Italian Joe
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Permanent Nukes on MGSV: TPP PS3 (and other consoles?) by reddit user Hastatus_ Atratus
Read this /u/KonamiUSSocial
Original reddit comment link
To Konami and the MGSV:TPP Players
I do not hunt and disarm nukes nor do I build or employ them, but my keen interest and understanding of the PF Virtual Battles system has allowed me to observe more types of accounts with nukes than most other people. I can say without any doubt that there are Permanent Nukes that remain inaccessible to all active players making Disarmament impossible to achieve. They have been there for over a year, possibly since the very beginning, and to date no Konami employee has yet acknowledged their existence. Given that Konami has been promoting Nuclear Disarmament and that Nuclear Disarmament is significant to unlocking ”Chapter 3" I suspect no one at Konami has observed or understands what these Permanent Nukes actually are. I tried reporting this issue to Konami but the reply I got back was very generic (automated?) and did not actually show they grasped what I was saying: it seemed like they thought I was reporting cheaters instead of examples of derelict accounts that have been permanently removed from the FOB system which in this case happen to also possess nukes. Contacting specific Konami employees directly for an intelligent back and forth conversation has not been possible. All my observations have been on the PS3, but I have heard from players on other consoles who have noticed a similar situation.
If I mention Permanent Nukes to someone they might think I am talking about many different things: They might think I am talking about an exploit where players reload their almost-completed-nuke save over and over so that they can build up 16 nukes nearly instantaneously; I am not talking about these nukes; They might think I am talking about people who use save editors to create nukes; I am not talking about these nukes; They might think I am talking about players who hoard 16 nukes and have enough time to rebuild their four lost nukes during their blockade because only 4 nukes can be stolen at one time and the triggered blockade time is more than enough time to max out their nukes again in a continuous cycle of 16,12,16,12,16,12,...nukes; I am not talking about these nukes; They might think I am subjectively complaining about something that is hard to achieve like many noobs on the internet; My complaint is not subjective opinion, but eye-witnessed fact. Let us get this straight, I am not talking about cheated/exploited nukes nor a bad intentional design decision lacking foresight; I am talking about literally Permanent Nukes that are present on accounts with bases that are permanently removed from all FOB tabs and so are inaccessible to everyone. This is an actual unintentional server/programming glitch caused by and probably unknown to Konami that can only be seen by the most observant and knowledgeable PF League players while they are moving up certain portions of the PF leaderboards.
Back during the week of March 14 to March 21 2016 (not 2017) I took the following two pictures:
At the time I was taking pictures of many people's stats because I had been figuring out how the PF battle scores were calculated. I also took pictures of unusual stats from time to time because I started seeing players with unusually high stats: I suspected that tyh56-5 had cheated in some manner in order to get 2.5 million Offensive Capability. At the time I had not really thought much about nukes on derelict bases. Derelict bases are accounts that clearly show no more player activity: their stats remain fixed over long periods of time or they have almost no staff left to take which indicates that they do not log in or have not taken care of their bases for some time. With the introduction of the compare PF stat feature in the May 2016 update it was also possible to see accounts that were no longer active because they possessed no PF-stat-ability staff. By September of 2016 I had come across more and more obviously derelict bases that still possessed nukes. I had seen bases with 0 Security staff and Total FOB defense in the single digits, which means any nuke hunter could take a casual jog straight for the nukes and steal them with no resistance. The longer such derelict bases keep their nukes and keep identical PF stats the more likely it is that their bases simply do not appear on the nuke tab or any other FOB tab. I called these Inaccessible Nukes and others mentioned noticing similar patterns on other consoles. At the time I was focused on other aspects of the game so I dropped the issue and assumed those who actively hunted nukes would report the issue to Konami and or Konami would realise that large numbers of nukes were obviously not being disarmed. Konami seemed to stop reporting nuke numbers so I figured they would fix the issue in an update or just stop talking about Disarmament and ”Chapter 3" altogether.
In May of 2017 however a new Konami Twitter spokesperson who signs their Tweets as "J" took over the @metalgear_jp Twitter account and the @metalgear_en Twitter account started retweeting J's nuke data. They have indicated, as had been formerly, that Disarmament unlocks ”Chapter 3" and have been reporting the nuke counts with graphs a couple times a week. They even indicated that there would be action taken against illicit nukes, the success or implementation of which I am dubious. Clearly they want players to disarm, but is it even possible? No, it is not.
