Syncing, is it against the rules?

I think so.
If people find it, people will use it, so I can't really complain, but if you REQUIRE syncing to do RA well something is wroung.
On a side note, I shank them with a scythe or two.....

Just go to Korean district. Much higher chance to egt better group than syncing.
/endofdiscussion

Please let us know which company you work for so that we do not buy stock in it.

The QA folks that work for me check functionality against design specs, not "designers intention", whatever the heck that is.

Exploits may or may not be bugs. In a game as complex as Guild Wars, there is no reasonable way that the designers could have anticipated all possible Use Cases, so it is difficult for outsiders to understand whether an "exploit" (whether this is an exploit or not is even up for debate) is a bug or a simple matter of unintended consequences. We can argue that the design is poor, but unless we see the requirements document, we have no idea whether it is a bug or not.

To be specific. If I develop code to spec, which says something like "Randomly assign players to teams when those players hit "Enter" during any given 30 second period". I may code that perfectly, but the requirements document may not have anticipated that people would "sync" their entry into battle.

Is that a problem? Yes? Is that a bug? No. At best it is an enhancement.

Anything that isn't specifically against the rules is fair game. Syncing is a very strong tool if you are trying to get gladiator points.

So I ask:

Why are you trying to get gladiator points?

In my company, QA folks are required to not only test according to design document, but also to provide feedback about possible exploits and anything they would consider oversight. Blind scenario-followers are not welcome.

But again, were talking banking/insuarance in my case.

Plenty of companies will see both the reason behind the spec's and spec's themselves as equal importance. We also do game balance and feedback. I have a very hard time taking you seriously if you honestly don't know this...

You sound like you work for one of those places were you have your testers act like mindless drones slaving away on test plans with all other input ignored. While everyone uses test plans, its not something to be absolutely set in stone. Testers have brains. Let them use them, otherwise your game is very likely to ship with tons of holes in it.

It is an exploit. That's not up for debate. There is even a guild called [SYNC] that can be found at certain times during slow hours that is basically dedicated to Sync-running balanced N - Mo - W - R in order to farm glad points.

What is up for debate is whether or not anyone really gives a shit. The general consensus is "No".

On Topic:
There is a distinct advantage to Synchronizing. You can build a balanced team that employs skills that compliment each other... something the opponent has only a small random chance of accomplishing. Synchronized teams also have better communication options (re: teamspeak or Vent.) They can issue directives audibly, leaving their fingers free for more efficient skill use and maneuvering. This is a clear advantage over random teams obliged to type and ping information.

I feel that if people wish to be on synchronized, co-operative teams, they should play in the team arenas. It is a clear and unfair advantage over those who play in the random arenas as they were intended by the designers.

A possible and imperfect solution would be to block players in the same guild/alliance from being placed on the same RA team, or even the same matches (because if placed on opposing teams, one might work against his/her team to benefit the other).

If you really want to PvP with your friends, try Team Arenas, HA, or Guild Battles. Random arenas are supposed to be just that, random. Attempts at synchronizing are an obvious effort to circumvent the intended use of that element of the game. There are places set up for co-ordinated play, and RA is not one of them.


Now on to this nonsense:
Why do some warriors always say this? It truly baffles me. It is not cowardly for a low armored ranged attacker to keep their distance from the high armored attacker; it is common bloody sense. Just as it's common sense that if your attacks only work at close range, you should probably bring a snare or some sort, or a speed boost to better run down your target.

Last time I had someone call this on me was in AB. I cast a degen on him and then kept my distance. The warrior chased me across 1/4 of the map (away from his support). When the degen wore off, I stopped and cast again, and began kiting again. At 25% health, he continued to chase me away from his support and landed no blows. Not surprisingly, he died and I returned to my team. Also not surprisingly, he started spamming ALL CHAT with taunts of me being a coward and having no honour.

Now if he had stuck with his team (in the team environment), he probably would have lived. He may have even killed me. But if someone is willing to abandon their team in pursuit of a target they can only hurt if the target willfully lets them, that's not courage, that's ignorance and hubris.

Calling someone a coward because you want them to fight in terms that are advantagous to you, and disadvantagous to them is not honourable, it's hypocritical.

You want the caster/ranger to stand and fight, then give them the same armor. Or take off some of your own. Otherwise quit your crying and actually invest some time in learning how to play the game.

