Taboo topic: Will Guild Wars 2 get infested with hacks ?

[Lucky_]

It's almost like we need a minimap and a global map to let us see what is happening strategically on the map!

Wait a minute...

In other news, every single hardcore BF2/2142 player is clearly wrong, having a minimap and a global map totally replaces commander. And in yet another news, that is what was clearly missing from original doom to make it the epic strategy games of all times.

No wait...

[DrakeWurrum]

Isn't Counter-strike an official e-sport still? As well as Quake? What about Halo?

I forget if they're still officially supported, but I remember that some official tournaments included those games, and I'm pretty sure there's more game modes than just deathmatch.

[Lucky_]

Isn't Counter-strike an official e-sport still? As well as Quake? What about Halo?

I forget if they're still officially supported, but I remember that some official tournaments included those games.

CS yes, at least source. There are definitely some quake events as well. Not sure about Halo, FPS on consoles have never been my thing.

Of course, these are all first person shooters with a tactical focus. Please tell me you're not going to try to jury-rig GW2 into the same category of competitiveness? That would actually be on par with your claim to "fully understand human psychology" in other thread in terms of hilarity.

[DrakeWurrum]

CS yes, at least source. There are definitely some quake events as well. Not sure about Halo, FPS on consoles have never been my thing.

Of course, these are all first person shooters with a tactical focus. Please tell me you're not going to try to jury-rig GW2 into the same category of competitiveness?

No, but none of those games have the same player perspective that RTS games do, which is all I'm trying to counter, when you're trying to make the claim that the top-down perspective is essentially required for strategy.

It's also worth noting that the original games that were given competitive treatments were fighting games - like Street Fighter or even Super Smash Bros.

Whether or not GW2 sPvP has the level of competitiveness necessary to count as an official e-sport remains to be seen and shouldn't be judged until the game has been out for a few months, but I find it ludicrous that you're claiming it's won't be on those grounds.

[Lucky_]

No, but none of those games have the same player perspective that RTS games do, which is all I'm trying to counter, when you're trying to make the claim that the top-down perspective is essentially required for strategy.

It's also worth noting that the original games that were given competitive treatments were fighting games - like Street Fighter or even Super Smash Bros.

Whether or not GW2 sPvP has the level of competitiveness necessary to count as an official e-sport remains to be seen and shouldn't be judged until the game has been out for a few months, but I find it ludicrous that you're claiming it's won't be on those grounds.

Yes, if you read and comprehended the initial post, it states very clearly that such shooters are tactical in nature and attract specific kind of people that like such games. Same goes for fighting games and their competitive crowd. And notably, in all those games, it's the deathmatch mode that is by far the most attractive format of play. Exceptions to this rule are generally far less successful simply due to tastes of this specific crowd.

And so, we have come the (obvious) full circle, where GW2 doesn't have the base structure to support death matching, doesn't have the tactical elements to interest the shooter and fighting game and generally tactical games crowd and doesn't have strategic depth to attract strategy games crowd. Which means that it will either have to carve a whole new niche in very competitive territory, which is pretty much impossible especially without a proper foothold in SK, or they will simply not really attempt the e-sports outside pretty speeches.

Which is exactly what I said.

[DrakeWurrum]

And so, we have come the (obvious) full circle, where GW2 doesn't have the base structure to support death matching, doesn't have the tactical elements to interest the shooter and fighting game and generally tactical games crowd and doesn't have strategic depth to attract strategy games crowd. Which means that it will either have to carve a whole new niche in very competitive territory, which is pretty much impossible especially without a proper foothold in SK, or they will simply not really attempt the e-sports outside pretty speeches.

I want to question, though, exactly how you decided upon any of that.

What tactical elements would you consider necessary to attract the shooter and fighting game crowd? Before I ever touched MMORPG gaming, I played fighting games very intently. I never took it to a competitive level (primarily because my parents never cared to support such interests), but it was the only kind of gaming I cared about. It got to the point where I'd convinced my Biology teacher back in high school to let us play video games in her portable during lunch period, and the place became a kind of regular hang-out for me, my buddies, and anybody else who wanted to try to take us on in one of the games we brought. Often games like Perfect Dark or Super Smash Brothers Melee, and more. It wasn't until after my first year of college that I got into MMORPGs, and that was only because of a certain job I'd managed to obtain for a short time.

What does it take to give a game "strategic depth" to attract an RTS crowd? Again, I spent many years playing Starcraft and Warcraft 3, though never at a competitive level. The only reasoning I can imagine behind this is that you're not controlling an entire army, but simply one "hero unit" with a handful of other "hero units" against an opposing team comprised of "hero units" of their own choosing.
The strategic depth of an sPvP match, imo, will come down not just to personal character build, but how your character build interacts with the builds on your team, and whether or not you can react to and counter the character builds and combos the other team has thunk up.