With this new push for Disarmament from Konami I came across a thread about the renewed Konami Twitter activity (https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/718564-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/75360719) and someone from Xbox One mentioned my previous observations about inaccessible nukes. At the time I was moving up the PF ranks again with an alternate account and happened to remember one of the derelict accounts with nukes that I had seen the previous week. I record everyone's Capabilities and Durabilities some weeks because I use a spreadsheet to determine the final scores and whether or not and against whom I should use my Liquid Carbon and Anti-Ballistic Missiles. The following is a screen capture of the stats of the players I faced on the week of May 30 to June 5 2017.
When I went back through my old pictures I noticed that one of them was tyh56-5 whom I faced on my main PSN over a year earlier. This player has exactly the same Capabilities and Durabilities over a year apart! This means that the player who owns the account has not signed in and no one has done any damage to their base. And yet they have had 4 nukes for over a year! According to my calculations with these 4 nukes and a maximum blockade of 5 days for each unsuccessful infiltration with maximum damage this account should have appeared on the nuke tab and been subject to nuke hunters over 70 times. Either nuke hunters sucked and failed over 70 times in a row and did zero damage every time or this account never appears in the nuke tab for active players to infiltrate.
Konami needs to start paying attention. Look at ALL accounts with nukes and verify that they appear in the nuke tab after their blockade runs out. That no one at Konami has been doing this already for such an important feature in the game is shameful.
I have seen MANY similar derelict accounts with nukes. I will not name them because I suspect Konami's support people will only think I am reporting cheaters instead of realising that I am reporting examples of a problem with Konami's programming and or servers (language barrier?). It is Konami's responsibility to seek out why such accounts and their nukes are permanently unavailable to the rest of the playerbase. I know there are Permanent Nukes currently on the PS3. I have seen nearly a hundred Permanent Nukes to date and given that the sample size of players I actually came across in the PF battles is very small I would not be surprised if 25% to 75% of all nukes currently present on the PS3 are Permanent. I have heard from people who say they have seen similar derelict bases with nukes on the PS4 and Xbox One so I strongly suspect that the programming and or server issue occurs on all platforms. Given that this situation has been present for over a year and Konami has done nothing and or is not observant enough to notice this situation players should come to terms that Nuclear Disarmament is currently impossible due to these Permanent Nukes. I really really want to see what ”Chapter 3" unlocks but at this point Disarmament is entirely dependent upon Konami's future actions.
Hastatus - aka the guy who figured out the math behind the PF Battles' scoring system and who sits in the highest PF Grade on the PS3.
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The previous text was posted on July 7th 2017. It has remained unchanged. Since I will not go away until Konami officially says they understand the situation or they do something to rectify it I will add further evidence here from time to time if I think it makes a good example for people to understand what I am talking about. Maybe it will also help cross the language barrier.
Another example of an account with Permanent Nukes: MrUnkreative (PS3) - July 21 2017
I encountered MrUnkreative on two separate occasions during Weekly PF Virtual Battles: the week of May 9th and the week of July 11th (so two months apart).
July 11 2017
May 9 2017
July 11 2017
As you can see MrUnkreative's Capabilities and Durabilities were identical two months apart:
May 9th : Offensive Capability = 7872095; Offensive Durability = 182838; Defensive Capability = 5106301; Defensive Durability = 232751;
July 11th : Offensive Capability = 7872095; Offensive Durability = 182838; Defensive Capability = 5106301; Defensive Durability = 232751.
Identical Capabilities and Durabilities over a two-month period is indicative of a player who has neither signed in nor been damaged in any manner through infiltration by another player. Either of these would result in slightly changing values at a minimum.
