Defining an exploit vs. "clever use"; the Ensidia and Paragon debate

[finchna]

I think that a world first kill is a world first kill. I'm disappointed when Blizzard takes things away like that. Blizzard releases the content. If they release content that is not tested, tested and not fixed until XX date, etc. and a world first kill of that content happens it should be counted.

These groups discover things -- Ensidia said that it regularly used Saronite bombs in it's play. They acted on things that they noticed during their game play.

In our not so world first guilds we take advantage of certain mechanics and sometimes these mechanics are changed, but as long as these things get a boss down at that moment it should be counted.

I think it's great to see the creativity of play that finds these things. Too bad that Blizzard doesn't like it when that means that they're not doing the fight the way Blizzard planned (whether or not it removes a particular fight mechanic).

So, I'd count all firsts cause they're firsts -- Blizzard should then own up to poor testing, Q/A, not acting on what they're seeing as these guilds test out strategies, etc.

[Zephire]

Very nice post indeed.

Think you're right in what you're saying, and I agree with it. Only thing wich comes to mind is the Normal 25 LK World first by Ensidia. Should they really have been punished? Place yourself in a similar situation, something makes the "outher" ice respawn and you don't know why (I've no info on if thy did know what caused the respawn and if that is the case then you can just ignore this^^), this clearly nulifies the Valkyrs, would you still attack the valkyrs? Wouldn't attacking them be "stupid"? That kill is something I think of as Blizzards way of punishing someone else then them self. Yes, its a way of making an "example" so that others might not do the same, instead they should stop the raid and wait for blizzard to fix it.

Whould this be a "legit" worldfirst? I think so. Why? Because everyone on that encounter had the same possiblility to use this "bugg", hence it was fair.

I don't think killing Sinestra with the DK spell Dark Simulacrum because it is just SUCH a trivalizing bug that its dumb (obviously the respawn on LK is aswell, thought hey still have to do something.

This is really hard thing to decide, the only thing I'm sure of what I think about is that Ensidia shouldn't have been baned for a mistake made by Blizzard, Blizz could've just removed the achi and said, "Hey, we've fixed it now and your LK kill never happen, though we've reverted your kill so you can go kill it again in this same reset, though in the right way" and let them do it the propper way. (Remember, if they did know what caused the respawn then the ban is called for)

[Deleted]

However, i dont blame any guild pushing for the world first to try different things to see if it works. i can imagine ensidia finding that out by accident and seeing as they are one of the first (And few) guilds on it, they may assume its intended (perhaps others things / class abilities can do that which they didnt realise. perhaps you are meant to do that instead of killing the valkyr?).

I agree on this, and to an extent I'd hold Blizzard responsible for bugs and quirks, especially if the offenders weren't complicit in the abuse. Ensidia's case I can't say for sure, since I've not researched it so well as to even guess whether they were "mucking about" or just in the stern belief that the platforms were meant to spawn. I'd lean towards calling them guilty for it though, since they probably messed about in all four size/difficulty types of the fight, and it must have seemed a wee bit off not to just ask their nearest GM (which shouldn't have been far away anyway) whether it's meant to happen.

I don't think it's very well written.

I'm happy to accept constructive criticism (and this isn't sarcasm, by the way); was it factual, opinion-based or just plain writing that was off?

Ensidia used a mechanic, which they found, to defeat a boss. Paragon used a mechanic which they found, to defeat a boss. [...] Blizzard hot fixing the mechanic only shows even more that it was a bug, Paragon stacking shows they knew it existed, and were trying to exploit it.

Define "broken". This is the point of my thread, really - why was Stolen Power broken, whereas e.g. Al'Akir wasn't when Dream took him down? Because Blizzard hotfixed it? I'd call that tuning, really. Were 5-man Heroics "broken" because Blizzard will buff some abilities in 4.0.6? If they were, the pre-raid gearing-up for these prog guilds was clearly "broken" in your definition, or?

I'm trying to get at that "broken" in my opinion means e.g. Sinestra's Wrack coupled with Dark Sim (as opposed to Rip with Stolen Power doing what I assume is reasonable damage until I see logs proving differently), but I'd like to hear what you mean with the word - just "too easy" or "trivial"? Was the Trial of the Crusader back in 3.2. "broken" since it's considered too easy?

Btw, "normal raid comp" isn't a word I'd use when talking about prog guilds. Granted, they do have their standard players, but they do a bit of experimenting to see what comp works best for a given fight.

