Guild Wars 2

When I think of cheaters, my mind is drawn to the individuals who persist in exploiting map/ game weaknesses to circumvent game mechanics or even entire fights/dungeons, just to get the reward. To be clear, the kind of behavior that was not expected by the developers, and yet still intended NOT to occur anyway. Examples are any door skipping in CoE, any platform use that makes you invincible to attacks or hopping over walls in Arah. Here it is clear that these encounters have an intended structure. The doors are in place to stop you from walking around subject alpha fights, or into other paths to skip content for the final reward.

This is subtly different from examples where the developers did not intend on you cheating content (as opposed to intending for you to NOT cheat). To exemplify this distinction, we can look at skipping Kholer. Here we can see a case where the developers did not intend on you skipping. However, they did not purposefully intend on you not skipping Kholer, otherwise there would be methods in place to make it impossible to finish the dungeon otherwise. You can skip Kholer, and there is nothing in place to force you to kill him, but you need NOT break mechanics for this. Here the developers did not intend you to skip, but it would NOT be true that they purposefully intended for you to not skip. Re-read this previous sentence if this entire paragraph seems contradictory.

And so here lies the problem. The community has been plagued by players who dont see this distinction, or dont care for it. They are lacking the incentive to discern the difference between rushing past mobs and shadowstepping through doors.

There needs to be enforcement. If a player is involved in circumventing the intentions of the developers for personal gain, that player should be punished. Its harmful to the game and to the players who care about playing the game properly.

A simple, non-extreme method is to temporarily ban characters/accounts from entering dungeons on a temporary basis if they are caught. When people realise that they cant enter their favourite content for a week, they will quickly begin to take on the responsibility of their actions.

Tl:DR Skipping boss fights and dungeon encounters needs to be punished, if that content is intrinsically necessary for the instance. Harmless trash skipping neednt be affected, although should probably be incentivised more.

Oh, I thought you meant real cheaters for a second.

The problem here is that it is not always clear. For months, people said that skipping Kohler, for example, was an exploit that should be closed. It took months before a developer came in and specifically said “This boss is optional with a bonus chest and waypoint for those who choose to kill him.” The same can be said of Korga in Arah, and many other bosses in the dungeons (Champion Destroyer Crab!). The problem is that people like to assume they know what was intended and what wasn’t, and while some things are pretty obvious (pathing through cliffs and doing multiple paths in one), many things aren’t. It’s a slippery slope that I don’t think ANet has the resources to enforce, nor would they want to. Playing the game fearful that anything you do can get you banned is terrible.

Furthermore, how do you handle the situation where you do half a path ‘legitimately’ and then 4/5 of your team wants to exploit the last half? You did all that work to get there, and you really want the reward, but if you don’t go along with them, you get kicked and have wasted your time. In this case, many players “go along” with the exploit in order to not get screwed out of their time, and so these players would get banned by association.

This sort of thing, unlike say, buying 2000 21 karma cultural weapons, is much more difficult to quantify the guilt of, and I think ANet recognizes that and doesn’t want to act on it. The best thing they can do, and have been doing, is close the exploits as fast as they can so that people cannot take advantage of them. I applaud them for not recklessly banning players for it.

Rising Dusk.2408:

This sort of thing, unlike say, buying 2000 21 karma cultural weapons, is much more difficult to quantify the guilt of, and I think ANet recognizes that and doesn’t want to act on it. The best thing they can do, and have been doing, is close the exploits as fast as they can so that people cannot take advantage of them. I applaud them for not recklessly banning players for it.

You raise some good points, but to be honest the cheating mindset in this game is atrocious, and that wont be fixed by closing the bugs. A exploit gets fixed and then everyone just swarms over a new one. It just makes me sad to go into a dungeon and people expect everyone to bug out bosses, skip bosses, glitch through walls to get multiple paths done in one.

