Guild Wars 2

And in this vid replace “honey Badger” by rT.

Their guild name is kinda ironical since this game is purely directed towards casuals. Casuals of the world, unite!

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Contrary to popular belief; rT is actually pretty split between who is happy to do varying levels of exploits, and who is not willing to do any (in a speed run scenario). Many of our best players are much in the same boat as Nike, and would love to have the standard set for records which involves minimal, to no ‘exploits’. Some believe speed runs should be just that, a run where you try and complete it as fast as possible. On the other hand, there are those that believe they should be a display of a very high level of skill, with minimal game mechanic ‘abuse’.

However, this brings us back to the biggest problem that we face when we try to ‘regulate’ what is a legit, or non-legit speed run.

How do we decide what is an exploit, and what isn’t?

I think I speak for most people in [rT], when I say that it would be much more interesting to have records based on ‘who is better’, rather than ‘who has better exploits’. I’m sure some of you think this is pretty hilarious coming from the guild that is seen as exploiting everything, but it is how it is.

There will never be any agreement on what is an isn’t an exploit unfortunately, since there is no honor among thieves. The only policy that makes any sense is to have an anything goes policy, even if I personally don’t find that fun to participate in.

That said, when people post record videos from now on with blatant, pathetic exploits I don’t feel obligated to give them any respect for a job well done, because frankly, it wasn’t.

I’m sure we could come up with some loose guidelines, of what is and isn’t acceptable.

Your black/gray/white list was pretty good, but we could elaborate.

-The boss bugged, did you have to actually try do that, or did it happen ‘naturally’? i.e. Lyssa, Balthazar, Alphard. These bosses all bug by themselves, simply by teams trying to DPS. Stuff like this should be ok.

-The boss has some questionable mechanics, does it make or break the boss? CoE boon golem and Melandru can both be interrupted through defiant. This should be ok, if you miss an interrupt you get punished severely, the boss isn’t permanently inactive.

-Did you go out of your way to avoid something which would usually gate progress? Only thing I can think of in this regard is the start of Arah P3. I’m not sure how I feel about this one.

-Did you leave the map boundaries? Arah P2 boat skip is not ok. Nor is jumping over the wall in Arah P3.

This list could continue. They’re like general guidelines. I’m actually kind of interested in just making a friendly competition. We could set some rules for the run, put a deadline on it. Which ever team uploads the fastest time on video is the winner? Maybe we could gamble a little bit with entry fees and such. Let me know if people would be interested in something like this, I actually think this would be the best way to get some competition going, with set guidelines. It’s like a tournament of dungeons.

Just more food for thought I guess. I just want to spark more interest in speed runs, is all.

I would say it would be more interesting and perhaps more respectable if we also banned class stacking.

Wow that’s bold Wethospu, and I am totally in favor

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

As I said in my OP, I don’t care what people do to complete a speed run. Just don’t hack or skip any of the primary objectives. This is how I think most people feel after making this thread.

This is basically my position. My tolerance for “exploits” is much looser in PvE games because you’re not really competing against anyone (compared to a competitive FPS).

Concerning fiery rush: it isn’t an exploit. In fact, I’d go as far as saying the skill was deliberately designed this way. There are enemies that use charge/rush type skills that deal an obscene amount of damage and rapidly tick (see: Champion Risen Megalodon and Risen Abominations). They use the exact same functionality as untargeted FGS/Bear Form rush. If untargeted FGS is an exploit, then these monster skills need to be changed so that they have to select a “target” as opposed to hitting a set direction.

I come from a background in the speed running community for other (non-mmo games) like Super Metroid, Link to the Past, Super Mario World, etc. In those communities, it is widely acceptable to do whatever glitch or skip you may need to get to the end of the game, short of using a cheat system such as Game Genie/Action Replay and the like. Categories are created to determine parameters, or if certain paths/techniques are used that will greatly affect the run time – for example and in-bounds only vs out-of-bounds run of Portal, 100% vs Any% vs Lowest% completion of the Metroid games, etc.