[souplix]

Chiming in here, and as all the others have said very well written, thank you for bringing the topic to us with valid arguments / examples.

First off I'd like to agree with most others here saying that the LK kill was obviously an exploit, as stated they could completely ignore the valks thus not having to divert dps, thus enabling an easier faster fight. Druid stacking was not, also as said before they found a class with an ability that let the fight go on as intended and yet gave them a substantial bonus.

To water it down and not sure if this works but for example anyway, a priest using leap of faith on the first boss of HoO (running up from the pit with snakes), could result in less healing, which in turn result in the healer omm'ing later in the fight, which could result in by the skin of our teeth victory.

None of the other healers can do this, does it make it an exploit? No, they are using class abilities that anyone else has as options. Those abilities happen to give a powerful advantage to the fight.

Now, should Blizzard revoke due to the advantages? I strongly disagree, should they fix it so that it can't happen again? I think I could swallow that a little easier, a little unfair that it "easier" before the fix, but such is life.

As a side not (sorry this went longer than I intended) I believe that Sarth 3D Zerg was another case of people thinking outside of the box, bringing melee in efforts to keep dps going while moving. Did Blizzard intend on that to be the way to do 3D? No, but those clever buggers played the system in their favor, and more power to them for approaching a problem from a different angle. Not enough people do that in today's world in my opinion.

[Sylla]

I can understand the whole exploiting/not exploiting debate, but I really don't get how people equate class stacking to exploiting - it inevitably gets brought up in every single debate about this kind of thing. If it is OK for a raid to have one of class x doing y, why does it suddenly become bad when you bring 10 of them. Can somebody explain this to me =(

[ElAmigo]

I don't think it's very well written. Ensidia used a mechanic, which they found, to defeat a boss. Paragon used a mechanic which they found, to defeat a boss. If they hadn't stacked feral druids, knowing full well it was a broken mechanic, and thus exploiting that to ensure max dps I wouldn't consider it exploiting. However, they found this mechanic, knew it was broken for feral druids, and thus stacked feral druids. I think it only shows even more that it was an exploit when they haven't replicated a kill the next raid lockout.

If Paragon had realized rip was bugged, used their normal raid comp, and benefitted from the ferals then good for them. However they went out of their way, to stack feral druids, because they knew it was a bugged mechanic with rip. Blizzard hot fixing the mechanic only shows even more that it was a bug, Paragon stacking shows they knew it existed, and were trying to exploit it.

---------- Post added 2011-01-30 at 10:20 AM ----------



Blizzard doesn't state the mechanics of a fight anywhere. Using your logic, how was Ensidia to know that the purpose of the valks was to kill them and not just to take someone out of the fight (such as a disc priest) for 12 seconds?

First of all ensidia claimed themselves that they had no idea what was causing the ledge to respawn but regardless that's not what got them banned. Ensidia ignored the ignored the valkyrs since they were no threat with the ledge back up and that is nullifying a mechanic to an encounter via a bug and not clever use of game mechanics (like a locks teleport spell for example, that's what got them banned. Also don't pull the card that ensidia could have thought that it was a mechanic of the fight cause they had downed him in 10 man previously to trying him on 25

Paragon didnt exploit anything, they just used the class that benefited the most from the MC buff. No it was not bugged for Druids they just realized that rip being the skill in the skill with the highest DPET in the game by a long shot was thE best candidate, it's no different than making sure locks were picked up by lich king so you didn't have to dps down the valkyrs or using licks in yogg 0 cause they had the most dps uptime on him. Paragons kill was fully justified and ensidias wasn't.

Case closed

[Mandible]

I don't think it's very well written. Ensidia used a mechanic, which they found, to defeat a boss. Paragon used a mechanic which they found, to defeat a boss. If they hadn't stacked feral druids, knowing full well it was a broken mechanic, and thus exploiting that to ensure max dps I wouldn't consider it exploiting. However, they found this mechanic, knew it was broken for feral druids, and thus stacked feral druids. I think it only shows even more that it was an exploit when they haven't replicated a kill the next raid lockout.

If Paragon had realized rip was bugged, used their normal raid comp, and benefitted from the ferals then good for them. However they went out of their way, to stack feral druids, because they knew it was a bugged mechanic with rip. Blizzard hot fixing the mechanic only shows even more that it was a bug, Paragon stacking shows they knew it existed, and were trying to exploit it.

