What is cheating?

SmokingHotImolation

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Mar 2008

Odense, Denmark

E/

[deadly paradox][glyph of swiftness][shadow form]
This is cheating.

mr_groovy

mr_groovy

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jun 2006

Netherlands

No Inherent Effect [NiE]

Nobody mentions [skill]ursan blessing[/skill]? doh!

Fril Estelin

Fril Estelin

So Serious...

Join Date: Jan 2007

London

Nerfs Are [WHAK]

E/

Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_groovy
Nobody mentions [skill]ursan blessing[/skill]? doh!
Message number 8 of this thread, may be?

A thread is not just its title or the last few posts!

One-liners/+1s FTL. I guess Anet's short skill description is the way forward for many, soon it's going to be GWG from your mobile in SMS style.

Chilos

Chilos

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: Jun 2007

Oulu, in magical land called Finland


Cheating

lord of all tyria

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Mar 2007

Cheating is to play without DF honor. This applies to all activities, both on and offline.

Proff

Proff

Jungle Guide

Join Date: Jun 2007

There's no cheating, only poor game design.

sixacsix

Academy Page

Join Date: Jun 2007

HERO

lol that isnt evn all of it but a lil taste of the shi* that went on in gw lmfao if only you guys knew

quickmonty

quickmonty

Ancient Windbreaker

Join Date: May 2005

If you are competing against someone, cheating is a possibility (like covertly moving a chess piece when your opponent isn't looking). In PvE, where it is you (and others) playing against a computer program, I wouldn't call it cheating. You are free to play however you like (within the confines of the EULA).

Star Gazer

Star Gazer

Wilds Pathfinder

Join Date: Nov 2005

Zerohour Enterprises [ZHE]

W/

Quote:
Originally Posted by pablo24
this

::evidence::
you sir, win the internet. congratulations.

sixacsix

Academy Page

Join Date: Jun 2007

HERO

you say that if ur in a pve instance that its not cheating but getting up to 12 people each with 3 hero's in a zone sounds like cheating lol all gw does is hold secret updates and play down what really goes on in there game lol its sad ( why don't you ask a gm what that glass vials bug fix was really about and why they took out clay bricks after 2 years LMFAO then you will get a kick )

itsvictor

itsvictor

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Jan 2008

Pablo resize the images ffs, that's just bugs/exploits/other stuff that Anet took a while to clean up. TBH I don't think there any "real" cheats that are intentionally given to us to use, poor holes in anet's security and design. When it's competitive (PvP), thats what I consider cheating, signet of ghostly might lmao but that was unintentional yet again so I don't consider it.

Edit: [Ursan Blessing]

[Glyph of Swiftness][Deadly Paradox][Shadow form] come to mind now...

Alleji

Alleji

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

Ursan is cheating.

Just like IDKFA.

It might be in the game, but if you're using it you're not really playing the game. You're just looking at the content.

garethporlest18

garethporlest18

Forge Runner

Join Date: Jan 2006

[HiDe]

W/

All those pictures pablo has shown is cheating, Ursan isnt' really cheating because Anet implemented it without keeping it secret.

Also I seen Mctigger in that dual warrior pic!

Danax

Danax

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Jun 2007

Ontario

R/Mo

Wow, that guy and all his friends are about to be PM'ed and whispered ingame for those tricks.

Thizzle

Banned

Join Date: Apr 2008

Cheating is not buying money. You make the money, you bought the game, and you bought the gold yourself that someone else made. Where is anyone getting cheated? I think cheating would be closer to modifying parts of the game or using programs to alter the game play.

Fril Estelin

Fril Estelin

So Serious...

Join Date: Jan 2007

London

Nerfs Are [WHAK]

E/

Is posting a message in a thread that you didn't read cheating?

Is posting the same old whining arguments without any sort of interesting comment on it cheating?

Is +1'ing cheating?

Is the inherent fact that software not specified formally is always flawed and full of bugs that need to be constantly fixed the source of cheating?

Yang Whirlwind

Yang Whirlwind

~ Retired ~

Join Date: Nov 2005

Copenhagen, Denmark (GMT +1)

E/

I would consider anything using a 3.rd party program cheating as well as anything clearly stated as being illigal in the EULA

- textmod is very borderline to me, though Anet continues to allow/ignore it (used it, but felt like a cheat)

Quote:
Originally Posted by Proff
I don't know what you're trying to prove, and I realise you helped anet with several of these issues but do you really think this couldn't have been prevented?
I take it you are the world famous super progammer called Mr. Flawless?