Because of this background, I have a pretty open view on what is acceptable. Obviously, not everything translates nicely into the MMO atmosphere, but when things are not specifically deemed “illegal” to do by the devs, I view them as fair game. Illegal would be something like going completely outside the map (NOT sneaky paths, using stealth, hugging the walls, hiding in corners, or pathing mobs in order to go around them, but things like running through the walls of CoE, blinking through doors or walls, going into completely other explorable paths where there isn’t an overlap). If anyone has ever gotten outside of a map or an instance in this game or any MMO, it’s pretty obvious by the graphics – flat textured files, lots of decorative walls or stones or other features that you can actually pass right through, etc.

Also illegal, as noted by the devs, is attacking the boss from a position to take absolutely no damage nor any risk of ever taking damage (generally this is done by ranging from a position outside of the boss’s attack reach). Again, I view this as different from smart positioning. LoSing to position the boss/control where the adds spawn I feel is fine, and is actually really standard practice in MMOs across the board. Likewise with pushing bosses to corners, walls, etc. I personally see two grey areas in the “boss positioning” category, both of which I find acceptable but others may not. First is attacking mobs through walls WHERE THERE IS CLEARLY A PATH THEY COULD TAKE to get to you. There are very few places where this actually happens, but CM comes to mind – there are a lot of side rooms where you can attack through the walls with certain weapons, but if you aren’t positioned correctly the mobs will come right around to you anyway. The second is related but more general, and that is positioning bosses/mobs where you are the least risk, but if positioning is not exact you will be hit by the boss and hit hard. A lot of them involve stacking and precise positioning for melee groups. Situations such as positioning during Lupi phase 3 to avoid bubbles. I firmly believe there is a difference between attacking a mob from atop cliff/wall where they have NO CHANCE of getting to you and attacking from a spot where they can still hit you if you aren’t in the exact position.

Beyond that, to me, everything is pretty much open. Stacking and rotating reflects? Sure. Whirlwinding into corners to get extra hits? Go for it. Chaining stealth to pass mob? Absolutely. Bringing certain classes/multiples of the same class to a run? Absolutely, as long as it’s the same from beginning to end – no switching from Mesmer on one boss to Warrior on the next or the like. Stacking buffs out of combat and then switching weapons before combat starts? Also fine, because these combo fields and buffs have a time limit that you have to work within, some of which is wasted by switching back and setting up, and also if you mistime or mis-position your finisher with your combo field, you’ve now put several abilities on cooldown, some of which are very long.

All of these tricks, which some consider to be grey areas, are finding the most efficient way to beat the boss/instance and is what speed running is about. They all involve active set up and things can go wrong and go downhill if you aren’t perfect.

colesy.8490:

I thought Define were pretty cool guys until this video.

But their responses in that topic are just pathetic.

Quoted for great justice! Such truth is contained within these words that I wish this quote were mandatory reading for all the members of Define and their friends.

Any speedrun is legit whether the community likes it or not. Why would you care what others think of your accomplishments? Are you that insecure outside of Guild Wars 2 as well? If so, I feel bad for you son I got 99 problems but Bear Form ain’t one…

You guys know that there are skills in this game that are intended to work like this, right?

Namely tidal wave among others. god forbid elementalists can have some good DPS. :rolls eyes:

But Elementalists are supposed to be bad!
Well, according to HC’s logic, since they only have warriors.

Debby has a mes :<

Zelyhn.8069:

But Elementalists are supposed to be bad!
Well, according to HC’s logic, since they only have warriors.

Debby’s main is an elem, and my main was my ranger but i don’t use it that much anymore, I like the mesmer playstyle more.

Dub.1273:

Debby has a mes :<

She also uses greatswords and staves for some unknown reason.

Looks like worlds that beat Tequatl used fgs with ice bows and that was approved by anet!

But…but… I’m from Define and QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ

colesy.8490:

But…but… I’m from Define and QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ

Watch the video. Get the point.

Anyway, this thread proved interesting at least. I thought the general consensus was that people were quite strongly against most ‘exploits’, but apparently that is not so much the case. While I’m sad that we probably won’t meet a standard in which we can start up some more competition, I guess it’s good at least to see how people felt about speed runs.