I think the point Renegade is trying to raise here is that this cheating mindset is detrimental to the game, and no matter how many bug/exploits Anet fix, until there is a consequence people will continue to look to break the game devaluing all the PvE rewards. Its such a shame to see people in this game with really cool bits of gear and not be able to honestly say “That player earned it.” because in truth, most of them probably exploited their way to the reward.

That’s the thing with a new game, though, there are a lot of exploits to work through. Eventually, though, there simply aren’t any new exploits to take advantage of in old content. It may seem crazy, but six months isn’t a very long lifespan thus far for a game like an MMO. If this game is as popular as sales lead me to believe, then yes, this game has many years ahead of itself to look forward to. Guild Wars 1, for instance, was still going strong after seven years, and still lives on now. That game had few exploits because, well, you couldn’t jump in the traditional sense.

A cheating mindset is toxic to any game, but it’s not specific to this game. Countless other MMOs, and games in general, feature exploits that players endlessly take advantage of to get ahead. ANet, compared to many other companies, has been very proactive in removing these exploits as fast as possible. I certainly agree with the logic that “exploiters suck and they shouldn’t be allowed to exploit”, but I don’t think sweeping bans is the answer to that problem. I think what ANet has been doing, and continues to do, is the correct approach.

Unless people are going through terrain they’re not supposed to (through walls or something) I don’t see how you can call it cheating. They’ve already come forth and said certain bosses are optional (but didn’t indicate the rest aren’t, either) so I think you’re confusing cheating with clever play.

It would be different if mobs didn’t leash in dungeons. That says to me they expect people to bypass content when they can.

Glitching bosses might/should be considered as cheating as well.

Skipping parts of content does not always mean “cheating”. Using mechanics to your advantage does not necessarily mean cheating either.

For example: Is it cheating to stand on top of the boss in the cliffside fractal, stunning him when someone uses the hammer on the seal? Before, he would some times drop the hammer repeatedly, and often the “stun” that hits all the players would affect him to a point where he would just sort of stand there not attacking.

Well, they’ve changed this fractal and he no longer drops the hammer repeatedly, so this was obviously a bug and not intended. However, group members standing on top of him will still stun him when they’re stunned after hitting the seal. So you tell me: Is this an intended mechanic of the fight to stun the boss and mitigate damage? Or is this an exploit?

My point is, there’s no dev post on it, so there’s no clarification as to whether or not this is intended. Some people might say “Well thats a bug the boss isnt attacking” while others may state “it’s not a bug, the mechanic is designed to stun anyone near the players, so stacking on him is a viable strategy – otherwise they would make him immune to that stun attack”.

Cheaters in general is a very broad term, but to simplify, it seems the skipping content seems to primary subject in this thread.

I’ve had different views on skipping content over time, but my take on skipping is this:

• If you skip highly visible mobs by simply not aggroing them, then that’s okay. Most of the time, these mobs are generally out of the way of the general path; or they could be patrols that sometimes get in the way but may move out to another location after a while.

• If you skip mobs by means of rushing, dodging, moderate terrain jumping, stealth, and/or Swiftness boons, then it’s probably okay providing that you’re not doing some heavy means of exploiting, which is another shady word that covers a lot of things and can be harder to distinguish between a genuine exploit and an intended game mechanic.

• If you skip mobs by means by use of extreme terrain glitches and unexpected shortcuts, then that’s more likely exploiting. Notorious examples include the “Boat” path in Arah Mursaat path, and the “Mountain Climb” path in CM Asura and Butler paths.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of skipping Bosses, required or optional. If a boss should be skipped, I think there should be certain consequences that come with it. Maybe the end-boss could be slightly stronger, has more health, new abilities, and/or come with more adds to assist it.

I can’t think of examples in GW2 where if you skip a boss or similar event that the end-boss becomes crazy-overpowered, but I do remember the Troll dungeons in WoW (most had the names of Zul’something) that had that kind of mechanic. I thought it was rather interesting to see what kind of abilities the end-boss would possess if you chose to skip certain bosses. Often times, an achievement and/or better loot rewards would be awarded if you chose to kill the “Hard Mode” version of that same boss. Now that would be a reason I could live with when it comes to skipping bosses. Any other reasons just seem kind of silly, despite some of the bosses being mostly damage-sponges at this time.