This might not be totally convincing to everyone who does not understand the math involved in calculating Capability and Durability, but there is something else:
As you can clearly see this player has 0 Medics, 0 Rangers, 0 Sentries, and 0 Defenders. The odds of getting a staff member with a PF-Stat Skill is roughly 1 in 10 (when obtaining ranks high enough to have the skill). They are very easy to come by and so obtaining many of them is very easy. Not having any of them is highly unlikely for a player who is even remotely active. The PF-Stat Skill was introduced in the May 2016 Game Update. Having zero staff with these skills means that a player has probably not played the game since before the May 2016 update. So MrUnkreative has not played since before the May 2016 update and has had 4 nukes this whole time. He is not playing the game and other players are not able to invade his FOB. His account is derelict and inaccessible to the rest of the playerbase...and he has 4 Permanent Nukes that no one outside of a Konami programmer can disarm.
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Another example of an account with Permanent Nukes: Astaroth-369 (PS3) - A Trophy Hunter - August 1 2017
I have encountered more Derelict Accounts with Permanent Nukes in the past few weeks but here is one that can be considered in a different way. I encountered Astaroth-369 during the week of July 11 2017.
July 11 2017
The first thing that indicated to me that this account had not been accessed by its owner for a long time was that they had 0 Medics, 0 Rangers, 0 Sentries, and 0 Defenders. This suggests that they have not played since before the May 2016 update. But there is another way to verify that an account has not been played by the owner: their trophy history.
Astaroth-369 is what I call a trophy hunter: they play a large number of games on a single PSN account and generally attempt to get Platinums for most of them. Here is the history of their game play as seen through their trophy history (you can view it for yourself at https://psnprofiles.com/Astaroth-369 ):
- Before playing MGSV:TPP they had already earned 54 Platinums.
- They started playing MGSV:TPP on December 1st 2015.
- They obtained Disarmament on Jan 21 2016.
- They obtained Deterrence on Jan 22 2016.
- They obtained the MGSV:TPP Platinum on Jan 23 2016.
- They then played 10 more PS3 games between Jan 23 2016 and August 23 2016, obtaining Platinums (or 100%) for all of them.
- They obtained a PS4 in August of 2016.
- They played their first PS4 game between Aug 17 and Aug 20 2016.
- They then played 26 more PS4 games; 11 of these were Platinumed.
- Their 10 most recent trophies were all obtained on August 1 2017 (today).
- They still had 4 nukes on their PS3 MGSV:TPP account on July 11 2017 and they are probably still there today (August 1 2017).
It is clear that this player played MGSV:TPP between Dec 1 2015 and Jan 23 2016. They got involved with nukes in mid-late January 2016. From their trophy history all common sense says that after getting the Platinum for MGS:TPP on Jan 23 2016 they stopped playing the game. You can see how they move from game to game and then a new console. Who would continue to play MGSV:TPP on the PS3 after playing 10 more PS3 games, getting a PS4, and playing 26 more PS4 games? 2.68 trophies per day is very, very time consuming. Clearly they have not been playing MGS:TPP on their old PS3 and yet over a year and a half after they stopped playing MGSV they still have 4 nukes on their account. His account is derelict and inaccessible to the rest of the playerbase...and he has 4 Permanent Nukes that no one outside of a Konami programmer can disarm.
Many Derelict Accounts with Permanent Nukes belong to people who do not speak English or who have so few trophies that they probably belong to people using them as Alternative accounts. Since Astaroth-369 included English in his account and they are clearly still very active on it I PSN messaged them a couple weeks ago asking them when they last played MGSV:TPP but they have not responded.
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Some final comments before a hiatus - August 9 2017
My alternative account is moving up past the range of the Derelict Accounts with Permanent Nukes so I will likely not see anymore good examples to add. I will continue Tweeting Konami, but I will probably stop updating this document for a while. I will end with the following thoughts:
Warning to Konami: The Time Factor
- Permanent Nukes have existed since at least January 2016.
- I reported the issue to Konami Support and received an unhelpful automated(?) reply from Konami Support on June 9 2017.
- I opened up a Twitter account and Tweeted my Proof to @Konami, @metalgear_jp and @metalgear_en on July 7 2017.
- I have replied to the Nuke Counts with my Proof 10 times between July 7 and August 8 2017.
- After 2 Months I have received no intelligent reply from Konami about the issue and they have not made any public statement about it.
- Konami continues to give out Nuke Counts to players either unawares or hoping the vast majority of players remain unawares.
