Guild Wars 2

Disclaimer : As a philosophic question it’s intended that there is not 1 and only one answer to it. Do not claim that you are absolutely right or someone is totally wrong, it would go against the very purpose of the question.

The question :

When players exploit mechanics are they cheating or are they displaying their skills?

Its tough to define skill and exploitation. I for one believe that if you use the mechanics youre given to get a result, its skill, even if it wasnt the mechanic the dev wanted you to use.

But in retrospect, something like a wall glitch, i dont think is skill. Because youre not taking a new approach to a fight or event, but rather you dont physically partake but channel your influence in.

the key word is ‘exploit’ identifying a flaw in logic and exploiting that flaw is not skill, in fact it usually indicates an ‘easier’ way of doing something so quite the opposite of skill.

The question is not very good, because the two propositions are not mutually exclusive :
- if the exploit is easy, you can cheat without skill
- on the other hand, a hard exploit will require skill, by definition

And finding an exploit can require skill, in the first place, not in execution, but in research.

A better question would be : “when does exploiting mechanics become cheating?”

its rather simple, if the said exploit is difficult to execute players are displaying their skill by using it

also if the said exploit is not widely known and the player found it due to their knowledge of game’s mechanics its also can be taken as diplay of player skill

example: finishing a player with thief’s impact strike elite chain without down state is a clear skill display , it takes a good amount of calculation or at least luck to pull this off and at the same time even today not a whole lot of people know thats possible to do

example 2: multilooting tarir isnt a display of skill because it takes zero effort from the player to do and even if at the beginning only few people knew they can loot several instances of tarir in a single meta today everyone and their mother know what tarir multiloot is

In my opinion, there are four categories:

I. allowed, tolerated and recommended
Those are violations of game mechanics which exist for a long time. They are commonly used and sometimes recommended in public. Noone marks them as exploits, as they are part of the game. Some are better known, some are “secrets.”

examples:
- dash jump, which increases everyones maximum jump distance and makes some JPs easier. Although all jumping puzzles are designed to be done without any speed/jump improvements.
- jump/leap-canceling, which is used for aiming leaps or interrupting a leap at all. The engineer exlexir gun users learn it from scratch and other classes use it as well.
- level 2 weaponswap option
- environmental weapons

II. pikaboo
Those are bugs which exist in the game, but the creators are actually too busy to fix them. They are not causing any real damage to anyone or anything. If you use them and do not get caught, all is fine. If you use them too often and get caught, you may face a punishment.

examples:
- void jumping, long range teleport, climbing objects
- cheating the megaserver, leaping vertical/diagonal,
- using a mesmer to exploit mastery-locks
… etc.

III. not allowed
Those exploits do harm to the game, the economy or the community. Frequently reported on first sight. Some of these also land on the “not enough time to fix it now”-list. But that does not mean the use is legal until it gets fixed.

examples:
- increasing certain boon durations,
- walk through solid walls, walk through invisible walls,
- bugging npcs/mobs into walls or to trigger certain events

IV. goodbye customer
The exploits which are openly marked as banable-offenses. If you use that, you get baned for sure.

examples:
- third party software use
- automated gameplay
- item duplication
- goldsellers

So, back to the OPs question I would say category I can be seen as skill. Category II can be seen as skill and cheating, depending how frequently those exploits are used. Category III and IV are cheating for sure. (imho)

I think that anything that demonstrates any kind of skill cannot be called an exploit. For example, using an obscure jump place in pvp that the devs clearly did not intend to exist is not an exploit in my opinion, because although it is unintended, anyone can do it and it is difficult to pull off.

Then there are things that are just exploits that clearly shouldn’t exist, such as breaking out of the map to get past a difficult boss or finding a way to earn a huge amount of gold at no risk as a result of a mistake by the devs. These demonstrate no skill and are just exploiting, plain and simple.

Really, I believe that any ‘exploit’ that shows mechanical skill is fine and is not really exploiting, but the ones such as easy money making and getting to unintended areas are not a show of skill at all.

Do not expect an answer anytime soon. This question is destined to be debated well into the 23rd century, as shown by Captain James T. Kirk’s solution to the Kobayashi Maru training scenario.

