Exploiting Shouldn't Be A Debate (a request for clarity)

[Azurymber]

TLDR; If people are unsure of something being an exploit, it should be made clear. Rather than let some people "win" at the cost of others, or ban a mass amount of people.

Back when I played ffxi, there were two major exploits that really screwed up the game.
The first was "Rusty Cap Fishing" in Rabao. Essentially people botted rusty caps for months, sold them to an npc, and flooded the economy with gil. After this the in-game economy tanked.
Many years later, people figured out how to duplicate items dropped by a boss. People did this for months and at the end 100s were banned (and many people lost friends)

When ffxiv started, people exploited a cnj healing bug which gave them massive amounts of exp. Within days they were rolled back.

However, since 2.0 launched, we have had issues like speed running dungeons and locking out trains of mobs, jump-hacking (when you took no damage while jumping), glitching bosses to do no damage, win trading in pvp, and probably more.

Many of these have been significantly debated on the forums, with no clear answers (some like locking out mobs did get an answer).

When people are winning any form of content by clearly glitching the system, there is a serious problem.
When people are doing it publicly in duty finder, you get a culture where cheating/exploiting is an accepted part of the game.
The only people benefiting from this is those who are exploiting.

PvP Win-trading is the best example of this at the moment.
This consists of people creating 2 groups, removing all their gear, and entering at the same time so that they can take turns insta-killing each other.
This happens in many other games, and people are generally banned or rolled back (SWTOR for example)

There has been a thread on win-trading in the PVP forum for 4 months now with no answer. There is currently a 26 page long thread in the general forum on the topic, going on for 10 days, with no answers. Other threads on the subject have been deleted. If you send in a support message asking about the question, they will direct you to the forums.

Now you might say "who cares"
Well, some people are using win-trading to get to rank 40 in a few days
Others are spending weeks waiting on 30min+ queues and fighting challenging battles (or getting their butts kicked) in order to accomplish the same thing.
How is this game fair if some people can accomplish a goal (by what most people would consider an exploit) 40 times quicker than others?

I'm not saying SE should ban or punish people.

What i'm asking is that if there is a potential exploit, and people -regularly- debate it on the forums (e.g. 20+ page discussion) a dev/gm/mod should Clarify The Issue


If they say "sure go ahead and do it" then everyone can play the game equally without a fear of a ban.

If they say "no it's an exploit" then people can be comfortable reporting it (without feeling like they are wasting someone's time). And knowing it's a bannable or punishable offense might stop some people from abusing it.

I'm not saying anyone should be banned/punished or treated special. I'm just saying, the game should be equally fair for everyone.

I hope that's not too much to ask.

[sairaus]

making another thread about it doesnt help, all the threads just need to be merged together

[Azurymber]

making another thread about it doesnt help, all the threads just need to be merged together

This isn't just about win trading but a general pattern with exploits over the last year.
People still debate if speed runs are legit, and if pulling out of duty finder 20 times till you get one progressed to the boss is allowed (I'm sure we all remember the 100s of withdraws from CT)

Lots of people take shortcuts and hope it's allowed
Others think it violates the ToS and don't
All I'm saying is it would really help if people knew if a "shortcut" is an exploit. Make it even for everyone.

[Noahlimits]

TLDR; If people are unsure of something being an exploit, it should be made clear. Rather than let some people "win" at the cost of others, or ban a mass amount of people.

Just fyi, mods here already stated locking enemies out of the boss area is an accepted strategy. This was around 3-4 months ago on the forums if you want to do a search. They said something along the lines of "we feel it takes the spirit out of the game, but it is an allowed tactic".

[NinjaDante]

You guys need to get over it. Speed running is not an exploit, it's a play style. Pvp win trading isn't an exploit, it's two groups deciding how they want to play, this once again is play style. No bugs are involved, just organized players playing how they want to. If you don't like it, well then tough. There's a lot of things in life you won't like and if you want to be a sane human being you just gotta move on and ignore them. People who say they want other players banned for their play style, when that play-style doesn't affect them in the least sound like spiteful people saying "I don't like them so I want them to be unhappy like me". If you don't want to do speedruns or pvp trade, that is YOUR choice. You need to get off your moral high horses and stop trying to push your view on to others as rules.

[Azurymber]

You guys need to get over it. Speed running is not an exploit, it's a play style. Pvp win trading isn't an exploit, it's two groups deciding how they want to play, this once again is play style. No bugs are involved, just organized players playing how they want to. If you don't like it, well then tough. There's a lot of things in life you won't like and if you want to be a sane human being you just gotta move on and ignore them. People who say they want other players banned for their play style, when that play-style doesn't affect them in the least sound like spiteful people saying "I don't like them so I want them to be unhappy like me". If you don't want to do speedruns or pvp trade, that is YOUR choice. You need to get off your moral high horses and stop trying to push your view on to others as rules.

The point of this thread isn't saying people should be banned. I don't really want anyone banned.
It's saying if it is considered a "playstyle" a dev should let us know. That's it. That way everyone can choose to play that way or not. Rather than fearing a ban.
No arguments against doing it (personally i see nothing wrong with speedruns as you are still playing and killing stuff)

While you might think win-trading isn't an exploit, it's clear a lot of players think it is. I personally lean to it being an exploit, but that doesn't mean i'm right.
A simple sentence like "yes it is ok" fixes everything.

[Devils_Lawyer]

snip

I have to disagree on the wintrading.

Wintrade isnt used to play with another group, its standing still and take a beating then switch to be the one doing the beating.

And it DOES effect others, people are forced into fights against players/groups with maxed out pvp rank/gear which decreases the chance of winning quite a bit.

If wintraders didnt get an upperhand when im fighting them in pvp then i wouldnt care, unfortuenly they do.

[sairaus]

Azury imo they should never post about it. Its a no win situation for them. they say its fine, the QQs go into maximum post and upset/qq/I quit which brings down forum morale and if people quit they lost revenue. if they say things are an exploit they have to act on it, and they have to sit down and find where to draw the line and which % of their population they have to ban/perma ban. this again can cost them a lot of revenue. and either way its a HR nightmare. rather than remain silent, focus on E3 focus on producer letters and working on fixing the root of the problem. ex slowing speed running by requiring a certain type of mob killed or keys to drop and open doors. I think all things they deem important will be fixed in time.

[Azurymber]

Azury imo they should never post about it. Its a no win situation for them. they say its fine, the QQs go into maximum post and upset/qq/I quit which brings down forum morale and if people quit they lost revenue. if they say things are an exploit they have to act on it, and they have to sit down and find where to draw the line and which % of their population they have to ban/perma ban. this again can cost them a lot of revenue. and either way its a HR nightmare. rather than remain silent, focus on E3 focus on producer letters and working on fixing the root of the problem. ex slowing speed running by requiring a certain type of mob killed or keys to drop and open doors. I think all things they deem important will be fixed in time.

And that's my issue. It sends the message that "if this game has an exploit, exploit it as fast as possible until it's fixed"

Kind of ruins the game for people who play fair.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people just want to have an equal chance at ranking up or leveling up or completing content.

[sairaus]

and they have an equal way of doing it. for pvp, they find 7 other people and fight srsly non stop for 16 hrs straight everyday until they are done. This is because win trading isnt the problem, preset instaquing groups are.