I didn't say that. What I said is that the QA testers test against the specs. It's the people who create the functional requirements that are responsible for doing what you've stated. Our company has outsourced / offshored / nearshored much of our development (using all level 4 and 5 firms), so it is paramount that we get our specs right, not that the onshore QA testers be left to determine "designer's intent". The 1/10/100 rule applies here.

Again, you're inferring something. I don't work for a gaming company, I work for a Dow 30 company with over 2,000 systems employees. And I didn't say that the QA testers couldn't make suggestions, but rather that it's their job to test against design specs. It is unfair to hold them to a standard where they have to somehow divine what the businessperson intended when they requested specific functionality.

I would tend to agree with both of your points. But unless we see the design specs, we won't know. I also think it's an exploit, but as I said before, this is a player problem, not a system bug.

And I especially agree with your last point. Feel free to take the last shot, then I'll cry "uncle" and let you win....

But this isn't "life". It's a game. And games are supposed to be fair.

its only against the rules if you dont do it

I'm not trying to be a negative bastard or anything, but....nothings fair, ever. Even in a game, the rich get richer, the poor stay dumb, the skills get nerfed, the market values drop when you finally get one, the zchest gives you shit, the way aggro works gets changed.


Nothing is fair, nor will it ever be, the only way that anet could make the game "fair" for everyone is for it to come with free blowjobs every time you start up the game, but even then it's not exactly fair to our female gamer population, so it goes back to being unfair again...yes?

thread win imo.


this thread has devolved into a arguement about whether or not it's morally acceptable, and as everyone has different morals, arguing them is retarded. and before yo try and tell me otherwise, consider this, in other countries it is "immoral" for a woman to show her face in public... to many of us it's immoral to force such a thing on a woman, but the moment you try to argue with someone who supports it you'll get two sides of an arguement that both end up losing because neither will make a compromise.

"Exploit:
Mostly used about multi-player games, an exploit can be defined as a case where a player knowingly uses a flaw in a game to gain an unfair advantage."

A Dictionary of Video Game Theory

If you are able to to create order and organization in a game designed to be completely random, is it considered a flaw of the game? Does knowingly using this flaw provide an advantage over those who don't? Seems like an exploit to me, which has nothing to do with "morals"...

Using misspellings and unusual spacing allows a person to take advantage of flaws in the naming filter, and therefore exploit the system in order to use words which are otherwise against the rules. While this doesn't provide them any sort of ingame advantage, it is still a punishable offense according to Anet.

Now, what seems worse: using an exploit to have an inappropriate character name, or using an exploit to gain an unfair advantage in a competitive arena?

Gogo rethinking priorities.

Seems to me, the only issue considered is how hard it is to deal with a given exploit that determines whether or not Anet takes action against it.

Wait...what? I'm curious who confirmed this? Oh right, no one or else we wouldn't have people arguing over it in this thread. As for the guild, not really sure what that proves...

Too bad I only saw this thread today

Saw this (or something like it) posted several times in this thread. I take it you people assume that because of the name, it's intended to be random?

As some people may remember, RA used to be called Competition Arenas http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Competition_Arena, so I guess that would mean the design-goal of that arena (whether we call it RA or Competition Arenas) has changed with a change in names?
If it hasn't, why would the design-goal of that arena be to make random teams when it could just as well be an arena where competition is meant to be extreme (seeing as we use names to determine the goals of an arena apparantly). And as we all (probably) know, with extreme competition there are people pushing the boundaries (synching). Seeing as Anet also knew that competition would cause that, pushing the boundaries (synching) was intended when they designed the arena.

Owh, and yes I do synch. Why? To have some fun times with mates while earning gladpoints. We do it with the three of us so it's not as if I do it because it's more efficient earning glad points that way (it's not I can tell you from experience ). Also, we don't leave/quit/run into the other team when not synched.
Sure, we could do AB but that gets boring after a while too. TA is an option too, but that's no fun with randoms (like I said, we do it with 3 people) and takes a lot more organization to have some fun. GvG/HA is for even more people.

Again, no idea why games are supposed to be fair. But even if they were, I care more about 'life' being fair (to everyone) than about fair games.

Do you get to pick your opponets? No. Then its random in my book.

GvG is now Random Arenas.