I’d say it would be quite good if we got a representative from each of the top dungeon guilds and they all decided together (a commitee maybe?) on what would be defined as an exploit and what wasn’t and then future records can be set on those criteria. Only guilds I can really think of though are rT, DnT and LOD though, if you guys can think of a few more (I suppose Define does count).

It’s role-play or it’s bad play, I’m the committee.

Can tell you right now, that you wouldn’t get a unanimous agreement from all of [rT].

There are nearly 30 members in rT. Of those, I think less than 8 have been involved in our record videos (not including lupi). That group of ~8 players doesn’t include most of the best players, because they don’t agree with using any form of ‘exploit’ in a run, while players such as the ones seen in our Arah/SE P1 videos are pretty lenient on what is acceptable for a speed run.

Cool idea in theory, probably not realistic though. At this point, I don’t think any guild has a set core of 5 people, so its pretty hard to get a general agreement from everyone on the same roster. I guess the most obvious subject that people debate over is FGS.

I would not count so much on LOD either, they have maybe 3-4 people who are committed enough to make a record… and they would probably say whatever gets the fastest time in the current meta, all exploits and glitches included.
BUT, to put my two cents into this I think there should be two different sets of records; one where you complete the dungeon as fast as possible, all glitches and exploits included, no third party programs, something like an “all time” record. The second is where you have a group doing a dungeon completing all necessary story steps (kholer and korga are not necessary) using no exploits (los/skipping is allowed, Arah JP not allowed, lets say no FGS too while we are at it) and up to date with the current meta. I think that having these two separate records will show both how strong an individual/team is and how committed they are without baring some due to their views on what is “right.”

I believe everyone would be fine to use no exploits in speedrun videos.
Fiery Rush isn’t an exploit, though, so restricting it’s use would be kittened and nothing i’d agree on.

Honestly I am a little on the fence with FGS but I think not using it would both promote better gamplay by the community and be more entertaining for people to watch. I see records as a way to weigh my skills against people with proof that they are the best, and lets face it, the fastest runs (not lupi kills, I don’t particularly care how fast you can kill a boss) don’t use FGS anyways and using fiery rush does not show much in terms of player skill but I guess it does show strategy. I guess why not, go ahead and use FGS for records, I am probably biased against it because I have seen too many good players become bad because of it.

If we want to decide what’s an exploit and what is not, you’d need to get mature people who are really experienced at dungeons, know all of the exploits and glitches, and have them make a vote, and for something to be considered legit, it has to be voted legit by more than 70% of that committee, mature being the keyword here.

Dub.1273:

I believe everyone would be fine to use no exploits in speedrun videos.
Fiery Rush isn’t an exploit, though, so restricting it’s use would be kittened and nothing i’d agree on.

Agreed, and a +1 to the idea of two record sets. One that will stand the test of time and one that is a current including whatever you want.

As Ather said, there are maybe 3-4 people in LOD who know enough about records to give a kitten . Of those 3-4, one isn’t able to do records, but did them in GW1. Of the remaining 2-3 players, only I probably care enough to give my opinion.

I think similar numbers apply to other guilds. Getting people to care isn’t as easy as you’d think.

Bright.9160:

As Ather said, there are maybe 3-4 people in LOD who know enough about records to give a kitten . Of those 3-4, one isn’t able to do records, but did them in GW1. Of the remaining 2-3 players, only I probably care enough to give my opinion.

I think similar numbers apply to other guilds. Getting people to care isn’t as easy as you’d think.

sad face

Ather.5091:

Honestly I am a little on the fence with FGS but I think not using it would both promote better gamplay by the community and be more entertaining for people to watch. I see records as a way to weigh my skills against people with proof that they are the best, and lets face it, the fastest runs (not lupi kills, I don’t particularly care how fast you can kill a boss) don’t use FGS anyways and using fiery rush does not show much in terms of player skill but I guess it does show strategy. I guess why not, go ahead and use FGS for records, I am probably biased against it because I have seen too many good players become bad because of it.

FGS is going to get nerfed with or without HC whines but I don’t see how not using it would promote better gameplay since most speedrunners would just stack warriors with enough reflections cause it’s the most foolproof and still very effective. I don’t see how rolling your face on a keyboard against los-ed mobs/bosses is entertaining for people to watch. It’s definitely not for me.

