Guild Wars 2

Nialiss.6459:

Just on the topic of calling these methods “exploits,” I don’t feel like it’s entirely correct. For me to call something an “exploit” I’d have to feel like someone is being harmed by the activity. Given that you can’t trade the tokens you get on completion and the silver reward is pathetically low, I can’t honestly say that I feel that anyone is being hurt by it. Back to the point, I’d prefer people call it cheating or abuse of a mechanic or something like that. Just saying.

You can skip everything but the bossfight on path 3 Arah by jumping and walking up the walls, you don’t even have to trigger the path to do it.
This gives you 60 dungeon tokens in 10 minutes or less if everyone knows how to jump up walls. If you have, like me more than one level 80 you can get quite a lot of tokens. Those tokens you exchange for the rare armor pieces not the dungeon armor. You proceed to salvage those armor pieces. You get ectos and orichalcum out of them.
That hurts the economy.
A lot of other dungeons have ways to glitch your way through content, glitch not skip. Hotw was another example before anet fixed it.
If people defend this just ask for an I win button, its basically the same thing.

RedStar.4218:

Unfair as a game mechanic. That’s how it’s unfair.
Go in the normal PvE, try and kill whichever monster while you are in place they can’t hit you. Watch them go invulnerable because this is intended.
Understand that this feature is a bug. Or a gross oversight. Or a weird intended idea to allow everyone to do AC.

To be honest, I find this ‘invulnerability’ mechanic very out of place in a game that’s supposed to be all about player skill, positioning and dodging stuff. You’re not allowed to take advantage of terrain, or even kite away more than a few steps before everything resets again. In fact, you could stand on a ledge, throw a fireball or two while jumping down and still have the mob reset because it couldn’t reach you when you threw the first fireball.

And that’s not even taking into account the bumps in the terrain that sometimes make mobs reset. I’d say, remove the mechanic in its entirety. It’s not stopping bots, it’s not stopping exploits. It’s just frustrating.

Ashur Etil Lani.4518:

You can skip everything but the bossfight on path 3 Arah by jumping and walking up the walls, you don’t even have to trigger the path to do it.
This gives you 60 dungeon tokens in 10 minutes or less if everyone knows how to jump up walls. If you have, like me more than one level 80 you can get quite a lot of tokens. Those tokens you exchange for the rare armor pieces not the dungeon armor. You proceed to salvage those armor pieces. You get ectos and orichalcum out of them.
That hurts the economy.

Actually gossamer is better than ori and this depends on RNG, as well as the number of ectos u can salvage. COF path 1 legit speedruns are still more profitable, even faster and requires less skill. If you are talking about Arah gear, I personally think it looks terrible. If Anet wants to encourage non-repetitive play, then it should have better scaling of rewards.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Ashur Etil Lani.4518:

You can skip everything but the bossfight on path 3 Arah by jumping and walking up the walls, you don’t even have to trigger the path to do it.
This gives you 60 dungeon tokens in 10 minutes or less if everyone knows how to jump up walls. If you have, like me more than one level 80 you can get quite a lot of tokens. Those tokens you exchange for the rare armor pieces not the dungeon armor. You proceed to salvage those armor pieces. You get ectos and orichalcum out of them.
That hurts the economy.

Actually gossamer is better than ori and this depends on RNG, as well as the number of ectos u can salvage. COF path 1 legit speedruns are still more profitable, even faster and requires less skill. If you are talking about Arah gear, I personally think it looks terrible. If Anet wants to encourage non-repetitive play, then it should have better scaling of rewards.

1 good jumper + portal gun + waypoint = run under 10 minutes.
Thats 60 tokens, so what if ori is worth less than gossamer my point still stands.
If you don’t use the candelabra exploits in cof path 1 that path is longer.

Oh? There’s another jumping feature in Arah?

ThiBash.5634:

To be honest, I find this ‘invulnerability’ mechanic very out of place in a game that’s supposed to be all about player skill, positioning and dodging stuff. You’re not allowed to take advantage of terrain, or even kite away more than a few steps before everything resets again. In fact, you could stand on a ledge, throw a fireball or two while jumping down and still have the mob reset because it couldn’t reach you when you threw the first fireball.