You might think that remaining silent about this issue will keep players from finding out the truth. It will not. Whatever policy you have in place preventing the disclosure of negative press will not serve you in time. The longer after June 9th 2017 you delay in responding in word and in deed the more negativity you will foster. It is one thing to miss a programming mistake for over a year and a half and claim you did not know, but it is another thing entirely once you have been informed and are continually informed twice a week when you post the Nuke Counts. Time is not your ally. More players will find out the truth and more players will learn for how much time you have known. This is the biggest programming flaw impacting the most number of players in the history of the Metal Gear franchise. Eventually many players will find out and many players will remember it for decades. What will be the perception of a player who looks at your lower budget games, like Survive, when they think back at how you could not handle entering a few zeroes in your biggest budget title?
Significance of this Issue
Some may not realise that this issue is in fact extremely significant. Early players claimed that this game was unfinished due to cut content and Konami argued the ending is there and the game is complete. Zero players have completed the game. Completing a game means reaching the intended ending of a game. Konami has confirmed that Nuclear Disarmament unlocks Chapter 3 whatever that entails. Dataminers can claim what is or is not included in Chapter 3, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence because Chapter 3 could easily be part of a game update/DLC. Konami is still pushing players to complete Nuclear Disarmament. It is one thing for Chapter 3 to be nearly impossible to achieve requiring the cooperation of nearly every player. This is a grandiose and impressive thing to attempt. BUT due to Konami's server glitch it is not actually in the hands of the players as it was intended to be. This is a disastrous situation. Chapter 3 cannot be reached by any player ever no matter how delusional players or Konami employees are (delusional means they are able to trick themselves into ignoring a problem and pretending it is not there). It is permanently inaccessible because of Konami's lack of testing and maintenance. A game with an intended ending that cannot be accessed due to a programming error is by definition an incomplete game.
It is no different than how some developers in the past put out incomplete games: in 1987 David Perry did not have enough space on the ZX Spectrum port of Gladiator/Great Gurianos so he omitted the ending and just made the final boss invincible; In 1988 Ocean did not have the time or could not figure out the bug that caused gibberish garbled views in level 4 of Robocop on the Commodore 64 so they set an impossible time limit in level 3 to prevent players from reaching garbled level 4; In 1990 Midway thought their arcade game Smash TV was impossible to beat so they did not bother to include the Pleasure Dome ending which was advertised in the game; In 1993 Ocean did not have the time to finish Dennis (the Menace) on the Commodore Amiga port of the game so they created a pit impossible to jump so that the last boss and the ending could not be accessed by the player; In 2015 Konami created or allowed a bug to remain in Nuclear Disarmament stats so that players cannot reach Chapter 3 of MGSV:TPP. Is the bug accidental or is Chapter 3 just unfinished? What are players to think if Konami never attempts to fix the bug?
What the players can do to speed up Communication and Action by Konami
Konami is only in this business to make money. To spend money fixing an issue such as this might only be in the hands of financially-incentivized businessmen. They essentially calculate how much negative publicity will arise and whether it might cost them future business. The negative press must impact future revenues more than the cost of the fix. Metal Gear Survive already has a bad reputation so maybe the Konami people do not think the negative publicity can get any worse. In the past they had Hideo Kojima a perfectionist who would not have allowed such a bug to remain. Who do they have now? Currently few players read my Tweets and my proof of this situation is not reaching enough of the playerbase and its collective voice. J gets more likes for his Nuke Counts than I do for pointing out the futility of the whole situation. Part of this is the language barrier: many Japanese players likely do not understand what is going on and there is no evidence that J understands English. The person in charge of the English Metal Gear Twitter account rarely says anything of note and seems to spend most of their time Retweeting stuff. Other people cannot read more than 140 characters at a time and or will remain delusionally hopeful. If you want to help force Konami into action I urge people to start liking all my Proof Tweets. J gets 50 to 100 likes each time he posts the Nuke Counts. If I start getting more likes than J's original post they will more likely pay attention, they will be more likely to get a translator involved to understand why, and they will be more likely to bring the issue up with their bosses. The more people that like my proof posts the more it will be evident to them that more people know the truth. Please help force Konami to face and own the truth. Thanks.
Hastatus.
