Official stance on Boarholm & Lodestone? Are these an exploit?

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Given that the latest patch notes do not mention either of these very publicly known exploits, we need to know AGS’s official position on them going forward. People using these exploits are getting VERY far ahead on trade skills, weapon mastery, and the economy of Rawhide is heavily affected.

I’m specifically referring to the exploits abusing the Lodestone Grizzly respawn rate, and Boarholm boar respawn rate.

I have advised our company to avoid these areas, using them in my eyes right now is exploiting and would result in a kick from our company. I frequently post in global channels advising people to avoid these as they are very likely exploits. My questions are as follows:

1) Are the respawn rates in these areas a bug, and thus the abuse of it classed as an exploit, which will be a punishable action?

2) Will the gains from these areas be rolled back such as trade skill and weapon mastery?

3) Will those who have knowingly abused these areas be punished for using an exploit?

Notes:

With regards to question 1; if these are exploits, they need labelled as such immediately, we need clear direction on this. Also, if the punishment is simply a single day ban with no rollback, this can be seen as a fair trade for huge advancement in such a short time, and is merely an acceptable cost of the exploit instead of a punishment.

Regarding question 2; I’m honestly skeptical you’re committing every single player action to a vast database, and I’m even more skeptical you’re going to put in the time to build a search criteria to filter out those using the exploit and roll back anything but their weapon mastery and trade skills as anything else is too intertwined with other mechanics to be rolled back (quest unlock at xp level, hide on the market, etc.). Unfortunately I feel the rollback is an empty threat, however I’d like to be proven wrong.

For 3, there should be many chat reports for people advertising usage of the exploits, even using the term “exploit” to get larger groups in the area, at the very least the people luring others into the area should be punished heavily. Again though, I am skeptical that this will happen, again, I’d like to be proven wrong.

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We indeed need an official statement about this ‘Exploit’. Players are reaching level 200 skinning within an hour, wich can not be the intention of the game. I think especially the players that are actively promoting these places and exploits should feel the consequences. An innocent soul who just wandered in there for a bit might not deserve a punishment. But if you gain 100+ tradeskills levels in 30 min, that cant feel right… so I think most people are aware their level gains are not as they supposed to be.

The argument the exploiders are using, is that the problem has not been addressed yet by amazon, and therefor is not an exploit.

This thread has thousands of replies and amazon has not recognized if this is, or isn’t a exploit they will or wont fix.

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humm, I don’t see a huge problem with that. in every game is always one or 2 things you can do to cheese. everything else will any way take a normal time to level up. each to his own i say, its a game and one part of games is also finding some small exploits here and there. but i also totally understand if you don’t want anyone using them in your company. but others will probably use them, so its also a question of getting left behind.

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Quote: “The argument the exploiters are using, is that the problem has not been addressed yet by amazon, and therefor is not an exploit.” End Quote.

Exploiters always defend themselves with those types of statements, it is nauseating. The little garbage munchers.

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the more common argument is that boarholm has been like this since alpha days.
We have reported it every playtest, alpha, closed beta, and open beta.
They have never made a statement or a ban.

So ill use it

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Some of the replies here are the perfect example of why we need a prompt response from AGS for issues like these. Being unanswered only punishes players who abide by the rules and avoid exploits and cheating.

Accepting ‘Abuse anything until there is a dev response; anything is fair game until we are told explicitly otherwise.’ Is not going to lead to a healthy game.

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Noticed they added this.

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I fully agree with you! I also agree everyone should play the way they want to play… yet such an exploit to farm exp and weapon mastery shouldnt be in the game when it can put them at such an advantage. With so much on the line with war and territories there shouldnt be such a easy button to max levels. Now a 5man running the 5man zones for tons of exp loot and mastery should be the method supported.

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Its not OK to stay online during dinner by autorunning into a wall … then the BAN HAMMER comes… but exploiting bosses like this 24/7 that is ruining the games economy etc is ok…

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Alpha/beta is to find bugs, now they should have fixed what is important to normal progression. At the cost of holding it off a week or two more? i don’t think it would have been in our best interests. Since the majority of the game was good to go.

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All of these so called “exploits” were on the Alpha/Beta, if it was an exploit they would’ve fixed it before it went live. Sadly they didn’t, so I don’t think it’s the player’s fault at this point. They should fix it and move on.

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tldr; Farming in itself is not an exploit if the rewards aren’t providing you an unfair advantage over others. Safe-spotting is an exploit, as it provides an unfair advantage. AFK abuse is a party that is farming is also an exploit.

Long post inbound. If you want to respond to debate my opinions, please take the time to read the words below.

Exploits are defined as abusing a system by using it in an unintended way, specifically to gain an unfair advantage. If you want to find out if something is an exploit or just a system that needs to be rebalanced, break the topic in question down in to parts that you can define as being an unfair advantage and an unintended use.

