Speedbooking- is it an Exploit?

Yes it's an exploit. This is what Gaile said earlier today about Match Fixing on her wiki page:
Speedbooking is just the same. The quests are not intended to be played without spawns.
Also, in my opinion the Jinkies' post wins and should be the next article on their blog.

This time you won't hear players say "You cheated, f*ck off" & "Bye bye!".

Just in case nobody mentioned yet (skipped a lot of posts), think about the old Kurzick and Luxon HFFF. That was somewhat more abusive and a hell of a lot more of people did it for sure, and yet nobody but botters were banned. So you even if somehow you were still unsure about it - this should be enough to ease you off.

This is the part where bothaters came in and said:
And as Gaile said, you're not supposed to be able to do that, yet you do it.

Stupid idea which will negatively impact every area/mission where you may need to flag-path heroes to your rescue, or something else. Might as well just pop up 'return to outpost' when the last player dies and only H&H remain.

To have an "exploit" you're supposed to have a bug to exploit.

Here is none. It's a poor design characteristic the developers have already told us they're unable to alter - that was about the HFFF issue. Quests are not intended to be played without spawns, yet the game is VOLUNTARILY designed not to create spawns if the player is out of compass range. They fixed HFFF by changing the whole mission and the completion requirements for a reason.

How naive, I didn't even know of this technique before today, I used to think people speedbooking were just doing three quick missions on their own. Anyway, even though speedbooking is not something I'd approve, I hardly see an "exploit" here. Surely not a bannable offense, since there's no bug.

Dungeons and elite missions weren't meant to be run, yet I don't believe monks and sins got banned for that, go figure...

Not sure what you think "Bothaters"(try bot-haters, though not a word either just seems more sensible) have to do with whether or not this is defined as an exploit, but as Gaile did say, an exploit of a bug is against the EULA, would you have everyone that used Sliver Armor banned? Seeing as for the last few years that was apparently a bug and therefore its use in builds was an exploit. Pray you don't have an ele with that skill, hero or human... I think not, bugs happen, the design of heroes thus far seems to allow them to go from one end of a map to another without setting off enemies, if not, explain how when "Ghost Running" existed, the Devs chose to change the function of the elite UA rather then fix the heroes?

Not sure if Anet has a problem with players clearing missions in quick time, but my instincts say they might. This is pretty delicate, though. So they will have to take time to over look every bit of detail, including the skills involved in these builds and the difficulty of the missions so they can still balance everything and not make something one sided.

I may be totally wrong about the "Red Resign" stuff (I don't do PVP), but I think the /resign command was also VOLUNTARILY designed to be useful in some cases, just like spawns (performance I guess?). Didn't these people get banned by exploiting this function? Obviously they did knowingly abuse it, and so do speedbookers.

About the running... that's just skillz, not abuse of something illogical

Haha I didn't even know about this bug! This can be fixed, and was fixed by ArenaNet so... I'm not sure if anyone really abused this? Or gained benefits from it? Well anyway, about the Gaile quote... it's just what she said on her page

Sounds like an extreme case of butthurt.

hmm ah yeh! It's an exploit. Never thought about it actually. I think most people didn't think about it like that. And the chance that they will ban players for this is prolly lower then 0.01%.

Is repeatedly doing a short mission for 50000 XP and getting an easy survivor title really giving you an edge over other players? ANet permanently banned players for that!

I don't do it but if people are doing it manually by flagging and not running a bot program then this is fine by me. Anet stopped ghost running and HFF not by changing or outlawing this mechanic but by changing spawns and skills. That means that they have no history of finiding the mechanic illegal and that they act if they think it is getting out of hand.

Flagging your heroes is a valuable game mechanic - lets face it, it's the one good sure way of saving those idiot chosen in Divinity Coast.

Is it an exploit? Yes.

Is it likely ANet will ban accounts over it? No.

I brought this up in this thread:

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/p...0436507p5.html

and some trolls actually responded that, yes, people should be banned for doing this... :eyeroll:

Lol now that I think of it I never actually did speedbook unless you count the 1 min great destroyer run which doesn't use a bug by any means.
And yeah any decent player can fill a HM book easy I went from r8 to r10 on all 3 titles within a couple days just from that.

But back to the original post if anet were to ban for this minor bug yeah that would be pretty dumb considering the popularity of it and they would end up banning more than 3700 actual people instead of 3700 accounts.

A guildie has mentioned numerous times that the reasoning for hero and Hench not triggering spawns is to save on server space, as to populate the entire instance would use up too much server resources to be practical. Assuming this is accurate, this is no bug, and no exploit, a design flaw perhaps, but one that is used to create a smooth game instance. If anyone could confirm this it might put this discussion to rest.

In addition:
"Spawning is appearing on a map. This can be players or NPCs appearing at a specified point under a certain condition, e.g. when a point is reached that was set to spawn a group of enemies.
-Spawn /spawn(ing) point:
-The set points on the map that foes, NPCs, allies, etc. are scripted to appear.
-A group of such creatures that appear at such a point; an alternate form of mob."