And that’s not even taking into account the bumps in the terrain that sometimes make mobs reset. I’d say, remove the mechanic in its entirety. It’s not stopping bots, it’s not stopping exploits. It’s just frustrating.

Bugs and problems with this mechanic make this very annoying. A lot of times monsters go invulnerable even though they can hit you, or reset when you go a few meters in one direction but they won’t reset if you go 100 meters in another direction.

You can use the terrain however the hell you want by hiding behind walls and using different levels to protect yourself from certain attacks.
But when there’s absolutely no risk for you, then there’s a problem.

There are people selling tokens for path3. I don’t see the problem with it but when you exploit and skip to the last boss it is the problem.

BTW, there are at least 5 places for the troll to pop in AC. And we run all 3 paths and we don’t speed clear either. It will take about 2 minutes to have the troll and kohler meet up, you just need communication between players.

I mostly roll a ranger on dungeon runs. I do not go up the stairs at the final bosses, but i will hide behind them on the ground. I am always trying to get to the side or back of them. Why, because of the bleeding. If I can keep up the bleeding with my bow, I will. I also look to keep myself alive by hiding behind pillars and such. It is called tactics.

We don’t exploit the game at anything we do. If you call a tactic of having the troll and kohler meet an exploit, well then you need to call anytime that you bring a mob into a fight out the world an exploit. How many times have you had a deer come in and fight what you were fighting, or you see 2 things fighting and jump in on it.

There is a difference between tactics and exploits/shortcuts. Don’t confuse them.

Ashur Etil Lani.4518:

1 good jumper + portal gun + waypoint = run under 10 minutes.
Thats 60 tokens, so what if ori is worth less than gossamer my point still stands.
If you don’t use the candelabra exploits in cof path 1 that path is longer.

Err what? Whats the candelabra exploit? A good team speed run for COF path 1 is under 9 minutes without special gear etc. You get 2 bosses gold on their bodies and 3 chests. Thats why people are willing to ignore DR for COF. Unless u count mesmer portals as exploits, its 100% legit.

So can you get banned for hitting a boss from a location it cannot hit or not? I"ve heard a lot of people saying that it’s just tactics whilst another group claimed that it’s an exploit. I do not want to get banned yet I do not want to miss out a great way of saving time. I really just want an official word on whether you can be banned for doing so.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Ashur Etil Lani.4518:

1 good jumper + portal gun + waypoint = run under 10 minutes.
Thats 60 tokens, so what if ori is worth less than gossamer my point still stands.
If you don’t use the candelabra exploits in cof path 1 that path is longer.

Err what? Whats the candelabra exploit? A good team speed run for COF path 1 is under 9 minutes without special gear etc. You get 2 bosses gold on their bodies and 3 chests. Thats why people are willing to ignore DR for COF. Unless u count mesmer portals as exploits, its 100% legit.

CoF path1 clearing every mob (ie actually doing the bridge) and running the balls (no mes trick) with a balanced group (ie. no 4war/mes like everyone wants for some reason) is still under 10min. the path is just a joke and anyone who does not realize this is just not that smart.

As the OP stated, most of us have used dungeon exploits (and I use this term lightly, one person’s exploit Is another person’s solution to a problem), if the other 4 in the dungeon want to use an exploit I just go along with it. It just causes too much tension in the group if you’re the odd one out and refuse.

I’ve completed probably 450+ fractals to date with random pug groups, I’ve not yet once come across a group that has not used every known bug/exploit. You’re probably thinking that I’m part of the problem by saying this, but it’s just become the norm to use every available tool (exploit/workaround) to complete these higher level fractals.

Arena.Net are usually very quick to fix these so called exploits, so until they do and force everyone to complete these dungeons correctly then everyone is just going to use them.

If Arena.Net was so quick to fix the many problems, bugs and bad design (in parts) in some of these fractals many people would not seek to exploit them. Maybe if they didn’t rush them in the first place and correctly beta tested them, a lot of these so called exploits would not exist.

