To Exploit or Not to Exploit

[Peaches]

What say you?

Over the course of the past two years, a little under, actually, I have seen many exploits come and go.

I feel it is in the best intererest of our community to not exploit. I firmly believe the best medicine in hand is to report it, so that it can be addressed. Exploiting hurts every single one of us.


What say you?

[Vlisson]

report it and hope that the exploiters gets punished for it

but at unity there is no "law" at all

i wished that if there is an exploit that all logs are examined to take care of it

[Dhalin]

It depends on what the "Exploit" is, as there are many opinions of what exactly is an exploit.

Currently, the "bugged" experience point rewards from making Lodestones is seen by some as exploits, but others see it as a godsend, a release from the near-endless crafting grind just to get to Lv100 DCRA. Myself, falls in the latter. It was a godsend for me, DCRA can't really make all that many things that I actually want, and need. Scales? I don't have Expert forms, nor have I been able to obtain them, despite numerous attempts at letting people know I need them, they still dump them on connies anyways.

Spells? I suppose I could make a few now and then, but its nothing I couldn't already get from a guildie. The only thing DCRA really does for me is help out my Lairshaping craft, so that I can make the intermediate resources at max efficiency until Tier 4, maybe some Tier 5 at near-max.

As far as AFK levelling, like in the other thread? Yeah, that's an exploit if I ever saw one. But then that's just MY opinion. Maybe they didn't see it as an exploit...

--Dhalin

[Peaches]

My definition of an exploit:

To raise, or gain, in a skill, or an item, that is not intended to work that way. We all have a grasp on what and how the system works, and to use something, albeit a programming error, is an exploit. Some can say, its the fault of the programming, but does that give permission for folks to use the exploit?

Thanks again!

[Aamer Khan]

Then let me ask you to clarify a bit further Peaches...

If a programmer, made a mistake ( I say mistake, because surely the devs would not do this on purpose? ) and had t4 fungus giving way too much exp, is it an exploit to use it to lvl weaver?

Is knowing in advance that mithril was going to change to an alloy, gather up as much mith as you can... is that an exploit?

Or, knowing that lava golems drop a ton of trophies, ( much more often than any other mob ) is it an exploit to risk DP's to collect as many as possible?

As buggy as the client's have been over the last 3 years, and with all the things the devs have tried with their small adjustments here and there, I think it is in the eye of the DEVS as to whether something is an exploit or not.

Some things were very obvious, a quest that was repeatable that gave 25k exp each time, selling goods to the blacksmith trainers... Those things were taken out by the devs. I fully believe they knew about them, and took action when they felt the time was right.

Somethings are not as obvious.

[Justa Mirage]

I had this discussion in depth with another guild person.

We discussed "What are Exploits and what is power leveling using exploits?"

You have pretty much defined the core of what an exploit is... but now comes the "how many ways can you interpret that" question...

An Exploit may still be a game design that wasn't fully tested and when put on live shards, ends up having players use game provided techniques in game play to accelerate their levels or by gaining comps / items.

The very first one was with the ELARS. They found that either solo / dual team play, they could stop mobs 20 levels higher than themselves with pinion and stun arrows until the mob was dead, thus vaulting themselves faster in levels. This was the first of many nerf hammers felt across the world. This is where the "interpretation" comes in...

Is making lodestones / caststones for XP an exploit? Surely it was designed and tested, but were the devs looking at the big picture? Storage filled with tons of raw materials in a lair that had the appropriate machines to make them, nets about 6 levels per filled storage if done at the right level where the player is "just" getting 2:1

I agree with the above poster, I think it was a great thing to introduce to the dragon community... but unfortunately there is still a rift between dragon players who "made it to 100" with the grind (yes, walking to school, in the snow, up hill, both ways) vs. you young whipper snappers that can zip to 100th using lodestones / caststones.

Is it working as intended? The devs must have not, as they were going to nerf the XP from them but it never made it live. Is it an exploit... no, just an oversite by the devs for making the XP readily accessable.

Other exploits I try to look the other way... things like the area with the indestructable Fyakki and having groups of uber-peds hewing them down by the dozen while 30-50th level characters stood around and either cast heals, rezzed, or just were bait. That may still go on, but with these new aggro changes, I wouldn't risk it

I watched as level 60 dragons would take on level 80+ mobs with no problems. Is it an exploit? no.. just a darn good player with min/max build.