I certainly find MMO gaming attractive, and I'm far more attracted to sPvP than I ever was attracted to arena, but I'll be the first to admit I'm not a "competitive" PvP gamer. So I can't pretend to understand the mindset here.

I'm just trying to grasp why you so adamantly believe that deathmatch, which is imo the least strategic of any possible game-mode, is the only mode of play that a competitive e-sport community would be willing to support. When it's quite clear that other game modes have been supported successfully before (namely in the LoL/DotA community, of course).

[Deleted]

Lucky do u believe WoW arenas are balanced and e-sport ?
After 8 years , Blizzard have balanced things out ?
Lets see what GW2 can offer , and judge later

Edit: No1 is forcing ppl to love Gw2 arenas , they can play other games too > no sub !

[Window]

I remember quite a few speed/ lag hackers running rampant on Uldum in vannila Wow before cross realm bgs
If it is possible it would want to be somthing Arenanet would want to police with a iron fist

[BrianV]

There will always be hacks and exploits in every mmo...Even if you think there is not, rest assured, someone is doing it.

[Herecius]

All movement is clientside? That is somewhat worrying... ok, no, that's more than a little bit worrying. Hopefully ANet is swift and skilled in their crackdown of inevitable hacks.

[Deleted]

All movement is clientside? That is somewhat worrying... ok, no, that's more than a little bit worrying. Hopefully ANet is swift and skilled in their crackdown of inevitable hacks.

I'd like to see them react with a lifetime ban, should they get caught. Seriously, companies are so afraid to react against hackers these days. I mean, look at BF3 on PC. I can't go a game without running into 2-3 hackers, at least. Although the EU servers seem to suffer from hackers way more than US servers.

[DrakeWurrum]

All movement is clientside? That is somewhat worrying... ok, no, that's more than a little bit worrying. Hopefully ANet is swift and skilled in their crackdown of inevitable hacks.

TBH, I haven't seen a source proving that movement is clientside.


The person claiming they saw a "speedhack" already in the game may have merely seen somebody with Swiftness on. I believe there was a bug somewhere that allowed people to stack up Swiftness in intensity instead of duration, but I never heard confirmation - could have been a beta bug and not a speedhack.

I heard that Swiftness will stack with passive movespeeds, even if passive movespeeds don't stack with each other, but I never heard if it was multiplicative or additive. If multiplicative this means that Swiftness plus Windborne Dagger would yield 53% increase movespeed. And then if you had Dagger/Dagger, you could use Burning Speed and Ride the Lightning to constantly zip ahead.

[Romeo83x]

For comparison, League of Legends is a good example. Built from groundup to be hackproof, straight up everything is serverside. You simply cannot have maphacks if your client doesn't have the data on enemy positions.

[Hockeyhacker]

Theres gonna be tons of hax and bots for GW2.
Bots will be close to impossible to detect (just look at WoW these days - those that get banned are only ones that got reported a lot of times and banhammer wave came - I know people who bot almost 24/7 and still survived those ban waves).
Hax will be removed over time and hopefully theyll be able to insta detect those by the game & client (important that BOTH do those checks - client can be cheated out easly) and insta ban accounts (just bit like PunkBuster stream bans - Player connects and insta banned).
Its an ongoing and endless war.

Eh your assuming a lot with your statement there, yes I agree people will figure out how to bot and what not, but your assuming that such actions are hard to detect, just because I quote you "(just look at WoW these days - those that get banned are only ones that got reported a lot of times and banhammer wave came - I know people who bot almost 24/7 and still survived those ban waves)." You have to look at it from a business perspective, are said bots getting complaints? If no then why ban $15/month if no one has been reporting them? Because it screws up the already over inflated economy? Yeah unless people are actively complaining about a bot screwing up their experience there is no reason for Blizzard to ban those $15/month, but generally from my experience the farming bots and speed hacks that do get reported get banned within 24-48 hours of complaint. And why would they ban a bot if someone complains? Simple answer being if person that complained sees bot is not dealt with in a timely fashion then not only does the person making the complaint leave but so does his/her friends, so its more profitable to ban someone reported for botting then to leave it active.

And yes I have watched the reaction time between both events, of finding a bot whos in a odd place where I see them doing whatever for weeks on end, but then when report said bot its generally been within 36 hours where in my "friends list" said toon shows as "Player no longer exists", same with offensive names generally within 18 hours of reporting a name like s**kmyfuryb**ls**k or n***ersmustdie their name changes to something more appropriate in my "friends list".

Its a business as long as WoW is sub based they will only be strict on reported bots when they risk losing multiple accounts over one, but will turn the other cheek if no one is bothered by it... Its not wither or not its hard to detect its wither or not banning said bot will make more or less money for them. Since GW2 is not sub based they can be a lot more strict on their botting policies since there is little to no downside of banning someone botting in a non sub game.