Players who hit enter close to the same time as someone else enter the same instance, thats how the system works, it's not an exploit.

Summary of the logic in this thread:

I use it, therefore it is not an exploit.
I like that it gives me an unfair advantage over other players, therefore it shouldn't be changed.
Everyone who disagrees are just QQ'ing care bears.

Did I miss anything?

There is nothing preventing it, the creators of it have no intentions of correcting it, and there is no penalty for doing it. Therefore it is not an exploit.

Sure did:

It isn't illegal so it must be the ethical and correct thing to do.

I always wonder how many would figure it must have been an exploit if Anet closed it tomorrow (and then just move on). I figure most would moan and complain and fall back to one of your three reasons since their main point of rationalization was taken away - at least that is what happens when Anet finally closes other exploits (say, quitting RA matches over and over until you get the team you want).

I also suppose they will not bother with it until it becomes a real problem (like quitting finally did). Then again they may have someone spending a handful of cycles a week on it and have a "fix" at some point anyway. However to say it is anything other than an exploit is not being honest - it may be an exploit Anet looks the other way on (for a variety of reasons), it may be one you enjoy doing, and it may also be one we can all equally abuse but it was obviously never meant to be the way you entered and played RA and people are taking advantage of the system used to match teammates (in other words, an exploit).

Like any other exploit it may be closed and it may not - the only thing we can conclusively say it isn't an exploit Anet finds worthy of banning or spending enough cycles to have fixed by now. As such abuse away - as long as few enough do then the previous statement will be true and those abusing it will have an advantage. If enough abuse it then it will get fixed.

No, not at all.

ROFl synchers are bad, keep 'em coming, I eat their hairy butt for lunch. If they were actually any good they wouldn't sync at all .

As usual it seems people are focused on the problem and not on a solution. The reason why Arena Net says the problem/exploit does not exist is quite simple when you think about it: they cannot fix this!
How could they? Prevent people from ending up on the same team: who have messaged each other? Who have used the general chat to count down? Who uses TS/Vent? Who are in the same guild? None of these solutions would solve anything even if they could be implemented (which they probably can't).

I do feel it is an exploit, as it circumvents the intention behind the Random Arena, by making it less than random, but it is not as far as I can tell something they can ban people for doing.

In the end it is morally questionable and in poor keeping with the spirit of the game,- but not illegal or cheating as such.

It's an exploit. But Anet can't think of an answer.

Is someone pretended to be a retard to win the gold at the special olympics would all you guys defend em? Caz thats what synchers are. You really suck so badly that you have to try to beat random teams with your premade team on vent; all so you can get a glad title that really doesn't mean anything. As much as I hate losing to you I still feel sorry for anyone that bad at the game.
And that fact that anet won't fix it/call it an exploit just proves once again how much they FAIL.

I would say no; not against the rules. You are allowed to click join at any time. If ANet wants to stop syncing altogether they can better add a randomizer to the grouping code, to make it highly unlikely that people who join at the same time actually enter the same team. Enforcing gameplay with the software is always better than to enforce it with rules.

In law there is a notion of a bad faith. There are some actions which are perfectly legal unless your intentions are proven wrong (registering domain names for example - you can do it as much as you want but if you do it in a "bad faith" and someone proves it you will have your domains revoked). So the "just clicking button" argument goes down if someone manages to prove that you do it to gain advantage over the others and not to play the way it was intended. I guess the issue that prevents Anet from doing something here is that it is very hard to prove that someone actually sync even if for most of the players it is plain obvious.

This is absolutely correct. There is no possible way these sorts of things can realistically be implemented. Ensuring that nobody is able to get on a team with another player with which they are even vaguely associated with is impractical. Cross-referencing guild and alliance rosters would slow the matchmaking process down a ton (some of those alliances are massive), so instead of 30 seconds between matches the countdowns would be resetting constantly because not enough people are separated by enough degrees to allow them to be on the same team.

Then you'd have to cross reference friends lists, too, because not everyone who syncs is allied. Throw that in there and the delays and resets are even longer. Perhaps I'm mistaken (I'm not much of a programmer), but isn't this stored client-side? If so that'd get even messier. Also, checking to see if the person is on vent/ts is ridiculous, as it would require GW to monitor other programs that you're running... and even if it did you'll just have people using vent on their laptop right next to their pc to get around this one.