There are few "exploits" left in Horizons, many have been either fixed by the devs, or just aren't practiced as you can accomplish the same thing in another way without doing it "that way"

Someone asked me the other day "Can you buff me? I need ped buffs badly. Would you hunt with me... my usual 100th level partner isn't online (this character is 32nd.) I proceded to tell them how to "solo" if they could not find a group to hunt with, and how dependency on "ped-buffs" just weakens your ability to learn / survive battles on your own with your own abilities and not be co-dependent on others. But, to each their own!

A prime example was the thread to help me level Healer: because of my crafting being above 90th, a player can wear certain fully teched cloth armor and jewelry... an exploit? What advantages would there be running around in fully teched clothes? I don't know... but I love my level 31 chainmail outfit, and attempt to play the game with it instead of utilizing a loophole in the system so I can level "quicker" and it seems to be working

[Aamer Khan]

Here is more food for thought...

How about when a player with say, 100 cleric, switches to cleric, self buffs with gifts and enhances, then switches to warrior lvl 23? An exploit? Not hardly. This is the way the game was intended to be played.

There in lies the rub...

Not only how do you define exploit, but how do you define intended? If the devs put in something to make it easier or for a bit of fun, will it be considered an exploit? If they did so without through testing is THAT an exploit? If they simply screw up... is that?

Many atm complain about how water pops in and out, and that if they are close to the edge ( like on ice island ) and the water is gone, some have died from having the water pop back in during the fight anf they didn't notice the breath bar. Some have gone as far as to remove the water totally from the game, in an attempt to rid themselves of this irritation. The fact that it can be done, is a wonder since it has been like this since release. However, this obvious exploit, does what to harm the game play of others or enhance the leveling ability of any player? Oh, I suppose a biped could trudge over to the dragon island and scob up on easy shining wisp gathering, but then he must somehow not be seen by any dragon and must drag his disk all the way back to a portal to use any of his illgotten booty. MUCH easier ways to get shining wisps.

Even the taking out of spell effects are seen by a few as some sort of exploit. I mean, it is hacking your client so as to not see the distracting and fps killing effects. This is certainly NOT playing as intended, but since the devs have allowed it, it is not considered an exploit.

The Devs decide if officially something is an exploit. The beholder can decide if they will use any method to level. WE will always have differing opinions.

[Rhyssa]

I think one of the things that determines perception of whether something is an exploit, is whether you still have to work to get the experience.
Technically, it's an exploit to level off something that is giving too much experience due to a miscalculation by the devs, eg crafting on lodestones, or levelling weaver on fungus.

Most players had no problem with people levelling on fungus, after all, they still had to do the work, they just got better exp for it.

But if I told those same players I could level a char from 1 to 100 in every craft school in the game in a couple of hours due to a bug, I'm sure those same players would all be screaming "exploit" - and rightly so.

*Most* people can accept the first one, because it still has to be worked for, nobody, however, will find the second one acceptable, because there's no work at all involved - it's a case of a lot something for nothing. That isn't to say no-one will use it - there'll always be people who'll take advantage of such a bug, but even those who use it will admit it's an exploit.

As Justa said, it also comes down to interpretation. Not everyone interprets the first case as an exploit, but no-one is going to try to say that the second case isn't an exploit.

[Rhyssa]

Oh, I suppose a biped could trudge over to the dragon island and scob up on easy shining wisp gathering, but then he must somehow not be seen by any dragon and must drag his disk all the way back to a portal to use any of his illgotten booty. MUCH easier ways to get shining wisps.

Now there's a very interesting example that appears to be defined by who does it.

If a dragon teleports between the dragon island and a racial town to easily gather shining essence then it isn't an exploit, but if a biped runs there while water isn't popped, gathers the same essence, and then drags his disk back across the ocean floor and all the way to the nearest portal he's exploiting?
No biped in his right mind is going to go to all that trouble, and yet I guarantee if some dragon players saw a biped gathering essence on the dragon island they'd immediately be screaming "exploit" in mp.

Personally if I was going to run all the way to the dragon island, I wouldn't do it for an easy load of essence, I'd take an army of dwarves and gnomes there and claim it for the short people - I feel they need an island of their own far more than the dragons do. Besides, the dragons have 2 other islands they can keep for themselves

Oh, and I'd also stand right next to the port-in pad so that every dragon who landed there would see me. But I couldn't be bothered running all the way there, so the dragon island, and it's essence, are safe

[pevil2000]

First of all, my definition on exploits is very much the same as Peaches. In the example with weaving, if you could only raise it by using the 'bugged' T4 resources, that wouldn't be an exploit. If, however, only one of the resources that you *could* use was bugged, but it was perfectly possibly to gain with other resources, I would probably call it an exploit (although in that case I'd have to get into the dodgy area of 'if the person knew the exp was greater on that resource')

BTW anything that involves actual coding I wouldn't consider an exploit, but a hack. Which is far 'worse' (depending on game, horizons is fairly moddable though shouldn't have anything that changes gameplay I feel), whereas exploiting would be simply using whats in the game already to gain unfair advantage.

