Guild Wars 2

I’m going to reinforce a point I’ve seen mentioned here already:

Most of you (including customer support, the community manager, and most of ANet’s staff) are using the word “exploit” incorrectly. An “exploit” is taking advantage of game mechanics in a way clearly never intended by the game design, like bugging out a boss, using terrain to access areas you shouldn’t, or otherwise using features in a way that’s obviously unintended.

What happened with this crafting recipe was NOT an “exploit”. It is not an “exploit” to use a system in exactly the way it is intended to be used.

A lot of people keep saying “they should have known better”. Why? Why should ANYONE have known better? Because it was too profitable? When is a recipe “too profitable” enough to arouse suspicion?

There is neither a fixed ratio of value across all crafts, nor a tacit statement from ArenaNet that all crafting at a given tier will ALWAYS have the same value or rate of return. If you see something as complex as a recipe in the game, why would you even pause to wonder if it’s “right” to use it? It’s a recipe – someone had to have written, coded, and tested it before deployment, right? Right?

People say: “exploiters” obviously knew it was ‘different’, because they made 1000’s of the items. Of course they did. Welcome to capitalism. You see an opportunity to make money – you jump on it. That’s how market economies work; you profit early on before everyone else figures out how it works. And sure enough – within a day or so this recipe was no longer significantly profitable, and its use dropped off.

The only people who should have been “punished” in this laughably draconian debacle is the ArenaNet QA team. Feel free to use their Christmas bonuses to pay back all of the refunds you’re already starting to dangle in front of the “only 200” people you banned for “economic terrorism”. Or maybe use that money to develop better customer support systems, like itemized rollbacks to counteract the unintended consequences of shoddy programming.

Erasculio.2914:

The fact it had such a higher return than the other recipes you admittedly knew about, and that it was different enough that you actually tried crafting a rare jewel instead of your usual options (daggers and warhorns) shows how you understood it was not the same thing. In other words, how it was something in a different order of magnitude from other recipes in the game, which you quickly tried to make a profit from, even if you failed.

I have no idea how you got from that, to this:

In other words, how it was an exploit you tried to abuse.

Really? In a batch of 10, I’d lose 2-3 snowflakes, most of the mithril (or orichalcum – I tried both), and get maybe a handful of Ectos back. Was it more profitable than making a dagger? Yes. Does that NATURALLY follow that it MUST be an exploit, because it is somewhat more profitable than another currently existing salvage method?

No.

No, guy, that does not follow at all. In my mind I assumed I was trading mithril/ori for Ecto, at a slightly more favorable rate than via the daggers. That it wasn’t really that profitable for me further distanced in my mind the notion that this was somehow illegitimate.

There are “good deals” all the time in this game. Cheap TP buys that turn into profitable TP sells. Spots where you can get good drops that have favorable resale rates. I’m largely aware of NONE of these things until long after they’re tapped out, because I seriously do not pay attention to the in’s and out’s of making money in MMOs.

So no, I did not think this recipe was an exploit. If I did, I would not have used it. You seem unwilling to accept my honesty here; that is on you, not me. ArenaNet, in turn, seems to be unwilling to accept their own incompetence in this affair; while my guildies bear the short-term burden of their judgement, they may find the long term effect of their decision is not to their benefit.

Erasculio.2914:

Out of curiosity, is there any other recipe in the game you have used 50 times in a row, salvaging and then recycling ingredients like this particular recipe allowed you to?

Absolutely. When I was trying to gather ectos for my legendary, I would regularly buy the cheapest T6 mats (or guildies sent them to me) and make either rare level 80 daggers, or rare level 80 warhorns, which I could then grind and hope to get ectos from.

I honestly couldn’t tell you how many of those I made. Easily in excess of 50. I only even bothered with the snowflake recipe so I could help my fellow guildies out with some ectos as payment for their help on my way to my legendary.

I am admitting I used a recipe that was listed in the game,which I (incorrectly) assumed had been tested and vetted by the QA department at ArenaNet.

Had it obviously appeared to be an exploit, I would not have done it. You’ll note that there were threads about this recipe on the forums that were left unanswered. There was no obvious indication to me or my guildies that this was anything nefarious.

So no, I do not admit to “exploiting”. This is more akin to going to a supermarket, and seeing a “buy one, get one free” sign for soda. We loaded up, because it was a good deal. Now that supermarket is telling us “there was supposed to be a limit of 10 sodas purchased. We didn’t write that down anywhere, but that’s the rule now. So you’re all criminals who robbed our store by stealing soda.”