Malice Black

Site Legend

Join Date: Oct 2005

Cheating is getting caught.

Avarre

Avarre

Bubblegum Patrol

Join Date: Dec 2005

Singapore Armed Forces

Cheating is something that gives you an unfair advantage.

Using broken skills is not cheating, they are openly available.
I'd hesitate to call RMT cheating, gold doesn't make you stronger, even if it is against the rules.

Abusing bugs depends on whether they're accepted or not.

pumpkin pie

pumpkin pie

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jul 2006

behind you

bumble bee

E/

too bad the community relation isn't in here to see the cheating pictures ey.

Malice Black

Site Legend

Join Date: Oct 2005

Quote:
Originally Posted by Avarre
Cheating is something that gives you an unfair advantage.

Using broken skills is not cheating, they are openly available.
I'd hesitate to call RMT cheating, gold doesn't make you stronger, even if it is against the rules.
RMT is a grey area.

In a game like GW which is advertised as skill over time, RMT offers little advantage. The only real advantage it offers is getting to the high end content quicker.

In a gear based game such as WoW, it certainly is cheating.

Avarre

Avarre

Bubblegum Patrol

Join Date: Dec 2005

Singapore Armed Forces

Quote:
Originally Posted by Malice Black
RMT is a grey area.

In a game like GW which is advertised as skill over time, RMT offers little advantage. The only real advantage it offers is getting to the high end content quicker.

In a gear based game such as WoW, it certainly is cheating.
I agree, for the most part.

zwei2stein

zwei2stein

Grotto Attendant

Join Date: Jun 2006

Europe

The German Order [GER]

N/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Malice Black
RMT is a grey area.
Everything is grey area.

What is cheating really depends on what goals of game are and what its major design element is.

In quest based mud looking up steps to solve quests is indeed cheating. On the other hands, something like Ursan would be completely fair as it would not really break game in meaningfull way. Most of combat is straightfowrward and requiring little skill except knowing when to retreat. "kill x" and wait.

GW is just inverted version: actual quest challenge is not present, we even get arrows and outlined next step. Wiki is hardly cheat, on the other hand most of game is based on combat system so anything that breaks it is kinda cheat.

(BTW: I got banned for "using third party stuff" in one MUD. I figured out that some puzzles were directly ripped from betrayal at krondor game and got txt with them from krondor guide :-). Devs were not amused when hyperlink appeared in all channel. Funny, such stuff would not make anyone raise eyebrow in gw.)

Tirath Eldrahir

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Dec 2007

france

snkw

Mo/

Duplication is cheating, teleporting to new places via guild hall is too^^ well, was.

pumpkin pie

pumpkin pie

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jul 2006

behind you

bumble bee

E/

what do you mean teleporting to new places via guild hall? do enlighten me thanks

oh, BTW, Is arena net going to do anything about those players in the photo whose obviously violated the Guild Wars Eula?



Thank you for the answer Pleikki and Fril Estelin

Pleikki

Pleikki

WTB q8 15^50 Weapons!

Join Date: Nov 2006

???oo ???ugs ???lan [?????????]

Pumpkin there was glitch that you could teleport places where you never been from Gh.

Maximumraver

Maximumraver

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Sep 2006

The Netherlands

Twisted Revenge [TR]

E/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Avarre
Cheating is something that gives you an unfair advantage.

Using broken skills is not cheating, they are openly available.
I'd hesitate to call RMT cheating, gold doesn't make you stronger, even if it is against the rules.

Abusing bugs depends on whether they're accepted or not.
Noting To Add.
qft.

Fril Estelin

Fril Estelin

So Serious...

Join Date: Jan 2007

London

Nerfs Are [WHAK]

E/

Quote:
Originally Posted by pumpkin pie
what do you mean teleporting to new places via guild hall? do enlighten me thanks
There was at least one glitch to access various zones (Mallyx citadel?) via GH.

Quote:
oh, BTW, Is arena net going to do anything about those players in the photo whose obviously violated the Guild Wars Eula?
Technically, it's not obvious. Read the very good Exploiting Online Games to see the various situations (WoW's EULA has this explicit rule about exploits and their monitoring Watcher that GW does not have I believe)

Of course there can be some pretty interesting stuff in their EULA:

(vii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service;

By now, if you've read the whole thread, you should understand that the EULA is not the best place to look for a definition of "fair" and thus "cheating.

