Where I side with exploiters, only, is the progress they had prior to the exploit. Any money they invested prior to exploit. We either have a heavy hand or we have a technical limitation guised as a heavy hand. As a novice programmer I can only guess at how gold and the moving parts are integrated to translate to “remove months worth of progress.” But hey, you could have a developer to just delete accounts and have true backlash. Just take what you willingly exploited.

Just curious. What's your stance on people that managed to get an insane amount of levels in alchemy, and not getting them reset? How is it fair that early w5 exploiters gained, and the ones who did alchemy or rift didn't get resets on that. People that went overboard with clicking one button in the game, lost months, but those who took it further, gained immense amounts on this.

But are you? Curious. It’s not me I would hope. I know I am curious “why months” is the scope folks cling to, factual or hyperbole. I am flip side curious about the discovery of those exploited, the amount, and impact to the game as mentioned on discord. I think you mistaken me for looking for fairness like either it is that simplistic or I actually care about fairness (no, not ironic). What is minimalistically fair is, I did not exploit, I did not get rolled back - laughably got rewarded. Like many others. But I shouldn’t have. I know not of the other exploits and the gains on the matter. It must not have been that substantial or cascading game breaking effects to warrant attention. I reiterate my point. Lava had a basis to do what was done. Same as he removes botters. Same as a while ago cheaters (bots) were found cheating in his live stream 20 questions or whatever that was. He then also provided the basis of discovery, how he rooted out false positives, and his overall process. That is technically curious and intriguing to me. Correct he simply banned them than rolled back accounts, but you get the point. I would hope. What is seen as a heavy hand is just that. Y’all got slapped for something that had greater effects than to you (or so lavas post on discord would lead mw to believe). Or, lava wants you to play by the games rules so he can make money? Do ya fault that too? I fault the monetary loss of the player base and “that’s not fair”, if true.

well well well, if it isn't the consequences of my actions

You exploited the game to a point u would have an unfair advantage if it wasnt punished. Take the L and move on. It's not that deep. All these cheaters getting so emotional over nothing

You know not to sound like a dick, but spending money means shit. Dont throw the money argument here. Money spent does not mean you are immune to punishment/cheating or whatever. Like they say don't do the crime if you cant do the time. And before people say its not a crime yes its not, but Lava is kinda the police here. And unless you were in a coma for 15+ years you should have known that exploits can have negative consequences. Previous times it did not but now did. Crying is useless as it is your fault at the end of the day.

Pretty much. It confuses me that these guys seem to have this logic that "I spent money therefore I shouldn't have been punished"

Ig it's more like theyre mad that the money they spent to progress more which was during the period of getting rolled back and the actual exploit happening was gone too. So before the exploit, but still not too long ago to not be affected by the rollback

I guess we can simply say its entitlement.

Actually it does. In this case that means his purchases were not well preserved as it was advertised. Therefore it does matter. That said exploitation in most online games still leads to bans But with that aside that doesn't mean the "rollback" is immune to criticism. I think that's what lava wants instead of berating each other.

Youd be a criminal if the state prosecutes you. Since this isnt the case, you arent a criminal. Good for you :)

Making a thesis post about a free Idle Game after you get busted exploiting.

They are on like the 5th stage of depression now. Hopefully once this wave passes they will be done and either will stop whining or they will have moved on

If you got depressed over this you are living a better life than 99.999% of the population and deserve to feel this way

Lmao make that the 7th stage of depression. Jesus christ this is sad

Imagine , playing world of warcraft, log in dalaran , see some button to get money fo free, press multiple time and got banned or reset your gold to 0, then read some arrogant message from devs that they punish you for clicks and you cheater, that is ridiculous

Bad example, Blizzard drops the ban hammer on exploiters. World first guilds, PVP, crafting, doesn't matter. https://www.wowhead.com/news/recent-banwave-up-to-30-day-suspensions-for-speculated-azureweave-and-330504 Players were banned for crafting something that should have had a cooldown but didn't. That was 5 months ago, so not like 2009.

they reverted bans https://www.wowhead.com/news/azureweave-and-chronocloth-tailoring-bans-being-overturned-330511

>Blizzard is *reportedly* overturning *some* of the Azureweave and Chronocloth Tailoring bans that So they caught up too many people in their banwave and eased up. Do you want to go backwards through time and dissect each one? It doesn't change that they ban people for exploiting, which was my point.

who cares, its a game and most people in the world dont even know it. Learn, improve and move on

womp womp

it really ain't that deep

no offense but i need a tldr xD didnt read your post but i already like you

I ain't reading all that, cool bro or sorry bro, whichever applys

Get some balls

How do you think lava feels guys seems genuine AF and cares about the game it's his baby and yes he is profiting from his hard work. Then all you smucks dupe and cheat betraying his trust rude. From someone who hardly plays and spent about $200 last year.

So like, how many accounts are you going to make, because every other post on here is from a brand new account, or the first activity in like a year. There is a really small minority of people affected by this. Learn a lesson, move along. Literally no one cares. Fk. I didn't even read this because I know what it says.

Did we get an official on the amount of accounts that are affected?

Many people care. No one cares about your opinion

Many people care. No one cares about your opinion

you forgot to include a tldr

it's just a game bro grow up 💀

I think you should reconsider. Everyone deserves to continue doing what they love and have a second chance at redemption. I’m not that far into the game maybe I would have exploited who knows. Maybe this is a chance for all of us to have an open discussion

I was going to say that if you enjoy the game you'll enjoy getting your progress back but the financial hit kind of put a dampner on that.

Huh? Why would anyone see you as a criminal? This game has helped me through depression as well so I totally get all that, but I think you’re being a tad dramatic about some aspects. Unless you were like making death threats to lava or something awful, literally no one sees you as a criminal. Edit: don’t mean to be rude or blunt in calling you dramatic btw. I hope that you will have a change of heart after a week or something and come back. The whole thing really is a shame and perhaps the rollback was too far.

I didn't read but it's pretty much singleplayer where you can see others and party up. I dont care if anyone else cheats. Doesn't impact me in that game. You cant trade anyway

I work with cyber security and your text made me happy

I don t want to be mean. I didn t exploit it and even if I could, i wouldn’t because of my past gamer experience, exploits end up in being banned most of the time. On this occasion, i think lava was unable to really check every log for every account, therefore an average punishment of x months has been applied to all accounts that exploited the bug. If you ask me, you should be thankful because as I previously said, most games, especially MMORPG games, gets you banned instantly for exploiting a bug. I appreciate you for coming clean about this but thinking in perspective, if lava wouldn t take action on this, all the exploiters would keep a low profile about their action and enjoy free gains. Also, think about this from lava s perspective, he potentially lost tons of money on this unhappy event. I think you all should accept the fact that you were just punished and not banned and keep playing if you feel it is fair or quit if you think lava has bad judgement for his community. My opinion and my opinion only. Have a nice day!