As for how I feel about exploits; anyone using them in my opinion might as well just pay for someone to play the game for them. If its to reach the 'end' quicker, they might as well get a powerlevelling service or, in a singleplayer game, just download a saved game where the game is complete. If they're using it to gain lots of gold/resource, then they need booting from the server for ruining the economy for everyone else.

[Takora Drakan]

As some stated here, there is a fine line between bugs and expolits.

If you abuse the system not as intended to gain lvls, exp, whatever, that is a expolit.

Like afk macroing, that is not adventuring, that is expoliting.

On the other hand, in the past you could farm the pawnbrokers, a expolit? No, the devs knew it and it was "intended" until they decided to nerv them. Lodestones? Where intended until a dev decided to nerv them.

Expoliting only destroys the game. The players who have hard leveled their levels by real adventuring/crafting will be pretty pissed off, because someone thinks when they be lvl xxx I will be so uber etc. blah.

[Tantalyr]

It seems to me that the definition of an "exploit" is as elusive as the radiant wisps initially were . . . .

At one end of the spectrum, you could easily say that an exploit is anything that violates either the ToS or the EULA. Third party cheat programs--ones which allow you to dupe items or macro afk to name but two--are obvious examples. But limiting the definition solely to express prohibitions in the ToS and EULA surely cannot be broad enough. And that's where things get fuzzy . . . and become a playground for "situational ethics."

Let's take the illustration bandied about previously in this thread--the coin exploit. As it occurred in the game sometime prior to the merger, you could sell a certain spell to a pawnbroker for six times the price of any comparable tier spell, indeed three times the price of the then highest tier of that spell. Obvious bug, right? So selling hundreds of those spells to the pawnbroker must be a verboten exploit, right?

Well, what if . . . just what if . . . that "bug" occurred after the devs sledgehammered the pawnbrokers to the point where crafters could no longer derive even a subsistence-level existence selling their wares to him? And that one spell--though again fetching six times the coin of comparable tier spells--fetched you precisely what the pawnbrokers paid for it prior to the sledgehammer? Exploit? Most likely so. But would it merit the opprobrium of the community? I'm not so sure . . . .

Or let's take a more recent historical hypothetical--craft school leveling with Tier VI resources. Let's say you're a level 100 Miner, and you've fetched the Master Stoneworking form that lets you work travertine. So you're happily leveling up Mason gathering and working travertine. And then you wake up one morning and BAM! The devs have sledgehammered the travertine field and you're lucky to find five nodes of it on a great day. And a week later you stumble across a bugged stonecutter that magically gives you five times the experience points you normally get from working marble or obsidian. Would using that stonecutter to replace all the experience points you used to get from working travertine be an exploit? Would you be at all tempted to ever use that bugged stonecutter?

Or another recent historical hypothetical related to adventure leveling. Let's say that for two years your greatest joy in game was hunting with your guildmates, of ALL levels. Just nothing like the thrill of taking newer guildmates out to the mithril golems and teaching them the best combat tactics. But then you log in one evening, gather up a couple of level 40ish guildmates and head out to Mithril Golem Canyon, only to watch every golem in a two mile radius make a beeline for your mates and squash them, ignoring every blow you land. But then one day you stumble upon a spawn of, say, bugged Emerald Golems that ALWAYS aggro the highest member of any group, or the one that lands the hardest blows, and ignore lower level members of the group. Would taking your guildmates to that spawn be an exploit? If so, would you do it anyway?

*ponders the imponderables*

[Sigi]

I couldn't care less how someone gets his/her levels/money. I'm not level driven, most "exploits" I only noticed áfter they were fixed. Exploit or no exploit, I don't mind if someone uses it because it doesn't effect me and I don't think it effects the game only perhaps some kind of honor system (no pvp...). It's all up to that person, in the end we all have to live with ourselves.

[Aamer Khan]

Actually exploiting can and did affect the game and other players.

Remember the water walking exploit one guild used to buy plots before a bridge was built?

Or, the vast amount of money some were able to amass with the blacksmith trick.