All being said, I must admit I really enjoy the fractals and 99% of the pugs I play with, even when someone shows me a new exploit its kind of fun to see what crazy thing someone learned to do this time?.

I never look at terrain tactics as an exploit.
“Location, location, location”: Positioning is the key to survival (that’s what i learned in gw1)

Walls are there to block projectiles, fair game in gw1 so i guess the philosophy stays the same here. Just because the asura boss on fractal likes weapons with a huge arc doesn’t mean it’s an exploit to use the ceiling to block the agony shots.

Jumping and z-axis were added to the game to prevent a few bugs in gw1 and add more active gameplay. People that played gw1 might remember meleeing mobs from under a bridge just because they were on the “same spot”. Also if we can jump it would be dumb no to use it to dodge mobs that can’t go ranged or find new paths. At least i feel that some JPs seems to be there just to fully develop our jumping skills.

If mobs sometimes bug, and i still don’t know why/how, it’s anet job to know the issue and fix it. If a boss just stays there quietly put and not attacking i’ll be sure to not use stun, kd and fear to unstuck him. This is no exploit until you can actually cause the said effect at will.
The rule is kill or be killed. Maw won’t stop it’s laser attack when i get bugged with the pickup running bug so why should players do things differently when AI bugs?

Skipping is not an exploit when actually running through mobs, unless you can skip like 90% of a dungeon but i would call that bad design.

Now teleporting through use of camera, seen that on fractals to skip to the last boss avoiding a real annoying part, is an exploit.
The already fixed teleport issue at dredge fractal was an exploit as it was the direct damage on the seal fractal.
Some walls that we can run are obvious exploits but if anet doesn’t bother to hotfix i guess they’re not that worried about it.

Regarding the ban hammer i think they should direct the ban somewhere else (mat farming bots and gold sellers mostly).
A few suspensions i could see but unless is a rather broken bug (like dungeon offering 10x tokens or insanely fast clears) people should be safe to do as they please.

It’s funny that people would not consider “positioning advantage” an exploit. After all, you’re exploiting pathing and scripting of bosses.

Khal Drogo.9631:

Ashur Etil Lani.4518:

1 good jumper + portal gun + waypoint = run under 10 minutes.
Thats 60 tokens, so what if ori is worth less than gossamer my point still stands.
If you don’t use the candelabra exploits in cof path 1 that path is longer.

Err what? Whats the candelabra exploit? A good team speed run for COF path 1 is under 9 minutes without special gear etc. You get 2 bosses gold on their bodies and 3 chests. Thats why people are willing to ignore DR for COF. Unless u count mesmer portals as exploits, its 100% legit.

Arah P3 can be done in 5 minutes, not 10 as someone said.
Also, you have to take into account the fact that it’s completely brainless, whereas you have to pay attention in CoF P1.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Just for the record, standing in a place where you can hurt the boss but the boss can’t hurt you back / can’t fight back is considered an exploit, and we are working on a solution for that problem.

Isn’t that annoying invulnerable mechanic that takes ages to disappear supposed to take care of that?
And what’s your take on 1 person maintaining agro to prevent invulnerable while the rest is somewhat safe? (in a sense that it’s unlikely the boss will go there but not impossible)

haviz.1340:

It’s funny that people would not consider “positioning advantage” an exploit. After all, you’re exploiting pathing and scripting of bosses.

So every time a mobs hits a wall or i go on top of a box so a melee mob doesn’t hit me while I heal I should be banned?

The objects around the world aren’t just decorations and should be fully utilized to get the most advantage on a fight. Walls to block projectiles is a common tactic to mitigate a ton of damage freeing the heal skill for when it’s actually needed.

The reason some professions have different armor and fighting mechanics is to take advantage of field positioning. While an heavy armored players drags the boss around dishing melee damage the rest could be in a safe spot focusing only on the offensive, lowering the chances of failure.

In gw1 having the higher ground meant little more range and damage. I don’t think that mechanic was introduced here but for the sake of the argument what idiot wouldn’t want the higher ground to maximize the dps and safety zone.

