Orichalcum Farming - Exploit Or Not?

[Elim Garak]

A bug can even mean an unintentional oversight that gives an advantage.

Oversight (as in design, not QA) - is not a "bug". It's oversight, hence the specific word.
Oversight is - tweaking a class in such a way that some of its abilities become OP (unintended) in some situations that were not considered at the moment of tweaking - i.e. overlooked. Now if design oversight is a bug - then playing that class would be exploiting. And all players of that class should be banned.

[Deleted]

Well, telling people how to do it probably won't help.

Rofl.

/10char

[Gisei]

Though it's most probably not intended. It's hardly "use of a bug or glitches, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc".
transfer - is legit feature - nothing is exploited here
mining - is legit feature - and mining is done in a legit way without any exploiting.

So not an exploit.

The 21 karma weapons - was an exploit - because the price was wrong - i.e. a bug.

To finish the sentence from your wikipedia definition. "The use of a bug or glitches, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers".

[Lucas Ashrock]

K, we are playing the semantyc game. This is not an exploit like an abuse of bad programming , like karma vendors. Server transfer is a feature, a paid service.
Now is free, for a few days more. Soon it will be closed, so this trick will not worth anymore. It's no more or less than overflow farm. All of us abused of it, noone of us was banned. It was a performance feature, but ye, irregular, so fixed , now. Anet is monitoring how the server transfer is used, so don't worry, not just someone surely reported it, but aswell if Anet (either if it's a free transfer soon removed) will consider it a possible abuse, it will be fixed like overflow. I should say "it's safe". But well, considering the recent attitude of Anet with their fancy banhammer, i wouldn't play my dice, risking a ban/permaban, for a few mats

[Deleted]

They fixed the issue where people could do this using overflow servers but as far as I'm aware, didn't take any action against people. Personally I'd consider it an exploit since it is not the way the game was intended to be played, but I would be surprised if people got banned for doing it, unless it's for telling other people to do it / advertising it I suppose. Personally I still wouldn't do it - no amount of gold is worth even a small risk of being banned to me and quite frankly, I'd rather have no money than know I made it by abusing something unintentional but that's just me.

I can't help but wonder if this ability will be available in guesting as well and why they didn't think to address it when they addressed spawns on overflow servers.

Nooooooo! I loved when you'd get called into the regular world after just mining a node, it was like finding a coin on the ground.

[Deleted]

Oversight (as in design, not QA) - is not a "bug". It's oversight, hence the specific word.
Oversight is - tweaking a class in such a way that some of its abilities become OP (unintended) in some situations that were not considered at the moment of tweaking - i.e. overlooked. Now if design oversight is a bug - then playing that class would be exploiting. And all players of that class should be banned.

What are you talking about :P. An oversight by definition is unintentionally failing to do something (In this case, its the unintentional failure of adding something into the game).
If you unintentionally forget to close a header then you cause a bug. Using your example before, if you unintentionally forget to raise the cost of an item from 21 karma then you get an incorrect value on an item - aka a bug, which people abused which made it an exploit. The same thing happened with this realm change business.

A bug can be the result of an oversight.

[Elim Garak]

To finish the sentence from your wikipedia definition. "The use of a bug or glitches, rates, hit boxes, or speed, etc. by a player to their advantage in a manner not intended by the game's designers".

1. it's not my definition, neither I was the one who brought it up
2. Do not take parts of it out of context of it. Etc doesn't mean EVERYTHING ELSE. It means - other similar things - i.e. bugs or glitches.
3. Not sure why you bolded the last part. It's pretty sure not intended by game's designer for players to run faster than intended due to a bug in the code.

What are you talking about :P. An oversight by definition is unintentionally failing to do something (In this case, its the unintentional failure of adding something into the game).

Funny how you left out the "notice" part.

If you unintentionally forget to close a header then you cause a bug. Using your example before, if you unintentionally forget to raise the cost of an item from 21 karma then you get an incorrect value on an item - aka a bug, which people abused which made it an exploit. The same thing happened with this realm change business.

We are not talking about bugs - something that QA can overlook. We are talking about design oversight. Something not noticed at design stage and is not a bug. I even gave an example of oversight in design.

A bug can be the result of an oversight.