Exploiting is sometimes easy to see... like when somebody is afk hunting.
Exploiting is sometimes more fuzzy around the edges like the loadstones or fungas "exploits".
Sometimes, it cannot be solved easily without a complete rewrite of the client side of the software, like removing water or climbing impossibly steep hills. The real problem with these last ones, is that modifying the client def/ent files has been approved by the developers of the game and opened this possibility to anyone with enough knowledge and ability. Some of them are fun, like the emote packs and Blue's color adjustements.
Some can help remove irritation like the removal of water, or are to help cut down on frustration like shrinking things to see better.

What we can continue to hope, is the devs will work hard at providing fun, so that we stop wasting time discussing thinsg like this.

[Theolaerynn]

I am at a loss to see what the deal is with leveling, be it craft or adventure. I would defy anyone to give concrete evidence how they are affected by someone elses leveling. And I am not talking about rare and bizzare stuff like an idle macroer stealing your mobs or training you.

I am 100 Adventure / 100 Crafter, as are many Dragons that have been around as long as I. Can you tell me how I got there? Did I exploit? Did I grind it the old fasioned way? If you do not know me well then the chances are you wont know. So tell me, what negetive impact does that have on you?

If the answer is anything other than 'none' then you need to ask yourself why, and look into fixing it within yourself.

I have watched folks do various exploits, including the idle macro, and shook my head in wonder. But hey, they pay to play, just like I do. It is not my business how they choose to use the time they buy in Istaria, and until I can give reasonable evidence as to how it negetively impacts me then there is nothing to say.

[Foxfire]

Actually exploiting can and did affect the game and other players.

Remember the water walking exploit one guild used to buy plots before a bridge was built?

I'm going to vilify myself here and now. I was one of the "water walking" 'exploiters', and to this day I'm still infuriated that this is considered an exploit. We did not walk on water. We walked out, we died. A healer rezzed us. We walked further before we drowned again. It got us to the island (Lerena) for the cost of a few death points. There were "water walking" exploits around then - things you could do to avoid drowning, that had been around since beta. And I reported them. In Beta. We didn't use those obvious "the game is broken" methods. What we used seemed to make sense to me, and still does. For those who weren't around then, that's why you are auto-teleported back home when you drown. Didn't used to be that way.

I don't care whether the developers "meant" for us to build the dang bridge first (Which, by the way, one of the two punished guilds built the majority of after this incident), I still see it as using the game mechanics on hand, that, for all we know, were supposed to work that way. There were two ways to get to that island and we opted for the clever, quicker way. Hell, we even asked a developer before doing it whether we were allowed to use that mechanic. He said yes. Only when the game world was in uproar did the devs reverse their stance to "Well, you're not allowed to use it to do that."

I guess I'm still very angry about the way the community and developers treated that one. Not that the developers didn't have the right to, just their handling of it. I'll tell you who it affected. Those of us who were punished and had our world "readjusted". Flame away, I'm sure there are dissenters.

To tie it back to the thread, opinions will vary, and tempers can flare.

[Flindar]

Exploit hmmm...... everyone knows the answer to this question.....

its common sense.... if a little voice inside your head says "hmm this dont seem right....maybe this isnt the way things were intended to work"

now.... given the shroom example... people learned of it by the masses.... people flocked to them.... weeks...WEEKS went by... the devs knew of it and obviously decided it wasnt so bad

Theres reasons i think to this.... one... have you ever tried leveling a cloth craft??? yeah tell me how that compares to leveling in marble or even yew??

a load of hide strips brought in about 450k when i could just make them... pretty nice... but lets compare.... a load the same size of marble brought in 130k... ish.... but!!!! then that marble could be crunched into tools or such for an additional 200+k....

so a load of marble at optimum would bring you about 330k... so yes hidestrips brought a little more... but i fealt that they only made up for the horrible difference in difficulty of something that is suppose to be on the same tier (ironsilk)

Do to the horrible imbalance of t5 materials I think the shroon deal was pretty sweet while it lasted

A prime example was the thread to help me level Healer: because of my crafting being above 90th, a player can wear certain fully teched cloth armor and jewelry... an exploit? What advantages would there be running around in fully teched clothes? I don't know... but I love my level 31 chainmail outfit, and attempt to play the game with it instead of utilizing a loophole in the system so I can level "quicker" and it seems to be working

To this I say... if you earned the right as a crafter to wear t5 techable gear then just that... YOU EARNED THE RIGHT TO WEAR IT!!!

