"Ram" in Rollerbeetle Racing got "fixed".

Where is the cutoff? When does something non-probable become probable? How do I know when a trick to make me go faster is cheating?

"I cannot define it but I know it when I see it" doesn't cut it as a standard. This is a well-established principle of law (the famous quote is from Potter Stewart's dissent to a Supreme Court decision).

I give you sound reasoning, and you give me, "If you don't agree with me you're either a liar or an idiot." This is the basic problem in this argument - instead of working through the problem logically, you're assuming you're right from the get-go and trying to post hoc justify the conclusion.

If you assume from the start that your argument is correct, OF COURSE you'll find it's correct! I can prove anything that way. Up is down, black is white, whatever.

Build an argument that is logically consistent, please. To elaborate on the earlier speeding analogy: you're trying to argue that it's fair to pull someone over that's doing 90 on the highway if you pass a law against speeding, but set no speed limit. This sounds attractive on the face of it, but how does your hypothetical speeder know that 90 is too fast unless you set a standard? What is too fast? 60? 70? 80? 90? If you give your police officers discretion but they enforce the law differently, then what?

In the case under discussion, no standard existed. Nor is it likely to emerge.

Wow. OK, so it was decreed a bug in April.

In February, what was a player supposed to do? Appeal to support?

Ask Gaile or Patrick or Izzy if Double Ram was cheating?

Come on, man. You can't argue that someone should have known that 'X' was an unintended bug in February if it's declared such in April. Unless you have invented time travel.

So what you are saying is you "think" you are just as good as the top 100 and deserve to be there? Get in line. There are thousands who think the same way. What makes you any different? You proved my point in my previous post. Please continue with your rant.

If he invented time travel, I call dibs.

But martin is right, April comes after February, they said it was a bug in April. People used it in February, it was fixed in April, they didn't know it was cheating, cause they were not told it was cheating.

BTW, martin that "hint" you gave in the last thread about rollerbeatle helped a lot.

After I got flamed on the first page for QQing over losing a strategy of racing about "exploiting a bug to get highscores," I pretty much realized that arguing from my standpoint was useless. If ANet deems it a bug and has fixed it accordingly, there's not a whole lot I can do about that, and as such, I just spent all my time over the event in DA.

As far as where the argument has gotten to now, lots of good points have been made over the vague rules concerning the skill descriptions, their actions, and the whole way that RBR works. I'm not going to argue from those points, because I see that everyone else is doing it much more efficiently than I probably could.

To be totally honest, my opening statement was crap to my real intention, which has been to grind out as many Gamer points as I can get. I could care less about highscores, as I already earned my minipet during the first event, when I relied on my luck more than my skill and knew not about the Ram exploit. Unfortunately for me, I was only able to get 1.7k Gamer points this event, rather than ~3k that I'd managed in RBR after knowing about Ram, and 2k in RBR that I'd managed without it.

The second event weekend after I discovered it, I posted it on the wiki. I doubt it was labeled then as a bug, and I'd never heard any other discussion about it from anyone else there.

RBR still boils down to three things to win: being lucky, being smart, and not being pushed on the ground. Nothing has really changed that, and nothing really will. It still has lots of flaws, and I was just disappointed that this was the one they decided to tackle.

I'm going to ask that this thread be closed soon, as the event is going to be finished tomorrow, and I wouldn't like to see this argument get much more heated.

Both are examples of breakdown in normal game play. Duping is fairly obviously exploiting a bug. Getting rewards for a mission a second time when it normally doesn't give those is an obvious bug.

However, getting a bonus from using a skill while the skill is still active might not even be noticable (as many have said they didn't even know, I never knew, though I only raced for about an hour durring the last festival because it looked like fun), and the bug has been there for... 2 years?

They just aren't comparable. Nor, honestly, is it provable who used it. Banning the top 100 wouldn't help, as we've already seen that removing the bug hasn't changed that, so how do you suppose they go about implementing these bans fairly?

Not only that, but they aren't comparable in impact to the game. Extra XP gives you skill points, Levels (if you needed them), and now, fodder for consumables. The Armbraces gave players extra money. The bug gave people... a possible slight edge that, when removed, doesn't seem to effect the game?

Texmod is technically against the User Agreement, but you don't see A-net banning people for it.

I just don't get the outrage. I'd rather they spend time banning RMTs and Spambots, or making improvements to the everyday game.

since when, from what i remember, your allowed to mod your own game client (texmod). As long as it does not interfere with the server or any one else's game client.

