Clear up/change GM Policy on popular exploit involving Mind Control (Priest spell)

[Caber 4]

Hello. I'd like to preface all of this by saying that this is an issue that has been haunting me for the past month or more and has ruined my enjoyment of the game a fair bit. It's frustrated to be faced with the same stupid exploit every time there is an enemy priest who feels like abusing it. I would also like to add that any mention of Mind Control (or MC) refers strictly to the priest spell.

To explain first what the exploit is about: Right now Mind Control is fairly buggy. Mind Controlled players will start using their skills randomly, and especially if they're warriors, they will often lose control of their character if the spell is used, then cancelled quickly after some specific movements (usually backpedaling the character). Some players abuse this circumstance by spamming mind control, then cancelling it after a second or two, so the target loses any and all (!) control over their character, often until they die, sometimes the "effect" breaks randomly. This means once this post-mindcontrol bugged state is triggered, it makes the victim completely unable to steer their character. It will either stand still and do nothing until death or it breaks randomly, or walk off to automatically to attack some unit (in BGs, often a friendly teammate. Yes, AFTER the MC is over. Not during it).

To repeat, this isn't just being mind controlled. This is being mind controlled, then the priest (usually purposedly) triggers the bug, then the victim is unable to regain control over their character.

Here's an example of it happening (to me) in burning steppes, by a band of players who purposedly abused it repeatedly and aimedly to get me killed by mobs, with myself having absolutely no control over my character while this is happening.  This isn't a ticket or bug report. I'm merely making this example overly clear here so that it can be easily understood by anyone reading who might not be familiar with the bug.

At this point I've already lost control of my character from the first mind control. I am unable to move my character as he's standing there.

The effect randomly breaks, so I try to keep the priest from MCing me. For obvious reasons, he gets it off anyway.

I am MCd and being walked backwards again to re-trigger the bug.

The bug is at this point autowalking me after an imp that I'm not even targetting.

 

This isn't a ticket or bug report. I'm merely making this example overly clear here so that it can be easily understood by anyone reading who might not be familiar with the bug.

Now having explained this exploit, how it works, and having provided some evidence: I have had a lot of issues and bad experiences with GMs about it. The first time I've reported it, the GM was seemingly unable to understand that I am speaking of a bug involving MC, not just MC itself. He wasn't able to help me.
No other GMs were able to help me much, but today, after it happened again, I was a bit fed up and opened yet another ticket with copious evidence to the exploiting. I then had a conversation with a GM, who told me it's ok to exploit this particular bug.

I am hoping it's ok to post this here. The GM went offline after the last message so I did not have a chance to ask him for permission to post, so I blacked out his name just to be safe.

So what I gather from this conversation is

a) It's a known bug, which means people abusing it are exploiting

b) this is tolerated as per policy for zeth'kur atleast

c) I should post on the suggestions forum if I would like to see a change in this policy

This is all just for context and I hope you understand that this large explanation seems very necessary from my end, as there seems to be a lot of confusion involved.

 

Now to the actual suggestion:

I believe this exploit is gamebreaking enough and the intentions of exploiters are clear enough to warrant an actual consequence for people who abuse it. I sort of fail to understand why it isn't being handled as such to begin with.

Please consider punishing players who abuse this bug in the future. It's infuriating to become victim of someone who abuses this bug. It's even more infurating to collect evidence of it, then being told the exploit is being allowed.

Thank you for your time.

 

-Caber, Zeth'kur

 

PS: If there are any issues with the formatting or content of this post, please let me know so that I can edit it.

[kittenbasher 0]

This should definitely be made against the rules, if it already isn't.

The GM might have just misunderstood you or not be qualified enough on said matter, IMO the results would vary if you made a ticket with video proof of the exploit.

[Fiers 0]

How is this even a question?

From the Terms of Use:

Quote

Cheats; methods to influence and/or facilitate the game-play, including exploits of any existing in-game bugs, and thereby granting you and/or any other user an advantage.

[...]
 

Quote

 

The most serious sanction. This sanction is applied in case of multiple violations of the rules, or after multiple account interruptions, as well as any of the following:

[...]

Abuse of major in-game bugs;

 

 

Perembula goes as far as to admit it's a bug, but then says that because MC is an allowable skill, that using it an an abusive manner is okay too? That's like saying jumping is allowed, so jumping to a place where you can safespot is allowed too. Power Infusion and Ignite are allowable skills to use, but people got banned on C'thun for abusing a bug in their interaction. There are many easy examples of how the GM's logic fails to hold up.

Even if this wasn't specifically against the rules, which it is, the manner in which it is being used here should clearly merit a GM using their discretion to address the problem.

[Rose_ 0]

WHAT? Perembula misunderstanding a player or ToU? Unheard of

[Guest]

I have elevated this issue to be reviewed internally, as it does appear to me to be unintended behavior of the mechanics. Normally, proving intent on abusing apparent bugs like this is fairly difficult, and documentation such as this goes a long way to assisting us. The average player report does not go nearly into the detail you have here in this forum post, and thus is relatively unhelpful to us without monitoring the offending player(s) 24/7. As it stands, your feedback has been escalated and we'll review to determine what our actions should be regarding the matter.

[QQsya 4]

I can confirm as a priest, it's fairly easy to reproduce this bug to the point where I've unintentionally done it several times.  If you MC a player and make them attack a hostile target, they will usually start spamming random skills/cooldowns (this part is WAD), but then even after the MC effect ends, they will often continue attacking their target and still not have control over their character's movement.  It also sometimes bugs out even if the MC effect is ended prematurely by something else, eg tremor totem, or having your cast interrupted by kick/CS/pummel.

 

[QQsya 4]

giving this a bump since I havent heard anything more about it

[Guest]

Fixes for the issue have been thrown up here, along with numerous other Mind Control tomfoolery: https://github.com/elysium-project/server/pull/1101 (not committed yet it appears, but assuming it all works correctly it should address the OP's problem).

My previous post on the matter for reporting this in an in-game ticket if it appears to be abused against you still stands.