Filtering teams by chat logs in real time... yeah, the fail in that should be more than obvious.

Neither can anyone else. When anybody here comes up with one that is both not-asinine and implementable then this thread will actually have a point.

You can manually disconnect at any time and use the reconnect feature to reestablish your connection. This used to be used to dupe items, but clearly because dupers were just using perfectly normal methods of playing the game they shouldn't be at fault by your logic, correct?

The problem is they can't enforce it with software. What can they do, delay all RA matches until there are 100 people to be randomized (and thereby lowering the chance of syncs working)? Have fun with 10 minute waits to enter the match. Are they going to prevent people from the same guild/alliance from getting on the same team? People will just change guilds.

If anything is going to change syncing, it should be to remove the gladiator title from RA. Won't fix syncing obviously, but it takes away the reward for winning.

The answer is obvious: because there is some chance greater than zero that you will be caught and punished if you go rob the guy to take your stuff back or compensate yourself by stealing from someone else. Ask O.J. Simpson.

No, see, your argument is the worst argument ever. You have attempted to argue by analogy, but your analogy fails because the conditions are radically different. Also, you have chosen to focus only on the segment of my argument that you found objectionable. I lay out two options:

1) if you can't beat 'em, join 'em
2) quit whining and instead do something constructive to convince ANet that the player base actually favors your position

because your preferred option #3:

3) start QQ thread #15 about syncing

is unlikely to produce better results than QQ threads #1-14.


Taki, I'm glad you brought your A game this time.

I advocated two possible solutions that are both more constructive than the present one we're observing. As for the second post: sophistry makes me mad. It required deconstruction.

You're still missing my original point. My argument against complaining is one of practicality here. It's wasted effort. Complaining on this topic has already been done to death, and the grounds the argument rests on aren't going to persuade a business owner.

There's nothing wrong with complaining in and of itself, but complaining for the sake of complaining is unhealthy. Requesting a change without a persuasive argument (in ANet's terms) to back it up is pointless.

Taki, there's some interesting sociology research that's been published in the last couple of years that suggests that bitching actually makes people feel worse, rather than better. It does so because once people hear other people respond, they harden tentative positions about issues (in response to other people's sympathy) and then become upset and frustrated when the world doesn't change to suit their new positions. Further, people that bitch often don't go do something to solve the problem that makes them upset. Instead, they get validation from their social support structure by continuing to bitch about the problem.

There have been a LOT of threads complaining about syncing prior to this one. You have an early enough join date to know that this is FAR from the first thread about syncing. People have been complaining about other players syncing every randomly assigned PvP format in the game for YEARS.

Do you seriously think ANet is unaware that syncing exists and that people don't like it? Further complaints on an old topic add nothing. If you're a player facing this situation, you need to either escalate or back down. Posting the same old complaint of "This is WRONG and it needs to be fixed!" isn't going to accomplish anything.

Further, that argument is wrongheaded because morality isn't the language of business. Oil companies don't conduct research into alternative energy sources out of charity. They do so because they expect the research to be profitable at the end of the day.

If you want to get ANet to change something, making a moral argument won't get you anywhere. Arguing that more players want to see the change than not may do so. But I haven't seen any evidence of that in this thread. It doesn't lack for defenders of syncing, and a lot of the mods seem to be defending it.

What are these awful consequences? The existence of one sync team tends to lead to the existence of more sync teams. That's the only behavioral consequence of the existence of a sync team. I could substantiate this with a mathematical model, but it's more bother than it's worth.

You're just strengthening my point, which was: the sky is not going to fall because of syncing. The hyperbole just makes you look foolish.

You want a comprehensive list of conditions that lead to balance updates? OK:

1) BAD THINGS externalities. Eg: the day that monsters dropped stuff whether you killed them or other monsters killed them. Consequence if not corrected: hyperinflation of gold = bad.

2) Game balance distortion. Overpowered skill(s) drive variety out of the game. PvP example: Original Searing Flames. PvE example: Ursan.

3) Bugs. Game doesn't work as intended. Eg: 1/2 second Decapitate when devs meant to update Agonizing Chop. Arcane Mimicry works on base defenders. (Most fun skill bugs, ever, btw.)