And lastly, how does fgs make good players bad? It deals way less damage than reflections which almost no one has problems with.

haviz.1340:

FGS is going to get nerfed with or without HC whines but I don’t see how not using it would promote better gameplay since most speedrunners would just stack warriors with enough reflections cause it’s the most foolproof and still very effective. I don’t see how rolling your face on a keyboard against los-ed mobs/bosses is entertaining for people to watch. It’s definitely not for me.

And lastly, how does fgs make good players bad? It deals way less damage than reflections which almost no one has problems with.

Spot on. Entertainement is the keyword here.

Start making records for lvl 70+ fractals guys, there are so few exploits in those, and they require skill, which is entertaining

K, ill just go reroll cause my mesmer does too much damage and its an exploit now.

Sandy now becomes king in necroville! One of the only professions with absolutely zero reflects!

Dub.1273:

Sandy now becomes king in necroville! One of the only professions with absolutely zero reflects!

Already on it! But now I am not allowed in speedclears anymore and people complain about lich form being an exploit cause in this game only hitting things with a stick is legit.

Yes. That’s why the devs have put a stick environmental weapon on bloomhunger’s fight. It’s obvious. All the other fights in the game are unintended and doing them is an exploit.

Sanderinoa.8065:

K, ill just go reroll cause my mesmer does too much damage and its an exploit now.

Typical 3w/1m/1g is boring as kitten to watch and easy to play. I don’t see anything remotely entertaining in playing faceroll team composition while having ~90% damage potential other and harder to play team compositions can achieve.

Why anyone whines about fgs doing 175k when feedback does 800k and completely nullifies enemy damage? I’m complaining about reflections being overpowered in pve since ever, not only they negate all damage but deal it back.

feedback doesn’t do 800k damage, that’s only in a highly coorinated lupi kill as you know, and frankly I don’t see how protecting yourself from things once in a while is such a big problem, I thought we were against facetanking and I believe you know we can’t dodge everything at all times. I’m not saying fgs should be complained about or not, frankly I don’t care, but dont pretend its the same as feedback in a normal situation, and that suddenly 6 seconds of projectile negation and an amount of damage equal to around a third of fgs is more of an exploit than getting 200k damage in a couple of seconds, which, aside from the big cooldown can be done around 6 times everytime you spawn it.

Sanderinoa.8065:

That’s a bit hypocritical considering how much you wanted guardians in our team, feedback doesn’t do 800k damage, that’s only in a highly coorinated lupi kill as you know, and frankly I don’t see how protecting yourself from things once in a while is such a big problem, I thought we were against facetanking and I believe you know we can’t dodge everything at all times. I’m not saying fgs should be complained about or not, frankly I don’t care, but dont pretend its the same as feedback in a normal situation, and that suddenly 6 seconds of projectile negation and an amount of damage equal to around a third of fgs is more of an exploit than getting 200k damage every 10 seconds.

Pay attention to voice tone next time. I’m really surprised you thought I wanted any guardians.

Feedback is just one skill of mesmer’s entire a—r—s—e—nal of reflections making most encounters faceroll. Do not compare almost 100% uptime of reflection to one elite with 180s cooldown which makes you stuck with 2 decent weapon skills.

I agree I may have said some things that aren’t true, so I edited it, anyways, the projectile reflection is still hard to keep up, people have to actually watch wwhere my skills are going and the wardens die almost instantly when they don’t attack, wardens need to be perfectly timed to keep it up 100% of the time, and this is only against projectiles anyways. As for damage, we all know that mesmers can’t try to tip warriors even with reflects, and for defence 2 eles or a guardian suffice too, I don’t think its more skilful to use reflects, but its definitely not easier than fgs.

Sanderinoa.8065:

I agree I may have said some things that aren’t true, so I edited it, anyways, the projectile reflection is still hard to keep up, people have to actually watch wwhere my skills are going and the wardens die almost instantly when they don’t attack, wardens need to be perfectly timed to keep it up 100% of the time, and this is only against projectiles anyways. As for damage, we all know that mesmers can’t try to tip warriors even with reflects, and for defence 2 eles or a guardian suffice too, I don’t think its more skilful to use reflects, but its definitely not easier than fgs.