Zinkey.6983:

Rising Dusk.2408:

This sort of thing, unlike say, buying 2000 21 karma cultural weapons, is much more difficult to quantify the guilt of, and I think ANet recognizes that and doesn’t want to act on it. The best thing they can do, and have been doing, is close the exploits as fast as they can so that people cannot take advantage of them. I applaud them for not recklessly banning players for it.

You raise some good points, but to be honest the cheating mindset in this game is atrocious, and that wont be fixed by closing the bugs. A exploit gets fixed and then everyone just swarms over a new one. It just makes me sad to go into a dungeon and people expect everyone to bug out bosses, skip bosses, glitch through walls to get multiple paths done in one.

I think the point Renegade is trying to raise here is that this cheating mindset is detrimental to the game, and no matter how many bug/exploits Anet fix, until there is a consequence people will continue to look to break the game devaluing all the PvE rewards. Its such a shame to see people in this game with really cool bits of gear and not be able to honestly say “That player earned it.” because in truth, most of them probably exploited their way to the reward.

Sometimes I don’t think punishments will even do any good to the problem. They’ll either quit, or do it again. I think a better solution is integrating a LFG system in-game that is detailed enough to know what kind of people you are running with or more social hubs in game. A lot of ‘bad experiences’ starts with 1 or more members who just do not agree with the way the party is playing. There are people who refuse to do these ‘tricks’ so to speak obviously—-otherwise we wouldn’t have so many hate threads on it. Find those people, party up. It’s more of a you have to find your kind of group problem than a in-game issue. You can’t change random people, but you can find like-minded players.

Also I find that most people complain because these ‘tricks’ do not seem fun to them. Which from my experiences is usually caused by the people who do these ‘tricks’ are actually bad at them and try to rush the team through the dungeon. And here’s how I assume it works usually with these discoveries.

Group finds trick.
Group lets friends/guild members know about trick but only competent runners.
Competent runners are missing a frequent and have to pug—teaches pug new trick.
Pug shares it with his friends.
And down we go until it hits newbies who enforce it and act like it’s the only way to do the dungeon but actually have little experience in the dungeon other than using the trick—-they die a lot and mess up the supposedly smooth flow of using the trick and annoy people who just want to do it the right way.
People post in forums about how annoying it is.

That’s usually what happens and can be prevented by
1) Don’t spread the tricks.
2) PUG and inform group about what you intend to do before starting.
3) Join group and ask what their plans are. If you don’t like them—“Sorry, I don’t want to use that trick to complete this dungeon”

PUGs will always be pugs. But not everyone is the same. We just need better systems to facilitate like-minded interests.

1) To people who dislike ‘tricks’, do your job to make sure you don’t join one who is going to do one. You will have a bad time.
2) To people who use ‘tricks’, do your job to make sure your whole party knows what you guys are going to do and leave some breathing room for people to back out if they feel uncomfortable.

EDIT: But I guess I do have to say, I don’t mind removing the tricks or whatnot. I just think it’s a much easier solution to report the bug and join like-minded groups and move along.

OP you opened a post without even getting base concept of online games (learn what a cheater is) and yet you ask for bans?

Dev have stated they MEANT kohler to be skippable…
And skipping is full legit.

It seems you are complete newby in mmorpgs yet you ask for arbitrary bans on what you don t like…

….
That is the problem to have to play with Others, some just wants the game to be how only them wants and don t care for Others.

Because the definition between good play and use of terrain vs exploiting is blurry at best.

If I find a rock to hide behind where the boss can’t hit me, and I can’t hit him, that feels like using terrain in a smart way.

Then I decide to equip a ranged weapon, duck out from behind the rock and shoot everything I can at the boss, then jump back to cover…. still feels smart.