Again, you people are assuming this was done with intent to commit some form of exploit, to break some rule, or to profit in a way that you assume EVERYONE understood to be an obvious violation of the EULA.

Your assumption is flatly incorrect.

You like to say “you should have known better.”

Why? We should they have known better? Oh, I’m sure there were many who said “man – this is obviously an exploit, but I don’t care.” I don’t deny that: there were some who definitely knew better.

But many others? They just assumed that because ArenaNet had put it in the game, it was legit. This wasn’t buying karma weapons for 27 karma, okay? This was just a recipe that had a better return on investment.

You know why I wasn’t banned? I tried the recipe; I did it about 50 times. And you know what? It didn’t work for me. I managed to get ectos maybe 50% of the time I salvaged, and I lost about two snowflakes per 10 salvages. I ran through what Mithril/Orichalcum I had stored, and I realized that the recipe wasn’t really worth my time or effort, since my returns were so poor.

Others in my guild saw that. They assumed it “not working for me” was further proof this was a legit thing. It had a chance of failure; it wasn’t a guaranteed source of profit.

Again, I know some of you seem overeager to label my banned guildies as “criminals” or “exploiters” of the worst sort, but it is patently not true. We do not permit cheating in the games we host guilds in; it makes us look bad as a gaming community.

This was not an obvious “exploit”. Why would we report it? It was a recipe; in my mind an exploit is something obvious, like a T3 karma item costing multiples less than it should. This looked more to me like a subtle attempt by ArenaNet to deflate the Ecto market, much like increasing the T6 mat drops or showering us with precursors in the Karka event.

You ArenaNet apologists really need to pay attention to what is being said here. Most definitely, this was not a “crime” committed wholly by “criminals”; many of them were just players who thought they caught a lucky break.

And in banning guild leaders with no implemented solution to transition leadership, they are radiating out “punishment” to hundreds if not thousands more innocent players, simply because they lacked the foresight to test their recipes, or anticipate one of the most fundamentally basic guild management support needs.

I find it funny that so many people are immediately leaping to the conclusion that ANYONE who used this recipe MUST have known it was an exploit. There’s this tacit assumption that the activity was undertaken purely out of malice, with an aim toward destroying the economy.

Let me offer you a different view.

First, Dantos (who is in this thread) and I are in the same guild. Several of our leadership (including the guild lead) were banned for this crafting incident. Did they exploit this recipe because we are a gaming community full of hackers and cheaters?

No. It’s because we’re a gaming community of casual players.

You see, we don’t play hard enough to get rich. We’re adults, we have jobs and lives; we can’t spend 10 hours a day playing the market. Out of our ~240 members only two of us have Legendary weapons; I’m one of them, and I only have it because most of the guild helped me get the items needed.

When our ONE genuinely skilled market player mentioned this recipe, we discussed it on Mumble. Was it an exploit? It didn’t seem so; it was a crafting recipe, for god’s sake. How could the design team have screwed up something so fundamentally obvious as that? We decided that it was probably a subtle attempt by ANet to deflate the skyrocketing Ectoplasm market; increase supply, decrease cost. (Much like they did with precursors and the Karka event.)

So many of my guildies jumped on this because it was a way to get things like ascended backpacks or legendary pre-reqs that they – as casual players – might never see.

When we learned about the ban, our members were horrified. We genuinely did not know this was an exploit; it had been around for DAYS. There was a POST about it right on these forums! Several of our banned members sent support tickets offering to have their characters rolled back, their gear trashed; whatever. This was not out of shame at “getting caught” – this was genuine regret for the misunderstanding.

What is worse is that ArenaNet’s technical incompetence has cost us our guild. Because our guild leader was banned, and because they have no way to move leadership to a new person we have had our head cut off. We cannot manage our guild properly, so we are forced to continue in a broken guild, or lose our name and influence. That is – in effect – punishing every single member for the actions of a few.

Lastly, I’m sure that a lot of you are eager to assume my guild is full of scummy hackers and exploiters. I’d just like to include an attachment here, which I just screenshotted from our community website. We have what we call the “Ten Commandments” of our community, which are the rules we expect all members to follow or be removed. Feel free to read #1, and tell me you still think their motivation for using this recipe was malice.

Truth is, this was sloppy coding on ANet’s part, followed by a gross overreaction. I understand and fully support their stance against exploiting, as does my gaming community. But this? This was poorly executed, and their doubling down on their stance by labeling my fellow gamers – most of whom are working professionals with families – “economic terrorists” is insulting, childish, and stupid.