No, they weren't banned.

If anything, their accounts would NEVER be terminated for just resigning or abusing the /resign commands, EVER. They'd be banned for MATCH MANIPULATION, which is the consequent effect.

Speedbooking has no consequent effect - someone does the mission anyway, even if they are someone's heroes - , speedbooking doesn't exploit a bug, speedbooking isn't an exploit.

Please note that "bug" ≠ "programming oversight". We have no bug here, end of story. A bug is, for example, the ability to access an otherwise inaccessible developer outpost and taking advantage of it: even if the game is programmed to void access to anyone with no credentials, somehow you manage to slip through and abuse it. Then you're banned for exploiting the bug.

The only action Anet could ever choose to apply against speedbooking is to alter the poorly designed missions so that you can't complete them with the speedbooking techniques (just like they did with the HFFF missions).

An in-game nerf for a poor choice of theirs is the ONLY answer (an answer to a question no one has ever asked), a suspension for users is plainly retarded, unless they also ban runners, ferrymen to Consulate Docks, Permasins and whatever is out the basic design of the game.

Not fighting anything but the final 'boss' in Curse Of The Nornbear to complete the quest is to me the same as the PVP points you gain by this 'trick'. Unearned, undeserved.

So in PvP it's wrong, in PvE nobody should care?

- What you gain has no impact on anyone else's game, while manipulating a match means you also influence other teams and their possibility of succeding.

- Skipping some parts of the missions can be done by taking shortcuts set in place by the designers themselves, but you still have to do the mission somehow. You can't beat the mission without at least killing the boss at the end of the Curse, but you can "win" a match doing nothing with match manipulation.

- Abusing the /resign command isn't the only way you can manipulate a match: the two teams can also come to prior agreement and manipulate the outcome of the match without using a single command line. The source of the problem is human conduct, something that is perceived as unsportly behaviour. That's what they usually take actions against, and it's strictly PvP-related.

- Anet doesn't condone abuses of design flaws. They just don't blame users and fix their flaws sooner or later. So they did remove the ability to HFFF, they did remove HB to prevent RR, they'll likely do something against speedbooking, but surely that won't be a mass-ban.

Tell that to those who didn't 'abuse this feature'...

It's still unearned, even if the PvP thing is worse.

P.S.: If you still think I'm totally wrong I'm OK with it, I'll no longer ague

Not an exploit, just as everyone else has said. Those that think it is are just bigots.

I'm with YunSoo on this ban anyone an everyone who uses any kind of ingame exploit. Regina even said if you think it's an exploit then "DON'T DO IT". So I think they should start watching this one for a few months and ban another 10000 players. Soon we'll have really truely great players who don't cheat, don't exploit and play the game properly.

Don't need to.

I didn't "abuse this feature", I got my titles the hard way. I got my PERSONAL reward (a title, and the gratification of actually earning it) and I won't complain if people get the same with less effort. I'm not envious, nor I advocate a ban for lazyness...

Sure, I'm all for fixing it. FIXING it, not banning people for a non-existent exploits, expecially since there's a whole lot of other abuses in the game (speed clears anyone?) that would then deserve the very same treatment.

I find this absurd witch hunt hilarious at best.

That's kind of like saying avoiding pop ups in a vanquish is exploiting the game, surely Anet wouldn't have put pop ups into the explorable area if they didn't intend for you to pop them...

The speed booking thing would be so easy to fix, if it is indeed a bug and not an intentional design feature.

I really thought that it wasn't that hard to understand that they don't spawn for performance reasons, and that they obviously are intended to spawn...
Pop ups obviously are another feature... meant to behave like this during normal gameplay.

Really, if it was just for 'performance reasons' then surely each spawn could check if the previous spawn had been dealt with before popping... other quests do this... why did Anet choose not to make this quest perform in a similar manner? Have they mentioned that it's an unintentional bug?

Popups and spawns are two different things.

Popups are scripted and trigger when the specific requirements are met.

Spawns are regular mobs that populate each map. Each group of enemies you face in missions and explorables is a spawn.

Spawns aren't created unless you're close enough to their spawning place. That's a built in feature for performance reasons, likely not needed anymore, but inherited from the original engine that dates back to year 2005: putting ALL the mobs in place as soon as the map is istanced would have probably hindered the engine too much.

That's why it isn't technically a "bug": bugs are either coding bugs (syntax errors in the code) or logic bugs (bugs in the scripting logic). This is just a shortsighted design solution - there's no error in the code, it's intended and meant to work like that - that allows some form of abuse unless they redesign the mission accordingly.

Then you are asking the wrong people. Nobody on Guru works for Anet. All we can do is supply our opinion. If you want to be sure of the answer you get, PM one of the Anet staff members or send an email to Anet support.