Then, as I refine my technique, I find a sweet spot…. I don’t seem to get hit, but I can still get my shots off.

Hmm… now my team is hunkered down with me and we feel like we’ve found an old west shoot out… some times someone ducks out a little too far and takes damage, sometimes other mechanics of the fight cause problems, but in general, it feels like good game play….

Right? Or not…..

But you see how a person gets there, how a technique develops. There is a wide world of ‘grey area.’

Doing a dungeon ‘as intended’ is also flawed. The devs are few, and their creativity limited (Love you Robert, but you guys are a small team.) Throw tens of thousands of players at what they built and stratagies that were never envisioned will spring up within a week. It’s not as intended because the Devs know that they can’t envision every way for something to be done. If all we were going to do is slog down the paths they built using the classes and builds they used to test things… what’s the point?

That’s the difference between Dungeons and other aspects of ‘cheating’ in the game. Exploiting a mechanic en masse (snowflake salvage) is easy to track, and to measure someone’s use of the mechanic. Who would you have review hundreds of thousands of hours of game play for where people stand in a dungeon?

If you think something is an exploit, alert the devs so they can work on closing it. Then, move on.

sad little completionists

LordByron.8369:

OP you opened a post without even getting base concept of online games (learn what a cheater is) and yet you ask for bans?

Dev have stated they MEANT kohler to be skippable…
And skipping is full legit.

It seems you are complete newby in mmorpgs yet you ask for arbitrary bans on what you don t like…

….
That is the problem to have to play with Others, some just wants the game to be how only them wants and don t care for Others.

I think you should reread what the OP has wrote. He’s not talking about skipping stuff that can be skipped, but skipping stuff that shouldn’t be able to be skipped.

CoE first Alpha encounter is one of them as he mentioned in his post. Or to simplify it Going from A to D without passing B and C, because you found and exploit to bypass it.

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

If you look at recent posts, the current plan to get things under control is more about positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement. And banning is just about as negative reinforcement as you can get.

Speaking of PvE exploits, I would like to add to this thread with this comment:

I would love to see dungeons getting a level cap or a level requirement to stop lowbie players from power-leveling through dungeon rewards.

IE: joining a CoE run (or equivalent higher level explorable), at the last boss, grabbing a low-level alt (lvl 30, etc), joining said explorable dungeon, and reaping the reward + gaining 8-9 levels. This is also an exploit, in my humble opinion. I am sure the developers did not intend for you to be leveling this way.

Thank you.

danni.1824:

Speaking of PvE exploits, I would like to add to this thread with this comment:

I would love to see dungeons getting a level cap or a level requirement to stop lowbie players from power-leveling through dungeon rewards.

IE: joining a CoE run (or equivalent higher level explorable), at the last boss, grabbing a low-level alt (lvl 30, etc), joining said explorable dungeon, and reaping the reward + gaining 8-9 levels. This is also an exploit, in my humble opinion. I am sure the developers did not intend for you to be leveling this way.

Thank you.

you cant get 8-9 levels from one dungeon reward. Exp reward is capped at about 70% of the exp needed for next lvl.

danni.1824:

Speaking of PvE exploits, I would like to add to this thread with this comment:

I would love to see dungeons getting a level cap or a level requirement to stop lowbie players from power-leveling through dungeon rewards.

IE: joining a CoE run (or equivalent higher level explorable), at the last boss, grabbing a low-level alt (lvl 30, etc), joining said explorable dungeon, and reaping the reward + gaining 8-9 levels. This is also an exploit, in my humble opinion. I am sure the developers did not intend for you to be leveling this way.

Thank you.

You don’t get 8-9 levels for it, you get same percentage as you would get at 80 lvl (70% of level). Secondly, you get less rewards (money + karma). I really don’t see that as an exploit.

Malediktus.9250:

danni.1824:

Speaking of PvE exploits, I would like to add to this thread with this comment:

I would love to see dungeons getting a level cap or a level requirement to stop lowbie players from power-leveling through dungeon rewards.