Continues down below...
Read this /u/KonamiUSSocial
Original reddit comment link
To Konami and the MGSV:TPP Players
I do not hunt and disarm nukes nor do I build or employ them, but my keen interest and understanding of the PF Virtual Battles system has allowed me to observe more types of accounts with nukes than most other people. I can say without any doubt that there are Permanent Nukes that remain inaccessible to all active players making Disarmament impossible to achieve. They have been there for over a year, possibly since the very beginning, and to date no Konami employee has yet acknowledged their existence. Given that Konami has been promoting Nuclear Disarmament and that Nuclear Disarmament is significant to unlocking ”Chapter 3" I suspect no one at Konami has observed or understands what these Permanent Nukes actually are. I tried reporting this issue to Konami but the reply I got back was very generic (automated?) and did not actually show they grasped what I was saying: it seemed like they thought I was reporting cheaters instead of examples of derelict accounts that have been permanently removed from the FOB system which in this case happen to also possess nukes. Contacting specific Konami employees directly for an intelligent back and forth conversation has not been possible. All my observations have been on the PS3, but I have heard from players on other consoles who have noticed a similar situation.
If I mention Permanent Nukes to someone they might think I am talking about many different things: They might think I am talking about an exploit where players reload their almost-completed-nuke save over and over so that they can build up 16 nukes nearly instantaneously; I am not talking about these nukes; They might think I am talking about people who use save editors to create nukes; I am not talking about these nukes; They might think I am talking about players who hoard 16 nukes and have enough time to rebuild their four lost nukes during their blockade because only 4 nukes can be stolen at one time and the triggered blockade time is more than enough time to max out their nukes again in a continuous cycle of 16,12,16,12,16,12,...nukes; I am not talking about these nukes; They might think I am subjectively complaining about something that is hard to achieve like many noobs on the internet; My complaint is not subjective opinion, but eye-witnessed fact. Let us get this straight, I am not talking about cheated/exploited nukes nor a bad intentional design decision lacking foresight; I am talking about literally Permanent Nukes that are present on accounts with bases that are permanently removed from all FOB tabs and so are inaccessible to everyone. This is an actual unintentional server/programming glitch caused by and probably unknown to Konami that can only be seen by the most observant and knowledgeable PF League players while they are moving up certain portions of the PF leaderboards.
Back during the week of March 14 to March 21 2016 (not 2017) I took the following two pictures:
At the time I was taking pictures of many people's stats because I had been figuring out how the PF battle scores were calculated. I also took pictures of unusual stats from time to time because I started seeing players with unusually high stats: I suspected that tyh56-5 had cheated in some manner in order to get 2.5 million Offensive Capability. At the time I had not really thought much about nukes on derelict bases. Derelict bases are accounts that clearly show no more player activity: their stats remain fixed over long periods of time or they have almost no staff left to take which indicates that they do not log in or have not taken care of their bases for some time. With the introduction of the compare PF stat feature in the May 2016 update it was also possible to see accounts that were no longer active because they possessed no PF-stat-ability staff. By September of 2016 I had come across more and more obviously derelict bases that still possessed nukes. I had seen bases with 0 Security staff and Total FOB defense in the single digits, which means any nuke hunter could take a casual jog straight for the nukes and steal them with no resistance. The longer such derelict bases keep their nukes and keep identical PF stats the more likely it is that their bases simply do not appear on the nuke tab or any other FOB tab. I called these Inaccessible Nukes and others mentioned noticing similar patterns on other consoles. At the time I was focused on other aspects of the game so I dropped the issue and assumed those who actively hunted nukes would report the issue to Konami and or Konami would realise that large numbers of nukes were obviously not being disarmed. Konami seemed to stop reporting nuke numbers so I figured they would fix the issue in an update or just stop talking about Disarmament and ”Chapter 3" altogether.
In May of 2017 however a new Konami Twitter spokesperson who signs their Tweets as "J" took over the @metalgear_jp Twitter account and the @metalgear_en Twitter account started retweeting J's nuke data. They have indicated, as had been formerly, that Disarmament unlocks ”Chapter 3" and have been reporting the nuke counts with graphs a couple times a week. They even indicated that there would be action taken against illicit nukes, the success or implementation of which I am dubious. Clearly they want players to disarm, but is it even possible? No, it is not.