"Thanks for being patient, Kurd! I've checked on this question for you, and I've been told that you would be permitted to try to use this program to mod your own GW client's textures if you'd like. Since this is a question that others may be curious about, I'll go into some more detail about it.

As a general rule of thumb, we don't mind if you do things like this to make your own playing experience more fun. Some people really like to mod, and we recognize that this can often be a valuable learning tool. When you're doing it, though, keep in mind that we ask that you don't use our content to mod other games. Please do not attempt to extract anything from your GW.dat with the intent to use it in a mod for another game or project. Also keep in mind that we can't support any changes you make. In other words, if you try to make some changes and your game crashes, don't contact support because there really isn't anything they will be able to do for you. Make sure you have your disks handy to reinstall

In case anyone was concerned about this reply, keep in mind that alterations that people make to their own .dat files will not affect the play experience of others. All of that important data is stored server side, so any changes that would be able to be made are purely cosmetic. For instance, if someone re-textures their sword to look like a gigantic pickle, they will be the only one to see this change. You won't start seeing people wielding pickle swords running around in random arena any time soon

Also keep in mind that we are always interested to see what stuff you guys come up with. If you do something exceptionally cool that you feel would really benefit the community as a whole, don't be afraid to let us know about it.

I hope this answers your question, Kurd, and thanks again for being patient with me as I tracked down the answer for you --Image:UserEmilyDiehlStar.gif Emily Diehl (talk) 17:57, 26 June 2007 (UTC)'"

Source:http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_...archive#gw.dat

Do you not read. All I said was I saw that guild in Korea district.

Then I said I saw you ingame and didnt believe you were cheating. I never said you was in korea district.

Now go pull you head outa ur A$$.

However I do have 1 question for you. You mentioned you wont beat the combo regardless at the end of a race.
what combo is that?

You misunderstand.

By a strict, direct interpretation of the user agreement, you can't. I am well aware that they basicly waved that part of the User Agreement for mods that give you no in game advantage, don't steal passwords, don't hack the game itself, and only effect you, and I think that's a good thing, but technicaly, they could ban people for it.

That was my point. Just because they can ban people for things, doesn't mean they always should, or will.

So with that, we would have these conclusions:
- PvP bug exploiters are not banned (Cultist Spike and Double Ram)
- PvE bug exploiters are banned (50k XP and duping)

First off, I'd like to remind you that this argument is based on the premise that everything you've said about how terrible the double-ram glitch has been to the game is god's own truth. Cultists Fervor was an extreme example of a similar exploit, a skill combination that is so obviously broken beyond belief that no one could reasonably think it'll be anything but closed as soon as it's noticed.

Lets look at some more examples then.

Duncan runners: Allow you to skip the quest and four early bosses and go straight to the final boss. No bans.
Guild Hall Travel: Allows you to travel directly to any PvE outpost without getting their fairly. No bans.
Pre-Sear Item Transfer: Exploit security vulnerabilities to bring post items into pre. No bans (that I've heard of).
HM EotN Introduction: Re-Running the final quest gives you 10k Rep Points *every time.* This is basically the same as your Augury Rock example. Where were the bans?
Various AB glitches: Gank people in their "safe zone" or get out of your base early. No bans.

There are lots of bugs and glitches that get exploited by someone, or often by many people. This isn't PvP or PvE specific. I don't even know which side you'd classify Roller Beetles as, it's really neither.

The point is, there is no hard and fast rule for what gets a ban and what doesn't. If you want to compare double-ram to duping and Mallyx shortcuts, then that's your prerogative. If you want to use an exploit that was closed and dealt with years ago as the only real comparable example that did result in bans, that's your prerogative as well. There are plenty of more recent examples that are worse then double ram in terms of their in game effects, but did not result in bans.

Clearly, ANet:
- Considers the double ram to have been less detrimental to the game then either duping or Mallyx shortcut.
- Has changed their policy about what constitutes a ban-able offense since the Augury Rock exploit.

Those doesn´t stop people from achieving things on their own. Unless Double Ram or the Cultist Spike. Both stopped you from having any chance to win.
But yes, it seems like they changed their "strategy".

This is not a bug! Even today when you rerun missions you get reputation points. The mistake was the huge amount of points you got with that one.