IE: joining a CoE run (or equivalent higher level explorable), at the last boss, grabbing a low-level alt (lvl 30, etc), joining said explorable dungeon, and reaping the reward + gaining 8-9 levels. This is also an exploit, in my humble opinion. I am sure the developers did not intend for you to be leveling this way.

Thank you.

you cant get 8-9 levels from one dungeon reward. Exp reward is capped at about 70% of the exp needed for next lvl.

Does not make a difference.

I think its all a huge “gray area”.

I mean really, what is a game mechanic and what is a design flaw?

If we intended to have to kill a mob to progress – the path would be narrow forcing us to aggro it – there would be a door at the end of the hall that blocked our progress that opened when we killed the mob – the mob would be faster than us and we could not simply out run it.

Designers more than often give us ways around things or easier and less obvious solutions. Did they intend that we melee a monster that only has a ranged attack? Sure. Was that sweet spot by the post were I can toss out damage without getting hit planned? Maybe. Should I be able to walk through (wall/floor/door/terrain) or attack through something without getting hurt? Do I need to answer that?

too many of them. Only a handful of people left after the ban would go out. That is why they cant crack down on any real mechanic exploit. They only do a handful of meaning less bannings now and again to prove they are tough on crime.

They have pushed and pushed and pushed to make this a dungeon crawler game with the best loot and gear so enforcing the game mechanic now would be catastrophic to the population of the game. So they cant – they are playing the way ANet wants them too albiet in a non conformity way. (cheating game mechanics and intentions but doing dungeons like Anet wants)

Vox Hollow.2736:

You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

If you look at recent posts, the current plan to get things under control is more about positive reinforcement than negative reinforcement. And banning is just about as negative reinforcement as you can get.

I’ve only ever read they wont increase the reward for trash mobs because they dont want people to farm them.

That’s the only positive reinforcement you can do in order to get people to even think about no longer skipping/exploiting content. The changes thus far, making the bosses easier, just makes skipping the content that much easier and more efficient.

Punishing exploiters is a grey topic because a lot of players like myself are peer pressured to exploit.

I love to do CoE but a majority of my groups, including my guild, forces me to do the “180 exploit” run where we do all 3 paths in 1.

I would be very upset if I was banned for it but I do not want to leave my groups.

danni.1824:

Malediktus.9250:

danni.1824:

Speaking of PvE exploits, I would like to add to this thread with this comment:

I would love to see dungeons getting a level cap or a level requirement to stop lowbie players from power-leveling through dungeon rewards.

IE: joining a CoE run (or equivalent higher level explorable), at the last boss, grabbing a low-level alt (lvl 30, etc), joining said explorable dungeon, and reaping the reward + gaining 8-9 levels. This is also an exploit, in my humble opinion. I am sure the developers did not intend for you to be leveling this way.

Thank you.

you cant get 8-9 levels from one dungeon reward. Exp reward is capped at about 70% of the exp needed for next lvl.

Does not make a difference.

Yeah 8-9 levels or 70% of the level is no difference at all.

Kain Francois.4328:

Punishing exploiters is a grey topic because a lot of players like myself are peer pressured to exploit.

I love to do CoE but a majority of my groups, including my guild, forces me to do the “180 exploit” run where we do all 3 paths in 1.

I would be very upset if I was banned for it but I do not want to leave my groups.

“I didn’t want to but they forced me” is kind of a weak excuse :p. I did a lot of exploits, but only once. After seeing them I wouldn’t even bother to do those dungeons with a PuG, thus why I’m not setting foot in CM p1 with a PuG.
And thankfully my guild isn’t too fond of using exploits. Skipping and sometime finding weakness with the AI (like their pathway) yes, doing blatant exploits is a no.

