Talk:Exploit

This page

I would love to see this page in a more prominent position on the wiki. I feel like it's good information for the users to have regarding what constitutes an exploit versus just a game benefit they have discovered. Also, it alerts them to what they should be on the lookout for. I'd go as far as to say somewhere on the Main Page, but perhaps that's a pipe dream. —Jyavoc 19:39, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Siege Blueprints

It shouldn't really be marked down as abuse, post 21 in the following forum thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Is-dropping-blueprints-considered-abuse/first implies that Arenanet has no problems with it.

With regard to the previous claim of people being banned for it, and the current claim of people selling the blueprints for "coin", is there any proof of either actually happening? In the case of the latter, it would be extremely unlikely, its very easy to get the blueprints and they don't exactly cost much from the vendor either.

Unless confirmed by Arenanet themselves, it would be sensible really to remove the section as it is untrue until proven.Ironhide 18:46, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

The exploit is selling the blueprints, not drop-trading them. I know someone who sold blueprints and eventually got banned for it after spamming map chat for an hour.--Relyk 21:23, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I would like a little more evidence that selling blueprints is an exploit. I'm sure selling outside of the TP is permitted, though players can be scammed for these transactions. Anet did intend blueprints to be tradeable. See here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Willing-to-share-WvW-details/first#post1190149 . Are you absolutely sure your friend was banned for selling blueprints, or was he banned because he was being spammy when attempting to sell them? --Draygo Korvan 01:50, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Not an exploit. ANet had an opportunity to label selling of blueprints as an exploit; they did not do so. As all we have is an anecdote, I believe we should remove blueprints from the article. People tend to misunderstand the reason they are suspended or banned, so I wouldn't take one person's word for it. Further, as has been noted by ANet in the official forums and on Reddit, those who are banned tend to restate those incorrect reasons in public.

tl;dr Until ANet confirms that this is against their policy, we shouldn't suggest to players there is anything wrong with selling blueprints. Of course, I can't see any reason why someone would want to buy them, since they are relatively easy to get for free. 75.37.20.209 02:30, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I would also say because the following thread wasnt closed that it adds to the evidence that the actual selling of blueprints is permitted, but unregulated. I'm also of the belief that the bannable act is spamming a sale in map chat, not the actual transaction. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Selling-siege-Is-it-helping-or-hurting/first considering you are not allowed to post exploits on the forums the fact that there is no reply or moderator action seems to support the camp that this is not an exploit. Draygo Korvan 19:06, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Added Exploit

I added an 'exploit' into the Chest Talk section; not sure weither it actually counts as an exploit (as it is not a game breaking feature); if it is deemed to be a game breaking feature please feel free to add it 165.154.50.79 14:57, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Removed Conclusion from Karma Exploit Section

"Nothing they gained could be traded in any way, as both the Trading Post and the in-game mail systems were offline at the time."

citation: Wiki Game Status Page Wiki's copy of the game status page, from 29 August

I removed the quote above for two reasons: (a) it doesn't contribute to general understanding of the exploit involved and (b) it's misleading in that it states categorically that the wealth gains could not be traded.

• The in-game mail was only offline for part of the period involved.
• The trading post was available to some people during that time.
• The items forged and the ectos were, of course, tradeable later.
• It was also theoretically possible to buy enough influence to create a guild bank and exchange through that.

Thus, without the bans, those items/ecto would have been part of the in-game economy. Those who escaped notice or were merely suspended were able to keep that wealth. I know of a few people who were accurately identified by ANet as low-scale abusers of the exploit and each considers themselves to have been financially better off as a result. Some shared their gains with others as they were able.

So, while it's technically true that there was a period that the gains couldn't be traded, it's largely irrelevant to the issue of whether the exploit had the potential to disrupt the economy or give these players a financial advantage. The downtime of those systems reduced the impact of the exploit; it didn't eliminate it. Accordingly, I believe it's misleading to leave the comment in. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 10:08, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, sorry, I put that in there because the previous version of the page said that people could sell the items they forged on the Trading Post, which I thought was misleading in the other direction. I know that the exact timeline isn't preserved in the game status page but it was the best reference to the state of things that I could find. At the time that the exploit became publicized, mail and the trading post were unavailable to everybody. I admit I did not think of the guild bank trading idea and I agree that had no action been taken these items would have been able to affect the economy later. With the edit I simply meant to emphasize that the actual impact to the game economy was very small. Wasn't trying to be misleading and I'm fine with the current edit not mentioning the trading post at all.83.81.198.240 16:53, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

Hey, 83.81 (you don't mind if I call you that for short?) I didn't mean to imply that the change was intentionally misleading. You're absolutely correct that the original text (and even the current one) could be misleading the opposite way. And your post above has me reconsidering what the article should say, especially since there was (and likely is still) a strong and "probably" mistaken that a few people obtained a ton of wealth and used it to manipulate prices.

• As your text stated, the actual impact on the economy was severely reduced because, for nearly all the time the exploit was possible, the TP was down (for technical reasons) and email trading was disabled.
• Regardless of the final impact, the exploit had the potential to severely impact the economy. That was why ANet took the additional step of disabling email until they decided how to handle it.
• However, I think there's reason to believe that the net economic impact was "significant" rather than "very small" — we have to use generic terms since we (the community) aren't able to measure that impact and ANet won't say (for good reasons):
  • Trading was possible for some people for some of the time.
  • Lack of trading tools only affects the supply side of the economy; the exploit still affected demand, since anyone using the exploit could use the ecto (and T5-6 plain mats) to craft or simply use the mystically forged weapons for themselves.
  • ANet reversed the ban for most anyone who was willing to apologize and promised to delete their gains. Unfortunately, we don't know how ANet handled it if a player only deleted leftover rares and exotics, but not ecto or crafted items they made with the mats (or if said players only deleted some of these items). In at least a few cases, we know that players obtained precursors. In a lot of cases, we know players unlocked crafting recipes and gear for their own use.
  • Anecdotally, the exploit added to our understanding of Mystic Forge mechanics: one player I know used it as a tool to reduce the cost of their research. Those details allowed unscrupulous traders a competitive advantage on the TP, which would have affected the economy. Again, we lack the tools to measure the net impact on the game.

Put another way, players were severely limited in their ability to convert karma into coin, but they were not limited in how much non-coin wealth they could accumulate. And we don't know how ANet followed up on the player promises to delete items: did they count mats? We do know that some players gained indirect benefits that ANet couldn't have reversed.

So, that leaves us with the task of assessing the actual economic impact without any good metrics. Thus, our choices are (1) to include a completely-accurate analysis of our best guesses on the impact that exploit had on the overall game or (2) to leave those gory details on the talk page. In my opinion, the first choice would confuse the primary purpose of the article section (to document the exploit), while the second merely allows people to think that the impact might have been "somewhat" bigger than we "guess" it actually was. My instinct is that the second choice makes for a stronger article. – Tennessee Ernie Ford (TEF) 12:58, 2 August 2014 (UTC)