Thizzle

Banned

Join Date: Apr 2008

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tirath Eldrahir
Duplication is cheating, teleporting to new places via guild hall is too^^ well, was.
I disagree because Anet could prevent that and everything will have a bug somewhere like that. I think that was just explotiing. I think cheating should be when the game deliberately allows the use of a in game menu or certain controller input combination to unlock extras or special abilities.

pumpkin pie

pumpkin pie

Furnace Stoker

Join Date: Jul 2006

behind you

bumble bee

E/

Thank you for the answers Pleikki and Fril Estelin.

Arena Net should be concern about these exploitations, its very possible illegal farmers are using it to farm, and then sell the stuffs for in game gold and then trade it for real life money.

Personal reason: I hate (notice i say hate, a very strong word) anything that is unfair.

Do something about it arena net. :P~

MStarfire

MStarfire

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Nov 2007

[SOS]

Rt/

Well, looking around the forums lately, apparently "cheating" is using easily-acquired skills offered by the game in such a combination that you can easily obtain what others insist on pulling teeth for.

Golgotha

Golgotha

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: May 2005

Rt/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alleji
Ursan is cheating.
You may dislike the skill, but claiming Ursan is cheating is a gigantic stretch. Enormous stretch. If it were cheating as you say, a player would, at very least, be able to solo a good portion of the game using only the one skill. Or it'd allow them to do things outside of the intended game design and confines. It does neither. Easy button? Sure. Cheating? Not even close.

Channeling_Monk

Banned

Join Date: Jun 2008

Cheating is abusing any game mechanic not meant to be abused. There is no intended way of paying real money for gold, so that's cheating.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Alleji
Ursan is cheating.
So is Searing Flames spike.

MStarfire

MStarfire

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Nov 2007

[SOS]

Rt/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Channeling_Monk
Cheating is abusing any game mechanic not meant to be abused.

That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The mechanics are there and this game is about skill combination and team building, so any way you use those mechanics is justified by the nature of the game.

Just because you don't know how to build a team that stands up to SF spike doesn't mean the other team cheated. Sure, they used a gimmick build and there's really not much honor in it, but that shouldn't be called cheating just so it'll get changed or nerfed and you'll suck less.


You do realize that you're calling all farmers cheaters, since that's all farming really is? It's nothing more than abusing a game mechanic. Abusing game mechanics has been the key to defeating enemy AI since well before GW was created. That's really the only way to win against a computer foe: outsmart its AI. If, over time, a player community begins to understand how that AI works, common strategies to defeat it will emerge. You're calling this cheating, when really it's just an example of adaptive learning. Maybe you have a learning disability because it seems like this is hard for you. You see other people succeeding by utilizing a common success strategy and you (and a very vocal group of others) can't stand it. Given, then, that all mechanics exist to be abused, you'd better shut down GW right now because you're cheating.


The only alternative to a static AI that fails against a common success strategy is for ANet to change the AI. Either make it adaptive (massive coding headache) or alternate it between instance generation. This idea fails when you realize that there are only finite builds of 5 or 8 skills that a monster of a given profession or profession combination can utilize. Not just brute-force skill combination, but builds that make sense and work together in a given attribute spread. So the choice there is very limited in that developers must decide on a set of builds that are chosen for a particular mob when the instance is generated.

What happens then is the player community goes back to research. Each set of randomly-chosen predetermined builds is analyzed and player builds are invented to counter them and farm them. If your monster loads a build you can't counter, just /resign and try again. This will have an impact on farming because maybe people will be /resigning 3 or 4 out of 5 times, but what happens when a particular mob has ALL of its skillsets easily farmable? It's not hard to farm melee mobs, regardless of their builds. So you're back to where you started, only with the added element of "which skillset will they have this time?"


So grow up. Stop calling it cheating when others can run a farming build better than you can. Stop calling it cheating when you get your ass ruined by a Sway group or SF spike. Quit bitching because I farmed Obsidian armor in three days. Stop whining because some are averaging an armbrace every other day and you still can't properly nuke the first group in DoA. You're capable of doing all that yourself, since the mechanics are there. Saying that others should stop playing the game their way because you don't like it is pathetic and hypocritical.

manitoba1073

manitoba1073

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Jan 2006

ManitobaShipyards Refit and Repair Station

(SFC)Star Fleet Command,(TDE)The Daggerfall elite,(SOoM)Secret order of Magi

Quote:
Originally Posted by MStarfire
That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The mechanics are there and this game is about skill combination and team building, so any way you use those mechanics is justified by the nature of the game.