@ EverythingXen

I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I’m reasonably certain the summary of that is supposed to read like;
‘I think the best way to handle this is to see why people skip in the first place and fix that. I think most groups are interested in making money, and dungeon mob get skipped because they don’t have enough return for the effort of killing them. But, I can’t make drops so lucrative that people aren’t encouraged to complete a dungeon. So, I have to work on striking a balancing act between rewarding people at the end and rewarding them throughout’.
Not;
‘I think the best way to handle this is to see why people skip in the first place and fix that. I think most groups are interested in making money, and dungeon mob get skipped because they don’t have enough return for the effort of killing them. But, I can’t make drops so lucrative that people aren’t encouraged to complete a dungeon. Striking a balancing act between rewarding people at the end and rewarding them throughout is way too hard. So just forget everything I typed before the previous sentence, because I’m not doing jack’.

Conner.4702:

LordByron.8369:

OP you opened a post without even getting base concept of online games (learn what a cheater is) and yet you ask for bans?

Dev have stated they MEANT kohler to be skippable…
And skipping is full legit.

It seems you are complete newby in mmorpgs yet you ask for arbitrary bans on what you don t like…

….
That is the problem to have to play with Others, some just wants the game to be how only them wants and don t care for Others.

I think you should reread what the OP has wrote. He’s not talking about skipping stuff that can be skipped, but skipping stuff that shouldn’t be able to be skipped.

CoE first Alpha encounter is one of them as he mentioned in his post. Or to simplify it Going from A to D without passing B and C, because you found and exploit to bypass it.

Bottom line is unless ANet comes forth with a specific list by dungeon instance and encounter of what can and cannot be skipped to ban people as the OP suggests based on his opinion is a terrible idea.

How do you know when you’ve violated a rule when the rule isn’t clear in the first place? The very fact there is a contentious discussion over this means people have different perceptions of what constitutes “cheating” and what is legit.

As I’ve already said, I don’t agree with banning.
I think positive reinforcement is a good way to start tackling this issue, and I have some sympathy for the peer pressure angle.

But, everytime I read some player plaintively simpering ‘-But, but, I didn’t know it was wrong’ around a big ole’ pair of virtual puppydog eyes, I emit a most unladylike noise and give my computer screen the flattest ‘are you kidding me?’ stare you ever didn’t see. No, no, stop typing. I don’t want to hear it. Nobody wants to hear it.

I’m polite as crumpets and curtsies, and I can’t stand a word of rules lawyering.

Vox Hollow.2736:

@ EverythingXen

I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle. Trash mobs have too much HP, and can’t be counted on for lucrative drops from a Risk/Time vs Reward, so people interested in making money (most groups) aren’t incentivized to do it, whereas the end chest/boss are more guaranteed and accountable returns on time and risk. I also think there is something to be said about interesting trash mob mechanics making them more enjoyable of a fight.
I can’t make the rewards from trash mobs so lucrative though that people just farm the first couple trash mobs/boss in a dungeon and then rinse/repeat. We encountered this when people just farmed the first boss in an instance and then restarted it (earlier around launch time), and we had to adjust the content as a result. It’s a fine line you have to walk to encourage players to get to the end, but make the process of getting there rewarding enough as well.

I’m reasonably certain the summary of that is supposed to read like;
‘I think the best way to handle this is to see why people skip in the first place and fix that. I think most groups are interested in making money, and dungeon mob get skipped because they don’t have enough return for the effort of killing them. But, I can’t make drops so lucrative that people aren’t encouraged to complete a dungeon. So, I have to work on striking a balancing act between rewarding people at the end and rewarding them throughout’.
Not;
‘I think the best way to handle this is to see why people skip in the first place and fix that. I think most groups are interested in making money, and dungeon mob get skipped because they don’t have enough return for the effort of killing them. But, I can’t make drops so lucrative that people aren’t encouraged to complete a dungeon. Striking a balancing act between rewarding people at the end and rewarding them throughout is way too hard. So just forget everything I typed before the previous sentence, because I’m not doing jack’.

It reads “I’m not going to do the only thing that will have the slightest effect on a vast majority of players skipping content. You’re on your own.”