My guild’s leader was hit by the recent ban wave. Because he can no longer access his account, he cannot pass on leadership to anyone else.

I sent a ticket to ANet asking for them to either pass leadership to someone else, or temporarily unban my guild leader to allow him to do this himself. They have said they have no ability to assist on this issue (and will not consider a temporary unbanning), which leaves our several hundred member guild effectively crippled.

Our guild was formed within minutes of the beginning of headstart. We have researched everything you could spend influence on, and the guild carries the name of our gaming community (Unrepentant). While one could just say “make a new guild”, that’s a rather unpalatable solution – to lose thousands of hours of influence gains, our name and tag, and whatever reputation we have on our server simply because ArenaNet did not think through the consequences of their actions.

They meant well with this latest action, but the fact that they would throw an entire guild under the bus to punish one person, and have absolutely no means to transfer guild leadership is frankly mind boggling.

My advice to those guilds still playing is to ensure that you have more than one person occupying the top slot in your leadership structure, or ensure a separate rank is created that has all the functionality of the leadership spot. If your guild leader gets banned, goes MIA, or otherwise disappears, you will be left unable to fully manage your guild.

I finished making The Dreamer a little while ago, and I can definitively say “no, it was not worth it”.

That’s not because I dislike the bow; on the contrary, it’s totally awesome and hilarious. It’s just that it’s such a huge, time-wasting, RNG-based train wreck of a process that the end result is just not worth the effort.

I was tempted to list The Dreamer right after I finished it. Probably only for ~1000 gold; (un)fortunately for me, I didn’t have the posting price.

Had someone had an offer up on The Dreamer for that much gold I would definitely have sold it.

You can definitely sell them, though. I think you shouldn’t be able to, but you can for now, at least.

I’m glad everyone is getting a chest – even people that weren’t there. It was a dumb idea to do a time-boxed event for one day only when you have a global product targeted toward a casual audience who shouldn’t be expected to put their life on hold for some event in a game.

For the record, I was there that day, ran the event, and got my chest. I don’t care who gets rewarded – it’s not a zero-sum game. Maybe next time ArenaNet will be smarter about event scheduling.

Absolutely The Dreamer. It’s so ridiculous-looking, how could you not?

(I guess if you’re a “srs bsns” style player, you wouldn’t. But dude – it’s a unicorn bow that shoots unicorn-tipped rainbows! Anyone I kill in wuvwuv should get some sort of “Humiliation” debuff put on them for a few minutes.)

I’m at 49 Clovers for ~200 tries. I think if I had started on my Clovers at the beginning of my Legendary journey, I would have quit on it long ago. I hate RNG systems, and would like to egg the car of the person who decided that the ONE thing you cannot buy with gold should be random.

Seriously. That dude is the devil, and the Forge is a cold-hearted kitten.

At least I can take some comfort in the fact that I’m going for The Dreamer, which is probably one of the easiest Legendaries to acquire.

I think Ironzerg neglected to state the obvious: that the post was more than a little tongue-in-cheek. ;-)

I did want to mention one thing, though, and that’s that people need to understand that boycotting the gem store isn’t going to make things better. People seem to forget that ArenaNet isn’t making money every month on this game via subscriptions; your gem purchases are the only thing keeping Guild Wars 2 in the black.

I, like many of you, have become increasingly frustrated with ArenaNet lately. Promised buffs to my main (a Ranger) have not come. Ascended gear introduced power creep and gear grind in the short term, while guaranteeing future creep and increasingly irrelevant crafting in the long term. They are already failing of their promise to us, and the game isn’t even three months old.

But… not buying gems isn’t going to make them sit up and say “hey – maybe we should fix Rangers”. Not spending my cash isn’t going to fix power creep. No – what will happen is that they will become increasingly desperate to earn revenue, and they’ll begin charging for content, or putting more and more “necessary” stuff up for sale in the store.

Vote with your wallet – that’s the capitalist way. But don’t think your not dropping twenty or fifty bucks on gems is going to “send a statement”. All it’s going to do is weaken the quality of their product. Play, or don’t play – but don’t delude yourself on how to affect change here.

Tonight is “Thirsty Thursdays”, where we jump into PvP matches with drinks in our hand, and violence in our hearts. Sometimes we fight naked!

…well, not in game. That would be silly. In real life.