Guild Wars 2

Today I got kicked out of a group for using Fiercy Greatsword 4 vs a wall for the reason ’it’s an exploit we don’t want to get banned’ no biggy, but it made me incredibly curious. What is considered an exploit and what’s considered smart use of the game mechanics and is up to the developers to change? Most notable:

- Fiercy Greatsword and the likes (Whilrwind, dodging etc.) vs a wall
- Dungeon buying (if the seller used exploits)
- Solo’ing a Dungeon with exploits without selling
- Using ports and portals for non-profit (such as the Dredge Fractals old Mesmer Blink/Portal ‘skip’ which is fixed I believe (ty devs!))
- Reaching area’s that aren’t usually accessable through normal (spacebar) jumping (such as the portals in Fort Trinity)
- The above but as a way to make a boss not much of a threat

These are all things people have yelled ‘exploit’ at in my presence and I wonder what is and what isn’t an exploit. I must admit before gw2 I thought exploits only excisted in PvP and the rest was considered being smart/creative, so my apologies if this is something that should be obvious.

Thank you in advance

Whatever Anet says it is.

It’s that simple but the basic rule of thumb is you could break the risk Vs reward balance or found a way through game mechanics that could generate a large amount of items or gold or you realized that you could farm certain spawned critters during an event indefinitely for great drops as long as you don’t try to complete the event, then you’re likely exploiting a bug and abuse of that bug is bannable.

Abuse is the key to banning. If you discover the change machine at work gives you $2 dollars in quarters for every dollar you put in, doing it the first time and discovering it wouldn’t necessary be theft, feeding it dollar bills all day and have a 5 gallon bucket to haul the quarters away, that’ll get you in trouble.

Sounds like those guys just wanted to kick you and sell your spot.

It’s like Behellagh, the key is how much you abuse and profit, I don’t think they go after things like you described.
I don’t even think Anet has a way to log what players are doing inside the dungeons for future investigation if anything is reported for that matter.

Thank you for your replies, I honestly think the group I was with ment it, since it was AC path 3, not exactly a dungeon worth kicking people for to sell. It just got me curious, this is the first game I ever paid attention to it (likely since it’s talked over a lot more since Anet actually uses the ban-hammer once in a while) when it’s outside odd things like people being able to leave gates early in PvP or just fly all over the screen. And the famous GW1 bots (not just GW1, but once again, more discusses than in any other game I’ve played.) About everything else I just tended to see as designers flaw, time to fix.

Dean Calaway.9718:

Sounds like those guys just wanted to kick you and sell your spot.

It’s like Behellagh, the key is how much you abuse and profit, I don’t think they go after things like you described.
I don’t even think Anet has a way to log what players are doing inside the dungeons for future investigation if anything is reported for that matter.

Not all players kick to sell spots, often it’s just because friends and guildmates show up and they would rather play with them than a random stranger.

Esmee.1067:

- Fiercy Greatsword and the likes (Whilrwind, dodging etc.) vs a wall
- Dungeon buying (if the seller used exploits)
- Solo’ing a Dungeon with exploits without selling
- Using ports and portals for non-profit (such as the Dredge Fractals old Mesmer Blink/Portal ‘skip’ which is fixed I believe (ty devs!))
- Reaching area’s that aren’t usually accessable through normal (spacebar) jumping (such as the portals in Fort Trinity)
- The above but as a way to make a boss not much of a threat

1. Probably not an exploit, but definitely not an intended use of the skill either (makes the skill much more powerful than it’s intended to be). Expect ANet to patch this if they get time.

2. Definitely an exploit. The seller can expect a ban if caught. Buyers may also face action.

3. Definitely an exploit, but you’re unlikely to face action since you can only get the rewards from dungeons/Fractals once per day, unless the exploit is particularly bad (e.g. beat the path in less than 5 mins for 1.5 gold).

4. Not an exploit, although the dev’s fix to the Dredge fractal shows that they do not approve of players using portals or “creative jumps” to get around content in dungeons/Fractals. I don’t expect anyone to get banned over this, but use at your own risk.

5. Same as 4.

6. Bugging out bosses by pushing them into areas where they stop attacking, or where they can’t reach you but can still be damaged is definitely an exploit. However, it’s likely that ANet will simply fix this when they get time and not ban people over it, unless they do this to sell paths.