Those are a few positioning tactics that are/were used in most MMORPGs.
If objects and terrain weren’t supposed to be used give us a flat world with vertical walls to be sure there’s no possible hiding place nor high ground to take advantage. Don’t think it would be successful as an MMORPGs but as an arena battle royale with quick respawn could be fun.

Of course those walls with 80% inclination and your char can climb are, most likely, exploits and any jumping path that can cut a whole lot of the run needs to be fixed. Yet, not all positioning tactics are to be considered exploits.

Regarding AI it is exploitable by design. No matter how smart it is made, and some fixes are needed, in the end the AI as to lose no matter what.

Flameseeker.1563:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Just for the record, standing in a place where you can hurt the boss but the boss can’t hurt you back / can’t fight back is considered an exploit, and we are working on a solution for that problem.

Isn’t that annoying invulnerable mechanic that takes ages to disappear supposed to take care of that?
And what’s your take on 1 person maintaining agro to prevent invulnerable while the rest is somewhat safe? (in a sense that it’s unlikely the boss will go there but not impossible)

the reason the places most use are exploits is because the boss does not go invulnerable or reset like they should. obviously if they did no one would do it because you can not do it.

My guess is 4 range taking high ground and a tanky character staying in melee should be ok, but if the tank is downed or dies those 4 would need to get into his range quick or he should reset (there must be some risk to the strategy if it goes wrong if it is not the intended way to kill the boss). Let look at AC final boss (path 1 and 3), if my guard stays melee and 4 range run up the stairs to not need to worry about the cone atk its good strat, but if the guard gets hit and is downed the other 4 can not just stay up top and range like is done with all 5 currently. the other thing with this is that unlike now, you need to clear the breeders by the boss, not just run up top and ranged from the top.

Why do we all kid ourselves, we all know the difference between and small help and an exploit, but everyone differs somewhat on where to draw the line.

I think using spykits and such is perfectly normal and acceptable, but I don’t think porting through walls or to the end boss is acceptable. Somewhere between these two examples is where I draw the line at what I’m happy with doing.

Other people draw the line a lot shorter and think that invisibility/spykits are an exploit. On the other hand some people think it’s perfectly ok to skip directly to the end of a dungeon to exploit the tokens because this is Arena.Nets faulty for not fixing it.

Only Arena.Net can decide on where these aids become an exploit and remove/nerf them in due time.

Who are we to question the morals of others, I say do what your happy with doing, don’t be forced to do something you think is wrong!!

The issue lies with the game not calculating vertical pathfinding properly. The range check is point to point with no obstacle. AoE circles don’t really have that pathfinding ability. Similarly, aggro seeking also doesn’t have that.

Please do something against exploiters (eg ban them). People already take using exploits for granted and its starting to get hard to find groups who do not want to take part in such business.
Like just I was in a lvl 26 fractal group and the group insisted on using at least 5 exploits I noticed.
And other people in my guild are doing silly stuff like skipping giganticus lupicus with portal cannons.

Malediktus.9250:

Please do something against exploiters (eg ban them). People already take using exploits for granted and its starting to get hard to find groups who do not want to take part in such business.
Like just I was in a lvl 26 fractal group and the group insisted on using at least 5 exploits I noticed.
And other people in my guild are doing silly stuff like skipping giganticus lupicus with portal cannons.

I think at this stage a ban is a little extream for most minor exploits, a better option would be to fix them maybe.

But I agree, do something!!

There are SO MANY exploitable bugs in this game, and this is 6 months after release. If the devs show no respect to the players by creating dungeons full of bugs, players should not show respect to the devs by playing the dungeon the way it was designed. You expect players to not exploit the bugs when there are so many ? Fix the bugs.

Nibiru.1423:

Malediktus.9250:

Please do something against exploiters (eg ban them). People already take using exploits for granted and its starting to get hard to find groups who do not want to take part in such business.
Like just I was in a lvl 26 fractal group and the group insisted on using at least 5 exploits I noticed.
And other people in my guild are doing silly stuff like skipping giganticus lupicus with portal cannons.