---------- Post added 2011-01-30 at 10:20 AM ----------



Blizzard doesn't state the mechanics of a fight anywhere. Using your logic, how was Ensidia to know that the purpose of the valks was to kill them and not just to take someone out of the fight (such as a disc priest) for 12 seconds?

The difference is that your not meant to be able to rebuild something that is removed in a fight unless you can actively click something, and when the valkyrs toss you to a place that is safe its damn obvious its a bug. In basis what blizzard says is intentional for a fight isn´t a bug - so if the boss gives / got a debuff or bug that adds loads of damage from some specific attack its not a bug.

[Deleted]

Looks like a interesting post, ALOT of text Will read it later when i get home

[brirrspliff]

Yeah.. unfortunately OP is going to get a lot of "Hurr tl;dr QQ moar" posts. I myself didn't read the post (yet, at least), but I'll refrain from commenting until then. Future posters should do the same.

the internetz is getting more hilarious every day! why did you post, again? yes, because you like when people hear what you say, no matter how unimportant and meaningless that would be. do you use facebook? you did even respond to a topic that you did'nt even read. oh my. but what you say has to be important! :-)

on topic:
someone said it already: common sense. if you stack 15 druids and let them use a single skill which is overpowered in a certain fight due to a certain mechanic, chances are that this was not intended by developers, and hence you are exploiting.

[refire]

First of all ensidia claimed themselves that they had no idea what was causing the ledge to respawn but regardless that's not what got them banned. Ensidia ignored the ignored the valkyrs since they were no threat with the ledge back up and that is nullifying a mechanic to an encounter via a bug and not clever use of game mechanics (like a locks teleport spell for example, that's what got them banned. Also don't pull the card that ensidia could have thought that it was a mechanic of the fight cause they had downed him in 10 man previously to trying him on 25

Paragon didnt exploit anything, they just used the class that benefited the most from the MC buff. No it was not bugged for Druids they just realized that rip being the skill in the skill with the highest DPET in the game by a long shot was thE best candidate, it's no different than making sure locks were picked up by lich king so you didn't have to dps down the valkyrs or using licks in yogg 0 cause they had the most dps uptime on him. Paragons kill was fully justified and ensidias wasn't.

Case closed

It's not case closed at all. Your logic is forcing the assumption that they saw valks and thought we have to kill them. Yet they do nothing other than drop the person if the valk doesn't die. Why is it fair to assume that since Ensidia recognized the valks play no harm other than dropping the target, and that the place in which they dropped them was magically appearing that they were exploiting by not killing this seemingly harmless add?

Granted I think both guilds should have been banned. They both used a mechanic to go above and beyond what Blizzard had planned for the fight. I fully think that Ensidia knew what was causing it and made sure to make use of it. However, Blizzard says nothing about their fights, ever. Why is it that as a raider you're subject to being banned because you didn't assume or imply the correct way the fight was suppose to be played out?

From what I've read concerning the MC buff it was affecting no dots/bleeds from any spell other than the first tick, except for rip and doom. How is that not an exploit? It wouldn't work on a rend, rupture, or a corruption. The one bleed it worked on was rip, they determined this, and exploited that effect with their raid composition.

[Kenjji]

Good post and I agree with everything you said, sadly others will be too blind to read it and just continue hating

[refire]

The difference is that your not meant to be able to rebuild something that is removed in a fight unless you can actively click something, and when the valkyrs toss you to a place that is safe its damn obvious its a bug. In basis what blizzard says is intentional for a fight isn´t a bug - so if the boss gives / got a debuff or bug that adds loads of damage from some specific attack its not a bug.

When did Blizzard ever say something is intentional for a fight? Blizzard doesn't say anything about their fights. The people doing them must assume everything. Blizzard goes so far as to say in a blue post that people should do a google search in order to learn how to do fights. There is no google search when you're the first person doing it. So again I'll ask, why are they subject to being banned for not making the correct assumption/implication of how the fight mechanics were suppose to work?

How would you know you're not meant to be able to rebuild something that is removed? It's later rebuilt in the phase transition, why is it beyond possibility to think that they thought you could provoke the rebuilding faster?

[Tyberes]

the TL;DR for the OP is basiclly this:

paragon took advantage of a mechanic, ensidia (and exodus before them) found a way around the mechanic and completely negated it.
then he says thats not an exploit

which i agree completely with.