With this new push for Disarmament from Konami I came across a thread about the renewed Konami Twitter activity (https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/718564-metal-gear-solid-v-the-phantom-pain/75360719) and someone from Xbox One mentioned my previous observations about inaccessible nukes. At the time I was moving up the PF ranks again with an alternate account and happened to remember one of the derelict accounts with nukes that I had seen the previous week. I record everyone's Capabilities and Durabilities some weeks because I use a spreadsheet to determine the final scores and whether or not and against whom I should use my Liquid Carbon and Anti-Ballistic Missiles. The following is a screen capture of the stats of the players I faced on the week of May 30 to June 5 2017.
When I went back through my old pictures I noticed that one of them was tyh56-5 whom I faced on my main PSN over a year earlier. This player has exactly the same Capabilities and Durabilities over a year apart! This means that the player who owns the account has not signed in and no one has done any damage to their base. And yet they have had 4 nukes for over a year! According to my calculations with these 4 nukes and a maximum blockade of 5 days for each unsuccessful infiltration with maximum damage this account should have appeared on the nuke tab and been subject to nuke hunters over 70 times. Either nuke hunters sucked and failed over 70 times in a row and did zero damage every time or this account never appears in the nuke tab for active players to infiltrate.
Konami needs to start paying attention. Look at ALL accounts with nukes and verify that they appear in the nuke tab after their blockade runs out. That no one at Konami has been doing this already for such an important feature in the game is shameful.
I have seen MANY similar derelict accounts with nukes. I will not name them because I suspect Konami's support people will only think I am reporting cheaters instead of realising that I am reporting examples of a problem with Konami's programming and or servers (language barrier?). It is Konami's responsibility to seek out why such accounts and their nukes are permanently unavailable to the rest of the playerbase. I know there are Permanent Nukes currently on the PS3. I have seen nearly a hundred Permanent Nukes to date and given that the sample size of players I actually came across in the PF battles is very small I would not be surprised if 25% to 75% of all nukes currently present on the PS3 are Permanent. I have heard from people who say they have seen similar derelict bases with nukes on the PS4 and Xbox One so I strongly suspect that the programming and or server issue occurs on all platforms. Given that this situation has been present for over a year and Konami has done nothing and or is not observant enough to notice this situation players should come to terms that Nuclear Disarmament is currently impossible due to these Permanent Nukes. I really really want to see what ”Chapter 3" unlocks but at this point Disarmament is entirely dependent upon Konami's future actions.
Hastatus - aka the guy who figured out the math behind the PF Battles' scoring system and who sits in the highest PF Grade on the PS3.
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The previous text was posted on July 7th 2017. It has remained unchanged. Since I will not go away until Konami officially says they understand the situation or they do something to rectify it I will add further evidence here from time to time if I think it makes a good example for people to understand what I am talking about. Maybe it will also help cross the language barrier.
Another example of an account with Permanent Nukes: MrUnkreative (PS3) - July 21 2017
I encountered MrUnkreative on two separate occasions during Weekly PF Virtual Battles: the week of May 9th and the week of July 11th (so two months apart).
July 11 2017
May 9 2017
July 11 2017
As you can see MrUnkreative's Capabilities and Durabilities were identical two months apart:
May 9th : Offensive Capability = 7872095; Offensive Durability = 182838; Defensive Capability = 5106301; Defensive Durability = 232751;
July 11th : Offensive Capability = 7872095; Offensive Durability = 182838; Defensive Capability = 5106301; Defensive Durability = 232751.
Identical Capabilities and Durabilities over a two-month period is indicative of a player who has neither signed in nor been damaged in any manner through infiltration by another player. Either of these would result in slightly changing values at a minimum.