And that is the problem! If two people did the same offence both need to be punished or none. But right now some are punished and some are not.

i bet if anet removed all the boxes and gave all racers all skills only avaible to be used once (except dash, harden shell, and ram) people would still complain somehow. i say make this truly skill based by removing the randomness. at least then people who consistently get on top will be on top more with undeniable proof.

Perhaps not, but the same could be said of duping or Mallyx shortcutting. I distinctly recall calls for bans to a certain extent for each of those topics when they were new.

But the bug was that the re-run reward was set to the same as the first-time reward. And it was extremely high. This had essentially the same effect as the Augury Rock bug, it allowed players to get certain point values (Dwarf Rep vs Experience) very high, very quickly. I would argue that it's worse, as dwarf rep is actually useful, while experience points were basically worthless at the time of the AR bug.

But the problem here is that there have been different offenses, of varying degrees. Something like the Duncan run was a lower degree of the same offense as the Mallyx shortcut. Considering the change it's had on the high score board (very little), the Double-Ram apparently didn't have much effect on top 100 times (and so, on Mini distribution).

I didnt agree with the 50k XP bans, at least not for a perma ban. But how can you not see how duping is a perma bannable offense whereas abusing skill mechanics isnt?

And I'd think you'd be thankful that duping IS a bannable offense, since you as a PVE player and all other PVE players are significantly affected by such exploits. As a PVE player myself, I'm GLAD that they punish for duping in PVE. And hey, if PVP had any reason to dupe stuff, I can guarantee there would be bans in that too.

Now quit with the lame attempt at making it look like there's some sort of favouritism between PVP and PVE when it comes to banning.

i do agree that anet should have put the phrase "after the 3 seconds, user returns to the original rpm before they used ram" that is the key missing phrase. however, most people should have known that from using the skill OVER 2 YEARS. it never crossed anyone's minds that "gee if i used ram when i have max rpm, maybe ill return to max rpm afterwards."

i never got a roller beetle from racing but i jsut think these claims of HAXORS + ABUSE seems silly.

I don´t think that Permanent Bans should be in any game. If some player really hurts the game, sue him.

I don´t see that. Even if everybody dupes, I can still make the decision to get the rewards others dupe, by playing the game, like it was meant to be done, and I can succeed in doing that.
Unlike those PvP exploits. I can still participate in PvP without them, but if I am up against someone halfly competent, I do not stand a chance! I can not succeed. And that makes PvP exploits so much more harmful and punishable.


I don´t know a single time where PvP exploits were banned. I know a few for PvE. Unless there is a rational explaination, why that is, I can not ignore the theory of favourism.
PvP exploits I know of: Grenth Balance, Cultist Spike and Double Ram.

If I'm not mistaken, wasn't there a PvP exploit where someone was able to crash everyone's client during a match? I'm pretty sure there were a few bans handed out for that.

The dopple xp ban was definitely wrong, I agree with that, but abusing a bug in the system for personal gain versus using skills as they were intended (albeit fatally imba combinations unforeseen by balancers) are quite different. No one got banned for 55ing, solo trapping, and all sorts of other ridiculous skill combinations farmers put together to 'abuse' PvE, so why should they be in PvP?

The client crash wasnt just PvP it was in the whole game including PvE and PvP.

I'm aware of that, but those who were banned were ones using it in places like AB and RA, possibly other PvP areas, but I distinctly remember those two. It was also quickly fixed for that very reason. Crashing the client in a PvE PUG - who cares?

The sad part here is that Ram is not fixed. Whether functioning as intended or not, with or without the right description of what it really does, who knows, however Ram still works like it did. The only thing they changed is that "Fixed a bug that caused multiple copies of the Ram effect (in Rollerbeetle Racing) to interact incorrectly. This skill now cannot be reused until its initial effects wear off." So yes double ram is fixed however ram itself is not.

It still works the same as it did before. Ram still takes the velocity used before using and saves and outputs it once the speed boost is done. Ram after Dash - saves the speed from dash. Ram after SRB - keeps you at max RRPM. Ram after Ram - still can give you a higher speed dependin on how fast you can spam the ram key after it wears off.

So really it doesn't matter as the skill usuage for Ram is still the same. You just can't use double Ram as a makeshift SRB anymore.

But hey bug/glitch abuse is almost required for some games. Look at Halo2, double shot and bxb and bxr are all glitches but are pretty much required if you wish to be any good at it. Many games have small glitches and nuisances in them that too be truely good you have to take advantage of. Otherwise - you're just gimping yourself.