4) Player preference changes. Your sync fix falls here. You could make an argument for #3 if it hadn't persisted for long enough to imply that syncing is a "feature" rather than a "bug", if you know what I mean.

#1 and #2 are types of game balance change. #3 and #4 are not. They're design changes. There's a difference.

The problem is that ANet has a limited amount of staff working on this game. As a result they rarely get down to #4. It took them 3 frigging years to fix Leah Stone! The community has complained the whole time!

So the thrust of the second half of my argument is: if you want ANet to do something about the problem, you'd better get your issue to the top of the #4 queue. QQ thread #15 won't do that.

As I said in the gvg syncing thread, just remove the countdown timer. They can still click at the same time but thats as far as they'll get. None of the wait until 3 seconds and re-enter or whatever.

Can't see the timer then you can't know when you're going to enter.

Easily foiled. Enter in 3, 2, 1. Cancel in 2, 1.

Repeat.

You'll inconvenience them, but that's all.

Better then nothing. Besides clicking enter at the same time doesn't always put you on the same timer.

Not to mention they usually cancel and re-enter right before the counter finishes if they don't know when it finishes they don't know when to cancel.

Syncing is not cheating as it doesn't violate the EULA.

Syncing is not such a big problem, you make it look like 50% of the teams are sync.

When will people stop QQing about syncing?

Never apparentely.

Yeah, and if Kevin Bacon were trying to do RA, we'd all be screwed!

Remove Glad points from RA!

Before Glad points were introduced there were almost no complaints about leechers, or leavers, or syncers, or griefers. Now that there is a reward in RA, instead of having laid back people goofing all, we also have self-important title farmers that get bitchy when they don't get the points and treatment they deserve.

thats it in a nutshell.

Also, there is a huge number of "pro" ra players. They don't move on to ha/ta/gvg and they've been grinding ra for what is years now. It should be a place for new players to learn and veterans to tinker or just run silly stuff for fun. Remove glad points and this is what you will have.

Ive always felt it would be a better system if like classes repelled while players were waiting in que before the matches. Call it balanced arenas, whatever. If its an environment where ppl run the strongest meta bars and sync with their friends it makes the groups with out a monk purely a waste of time 95%. Charging to your death over and over just isn't fun hamstorm or not :P

Sure, its only ra and who cares but there are a hell of alot of people that play there for a variety of reasons. To say it doesn't deserve any attention because its not a premier pvp format is out of touch and basically anets fail approach. They chased alot of players there by destroying every dynamic that originally made gw so pimp. Its the last place you can sit down and be creative with your skills and the game mechanics. For those who weren't around that was guildwars, not titles or everlasting elves.

If they[anet] were only like 10% competent at skill balance and did so frequently ra and gw for that matter would be eternally fun.

I pm'd him in-game, but he's more of a pve-er these days.

There is truth in this, but...

...the problem lies in the existence of these "pro" (although permanent may be a better word) RA players, which I'd venture to say are the solid majority of the population there. In the beginning, before glad points, ra was a training arena where people practiced there fully intending to move on to higher levels. This did seem to work. But now, at this point, people aren't working towards that ultimate end anymore, and instead are there solely for progressing the title. Removing glad points from RA will cause these perma-RAers to move on to TA where they can get them, leaving RA fairly barren. Sure, you'll get a few people there occasionally test something, but people aren't going to spend much time doing something that provides no intrinsic reward (just look at the multitude of threads demanding larger rewards for increasingly-easy accomplishments). Matches will be few and far between... if you take away glad points you might as well just eliminate the whole arena.

syncing only works like two times, then regardless of the countdown you and your friend won't be on the same map. thats why you don't get the same party members over and over.. so it's not really a big deal.

Wow...

So this is the latest thing people are QQ'ing about now. I knew it was too quiet.

All sarcasm aside, how in the world is sync'ing an exploit? I sync with my alliancemates and guildmates in ab all the time, which actually isn't a disadvantage to the other team. As I've read, I understand that you guys are referring to RA only, which I'll admit that sync'ing in ra is kinda like cheating on a math test in college. (Great comparison huh.) There are people out there that know how to do ra that should be doing ha. But seriously, if you think about it, sync'ing isn't a exploit at all. I mean there's many different examples of exploits, like the Mallyx one. Seriously people what's next?

There are more things to worry about, this isn't one of them.