Dadnir.5038:

Disclaimer : As a philosophic question it’s intended that there is not 1 and only one answer to it. Do not claim that you are absolutely right or someone is totally wrong, it would go against the very purpose of the question.

The question :

When players exploit mechanics are they cheating or are they displaying their skills?

I think the question is moot.

Despite what you say, there are technical definitions of ‘exploit and ’cheating’ and they have nothing to do with ‘skill’. An exploit is simply the abuse of a game mechanic loophole, allowing the player or group to gain something unintended by the developer.

Similarly, there aren’t multiple definitions of cheating — what changes is how strict people want it to be applied. Just as some groups want any blood alcohol content to be considered “drunk” for the purposes of “drunk driving,” others draw the line at 0.08 or 0.20 etc. In gaming, a game company might or might not care about an exploit, for a large variety of reasons. When they do, they consider it cheating and take appropriate action.

Further, some exploits don’t require any skill to manage. The first people to figure out how to do AB/ML 6+ times after a single victory displayed some skill; the rest of us that followed display only the skill required to drag our icon from one sub-group to another.

If you want to ask a philosophical question about exploits and skill, I think it would be better to ask: what does each person consider to be an exploit? Where would each of us draw the line before we consider it to be cheating?

Dadnir.5038:

Disclaimer : As a philosophic question it’s intended that there is not 1 and only one answer to it. Do not claim that you are absolutely right or someone is totally wrong, it would go against the very purpose of the question.

The question :

When players exploit mechanics are they cheating or are they displaying their skills?

There are some people who seem to love finding ways to exploit any system. That is their skill. People who find out about exploits from someone else and then use them are not using any skill.

I’m not sure that “exploiting” and “displaying their skills” are mutually exclusive notions. You can be skilled at playing and still choose to use exploits (for whatever reason you’ve created in your mind). You can be skilled at finding exploits and abusing them. You could also just be a crappy player, find out about an exploit, and monkey-see-monkey-do it. Also, it is good to note that “exploit” often means different things to different people.

An exploit may or may not require skill, but it is still an exploit. However, an exploit may also become emergent gameplay if the developers decide that it is not problematic and/or represents an improvement or acceptable deviation from the intended use. It is up to the developers to decide whether utilizing an exploit is an offense, as not all unintended uses of game mechanics are problematic.

I’d like to quote everybody but… Not enough time in my days to do that

Myhr.9108:

The question is not very good, because the two propositions are not mutually exclusive :
- if the exploit is easy, you can cheat without skill
- on the other hand, a hard exploit will require skill, by definition

And finding an exploit can require skill, in the first place, not in execution, but in research.

A better question would be : “when does exploiting mechanics become cheating?”

I like the question that end your post and this is what is supposed to conclude a philosophic exercise. You clearly understood the question I asked but you didn’t put much a thought in it (well It’s ok, I just asked it for fun)

HnRkLnXqZ.1870 seem to be the one that have the best grasp of the question I asked.

What is exclusive in the two word that are up one against the other is their “reputation”. Exploit is seen as the bad guy while skill is for the goody. A lot of mechanisms in the game are meant to be exploited (boon share/ combos/ traits combination… etc.). When one have the best grasp on how to exploit those mechanisms, he can say that he got “skill”. At the same time there are mechanisms that aren’t meant to be exploited which make the one that do it a “cheater”.

So yes the question is still about “skill”. Where lie the thin line between “skilled” players and “cheaters” when it come to exploiting game mechanisms? For exemple, would you say that players that “phase” a boss throught sheer dps in order to avoid some troublesome mechanisms are cheaters or skilled players?

I’d also have to agree I don’t think this is black and white per the wording of the question. A primary example would be the use of “exploiting” the bug in Infiltrator’s Strike before ANet fixed it. I don’t think this is something as bannable, and quite frankly, we’d have been better off if it was just accepted by ANet because it added so much depth and necessary utility to S/x thief as a whole. It may not have been intentional and may have been a bug exploit, but there was really no downside except for some people being salty about S/x thief being able to chase/diversifying the viable kits on the thief.