To those who didn't know while it lasted...tough shiot? Think a little more? Granted it took me forever to figure it out - with a little help - I didn't complain. But i digress. The whole point i wanted to make was that Ram still works the same, except now you just can't use Double Ram anymore. Thats all.

Man, I am glad you are not in charge. Your "reasoning" and "logic" are horrible flawed. That is all.

Oh and yes there were PVP exploits where people got banned. There once was a bug where you could kill your own teammates using stuff such as traps. Some used it to grief others (especially in RA) and got banned.

So much for your theory.

Why should they fix the way ram works? Perhaps they should change the skill description but I don't think anything is wrong with the way ram works now. The bug was the use of double ram, not ram itself.

Huh. Look at that. More contextual clues that a thinking human being with the capacity for rational thought can evaluate to think "gee... I'll bet THIS is intended behavior, and THIS probably isn't".

Seriously, just stop arguing. Your entire argument here is based on the idea that you are so incapable of rational evaluation that you should be held blameless for a bug exploit because everything wasn't laid out explicitly before you ahead of time. It's as bad as all the people whining that they got banned for buying cheap armbraces.

"gee, it sure it sure is unlikely that anyone would have ten stacks of armbraces, but I haven't been explicitly told that anything funny is going on, so I don't think I'll stop and consider the various likely possibilities before I leap head first into this obviously shady transaction!"

THINK a little for once and take some responsibility for yourself.

No, they shouldn't have. They shouldn't have to spoonfeed everything to people on the assumption that their customers are idiots.

I think it's silly that anyone is up in arms and calling for bans, but it was still abuse. They abused a bug, and it was obviously a bug to anybody with any capacity for rational thinking.

I reiterate my prior point: remove the leaderboard and all reward from RB racing and just have it be a fun mini game. The way people exlpoit it, spend so much time in it, and whine about not winning it is really quite pathetic.

Seriously - what a great load of dribble. All the QQing for bans and calling things exploits and bugs etc. Cry me a river.

The fact is that all went in with the same skill set and descriptions and some learned how to get the best out of what was available.

Totally level playing field. The fact is that one group of people look learn listen and perfect, and the other group want to just be able to look up the Wiki guide to roller beetle racing and smash out a good time and win a mini.

Nope - I gave up racing after 3 rather unsuccesful goes so I am not in the first group. I have no mates or indeed any vested interest in sticking up for the group that got the best out of their beetles. No vested interest that is other than to add some common sense and to chuckle at all the "gimmee a mini" QQers.

No, it was not obviously a bug, it's all open to interpretation until ANet comes out and tells us what it is. That's all, you telling us that we have no capacity for rational thinking if we don't agree with you is just laughable and only shows your own immature arrogance.

If that's what you call "recognizing things for what they obviously are", more power to 'ya. I'm not debating it with you anymore though because I can't really argue against "I'm not capable of recognizing obvious things unless someone holds my hand and points them out to me", so I'll just put you on ignore.

If your entire argument is seriously going to be based on the notion that you shouldn't be held responsible for applying a moderate amount of critical thinking to ambiguous situations, well, that's your opinion, and I wholly disagree with you. I have slightly higher standards for myself and other people than that.

You're just continuing with the narcissistic, "Obviously my interpretation is correct, QED" line of reasoning. Your argument logically hinges on the notion that all right-thinking, rational people will converge upon a single interpretation, which just happens to be your interpretation.

Apologies, but you're the one that's being impossible to reason with. You're assuming that your argument is true in advance, and then getting upset when people tell you that you're wrong. Your defense is that you have proven that you are right. Logically, your argument is:

Assume A.
Therefore A.
QED.

That just doesn't work.

I'd buy your argument given a clear, interpretable reference point for a definition of "exploit" in the content of going faster in the races. Then you can construct a valid logical argument (this argument is a bit more complicated than the above; you have to demonstrate unambiguously that X is logically a form of cheating given the rule to prove that X is a form of cheating). But since you haven't proven the existence of the reference point, you're stuck with the 'assume my argument is true, therefore it's true' argument.

If you're a teenager, I forgive you. The part of your brain responsible for rational thought hasn't fully formed yet. Studies have demonstrated this; it doesn't fully form until about the age of 25.

In that event, I can't hold you responsible. it's like throwing a ball at a blind man and then asking him why he doesn't catch it after it bounces off him. I should know better.