Blizzard handles their bots exactly as they should from a business standpoint, it doesn't make them bad for being more lenient, it just means they are a company to make money and act as such, just like if you work in a retail store and out on the side of the building there is someone drunk who often things from your store, if they are not bugging anybody you leave them be, but very second a customer or potential customer complains about said person you go out and ask them to leave store property, that's pretty standard business practice.

[DrakeWurrum]

I fully desperately hope that ANet is not lenient. Rule with an iron fist! >D

[Repefe]

Every ban means one new potential buyer for the game ...

[dennisdkramer]

I'd like to see them react with a lifetime ban, should they get caught. Seriously, companies are so afraid to react against hackers these days. I mean, look at BF3 on PC. I can't go a game without running into 2-3 hackers, at least. Although the EU servers seem to suffer from hackers way more than US servers.

^ This

Blizzard, for example, is not remotely proactive about botters. I'm fairly confident that the ONLY way they catch people is via other player reporting, and even then it takes days or weeks for the GMs to investigate those claims, and if there is no proof at the time of the investigation its like it never happened.

There are ways that you can tell if a bot is a bot. Movement is a big one of those, but it requires extensive knowledge of the way bots work. Realistically you must even know the class specific oddities of each class to find some of the clues. If blizzard wanted to eradicate its botting population, they could. They could hire me, give me a list of every character with click-to-move enabled, and I could go through them one by one and perma-ban them. It would take anywhere between 10 seconds and a minute or two per character to be 100% sure whether or not it was a bot. Because this does NOT happen, I am 100% convinced that blizzard either DOES NOT WANT to stop people from botting, or do not think it would be profitable. They are trying to sue the companies that produce these bots, but these lawsuits have the potential for them to profit BIG TIME. I believe the creator of wowglider had to pay blizzard 7 million or something like that. Banning botters does not get them a cent, and in fact often brings in more money from those players buying new accounts.

I have no idea what arenanet's stance on botting is, but in my (vast) experience with botting, I see it as EXTREMELY UNLIKELY that a bot will be made that does anything competitively except farming. WoW bots have astounding logic, but it is not even on the same level as what would be needed to succeed in GW2 combat.


Some people were saying that people bot because they're just evil, or trolls, or lazy, but that's not really the case. People bot because there are things in the game that they HAVE to do (bg grind for gear before entering arena for example) but do not have any interest in doing because those aspects of the game are no longer fun. People bot BGsbecause other bots (and terrible players) make BGs intolerable, people bot farming because other bots drove down the price of farming mats so that it would take 4x as long to make any decent amount of gold. Some people even bot to sell their gold IRL, though this has become less profitable lately. I'm guessing that none of you (even the ones who are telling others how sophisticated bots are) actually know quite how sophisticated bots can be:

There are a series of custom profiles that will log on/off your gathering characters, mail gathered mats to crafting characters, craft items or prospect/mill into crafting mats, send disenchantable items to your disenchanter, disenchant them, send all these various mats and items to a bank character who puts them on the AH and then continually undercuts and reposts, and/or restarts the cycle of farming, crafting, and posting. Part of this process is called 'the elementium shuffle' and it is commonly known among gold makers in WoW, but what people DON'T know is that a bot can do the ENTIRE process, more efficiently, faster, and all day every day. You can even bot RAIDS, ARENA, etc.. it takes work, its quite a process and its not going to be perfect, but there are people who have gotten 2200+ rating by telling their bot which target to attack and basically letting it do the rest.




EDIT: "react with a lifetime ban, should they get caught." I forgot to mention my comment in regards to this part of the quote - Blizz almost never gives out lifetime bans, and even when they are supposed to be permanent, they often actually arent. Botters QUITE often call blizzard and get their accounts back. In fact, I have a friend who got a perma ban, and a month later went to log in again and found his account mysteriously unlocked.

[Deleted]

Like I mentioned in another thread, the lack of subscription works in ANet's advantage. Games with a subscription like WoW and BF3 (I think, I don't know much about FPS games) lose a monthly source of guaranteed revenue every time they permanently ban anyone. ArenaNet will only lose potential revenue from the gem shop.

[Kouki]

Most game have the same thing, it's not about if they can do it, but more about if they can detect it and react quickly enough to ban.

This is true here what he says.
The game will like any even wow or swtor and league of legends have hackers, its not going to have hackers just because its cheap to play.
Your 15 bucks a month to wow or swtor does not prevent hackers.

At the very least a sub fee only stops a newb from trying hacking.

[Drakhar]

Population has no impact... "Just some guy farming creeps".

Off-topic but... from what game did the term "creep" (always been mobs to me) originate?