I dont mean to imply Rob is lazy or a liar. I do greatly disagree with his philosophy.

How does the first line work under that logic?

I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle.

That sounds like an action sentence, not something you’d put in front of two paragraphs describing your future inaction.

to you guys changing the mod’s words/post. i have no idea what ur trying to imply. how is he actually saying the things you said, when in fact he didnt say that?

You don’t think either of our interpretations actually encompasses what he’s trying to ultimately say? So there’s three separate ways to read the same two paragraphs?

Well, now I’m just curious.
What do you think that quote says, JJ?

o.o im scared. i just got the idea it was something negative implied towards him, which is ok if its people opinions. but i just didnt get it as 3 different people tried to do it and it lost the meaning. but generally, people are saying that the post doesnt say much by the mod

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Will-the-new-update-stop-skipping/first#post1205684

Here’s a link to the entire post.

I brought it up because in it, he states that the only thing (in my opinion) that will have the slightest affect of stopping people from skipping content in dungeons (without punishing them) is something he cant do.

Bringing this back to the OP, “cheaters” arent punished because speeding has become ingrained in the dungeon running community. Any punishment put out would affect a great majority of them. I actually agree on this point that solutions that force speed runners thru combat arent viable.

“Cheating” will continue as long as the reward/time on the trash mobs remains as it is. And the amount of reward, in my opinion, needed to make not skipping them viable is not something Rob, according to his post, is going to do. No amount of tweaking of the mobs themselves is going to cut it.

Vox Hollow.2736:

How does the first line work under that logic?

I think the better solution is to look at why people are skipping things, and approach from a different angle.

That sounds like an action sentence, not something you’d put in front of two paragraphs describing your future inaction.

Future ineffective action, in my opinion. If he’s attempting to curb skipping in dungeons in any way, the implied incremental drop rate increase is just a waste of his time and resources. Which I’d imagine is pretty scarce on his 2 man team.

DeathPanel.8362:

How do you know when you’ve violated a rule when the rule isn’t clear in the first place? The very fact there is a contentious discussion over this means people have different perceptions of what constitutes “cheating” and what is legit.

My guild has talked around exactly this topic. One of the things we go back to is Robert’s post here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Exploits-and-Glitching/page/2#post1213057

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. As is exploiting terrain like teleporting through walls/closed doors, and getting under/above the map to skip content and get to a place where you can take advantage of bugs or events not requiring previous completion in the order of events (skipping directly to Giganticus lupicus from the start of the arah explore chain for instance).

These are things we patch and fix as we discover them and figure out solutions for. As I have said before, if you see something say something by emailing this alias: Exploits@arena.net

With that as a basis, we try to evaluate a tactic that feels ‘hinky’ with the questions:

1) Are we vulnerable to damage here? Is the boss able to reach us, does the boss appear to go ‘inactive’ … could I afk here?
2) Does the use of terrain prevent an event from triggering that should trigger?
3) Does the tactic require unnatural play (avoiding the use of specific types of weapon skills to prevent mobs from spawning)

In general, if it feels odd when we try it, we talk about it, and the group comes to an agreement on weather things feel okay, or not. When we’re unsure, we ask. (was very happy to get Robert’s answer on the Ooze bosses beign accessed from CoF p1 )

2/3rds of the time when I’m in a dungeon it’s with a majority of the group being guild mates. We’ve had generally good luck when a PUG that we picked up to fill a spot positions for an exploitive method and we say ’We’re old school, no doing X…’ and if we need to, explaining the mechanic we use to down the boss.

The other 3rd of the time, I’m the lone man in a PUG, and I’m open to learn how the group wants to do things, but I’ll apply the above criteria to any thought I have about repeating those tactis with my static group. Some times, I learn cool new things I can bring back to the group… some times, I bow out after one path when I see that a group wants to stand in funny places and gimick a boss down.