If you're older than about 25, then...I'm at a loss for words.

if going by that logic, who is to say what is a bug? since the skill does not specify all the exact uses or capabilities of it (and u are against doing so because u support individual reasoning: "No, they shouldn't have. They shouldn't have to spoonfeed everything to people on the assumption that their customers are idiots.") who is to say that it was a bug at all? as long as there is reasonable justification on both sides of the argument, u cannot reasonably make a blanket statement calling double ram a glitch.

calling double ram a glitch would be along the lines of calling 55 monking a glitch. anet OBVIOUSLY never inteded any SINGLE person soloing high level areas (evident in the fact that they allow up to 8 people in a party). why is it that using 600 smite is reasonable? is that not an unintended bug? anet obviously never imagined someone would WANT to get their health down to 55 in order to be able to use protective spirit to shield themselves from dmg taht would normally kill them. if by ur logic these are all glitches and be fixed right?

Rollerbeetle Racing stooped being fun long time ago.

And thanks to Anet, i don't have to waste anymore time with this, if i want a mini beetle.



Thanks Anet

Speed bots I also hear help a lot. Clearly they helped again this year. /shrug

If the double ram exploiters "didn't know" it was a bug then that very same argument is 100% just as valid for those who exploited the multiple 50 000XP bug, those who exploited the Mallyx outpost bug, those who exploited the dupe exploit bug and/or profited from it even though they didn't dupe directly, and those who exploited every other bug in the history of GW which the exploiters of those bugs got banned for, which they did in all of the aforementioned cases (in addition to other cases).

To ban them and not accept their excuse "I didn't know it was an exploit", yet accept that very same exscuse from double ram exploiters and do nothing about them exploiting based on that exscuse, is grossly unequitable to all of those previously banned exploiters. Especially considering some of the previously-bannable exploit offences didn't even have any harm on the game (ie: XP bug, who cares, since XP doesn't matter yet they got banned anyhow) yet the ill-gotten rollerbeetles made exploiters instantly rich which has a huge negatively unfair impact on the game.

He's ugly.

This was covered earlier.

There's a clear difference in each instance. In the case of the 50k XP bug: common knowledge that every mission but that one only gave XP once. Mallyx outpost bug: common knowledge that you had to kill all 4 bosses again to get to Mallyx again. Dupe exploit: common knowledge that duplicate items aren't supposed to happen.

No such reference point in Rollerbeetle Racing. Who knows what's 'intended' and what's not? What do you have to compare it to?

Your argument collapses on that point. Like all the rest trying to make this argument, you implicitly assume that there's an "obvious" focal point on what's allowed and what's not. But there isn't, in this case.

The whole point is to go as fast as possible. Unless someone in authority says, "That's cheating", you have to assume everything goes in a racing environment.

Great example from real life: there was a race in NASCAR where a driver was accused of having too large a fuel tank, because he didn't have to pit as often as everyone else. Officials inspected the car. The fuel tank was perfectly legitimate. Officials drained the fuel tank. Driver got into the car, started the engine, and drove away.

They had run the fuel line THROUGH THE ENTIRE CAR (not normal practice). No rule existed against doing so. Driver was unpunished and his race win stood, because there was no rule against it.

In a racing environment, the obvious focal point is, "anything goes unless there's a clearly written rule against it." Otherwise, how in the world do you enforce "cheating"? Who decides what is and what isn't? Based on what standards? How do players know what is allowed and what isn't?

You have no answer to these questions, nor can you possibly have one.

To ban based on this would be grossly unequitable to those who utilized the "exploit", since there was no basis for determining whether this was against the "rules" or not. Given the existence of a clear reference point in the former, but none in the latter, I'd say the greater injustice would be done by banning the "exploiters" in this case.

The injustice is rooted in the policy. Since it does not clearly define an "exploit", it is difficult to determine what is bannable and what is not. An "exploit" is currently defined as "anything we think you knew you shouldn't have been doing". This sort of vague policy is almost certainly insisted upon by the legal department, so that ANet can easily defend a ban as "legitimate" under the ToS. Legally, they can ban you for (almost) no reason, and it would likely stick in the unlikely event that the ban were reviewed by a court. (Granted, ANet has incentives not to randomly ban people, and those incentives are rooted in their desire for us to continue to buy their product.)

If you want something positive to come out of this: lobby for the policy to be changed to something transparent.

The thread has run its course. Closed.