Of course, oversight by programmer. And eventually by QA that didn't notice it.
Or by designer who put the wrong numbers into the DB (21 karma weapons) and didn't notice it.
We are not talking about that!
We are talking about design oversight - something that was DESIGNED that way INTENTIONALLY, but has an unintentional additional EFFECT.

[Keosen]

Well i suppose that noone will get banned for this so either you do it yourself or staying out and fall behind that's how things works in MMOS sadly.
Only the big and obvious exploitation is punished.

[Vexies]

But they didnt penalize anyone for doing it.

I love this rational...

So they didnt actually penalize anyone for an obvious unintentional use of "cleaver mechanics (BS exploiting)" so its ok to do eh?

I dont know why im surprised anymore at the morals / choices people make but at times I still find myself so. What is the fun in exploiting something to the breaking point. Once you have all the money you can spend all the items and so on.. the game is cheapened so what is the freaking point?

[terrahero]

By that logic, no one should have been banned for the karma weapons. I mean, it only gave gold anyways!


See previous answer.


See previous answer.

You really dont see the difference between these two? okay, ill explain.

The karmavendor incident generates gold fro vendors. As a result NEW currency is entered into the economy. As a result, rampant inflation that hurts everyone except the ultra-rich.

Ori being farmed and sold for gold is sold to other players. No new currency enters the economy, it merely changes hands. And as a result Ori would only end up getting cheaper aswell. Making it more available to everyone.

Both completely different, with completely different impacts on the economy. One ruins it, the other makes a rare product more common. And isnt the TP hailed by the thousands that dont know jack about economics as "yay, now people cant charge insane amounts for stuff anymore!". Same thing would happen with Ori, stop bitching and be happy you can now more easily craft your lv80 Exotics.

[Farabee]

Eh, not much different than the CRZ feature Blizzard has now. I doubt it's considered an exploit, just smart use of time.

[Cthulhu 2020]

No it wasn't. What you mean to say is 'Clever use of game mechanics' is the excuse exploiters use to excuse themselves of the wrong they have done. If they exploit and think it was smart they call it 'Clever use of game mechanics'.

Clever use of game mechanics has always referred to using game mechanics in interesting ways to get advantageous results (In any scenario).
An exploit on the other hand refers to people abusing mechanics, which were never intentional, to get massive advantages which ends up trivialize whatever subject or part of the game you are exploiting.

As far as I remember, clever use of game mechanics was coined by Blizzard, and it was basically used for any exploit that they didn't deem worthy of banning people over, so the exploiters adopted it as a "wut, I didn't do nuffin wrong! dun bans me!" response for defending themselves when they clearly know what they did was questionable at best.

[Azerox]

I love this rational...

So they didnt actually penalize anyone for an obvious unintentional use of "cleaver mechanics (BS exploiting)" so its ok to do eh?

I dont know why im surprised anymore at the morals / choices people make but at times I still find myself so. What is the fun in exploiting something to the breaking point. Once you have all the money you can spend all the items and so on.. the game is cheapened so what is the freaking point?

Sell of real life money?

Some people dont play this game to have fun, just to grind max dollars out of it.

I hope Anet is going to do anything about it, this is not good for the game and players like you or me.

[Delias]

You really dont see the difference between these two? okay, ill explain.

The karmavendor incident generates gold fro vendors. As a result NEW currency is entered into the economy. As a result, rampant inflation that hurts everyone except the ultra-rich.

Ori being farmed and sold for gold is sold to other players. No new currency enters the economy, it merely changes hands. And as a result Ori would only end up getting cheaper aswell. Making it more available to everyone.

Both completely different, with completely different impacts on the economy. One ruins it, the other makes a rare product more common. And isnt the TP hailed by the thousands that dont know jack about economics as "yay, now people cant charge insane amounts for stuff anymore!". Same thing would happen with Ori, stop bitching and be happy you can now more easily craft your lv80 Exotics.

You must be thinking of a different "21 karma vendor exploit" /endsarcasm.
The issue with the karma vendor exploit is that it enabled you to throw the level 60 weapons into the mystic forge to get high end level 80 gear for a very very small fraction of the price that were sellable on the trading post. Ruining the economy by putting more of something rare onto the trading post than is intended is still ruining the economy, fun fact.

[Deleted]

Arenanet is all bark no bite

The whole thing about the perma bans for karma weapons exploiting was a publicity stint. They want you to think exploiting will be punished harshly but it really won't at all - just like every other MMO - they are all the same, exactly the same. In order for them to ban you, the guying throwing money at them, you would have to do something truly nasty.