Pastor Walsh was the only one mentioned in the current patch. Why? Possibly due to his loot table, or due to it interfering with quest progression due to so many players being in the area. Either way, it was decent for weapon masteries when your level was close to his, but after you are too high leveled, it is barely a dent in XP or Weapon Mastery.

Lodestone Bears - There are originally three in a wide area, allowing for a good path for a solo player to farm bears for skinning, several materials for Gathering, lots of iron for Mining, and honey/mature trees galore. The bear in the cave is the one in question of being exploited. What happens? Each new player in the area increases it’s spawn rate. After 6 players are in the area, suddenly new bears start appearing before the previous bear is even killed. If you are in the level 20-30 range, this can be effective for xp/weapon xp, but your skinning level has to be high enough to skin the enemies + you have to survive the endless assault of bears to be able to skin them. I finally saw one of these farming parties last night on my server and hopped in at level 38. Result? 18 XP/15 weapon XP per kill. So as someone already leveled, this was not worth the time or effort since the bears loot table is atrocious, it consumes food/potions, and durability loss costs from getting slapped constantly. Not to mention it was impossible to consistently skin bears do to 3 bears running around doing AoE attacks and other players skinning while you have aggro.

So is Lodestone Bears an exploit? I say no. The window of “exploiting” it is limited to certain levels to be effective by any means, and skinning is already the easiest 200 that you can achieve by simply skinning enemies you kill. After you are able to skin 40+ cat-type beasts, you will hit 200 way before you reach level 60. The loot table is also nothing to write home about.

What about the Boar farm? Not even gonna expand on this one as much, but it is a higher level area, so it is limited to well-geared adventurers… under normal circumstances. If anything could be considered an exploit in this area, it would be the ease of safe-spotting huge groups of boars. Safespotting and mass-AoE removes all risk of this farming method, so everything is just a gain/reward. The spawning itself isn’t really an issue, the lack of risk is. Remove the tents/other objects that prevent the boars from fighting back and problem solved, risk is reintroduced and there is a cost that comes with participating in this farm.

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Any update on this? It’s broken beyond belief lol

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To be fair it is just a spot being more OP than others because you can skin it. There is also multiple other spots in the game with mobs spawning just like this one. Their algorythm for increasing spawn rate is borked for the amount of people that is grouped sometimes. But this is a damn mmo, clusters of people are to be expected…

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The community manager/devs have already commented saying that abusing the respawn mechanic of mobs is an exploit and they’re investigating everyone and taking action.

If you have a mission in a abuse spot it would be fine to get the mission or complete it once but hanging around and killing the mobs over and over is then abuse and will get you reset/banned.

Amazon during the betas have already stated they’re taking a very firm stance on toxicity and exploit abuse. As you can see a simple toxic message in chat results in a 2 day ban so abuse of this bug will result in tougher punishment.

Obviously I’m not your dad so you do you but just be warned. If you search for “dev” in the top right it should show the CM message stating this.

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Thanks for posting that, I think that clears it up that this is seen by the devs as exploiting and will likely result in punishment.

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Good to See you cant read in context. The Difference here is, that the respawn rate is short by the game itself. If you are alone or in a group of 20, the respawn rate stays the same. The exploit though…its meant to spawn every 10 Minutes. The Bug allows the mob to respawn INSTANTLY - thats not intended.

Nonetheless I’d appreciate a bigger respawn rate for the Boars. The bear mechanic is also an exploit btw. But the boars spawn like that even when solo.

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Can someone enlighten me what constitutes abusing the respawn mechanic? I guess I don’t know exactly what’s happening… but am I ‘exploiting’ if I’m in an area with a high respawn rate and all I do is farm/grind them?
I’m not trolling, I’ve just never been to the boar farm, so maybe if I go there it’ll be an ah-ha moment for me then?

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So you mean to tell me…

This which was a thing in BETA is an exploit? That they knew about and just didn’t fix?

Killing mobs that spawn at a high rate is not exploiting and banning accounts based on this is going to result in people contacting the BBB about the bans and amazon will indeed overturn them all.

Anyone who is claiming this is an exploit clearly didn’t play the betas and see this happening. This was pointed out to the Developers months ago and they have chosen to leave it in for launch.

“repeatedly chain killing mobs” is an exploit? This is hardly the case as you are not exploiting anything within the game this is a built in mechanic with an absurdly high spawn rate… you are in no way exploiting the game as they have had ample time to fix this with a simple patch that changes the spawn timer… its a 10 second patch to make where you literally change 1 variable the spawn timer.

If you want to blame anyone for this blame Amazon for allowing this to be in the game after it was mentioned in BETA TESTING.

Mic drop

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No, when you kill monsters in an mmo and it respawn inmediatly, and u can see a full floor cave with 1000+ bears dead, and 50 people killing it, and doing nothing more in the whole day, ITS A EXPLOIT and need to be punished and fix ASAP.