The term “exploit” itself is just a big joke. What is an exploit? If there is a clear and objective definition, then any player should be able to judge a given situation and reach the same conclusion as anyone else. However, that’s not remotely what we have here. We have people disagreeing about what is and isn’t an exploit. We have people presenting several different examples and challenging others to find the exploits, like it’s a game. We have links to ArenaNet developer comments in some other discussion thread, where they give a vague “rule of thumb” which explains nothing.
We have a guy honestly saying that a Mesmer using portals to get other players from point A to point B is an exploit. Are you kidding me!? In World of Warcraft, you could have a Mage portal your character to any major city. Many players tipped a Mage for bringing their lowbie alts to the endgame hub city, because that city had permanent warps to all the other cities in the game. We could set our “Hearthstone” there (insta-warp, on a cooldown), for fast and free travel around the world any time. Often, players would tip the Mage for their trouble. No one ever considered for a moment that it was an “exploit,” it was just another part of the game. Blizzard never banned anyone for doing that.
If ArenaNet doesn’t like other players going through Mesmer portals, they should never have allowed it. I would not, in a million years, consider calling that an “exploit.” If it is, then every player who ever stepped through a Mesmer portal should be banned, right? Whether or not this opinion represents the majority, or whatever ANet’s feelings are on it — it only goes to show how unclear the concept has become. Why do we even have to wonder and debate about it?
Can you be arrested for breaking a law that was never written? If I use the Konami code to get 30 lives in Contra, should my game self-destruct? If I read a spoiler for Game of Thrones on the internet, should I be banned from watching the show or reading the books? If you pay for a drink at a vending machine and 2 or 3 come out instead of one, do you get banned from the machine? Should we be worrying about being banned by our cell phone company, if we call too often during evenings and weekends?
When you “exploit,” you are not cheating. You are not hacking. You are not patching the game to function differently, and you are not using add-ons. You are playing entirely within the rules that ArenaNet created. If they decide that they don’t like the way a certain thing in the game is working, or if it was in error, then by all means — patch it out. Fix it. If it’s a huge enough mistake, roll accounts back and explain what happened. Warn people about watching out for exploits, and encourage us to report anything we find.
I assume the element of mystery surrounding what gets you banned is part of a tactic to combat those who are actively trying to abuse the game mechanics, or to catch botters. But at the same time, they are promoting a hostile environment for legitimate players. Why on earth would anyone report an exploit they discovered, if doing so could get their account banned? Why should we worry about “the man” being out to get us, in a video game? We are the customers — ArenaNet is providing a service to us, which we paid for.
Maybe we should get banned for using a profession that will later get nerfed because it was judged “overpowered.” Maybe we should get banned for using gw2lfg.com, or referencing the Dragon Timer site. Maybe we should get banned doing repeated runs of CoF Path 1. Do you disagree? Too bad, because under the current system you have no basis for telling me it is or isn’t an exploit.
Oh, but ANet “only banned the worst offenders,” you might say. Alright, so then only the people with the most overpowered profession will be banned. Only the people who ran CoF1 the most will be banned. Only the most prolific dragon event runners will be kicked out of the game. I still have no idea what an exploit is, and neither does anyone else.