Have you ever played an ele? 66% less hp than mesmer, no vigor on crits, no weapon swapping and no distortion if you want to use conjures. That’s why almost everyone would just go back to 3w/1g/1m, because it’s the easiest and gives results inappropriate to your input.

For damage, you have mes solo 5:40, warrior is 5:08, guardian 5:29. Guess how other professions fare.

As for defense, 2 eles can get you with 50% uptime of projectile absorption and it doesn’t work as often as feedback (Cursed Grasp for instance).

Don’t think fiery rush is going to get a huge nerf, maybe lower fire trail damage and that’s it, someone said that the devs approved using fiery rush on tequatl.

haviz.1340:

Sanderinoa.8065:

I agree I may have said some things that aren’t true, so I edited it, anyways, the projectile reflection is still hard to keep up, people have to actually watch wwhere my skills are going and the wardens die almost instantly when they don’t attack, wardens need to be perfectly timed to keep it up 100% of the time, and this is only against projectiles anyways. As for damage, we all know that mesmers can’t try to tip warriors even with reflects, and for defence 2 eles or a guardian suffice too, I don’t think its more skilful to use reflects, but its definitely not easier than fgs.

Have you ever played an ele? 66% less hp than mesmer, no vigor on crits, no weapon swapping and no distortion if you want to use conjures. That’s why almost everyone would just go back to 3w/1g/1m, because it’s the easiest and gives results inappropriate to your input.

For damage, you have mes solo 5:40, warrior is 5:08, guardian 5:29. Guess how other professions fare.

As for defense, 2 eles can get you with 50% uptime of projectile absorption and it doesn’t work as often as feedback (Cursed Grasp for instance).

Well, i believe with what is given to engineers they might even do a faster kill than a warrior.

haviz.1340:

Why anyone whines about fgs doing 175k when feedback does 800k and completely nullifies enemy damage? I’m complaining about reflections being overpowered in pve since ever, not only they negate all damage but deal it back.

You must have a very short memory because there was tons of whining about how much damage Feedback does to Lupi when you guys started posting your sub-30s kills.

Broadicea.8294:

You must have a very short memory because there was tons of whining about how much damage Feedback does to Lupi when you guys started posting your sub-30s kills.

Forgive me for you using euphemism. I didn’t mean ‘whine’ but harsher words are getting filtered.

haviz.1340:

Have you ever played an ele? 66% less hp than mesmer, no vigor on crits, no weapon swapping and no distortion if you want to use conjures. That’s why almost everyone would just go back to 3w/1g/1m, because it’s the easiest and gives results inappropriate to your input.

For damage, you have mes solo 5:40, warrior is 5:08, guardian 5:29. Guess how other professions fare.

As for defense, 2 eles can get you with 50% uptime of projectile absorption and it doesn’t work as often as feedback (Cursed Grasp for instance).

Not to say ele wouldn’t be hard to play but I know you dislike playing with conjures only so you have access to way more things than you make it sound like. You are also aware that ele has access to vigor on crits for example, if you are not going for it that is your personal choice.

I wouldn’t mind eles getting some love if/when fgs gets changed and I do agree playing other than war/guard/mes compositions is usually the more entertaining option.

Konu.1826:

Not to say ele wouldn’t be hard to play but I know you dislike playing with conjures only so you have access to way more things than you make it sound like. You are also aware that ele has access to vigor on crits for example, if you are not going for it that is your personal choice.

I wouldn’t mind eles getting some love if/when fgs gets changed and I do agree playing other than war/guard/mes compositions is usually the more entertaining option.

I was comparing ele to mesmer. To get vigor you have to spend 10 points in non dps line while mesmer has it basically for free.