And this isnt nasty at all. This is a typical "slap on wrist" exploit. Worst case scenario you get a warning or maybe even a temp ban. Well worth the risk if the much more likely scenario is NO CONSEQUENCE at all. Well except for one - you're filthy rich.

If you encounter an exploit in a game like this the only question you have to ask yourself is - how much time can I free up today to abuse the shit out of this exploit before they fix it.


EDIT: Why are there always so many trolls discussing semantics when it comes to the word exploit? This is a textbook example of an exploit. Exploits dont have anything to do with bugs or glitches. If it's an unintended game mechanic, wether because of bugs or just bad design and "cleverly using game mechanics (that are working in unintended ways), it's an exploit.
If you ask yourself: What I am doing right now, did the developers intend this to happen or not, and the answer is NO, you are actively using an exploit, period.

And that's it, no room whatsoever for discussion. Obviously there are various degrees of how severe the exploit is. Glitching out a random npc isnt on the same level as glitching out and soloing a world boss. But as far as definition goes an exploit is an exploit is an exploit. You can personally disagree with the definition but the real world will still be there when you open your eyes again.

[terrahero]

You must be thinking of a different "21 karma vendor exploit" /endsarcasm.
The issue with the karma vendor exploit is that it enabled you to throw the level 60 weapons into the mystic forge to get high end level 80 gear for a very very small fraction of the price that were sellable on the trading post. Ruining the economy by putting more of something rare onto the trading post than is intended is still ruining the economy, fun fact.

First off, there WAS another karmavendor incident where you bought ingredients for cheap karma and could vendor it, before or after crafting something basic with it, for a gold a pop. So dont get sarcistic with me.

Secondly. Comparing the dumping of virtually no karma to cheese your way to lv80 Exotics for no effort at all is the same as going around Orr for a base component (one of many)? Going to a different server, and then going around Orr again. Have you even been to Orr? Its no picnic. And spawns are documented but vary per server. You still have to go around and get it.

So to summerize:
-Its a game mechanic as intented by the devs. One they have been fully aware of since the beta and have taken no effort to change or otherwise limit. And people found a way to use this to help with the grinding that the endgame is ripe of. As opposed to karma items which had a specific set at a much cheaper price by comparison to everything.
Being litterally cheaper then a bag of cheese.
-Unlike with a karma vendor the Ori still requieres the player to go out and look for it, which may be in one of several locations across the two highest level maps. As opposed to standing near a vendor and just buying and walking up to a forge, all within the comfort of city walls.
-Unlike the Karma gear, which offered completed products. Orichalcum is just one of a bunch of base components. The gear is sold as a final product, the ori is used as an ingredient to create a final product. Someone cannot buy the Exotic and reuse it in the economy, the Ori can be used as crafters to create more. Base cost to craft is lower, base price of item is lower. Margins remain the same.

New player waves with little money can now more accordingly afford gear, and by the time that players get richer the server transfers will cost money and this wont even happen anymore.
You are still comparing two different things that cannot be compared. If this was compareable to the karmavendor debacle, or the karma ingredients infinite money loop thing, don't you think we'd see thousands of bans by now?

Infact, do you remember anyone getting banned for using the overflow to bypass the cooldown on farms? Nope.

[Delias]

Infact, do you remember anyone getting banned for using the overflow to bypass the cooldown on farms? Nope.

Not replying to your whole post as it is all stuff that has already been posted and I do not agree with, but the point of this part right here is that they FIXED the overflow, which means it was quite obviously unintended. It did basically the exact same thing that this does. Just because it is unlikely that people will get punished and it has not yet been fixed does not mean it is not an exploit. You seem to be under the impression that the breaking of game mechanics (albeit in a minor way) is a good thing because it helps those with little money and isn't a big deal because it's only a temporary bug, the first of which is hilarious. The second is whatever. I never said it was a major gamebreaking bug of oh dear god GW2 is going to flop because of it and everyone is going to get banned, I said it was an exploit and is obviously not an intended feature. Doesn't mean you'll get banned for it, doesn't mean it's completely gamebreaking. Still messes with the economy, is an exploit, and is not an intended feature.

[Deleted]

I wouldnt count that as exploiting just clever use of mechanics and the free transfers won't be forever.

It's cool Anet will ban for clever use of mechanics