gettin 100 in any craft is just as hard if not harder then adventure leveling
not to mention that it works the other way too..... hi level adventurer's can use t5 craft techs to boost there level 1 crafting


Quote from Tantalyr
Or another recent historical hypothetical related to adventure leveling. Let's say that for two years your greatest joy in game was hunting with your guildmates, of ALL levels. Just nothing like the thrill of taking newer guildmates out to the mithril golems and teaching them the best combat tactics. But then you log in one evening, gather up a couple of level 40ish guildmates and head out to Mithril Golem Canyon, only to watch every golem in a two mile radius make a beeline for your mates and squash them, ignoring every blow you land. But then one day you stumble upon a spawn of, say, bugged Emerald Golems that ALWAYS aggro the highest member of any group, or the one that lands the hardest blows, and ignore lower level members of the group. Would taking your guildmates to that spawn be an exploit? If so, would you do it anyway?

The "wonderfull" <----sarcasm... aggro changes made to Horizons in the past months have killed guild hunting..
Tantalyr has explained the exact scenario we experience with every new guild member..... capping exp for them sure.... they dont need to be powerleveled... but making the aggro beeline for them or any healer is rediculous... most of the fun when I started Horizons was going out with the higher players and watch then hunt and kill.... learning ways to do the same..

now i cant even take anyone under level 100 anywhere because they are a mob magnet..... thanks for killing the grouping fun..



And to Foxfire.... sorry you went through that but IMO if a dev knew and did not warn against it and it was not fixed.... then obviously it was not that important of an issue and therefor should not have been blown up...
and also... nice thinking on the strategy there...


I know of several exploits right now... I have reported them... I have spoken with devs.... Their answer was this..... If its not hurting anyone else or not hurting the economy or community then its not a big issue....

Leveling and exp exploits only hurt one person.... thats the person that uses them... they rob of the satisfaction of knowing that you accomplished something the way it was meant to be done....and since that person pays their subs... not anyone else... then its noone else's right to tell them how to play their game

BTW... when everyones done worrying about how other people are playing their games....try logging in and just enjoying the community...

[Flindar]

My definition of an exploit:

To raise, or gain, in a skill, or an item, that is not intended to work that way. We all have a grasp on what and how the system works, and to use something, albeit a programming error, is an exploit. Some can say, its the fault of the programming, but does that give permission for folks to use the exploit?

Thanks again!

"Intended" to work that way.... yes since we were always so informed of what the devs where doing...<-----sarcasm.... we... being every individual in horizons... should know exactly how the game was intended to be played and what was meant for each and every action or reaction in the game.....

Peaches I like you you know that but this piece just doesnt make sense to me.... how can average people know what is "intended" in a game so complex as Horizons.....

I have seen instant shard shutdowns to fix exploits... if the recent stuff has taken weeks or months... (actually a few I know have been here since creation) and the devs are fully aware of them.... how can the player base be expected to think anything other then that they Were Intended?

[Kwinn]

I think there is also a fine line between expoits and good old fashioned using yer noodle fer something besides a hatrack.

Ya have yer ADV rating so high killing lvl 120s nets a few hundred xp for a new school. So ya don your main, go mass kill mobs for trophies. Then ya don the new school and go turn in the trophies. Exploit or using yer noodle?

Everyone knows Ogre Zombies are rare critters and the drops of Toes are even rarer. Yet those Ogres are Undead and will spawn as replacements in undead spawns thereby increasing the numbers of Ogres one might be able to kill. Exploit or using yer noodle?

Using a chain of people to pull a critter away from his spawning ground so some lower levels can get kill credit for a quest. They would never make it to the spawning area otherwise. Kaa comes to mind here. Exploit or using yer noodle?

Using a low lvl in a group as bait for a mob. Herman vs Fafnir comes readily to mind. We had a group, Herman by far the lowest rated. We knew Fafnir would make a beeline for him ignoring the heavy hitters lying in wait. Herman ran ol' Faffy in circles while we hit Faffy with everything but the kitchen sink. No deaths and Fafnir never let off chasing Herman. Exploit or using yer noodle?

Sure, AFK macros, 3rd party Exploit programs and the like are very definitely exploits. But, who really suffers? The community as a whole or the individual that got it all the easy way, doesnt know what to do with it and eventually leaves?

[Phillip]

Blacksmith - Exploit. Fixed. Rah. Took only 6 months.

Stuff the Vault with 1 million bulk - Intended.

Novian Rush of 2005 - Intended.

(edited)

Maybe EI will have bring better versions of intended and exploit.