I think at this stage a ban is a little extream for most minor exploits, a better option would be to fix them maybe.

But I agree, do something!!

No, they need a form of punishment. This kind of behaviour should never be allowed. If no punishment is given you just send the wrong message. So I’m all for a 3 day ban to those that have abused the exploits.

Conner.4702:

No, they need a form of punishment. This kind of behaviour should never be allowed. If no punishment is given you just send the wrong message. So I’m all for a 3 day ban to those that have abused the exploits.

I agree. A perma ban is way too extreme, but a 1-3 day ban isn’t too bad for players that exploit whenever they can. If you think about it, some players exploit so much that 1-3 days of playtime is probably the amount of time they saved by exploiting.

the dredge fractal : “wheel?”
AC : “stairs?”
CoE : “skip first alpha?”
CM : “come here guys i’ll show you something!”

What does it take for a hotfix? How much time does it take to place a rock in that CM spot for example ?

Consider the following: If people go to such extreme lengths to bypass mechanics, maybe the problem is with the mechanics?

Iehova.9518:

Consider the following: If people go to such extreme lengths to bypass mechanics, maybe the problem is with the mechanics?

Outside of fractals (because I don’t know enough on this), no. They are lazy/don’t want to take any risk/can’t do it normally.

Czinczar.3786:

the dredge fractal : “wheel?”
What does it take for a hotfix? How much time does it take to place a rock in that CM spot for example ?

It’s the third or fourth jumping spot since the mountain exploit was discovered. It wouldn’t surprise me if players find a new one after the update.

Not banning exploiters just encourage use of more exploits as soon as they’re found.

“Oooo I found a new exploit, better use it as much as I can before it gets fixed since I don’t get banned anyway!”

come on, you are not going to ban players just because they stand on that little rock that lies in front of them. If standing on that little rock breaks the intended design of the dungeon, then it’s clearly a design flaw.

Czinczar.3786:

the dredge fractal : “wheel?”
AC : “stairs?”
CoE : “skip first alpha?” “lets do all 3 paths in 1 run” “stand here, no pets, no illusions”
CM : “come here guys i’ll show you something!”

What does it take for a hotfix? How much time does it take to place a rock in that CM spot for example ?

fixed that for ya

Czinczar.3786:

come on, you are not going to ban players just because they stand on that little rock that lies in front of them. If standing on that little rock breaks the intended design of the dungeon, then it’s clearly a design flaw.

Of course, I think that those on the side of banning players know that some things are so stupid that they shouldn’t warrant a ban. Ranging the AC boss isn’t worth banning anyone, it doesn’t save any time, unless you have the worst PuG ever.

Exploiting to do 2 dungeon runs in one, as seen in CoE, HotW and Arah however, saves a huge amount of time. So does skipping Giganticus, or the mountain in CM.
Basically anything that relies on terrain bugs, missing textures, portal gun and whatnot is something that I consider high on the “you should be ban” list.

I find it funny that all dungeons have some way of skipping content with just some JUMPING. Looks like ANet still needs to learn the power of jumping xD

Btw I could prolly name all the dungeon jump exploits (some let you finish 2 paths in one run) But then again why should I? ANet should’ve tested it themselves before releasing them. Some were very easy to spot (cracks in the walls, I mean come on who designed these dungeons?)

Ooh and on the portal gun thing. ANet has added it in themselves. But I can see it getting removed soon, since they also removed the sentinal gun which granted the One-shot skill ( you could one shot bosses in CoF with them, it made some pretty good lulz though xD)

Now that I’m thinking about it, they should take some inspiration from this : http://www.cracked.com/article_19162_6-hilarious-ways-game-designers-are-screwing-with-piratekittenml

Players are blatantly taking advantage of pathing and AI glitches in order to completely trivialize dungeon content — which, to some players (myself included) completely ruins the experience.

It’s totally out of hand.

It’s a a reasonable assumption that skipping encounters, res-rushing, and exploiting the terrain is not how ANET wanted players to experience their content. In other words, the current user-experience is probably not what ANET intended.

Hopefully they can (and will) rectify this.