I don’t think banning people is the answer. I think reporting exploits so they can be closed is the best answer for now.

i would love to see a team dedicated to taking care of these exploits.

personally i hate trying to run a dungeon and end up running 1/4 of the dungeon and the rest is completed easily due to glitching/terrain exploits, etc. and i personally try to tell the group that i prefer to run the content like it should and not glitch/exploit to a faster victory…. if they feel that is going to slow their run down, and its not worth it to them. then i will just leave the group and now they are faced with the possibility of not even being able to do the run anymore.

what one person said earlier in the thread is purely laughable!!!!

" It’s a slippery slope that I don’t think ANet has the resources to enforce, nor would they want to. Playing the game fearful that anything you do can get you banned is terrible."

^ if you are honestly fearful of being banned for your actions, that means you are clearly doing something you think you shouldn’t be doing… so stop it.

Zinkey.6983:

You raise some good points, but to be honest the cheating mindset in this game is atrocious, and that wont be fixed by closing the bugs. A exploit gets fixed and then everyone just swarms over a new one. It just makes me sad to go into a dungeon and people expect everyone to bug out bosses, skip bosses, glitch through walls to get multiple paths done in one.

I think the point Renegade is trying to raise here is that this cheating mindset is detrimental to the game, and no matter how many bug/exploits Anet fix, until there is a consequence people will continue to look to break the game devaluing all the PvE rewards. Its such a shame to see people in this game with really cool bits of gear and not be able to honestly say “That player earned it.” because in truth, most of them probably exploited their way to the reward.

I don’t think it is with in ANet’s abilities to fix people. There will always be the “I won’t get caught” crowd and there will always be “Someone got something before I did, they must have cheated and since they cheated it is okay for me to cheat.” crowd.

ArcTheFallen.7682:

Also I find that most people complain because these ‘tricks’ do not seem fun to them. Which from my experiences is usually caused by the people who do these ‘tricks’ are actually bad at them and try to rush the team through the dungeon. And here’s how I assume it works usually with these discoveries..

Actually its the converse with my experiences in AC. So many “elitists” in this game want to do Kholer (not because of loot but because of “elitist” anti-skip mentality) but get downed by him. Ditto for Howling King pre-patch.

Usually the better players are the IDC crowd.

Future ineffective action, in my opinion. If he’s attempting to curb skipping in dungeons in any way, the implied incremental drop rate increase is just a waste of his time and resources. Which I’d imagine is pretty scarce on his 2 man team.

I’m not sure I follow.
Why would somebody consider increasing the rewards a waste of time and resources, when they remark how important being rewarded throughout the dungeon is in one paragraph, and say they believe dungeons currently aren’t managing to do that well enough in another?

If you want to dungeons to accomplish something, and you know they currently aren’t, surely fixing it a pretty good use of time and resources? And a bit of a foregone conclusion, at that?

But yes, Off topic.
I’m sorry, I did let this get kind of bad.

Zinkey.6983:

Rising Dusk.2408:

This sort of thing, unlike say, buying 2000 21 karma cultural weapons, is much more difficult to quantify the guilt of, and I think ANet recognizes that and doesn’t want to act on it. The best thing they can do, and have been doing, is close the exploits as fast as they can so that people cannot take advantage of them. I applaud them for not recklessly banning players for it.

You raise some good points, but to be honest the cheating mindset in this game is atrocious, and that wont be fixed by closing the bugs. A exploit gets fixed and then everyone just swarms over a new one. It just makes me sad to go into a dungeon and people expect everyone to bug out bosses, skip bosses, glitch through walls to get multiple paths done in one.

I think the point Renegade is trying to raise here is that this cheating mindset is detrimental to the game, and no matter how many bug/exploits Anet fix, until there is a consequence people will continue to look to break the game devaluing all the PvE rewards. Its such a shame to see people in this game with really cool bits of gear and not be able to honestly say “That player earned it.” because in truth, most of them probably exploited their way to the reward.

Why is it detrimental to the game though? If you don’t agree with them, you can opt out of it. Nobody is forcing you to play the game as the next person.