This discussion is leading to the same results as always…
Anet seems to have forgotten how to create/support a good game when gw2 was launched
My reference is mainly to gw1 and uw. Although you were heavily relying on SF there were more viable classes than just 3/8. For record runs you couldn’t just use any professions ofc but for regular fast and casual runs you could even take an ele/monk/warrior/derv/ritualist spiker or use ele/ranger/mesmer/assa/derv t4 to name a few examples. The more I play gw2 the less entertaining it is since you don’t have to bother finding good traits for a specific dungeon or think about which build to use since the common builds are the best in 90% of all situations you can get in dungeons. I really miss the theorycrafting aspect that gw1 had and good group comp alone not being enough for decent runs.
Back on topic:

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

I wrote a huge thing but took too long and got timed out. So I’ll be brief. Some things I consider game breaking exploits, and wouldn’t consider a run using them to be valid. Some I consider shady, but valid. and others I consider perfectly legit. I don’t expect anyone to agree with my opinions nor do I expect them to at all be community standards.

To be truthful, I have been discouraged recently in going for record attempts because no matter what we do, someone will always be willing to exploit harder than I am. It’s not fun to work your kitten off for a record video only to have it trumped in 3 days because someone was willing to glitch a boss or go outside the map. If the community standard is that stuff is OK, so be it, but I don’t have any desire to participate in it in that case.

So here is my short list of common exploits and how I label them. Black are things I consider definite exploits that shouldn’t count for records. Grey is valid but shady. White is OK

Black

Using flowers, or positioning, to glitch a boss so that it either doesn’t attack at all, or so you can hit it, but it cannot hit you.
Going outside the map to skip things using blinks, portals or consumables.
Using blinks to bug animations for fiery great sword/bear form. Anet’s stance on animation graphical-only glitches is clear: they are an exploit. So an animation glitch that has a broken in game effect is bullkitten. It is basically a double abuse because you’re breaking the game to make an imbalanced, unintended mechanic even more imbalanced.

grey

Using consumables to trivialize encounters aka Ash Legion Kits prenerf in Dredge or Spikey Fruit vs. Bjarl or the Lovers. Spikey Fruit is only still functional in dungeons because Hrouda didn’t know they existed when he removed Dam Debris, and he is no long in a position to do anything about them now. I list these as grey because they are consumables being used for the specific functon they are intended to be used in rather than used in ways as oppose to, say, gem store Flowers.
Staying inside a map, but using “clever” routes to skip things. The dredge jump is currently on the darker side of grey. the SE path 3 bridge ledge (which actually loses you time) is on the lighter side. Since you’re not going outside the map, and not using a consumable, I am OK with these types for records even if they are shady

white

Fiery greatsword rush/bear form against a wall/corner – the big debate. I am in the middle ground between HC and rT on this. Using a blink, to me, is clearly an exploit. Arguing that it isn’t is ridiculous. And I feel the mechanic itself is broken and needs to be fixed, but that said, to take advantage of it without a blink requires positioning and timing, which are both skill based. So I am not opposed to record runs using it so long as there are no blinks used. Additionally, having an ele using the FGS rush isn’t even optimal for all dungeon records, only the ones with time gates that allows for fire field Might stacks to be used without costing the run time. So I don;t think it is AS BAD as HC, but I don’t think anything goes like rT feels is right.
Fire ele powders pet whistles etc: don’t think these break the game at all, and they are only really useful in a handful of places. They are more for speed kills rather than speed clears and the two are hardly synonymous.

^Exactly the way I see it

Spiky Muffin.9180:

This discussion is leading to the same results as always…

Sorry muffin, I let myself go for a bit

I know many people consider blinking during rush as something bordeline exploit but what if teleport wouldn’t make you stuck in place?

Is this an exploit to you?

I’d call that being clever

yeah same as cookie said. forgot to mention that is something that i dont fully agree with. using flash/blink to completly stop the movement shouldnt be used if its true that anet considers this an animation glitch and exploit

Impressive records cookie

I’ll see the videos at home (can’t from the office).

regarding exploits: I’d define it as going beyond the design to shortcut the reward. Of course the limit its a huge gray. For example; do you remember in Arah path 3 when everyone used to jump that wall to cut half the path? Well, that is an arguable exploit because the game encourage you to climb obstacles and play with the environment (it was after all and got fixed) BUT, remember when you could jump on top of HoTW P2? In that case it was obviusly an explot since you could clearly see the walls and ceiling glitching as you pass through it, besides, you ended up in a place that was not even designed and had no textures.