Just because you don't know how to build a team that stands up to SF spike doesn't mean the other team cheated. Sure, they used a gimmick build and there's really not much honor in it, but that shouldn't be called cheating just so it'll get changed or nerfed and you'll suck less.


You do realize that you're calling all farmers cheaters, since that's all farming really is? It's nothing more than abusing a game mechanic. Abusing game mechanics has been the key to defeating enemy AI since well before GW was created. That's really the only way to win against a computer foe: outsmart its AI. If, over time, a player community begins to understand how that AI works, common strategies to defeat it will emerge. You're calling this cheating, when really it's just an example of adaptive learning. Maybe you have a learning disability because it seems like this is hard for you. You see other people succeeding by utilizing a common success strategy and you (and a very vocal group of others) can't stand it. Given, then, that all mechanics exist to be abused, you'd better shut down GW right now because you're cheating.


The only alternative to a static AI that fails against a common success strategy is for ANet to change the AI. Either make it adaptive (massive coding headache) or alternate it between instance generation. This idea fails when you realize that there are only finite builds of 5 or 8 skills that a monster of a given profession or profession combination can utilize. Not just brute-force skill combination, but builds that make sense and work together in a given attribute spread. So the choice there is very limited in that developers must decide on a set of builds that are chosen for a particular mob when the instance is generated.

What happens then is the player community goes back to research. Each set of randomly-chosen predetermined builds is analyzed and player builds are invented to counter them and farm them. If your monster loads a build you can't counter, just /resign and try again. This will have an impact on farming because maybe people will be /resigning 3 or 4 out of 5 times, but what happens when a particular mob has ALL of its skillsets easily farmable? It's not hard to farm melee mobs, regardless of their builds. So you're back to where you started, only with the added element of "which skillset will they have this time?"


So grow up. Stop calling it cheating when others can run a farming build better than you can. Stop calling it cheating when you get your ass ruined by a Sway group or SF spike. Quit bitching because I farmed Obsidian armor in three days. Stop whining because some are averaging an armbrace every other day and you still can't properly nuke the first group in DoA. You're capable of doing all that yourself, since the mechanics are there. Saying that others should stop playing the game their way because you don't like it is pathetic and hypocritical.
Well said. Very well said.

Tyla

Emo Goth Italics

Join Date: Sep 2006

Quote:
Originally Posted by MStarfire
That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The mechanics are there and this game is about skill combination and team building, so any way you use those mechanics is justified by the nature of the game.

Just because you don't know how to build a team that stands up to SF spike doesn't mean the other team cheated. Sure, they used a gimmick build and there's really not much honor in it, but that shouldn't be called cheating just so it'll get changed or nerfed and you'll suck less.
Abusing broken game mechanics isn't cheating?
Some skills are broken in essence, and cheats are actually implimented in alot of games purposely. In this game, they either didn't test it or they cluelessly added it on.

This game was also all about positioning. The mechanic known as "shadowstepping" was against that concept and the usage of shadowsteps gives you an unfair advantage in positioning.

If it wasn't cheating, it wouldn't be known as abusing, but using instead.

By the way:

Quote:
Just because you don't know how to build a team that stands up to SF spike doesn't mean the other team cheated.
There's only one skill in the game that counters an SF spike at it's utmost potential. Yeah, you can split up, but the radius of SF is generally quite wide.

This skill is known as [[xinrae's weapon], which has a recharge of 30 and an energy cost of 25, which is elite and sucks against any other team.

Counters don't stop a build being overpowered, and an SF spike recharges in a measly 2 seconds.

Avarre

Avarre

Bubblegum Patrol

Join Date: Dec 2005

Singapore Armed Forces

Overpowered is not the same as unfair. Skills are available to everyone in game. Using a broken build is not cheating. It's certainly lame if that's all you do, but anyone is allowed, and able, to do it.

Floski

Krytan Explorer

Join Date: Aug 2007

Rank Three Plus Pug [deer]

W/

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyla
Abusing broken game mechanics isn't cheating?
Do you know what cheating means? It means breaking the rules. What rules are you breaking? Oh noes, I'm a human being with the abilities of abstract thought that allow me to come up with great skill combinations. I'm a cheater!

Cheating = Breaking the rules.

Unless I'm mistaken, there's no rule against being "dishonorable." The skills are in the game to be used, in conjunction with any other skill. If Anet feels a mechanic is too powerful they will nerf it. They will not punish players for cheating because they used it.

Now, if a skill doesn't do what it says it will do (think: Signet of Ghostly Might bug) that's cheating. The skill is obviously bugged, using it knowing that is cheating.