[Sylla]

From what I've read concerning the MC buff it was affecting no dots/bleeds from any spell other than the first tick, except for rip and doom. How is that not an exploit? It wouldn't work on a rend, rupture, or a corruption. The one bleed it worked on was rip, they determined this, and exploited that effect with their raid composition.

Nah this isn't true, those abilities just have the highest damage per cast, which puts them way above and beyond the damage any other ability would do.

[refire]

Nah this isn't true, those abilities just have the highest damage per cast, which puts them way above and beyond the damage any other ability would do.

From almost every source I've seen it was only suppose to affect direct damage spells, ex. Envenom, Shadow bolt, Ferocious bite, etc.

[Azrile]

The LK kill was an exploit because they purposefully cause the computer program to ´bug out´and exploited that bug. The feral thing was not a bug because they simply determined the best way to do damage based on the fight.. they never caused the program to stop working properly.

I´m not a fanboy of anyone and think progression guilds are a joke.... but the difference is that with an exploit, you purposefully take advantage of a bug in the program. There was no bug that caused ferals to do more damage.. it was just something that wasn´t anticipated by the devs.

[ElAmigo]

It's not case closed at all. Your logic is forcing the assumption that they saw valks and thought we have to kill them. Yet they do nothing other than drop the person if the valk doesn't die. Why is it fair to assume that since Ensidia recognized the valks play no harm other than dropping the target, and that the place in which they dropped them was magically appearing that they were exploiting by not killing this seemingly harmless add?

Granted I think both guilds should have been banned. They both used a mechanic to go above and beyond what Blizzard had planned for the fight. I fully think that Ensidia knew what was causing it and made sure to make use of it. However, Blizzard says nothing about their fights, ever. Why is it that as a raider you're subject to being banned because you didn't assume or imply the correct way the fight was suppose to be played out?

From what I've read concerning the MC buff it was affecting no dots/bleeds from any spell other than rip and doom. How is that not an exploit? It wouldn't work on a rend, rupture, or a corruption. The one bleed it worked on was rip, they determined this, and exploited that effect with their raid composition.

Because the attempted it in 10 man where they there was no one using saronite bombs so the did t accidentally respawn the ledge and guess what? They had to kill the valks. The logs of the rogue showed that they ignores the valks in the 25 man kill and them ignoring it due to a bug is exploiting, it's as simple as that.

Oh and Zyn paragon claimed himself it was affecting his diseases, bane of doom, combustion, etc. They capitalized on the most effective dot, that's not exploiting that's using common sense.

[Ares42]

Hmm, if you ask me the definition is pretty damn easy. Using an ability that produces some sort of effect that in no way is described or has no relation to what the ability is described as is clearly exploiting a bug. Using an ability that has an unintended result, but still does what it's supposed to do is abusing a broken mechanic.

What really separates the two is the fact that almost every boss in the game (hell, even most normal instances) will have certain broken mechanics to them when released, they just vary in severity. Banning people for abusing these mechanics would be an extremely big hurdle, and actually quite counter-productive for Blizzard. It would also mean that their content would require way way more testing before it was released, and they would probably also need to start releasing lists of bannable abuses (which ofc would lead to a good portion of players trying to play the system). Straight up bugs however are much rarer, and they are also usually way harder to stumble into (as they require "creative" experimenting). Exploiting a bug will in 99,9% cases mean you are intentionally trying to "break" the game, while abusing broken mechanics could just as easily be someone not knowing what they're doing.

Now you could say they should just ban the people trying to abuse mechanics for world first raid kills etc, but they could probably not get away with running an inconsistent policy like that without running the risk of getting sued.

[Purely]

response to some of the comments:

How is class-stacking for max dps an exploit ? eg. if aff locks did 200k single-target-dps, while everyone else did 15-25k, obviously every guild would only use locks on any given fight.

[Sylla]

From almost every source I've seen it was only suppose to affect direct damage spells, ex. Envenom, Shadow bolt, Ferocious bite, etc.

Oh and Zyn paragon claimed himself it was affecting his diseases, bane of doom, combustion, etc. They capitalized on the most effective dot, that's not exploiting that's using common sense.

I don't think anybody except the couple of guilds who are onto H Nef (and blizz i guess) know how it is MEANT to work. You may be right and it was only meant to affect direct damage, or maybe it is meant to affect dots.

Regardless, the point of the OP is that it isn't exploiting either way.