This might not be totally convincing to everyone who does not understand the math involved in calculating Capability and Durability, but there is something else:
As you can clearly see this player has 0 Medics, 0 Rangers, 0 Sentries, and 0 Defenders. The odds of getting a staff member with a PF-Stat Skill is roughly 1 in 10 (when obtaining ranks high enough to have the skill). They are very easy to come by and so obtaining many of them is very easy. Not having any of them is highly unlikely for a player who is even remotely active. The PF-Stat Skill was introduced in the May 2016 Game Update. Having zero staff with these skills means that a player has probably not played the game since before the May 2016 update. So MrUnkreative has not played since before the May 2016 update and has had 4 nukes this whole time. He is not playing the game and other players are not able to invade his FOB. His account is derelict and inaccessible to the rest of the playerbase...and he has 4 Permanent Nukes that no one outside of a Konami programmer can disarm.
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Another example of an account with Permanent Nukes: Astaroth-369 (PS3) - A Trophy Hunter - August 1 2017
I have encountered more Derelict Accounts with Permanent Nukes in the past few weeks but here is one that can be considered in a different way. I encountered Astaroth-369 during the week of July 11 2017.
July 11 2017
The first thing that indicated to me that this account had not been accessed by its owner for a long time was that they had 0 Medics, 0 Rangers, 0 Sentries, and 0 Defenders. This suggests that they have not played since before the May 2016 update. But there is another way to verify that an account has not been played by the owner: their trophy history.
Astaroth-369 is what I call a trophy hunter: they play a large number of games on a single PSN account and generally attempt to get Platinums for most of them. Here is the history of their game play as seen through their trophy history (you can view it for yourself at https://psnprofiles.com/Astaroth-369 ):
- Before playing MGSV:TPP they had already earned 54 Platinums.
- They started playing MGSV:TPP on December 1st 2015.
- They obtained Disarmament on Jan 21 2016.
- They obtained Deterrence on Jan 22 2016.
- They obtained the MGSV:TPP Platinum on Jan 23 2016.
- They then played 10 more PS3 games between Jan 23 2016 and August 23 2016, obtaining Platinums (or 100%) for all of them.
- They obtained a PS4 in August of 2016.
- They played their first PS4 game between Aug 17 and Aug 20 2016.
- They then played 26 more PS4 games; 11 of these were Platinumed.
- Their 10 most recent trophies were all obtained on August 1 2017 (today).
- They still had 4 nukes on their PS3 MGSV:TPP account on July 11 2017 and they are probably still there today (August 1 2017).
It is clear that this player played MGSV:TPP between Dec 1 2015 and Jan 23 2016. They got involved with nukes in mid-late January 2016. From their trophy history all common sense says that after getting the Platinum for MGS:TPP on Jan 23 2016 they stopped playing the game. You can see how they move from game to game and then a new console. Who would continue to play MGSV:TPP on the PS3 after playing 10 more PS3 games, getting a PS4, and playing 26 more PS4 games? 2.68 trophies per day is very, very time consuming. Clearly they have not been playing MGS:TPP on their old PS3 and yet over a year and a half after they stopped playing MGSV they still have 4 nukes on their account. His account is derelict and inaccessible to the rest of the playerbase...and he has 4 Permanent Nukes that no one outside of a Konami programmer can disarm.
Many Derelict Accounts with Permanent Nukes belong to people who do not speak English or who have so few trophies that they probably belong to people using them as Alternative accounts. Since Astaroth-369 included English in his account and they are clearly still very active on it I PSN messaged them a couple weeks ago asking them when they last played MGSV:TPP but they have not responded.
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Some final comments before a hiatus - August 9 2017
My alternative account is moving up past the range of the Derelict Accounts with Permanent Nukes so I will likely not see anymore good examples to add. I will continue Tweeting Konami, but I will probably stop updating this document for a while. I will end with the following thoughts:
Warning to Konami: The Time Factor
- Permanent Nukes have existed since at least January 2016.
- I reported the issue to Konami Support and received an unhelpful automated(?) reply from Konami Support on June 9 2017.
- I opened up a Twitter account and Tweeted my Proof to @Konami, @metalgear_jp and @metalgear_en on July 7 2017.
- I have replied to the Nuke Counts with my Proof 10 times between July 7 and August 8 2017.
- After 2 Months I have received no intelligent reply from Konami about the issue and they have not made any public statement about it.
- Konami continues to give out Nuke Counts to players either unawares or hoping the vast majority of players remain unawares.