In essence, before the fix, if the user jumped while casting the first part of the ability, they would be teleported to their target as normal, but the subsequent use of Infiltrator’s return would no longer teleport the player back to the original point when casting IR, and as such allowed players to exploit having an extra condition cleanse on a weapon skill for the next several seconds and could let them chain teleports with intermittent delays for the continuous casting and burning of IR.

While one could say this was exploiting a bug, it also required a lot of skill and understanding of the game to use properly; it’s not a ground-targeted blink, and jump-casting IS would lead the thief with no option to disengage (and costs initiative). If a thief chain-used it to rapidly catch up to an enemy, it could leave itself with no/little initiative upon actually engaging, and no escape mechanism should said enemy decide to just turn on the thief and fight back. It took skill to use effectively because it took an understanding by the thief of his opponent to know if and when to jump-cast.

However, there are also very clear exploits that go against the principles of the game which have no clear required investment of player ability, like abusing holes in mesh seams to skip content or glitch out of areas of the game, item duplication bugs/exploits, etc.

To me exploits are always cheats no matter how diffult they are to do and cheating in multiplayer game is something I never approve.

Ameepa.6793:

To me exploits are always cheats no matter how diffult they are to do and cheating in multiplayer game is something I never approve.

It’s only cheating if it violates the rules of the game. An exploit is merely utilizing game mechanics in an unintended way. It may violate the rules, but it may not. This is also why some exploits get fixed, some become bannable offenses, and others simply become part of the way a game is played. But skill requirements have no bearing on whether or not something qualifies as an exploit.

AliamRationem.5172:

Ameepa.6793:

To me exploits are always cheats no matter how diffult they are to do and cheating in multiplayer game is something I never approve.

It’s only cheating if it violates the rules of the game. An exploit is merely utilizing game mechanics in an unintended way. It may violate the rules, but it may not. This is also why some exploits get fixed, some become bannable offenses, and others simply become part of the way a game is played. But skill requirements have no bearing on whether or not something qualifies as an exploit.

I was talking of my own view, not the official view. Like I wrote, to me they are always cheats.

My personal point of view is that only because something is not forbidden, it is not automatically ok to do it. Of course there are white collar exploits where nobody is hurt and dirty neck exploits where people massively and untimely benefit from something.

I’m going to use examples from a different game (vaguely)
in other game there’s exploits that bypass how the game was intended such as doing a boss alone instead of with a group or gaining levels in a way other than playing or buying items that level you.

for doing things alone instead of with a group there is often two types of routes one i feel is skill, the other i feel is just flat cheating.
1. There is a particular boss that had a bug that makes the boss stop using special attacks (so only auto attacks) if you can survive for X amount of time without dying. it also requires standing in specific areas, but theres a lot of skill in the surviving. You have to really understand the normal mechanic of the boss and rotate through your skills perfectly. It is most definately an exploit but I also feel that it is a true demonstration of skill. (whether or not its ethical to use an exploit to kill a boss alone instead of giving a full party a chance is a different discussion)
2. There is also a boss you can pull out of its typical area that also makes it stop using its attacks. thats not skill, youre just kiting. sure it takes some special knowlegde of the exploit to know how to get it to leave the area…but thats not skill in the game.

There is also a way you can ‘powerlevel’. It requires glitching an item in the game to make the option available (which is what makes it an exploit) but following that you have to do a very dull repetative task that requires a great deal of skill and a tiny mess up means death. sure, theres a tiny exploit involved but i still view it as being a very skillfull way to level up an alt without having to do a million quests or pay a lot of money.

of course making your question “is it cheating or is it skill” is not very fair. if you are exploiting you are cheating, but that should not mean it isnt skill. You could claim “youre finding an alternate way to do it, that is just as difficult as the intended way” but its still forcing the game to work how it wasnt intended or taking advantage of it not working as intended, otherwise it wouldnt be called an exploit

vesica tempestas.1563:

the key word is ‘exploit’ identifying a flaw in logic and exploiting that flaw is not skill, in fact it usually indicates an ‘easier’ way of doing something so quite the opposite of skill.

Identifying a flaw is skill. Using it to your advantage is also a skillful display of tactics.

It may not confine to the rules, but that is another story entirely.

Cheating and displays of skill are not opposite ends of the same continuum. They are independent of each other.