Shattered Kingdoms

This is one of my favorite quotes of all time and I feel it requires posting here.
"Common sense is the least used of all the five senses."

Common sense should never be used in judgement of anyone ever. Because what "Common sense" people refer to is at its core gathered and applied knowledge. The assumption of knowledge is one of the hardest things for teachers to learn about. On the flip side I understand how it is tiring to deal with the same "problem makers" again and again.

Might I advise a slightly different way of meeting out punishment regarding new (unseen) bug abuse. A reversal of what ever was gained by the abuse (aka gear XP). The bug then gets posted on the bug forums in long running sticky as something that needs to get fixed with a prescribed first offence punishment. Before it is posted it is not considered any part of a repeat offenders rap sheet. Punishment for an unknown bug is far but suffering an increase penalty for it seems unfair, (yes that means that a minor number of shady people might get away with something once.)

This would also give people a place to point to if you noticed someone else using something you where not sure was a bug or a feature. I have on several occasions seen something that I thought was a feature and prayed about it but continued to use it due to the ambiguity. I once have received contradicting advise from Imms on if something was a bug or feature. On such issues they could be discussed between imms and posted on the forums under a known bug list.

If you take the current example and run it though my proposition. The person would not have been site banned for doing this the first time. However everyone would quickly be made aware of the bugs nature and expected punishment for abuse of it (unless they are a repeat offender) So that if someone else noticed someone doing it they could say Hey that is against the rules and this is where it is explained. This would limit the feeling of players from being targeted by a rules manager while still letting the rules manager give punishment for new inventive bug abuse. And most importantly being able to stomp out repeat bug abuse. It also gives a place to list things like repeat mentoring of the same person for a mentor point abuse. A prime example of things that should be on the list are using disguise polymorph and pets to mess up targeting. These things have been reviewed in many different threads across the forums but to a new player the first to seem like just clever uses of the skills.

If this bug was known to the staff, and ...one player...why wasn't it fixed and why was no notice given that using take was a bug? Is it now fixed?

D does not have unlimited time is a simple reason for why bugs are not fixed. Which is why I think bugs should be logged and displayed once found so people know it is there.

I agree with what you have said. In this case the fix would be making the echo the same whenever the npc or pc is conscious. And would be not at all time intensive. If in fact there simply isn't enough time, then publicly posted it as a bug would be the logical choice like you said. In this case I don't see the fix taking much more time than the forum post, but no action was taken. Imms certainly have the time i must say, given that Thuban had to read through eight plus hours of gameplay logged just to see my type take ring zombie. Seems like time could be used to fix the problem instead of skimming logged play. Either way, either fixing it or documenting it would make sense.

Appears to be some confusion in the last couple of posts. The bug was not previously known. The bug was fixed within 24 hours of being discovered by the staff. You can read the fix announcement here.

But it IS true that I don't have unlimited time.

You mean to tell me that twenty years of playing and administrating this mud...and I found that? But previously you said it was common sense and that players knew about? So which is it?

Furthermore, those echoes were coded by you, as they differ from diku, merc, and rom, diku having come pre coded not broken.

And in all that time, how many people used the take command and didn't report it to you, for which I was punished? Every player ever?

The fix was apparently simple I might add.

This is probably the best way to summarize my view as well, except that I don't think it's right for me to ask you to revert another person's punishment: That's up to Azar's player to appeal his own punishment. I do feel like if Azar appealed this punishment that it be reverted, however.

I would also encourage the staff, moving forward, to treat exploits where it's reasonable for someone to unknowingly commit them like the "follow" example than this recent "take" example: The way that following NPCs was dealt with allowed everyone to be on the same page and it felt fair, but this recent one didn't feel fair to the majority of the playerbase and makes players worry that they might be punished for things that they honestly didn't think were wrong.

I don't think that there are that many exploits like this one that provide a meaningful benefit and also aren't obviously cheating.

Yes, this feature is unique to SK and therefore many players don't even know that the command exists. For those that do know about it, they understand that it's intended use is for after the target is already unconscious. And since most people attack to kill instead of stun, that even further reduces the pool of people who would stumble on this. This is an edge case dual-mode error message that a player would normally only come across accidentally. Anyone triggering this message constantly is already violating common sense.

Note that the only reason it was retroactively made dual-mode is because twinks were abusing the visibility of items the first time around. The long-time veterans who say they don't know about this have forgotten. Or perhaps selective amnesia works better for trolling. I would say it's unfair for them to remember a detail from so long ago, but a lot of them are completely capable of remembering every other tiny change in the game over the course of many years.


It was relatively simple, which just reinforces the fact that the staff didn't know it existed.


As is pretty obvious from the above, most people using it weren't abusing it or even aware of how to abuse it. We wouldn't know it today if you weren't already established as a cheater who also lies about not cheating, promises they will stop cheating, and then goes ahead and cheats again the very same day. But since you are an established cheater, you were under observation and it led to the staff finally discovering this exploit. I would thank you, but overall the time spent watching perennial cheaters is a poor use of the staff's resources, yet is sadly necessary.

You were already warned that you were under a 'third strike' clause. If this cheat was found by most anyone else, it would have warranted a small penalty, and if respectfully acknowledged during the conversation, would probably have been reduced to a warning. Since you were already told that anything that smelled like abuse would be the end, it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise now.

Although you already know how to appeal a ruling (after all, you emailed me and I did respond, but then you never continued the conversation -- something else you've lied about), I will go ahead and state preemptively that the appeal is denied. The ban stands.

It truly is a shame that contrary opinions are dismissed as trolling or selective amnesia. It speaks volumes that bonita, baldric and even edoras fail to understand the logic in the way this was handled. Looking back, this was a great game during my highschool years and perhaps I continued to play it out of nostalgia, but I will no longer be playing if this is the way things are handled. Good luck with your game Dulrik. I really do hope your player counts increase.

My opinion is that the punishment did not fit the crime.
Imo, this should have been handled by a brief conversation stating that it was a bug and that it would be taken care of soon.
A one level curse might have been appropriate or even better, flagging the quest as completed, not allowing further action to be taken and the progress he made, pointless.

The day before this happened, I gave jomino some equipment. He didn't think he had it because he pocketed it.
I attempted to use the take command to prove to him that he had it. Now, in this case, the code returned the false echo. But the attempt was made nonetheless.
I've seen people try to say "give me that" by using the take command.
Is this using the command in these regards bug abuse? Because I was using the command to pretty much peek his inventory?

I support the reversal of the punishment.
Inform the user not to do it again and post it to the forums in a new thread titled "Known Bugs."
This new thread would be positive for the community by adding more transparency.