You might think that remaining silent about this issue will keep players from finding out the truth. It will not. Whatever policy you have in place preventing the disclosure of negative press will not serve you in time. The longer after June 9th 2017 you delay in responding in word and in deed the more negativity you will foster. It is one thing to miss a programming mistake for over a year and a half and claim you did not know, but it is another thing entirely once you have been informed and are continually informed twice a week when you post the Nuke Counts. Time is not your ally. More players will find out the truth and more players will learn for how much time you have known. This is the biggest programming flaw impacting the most number of players in the history of the Metal Gear franchise. Eventually many players will find out and many players will remember it for decades. What will be the perception of a player who looks at your lower budget games, like Survive, when they think back at how you could not handle entering a few zeroes in your biggest budget title?
Significance of this Issue
Some may not realise that this issue is in fact extremely significant. Early players claimed that this game was unfinished due to cut content and Konami argued the ending is there and the game is complete. Zero players have completed the game. Completing a game means reaching the intended ending of a game. Konami has confirmed that Nuclear Disarmament unlocks Chapter 3 whatever that entails. Dataminers can claim what is or is not included in Chapter 3, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence because Chapter 3 could easily be part of a game update/DLC. Konami is still pushing players to complete Nuclear Disarmament. It is one thing for Chapter 3 to be nearly impossible to achieve requiring the cooperation of nearly every player. This is a grandiose and impressive thing to attempt. BUT due to Konami's server glitch it is not actually in the hands of the players as it was intended to be. This is a disastrous situation. Chapter 3 cannot be reached by any player ever no matter how delusional players or Konami employees are (delusional means they are able to trick themselves into ignoring a problem and pretending it is not there). It is permanently inaccessible because of Konami's lack of testing and maintenance. A game with an intended ending that cannot be accessed due to a programming error is by definition an incomplete game.
It is no different than how some developers in the past put out incomplete games: in 1987 David Perry did not have enough space on the ZX Spectrum port of Gladiator/Great Gurianos so he omitted the ending and just made the final boss invincible; In 1988 Ocean did not have the time or could not figure out the bug that caused gibberish garbled views in level 4 of Robocop on the Commodore 64 so they set an impossible time limit in level 3 to prevent players from reaching garbled level 4; In 1990 Midway thought their arcade game Smash TV was impossible to beat so they did not bother to include the Pleasure Dome ending which was advertised in the game; In 1993 Ocean did not have the time to finish Dennis (the Menace) on the Commodore Amiga port of the game so they created a pit impossible to jump so that the last boss and the ending could not be accessed by the player; In 2015 Konami created or allowed a bug to remain in Nuclear Disarmament stats so that players cannot reach Chapter 3 of MGSV:TPP. Is the bug accidental or is Chapter 3 just unfinished? What are players to think if Konami never attempts to fix the bug?
What the players can do to speed up Communication and Action by Konami
Konami is only in this business to make money. To spend money fixing an issue such as this might only be in the hands of financially-incentivized businessmen. They essentially calculate how much negative publicity will arise and whether it might cost them future business. The negative press must impact future revenues more than the cost of the fix. Metal Gear Survive already has a bad reputation so maybe the Konami people do not think the negative publicity can get any worse. In the past they had Hideo Kojima a perfectionist who would not have allowed such a bug to remain. Who do they have now? Currently few players read my Tweets and my proof of this situation is not reaching enough of the playerbase and its collective voice. J gets more likes for his Nuke Counts than I do for pointing out the futility of the whole situation. Part of this is the language barrier: many Japanese players likely do not understand what is going on and there is no evidence that J understands English. The person in charge of the English Metal Gear Twitter account rarely says anything of note and seems to spend most of their time Retweeting stuff. Other people cannot read more than 140 characters at a time and or will remain delusionally hopeful. If you want to help force Konami into action I urge people to start liking all my Proof Tweets. J gets 50 to 100 likes each time he posts the Nuke Counts. If I start getting more likes than J's original post they will more likely pay attention, they will be more likely to get a translator involved to understand why, and they will be more likely to bring the issue up with their bosses. The more people that like my proof posts the more it will be evident to them that more people know the truth. Please help force Konami to face and own the truth. Thanks.
Hastatus.
Continues down below...
W (which shouldn't count but just to be fair)
