Guild Wars 2

Hello there WvWers!

Lately, I’ve been hearing/seeing a lot of gripe about “Arenanet needs to fix blank its so bugged! yarg yarg yarg yargiddity yarg….” We’ve all seen it. We all know the common things people complain about. “Theives in stealth are too op!” “Mesmers are useless without 20+ people per portal!” “CULLING” “CULLING” “CULLING”. You get it.

So, what I want to do is throw out an idea……

What if, as a general whole, the gamers of GW2 decided to step it up a notch? So instead of griping about blank until A-Net fixes it, then moving on and griping the next “horrible awful permabad gamebreaking thing i CANT believe A-Net overlooked!!!!”, we simply………exploited less?

I know, I know, “KELL IS CRAZY!!!!! In fact, he’s probably a WITCH! BURN HIM!” but really, think about it…..

What if people stopped abusing mesmer portals not because portalling is wrong or bad, but because when combined with the culling issues, it enters the grey area between “Strategic use of skill” and “Exploiting a game weakness to manipulate a win?”

What if players decided to hack less for speed and damage on the basis of “just because I can cheat doesn’t mean I should”

What if more gamer’s grew a sense of pride in realizing “hacking doesn’t make me better than the people I just wiped, in fact, it makes me worse.”

What if instead of giving A-Net a giant, ever-growing list of “things you need to fix NOW OR IM QUITTING AND NEVER COMING BACK!!!! yargity yargy yarg….” We simply MADE LESS PROBLEMS FOR OURSELVES?"

I know not everyone who reads this is going to stop exploiting the issues we all know are in the game, but hey, if enough people do, we may just realize the problem ISN’T with A-Net, its with US.

And the answer just may be in the same place.

People who use illegitimate tactics are unlikely to respond to pleas for legitimacy.

It’s the responsibility of each server community to police their players and promote legitimate WvW tactics. The real problematic exploits right now have nothing to do with player culling… there are other bugs that completely cheapen the WvW experience. You never know when a keep was taken by a hidden mesmer or an exploiting mesmer, because they could have been hiding in a false wall or they could have jumped through the gate. Without catching them in the act you’ll never know.

People who are exploiting in this fashion will never listen to reason. If they get kicked from their guild and condemned by their server, they’ll just switch to another server and repeat the same thing again. What’s important is that we encourage honest players to keep playing legitimately, because every day they inch closer to the “If they’re doing it we should do it too” mentality.

Kell,
It’s a noble thought and I admire you for say it… But lets face it, you are asking cheaters not to cheat.
In a perfect world, that would work and we could all focus on having fun with friendly competition. Sadly, there will always be those who ‘MUST WIN AT ALL COSTS!!’ just to stroke their poor little egos or otherwise make themselves feel superior.
ANet can do all the balancing and retooling they want. Until the attitude of these mental delinquents changes (I won’t hold my breath…) or we have dedicated referees watching us as we play (doubtful that would ever happen) there will always be problems like this in any PvP environment.

Oh I know exactly what I’m asking!

It’s really just some food for thought

I really admire that thought, but let’s face it, people who glitch their way to win care less about what we think. After seeing a whole guild use flying mesmers portals behind walls and gate, I simply gave up. I am putting this game on hold, or at least the WvW part, till the major issues are fixed (hopefully).

Simply put, such sentiment doesn’t work. There’s a whole math-based field of study devoted to the subject (game theory) which explains why the best solution to this problem still is for Anet to fix the bugs.

We are all aware of the various exploits and people that abuse them and want action taking to fix them and punish their abusers

I fully understand that it takes time to fix the exploits and that it is entirely possible that some of them cannot be fixed.

What I find the most annoying is that ANET refuse to throw a bit of money at this problem and have an actual team of ingame GM’s patrolling the servers with the powers to take on the spot action against cheats. It does not have to be that many people doing this, just enough so there is a realistic chance that serial cheaters will get punished.

So you are saying all us thieves who use stealth are cheaters(even if we dont go d/d) because Anet cant fix their problems? Same with mesmers and their portals? You mention portals and culling(stealth) and in the next paragraph you bring up speed and damage hacks. These are 2 different subjects entirely. One is bad coding and the other is intentional hax.

eithinan.9841:

So you are saying all us thieves who use stealth are cheaters(even if we dont go d/d) because Anet cant fix their problems? Same with mesmers and their portals? You mention portals and culling(stealth) and in the next paragraph you bring up speed and damage hacks. These are 2 different subjects entirely. One is bad coding and the other is intentional hax.

Not all of you thieves are cheaters. He’s probably referring to the ones who have built a stealth thief simply because the rendering exploit exists and it makes them op.

This is the bank vault argument.

If you build a bank with a vault that had a screen door open to the street, people would rob the bank all the time. You could argue that the fault is in the people; that the bank vault wouldn’t need to be secure if people would just agree to not rob it.

But it’s more practical to just admit and it’s a really stupid way to design a bank vault.

And so it is with software development. It may be the fault of cheaters and hackers but it’s also really stupid to not have designs for contending with them.

Slamz.5376:

This is the bank vault argument.

If you build a bank with a vault that had a screen door open to the street, people would rob the bank all the time. You could argue that the fault is in the people; that the bank vault wouldn’t need to be secure if people would just agree to not rob it.

But it’s more practical to just admit and it’s a really stupid way to design a bank vault.

And so it is with software development. It may be the fault of cheaters and hackers but it’s also really stupid to not have designs for contending with them.

This is not a bank vault though…
If it was as relatively simple as physically blocking up a door with bricks, mortar and steal, then I doubt there would be that many exploits to begin with.
On the other hand, (and using your analogy) I doubt that the ANet Developers intentionally made their proverbial ‘Vault’ with a big wide open screen door and said,
‘Eh, the players won’t intentionally exploit this. They are good people…’
I’m not a Game Developer (sadly…) I have no idea what goes into making a game like this work or what they did to test it. I /do/ know that, no matter how much testing you do, things will slip through, because there is a big difference between having a select number of people run through your brand new game, looking for something that could potentially break it, and having many times that many running around when it goes live.
Yes, it falls to ANet to fix these problems. There is no denying that. (Because really, who else could fix them?) But that doesn’t make the players who intentionally cheat any less at fault.
My biggest hope is that, come February, these big exploits will be dealt with and fixed.
Unfortunately, I am jaded enough to believe that would only make these players look for (and probably find) more exploits and cheats to use.

There are two issues that have occurred with the exploits in the game:

1) They have been in the game for so long that people are actually beginning to think they are not exploits.
2) If they can use an exploit, there is nothing stopping other people from using the exploit, so it’s OK.

There is not much legitimate players can do except report the exploits they see, but when those as still not fixed months later, those players get fed up.

WvW needs to be fixed asap, not wait until the next patch 3 months down the line. People can spend over an hour retaking a tower, and then minutes later a mesmer jumps the wall, portals a group in and you lose it again. It seriously is not fair and needs to be fixed.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your contribution.

Exploiting is a breach of the Guild Wars 2 User Agreement, please report exploits by sending an email at exploits@arena.net