Less expolit, more optimizing your time vs reward.

I agree. Lots of arguments here, no real answer in the end.
Ask Gaile on her page, she's always happy to help:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/User_...Support_Issues

If Speedbooking relies on mobs not spawning properly due to you being dead and heroes running ahead, then yeah, it's an exploit.

If it's simply using amazing builds and owning the missions in fast times, then you're set. But from what I can see on wiki, this is an exploit.

This is A-Nets fault for not being specific about what is an isn't allowed in the rules. They go all ban happy without warning for things which people did for years without a ban (leeching and /resign) and now people are afraid to play the game.

Bans for things like speed booking should ONLY be done after A-Net comes out and makes a public statement, preferably in the log-in screen saying any people who participate in the future will be banned. People who did it in the past are fine.

Banning people for strategies which are popular, well known and long exhisting is going to hurt a lot of people who wouldn't have done the activity had A-Net simply come out and said it was a bannable offence.

The simple reality is Guild Wars is a game that has been played since it was released based on abusing AI, glitches and unintended mechanics.

Gyala Hatchery has an exploit where you can clear the mission before the turtle squad launches if u go right at the start.

Before factions, the held items (like gears and books) were used to exploit AI and force them to target the warrior so he could tank.

Lots of elite area tanking tactics involve standing next to a wall and forming a perfect 90 degree angle forcing the mob to lose aggro on the people in the distance and aggroing on the person forming the 90 degree angle with the wall.

The strategy for Duncan early on was to use a necromancer sunspear skill and I believe a pet in a way which prevented the party from fighting the spirits and thus made him very easy to kill without being hit.

In FA there are numerous locations Kurzicks can stand where the turtle will aggro but not hit them, and several more where the players can't either.

Guild Wars is a game that is played by game exploits that have existed for years. Because of poor game design in end game PvE exploits are how content is completed. To start banning people for using them now would truly be a jack ass move.

TL;DR A-Net needs to be specific on a regular basis about things they allow and disallow, terrifying people into behaving is going to make the game very stressful for a lot of people.

You know, I really have to say not to argue against speed booking. It's bad enough we have to grind annoying amounts of points to max our titles. Do we really need speedbooking removed from the game anytime soon?

@OP ; all you have to ask yourself is, did people get banned for HFFF? just like dancing gnome said, worst case scenario they'll nerf it just like they did with HFFF.

not perhaps, it -is- a design flaw, and people are taking advantage of it to clear missions faster than is intended; therefore it -is- an exploit.

Why can't people just play the game like it's supposed to then there's nothing to worry about.

Stop fooling yourself. Speedbooking is abusing functionality in the code which allows the user to bypass part of the game (an exploit). Why would they put all of those mobs in there when a player plays them if they were not supposed to be fought? The only one that is clearly not an exploit is ATFH where the mission is completed fairly.

The EULA states you are not allowed to abuse exploits, therefore a ban is definitely possible. With that said, I doubt they'd do that. There ARE advantages gained through speed booking but they are far less impacting on the game than other major exploits.

I think it's a grey area.

From playing WoW I know blizzard differentiates between outright exploits and what they call "creative use of game mechanics" - I believe this would go in the latter category, in WoW only outright exploits are bannable.

Because "playing like it's supposed to be played" isn't innovative and it doesn't lead to people finding a way to beat things like Elite areas. I would bet that 90% of techniques used to defeat bosses in elite areas were not intended. The entire use of Shadow Form for end game PvE wasn't intended. The entire history of solo farming is a testament to playing the game in an unintended way.

Player get onto betas for games because they are able to think outside of the box, that's what skilled play is.

I'd also like to note A-Net actually rewards people for playing the game in an unintended way. Ever head of Legendary Defender of Ascalon? That's a good example of players exploiting an unintended function of the game to do something that is supposed to be impossible. Not only do they not get banned for it but A-Net made a title for it. Doing things like rewarding players for doing unintended things in the game blurrs the lines for people worried about what actions are acceptable and which actions are not. This is why warnings for things that fall into the game abuse category are needed.

exploits are very common, and many are considered harmless. one of the most common exploits are ai exploits because they are completely dumb that its so easy to exploit them. for example, in double dragon games there are various wall exploits, where the enemy will get 'stuck' and you can freely hit them. many of these things overtime generally get accepted as normal. in gw, one that i can think of off-hand is the "book trick" that was used in fow and sf that caused ai to only attack the holder of the book. the difference here, is that while the community accepted it as normal, anet said no and nerfed it.

ai is dumb amirite?

there are tons of exploits in gw and in all games. pvp has a ton too: the obstructed glitch, where standing on the edge of bridge grants you invulnerability against projectile attacks. the most common one that gets used nearly every single time in ha is the longbow to build up adren before triggering the timer.

exploits will always be a part of a game as long as there are bugs/design flaws. just be glad games like gw gets constant maintenance updates and bug fixes.