Thorpe actually does damage, is difficult to beat, takes more than 30 seconds to kill, and has a longer respawn. They are exploiting by moving to a certain spot to respawn it. No one is taking any damage from the boss. There were people on my server complaining that someone was in the zone causing it not to respawn, so they knowingly do this.
Thorpe is an open world boss with bad drops/placeholder drop table, not a “dungeon” boss. The fire staff is not the issue. Its the jump through the window. On my high population server, no one is camping Thorpe, but this boss has constant people there abusing this since release.
To be fair I think Amazon should be faster to at least investigate and make statements ont hese sorts of things.
Silverleaf is a good point to make. On one hand people could complain that people are exploiting for good gear. However like I said, it is easy to fight this boss in a few places in the arena and see it stop attacking if not rushing in and fighting it head on. This begs the question to ask Amazon and those complaining:
Are players only allowed to engage this boss and its adds head on in order to “legitimately” kill this boss, despite having some choice in strategy for other mobs in other areas?
It is not a clean situation. However we can analyze the reltive gain of players, and farming this boss from the rocks would gain less watermark/hour than other places assuming the same amount of players farming. Using punishment is a tool of last resort, not something to wield whenever something looks like a nail. There is no problem ultimately in the end result of where players are at relatively for the efforts they put into the game.
Takes about 5 minutes for 2 - 5 people with fire staffs to kill.
10 minute respawn timer.
This is not an exploit in the more malicious sense, this is large developer oversight. That cliff has been there since the alpha, people have reported on this for over a year now. Standing out of range and killing an enemy that does not have proper leashing mechanics is very different from something like Z diving through a solid wall after fire staff/greataxe jumping across gaps you shouldn’t be able to get across.
That said, I would not expect this to be fixed anytime soon and while it is problematic it is not nearly as alarming as you are making it out to be in terms of how fast you can accomplish higher watermark.
It addresses making the boss spawn instantly. In exiting the zone it seems it is taking advantage of a deliberate mechanic in the game. Not sure why they would have two different spawn timers, but it is a thing.
Taking advantage of a game mechanic isn’t exploiting. Taking advantage of a bug would be. There’s no bug here.
If anyone is inside the landmark, it’ll respawn in 5mins. If no one is inside the landmark, it’ll respawn in 2mins. People are going far enough away that it’ll respawn in 2mins rather than 5min. All it takes is a single person to be inside the landmark for it to take 5mins instead.
AGS have spoken about spawning something instantly as an example for their stance on exploits. This isn’t instant and there is no “sequence of actions” required.
If they cared enough they could just remove the whole “respawn everything 3mins sooner if no one is in this area”.
“A bug is when a game mechanic doesn’t work as intended or described in game. Bugs are things that happen by accident to players and we aren’t interested in suspending or banning in the case of accidents. A bug becomes an exploit when players use it intentionally, repeatedly, or both to obtain an advantage over normal game behavior. In cases where it doesn’t seem very clear to an average player that something is a bug, when possible we’ll specifically identify particular bug use as an exploit to warn they will be acted upon.”
In this case, monsters and mobs are intended to attack players in this game. No mobs are designed to just sit there and not aggro while you kill it. Elk, turkey, rabbit all actually run away and other mobs such as banners and undead piles have other interactions. For this particular mob, it has a list of attacks and abilities to use on the player however standing outside of its range it does not have a way to attack or trigger its health reset. People who choose to farm this are handed Elite Boss drops that can hit a pretty high loot tier table.
The monsters in this game I believe are designed in a way where they “de-aggro” if a player runs out of its movement range or stands where they can’t hit it. Here however, the mob cannot move. Unless this is actually an intended interaction by this specific mob, it seems more like a bug that would be on the edge of exploit if you performed it multiple times with an intended result (ex. Boss loot without the boss fighting back).
People who want to fight monsters who don’t fight back will probably argue its a legitimate strategy.
Just to be clear, the tenticle can move. It also has the ability to mellee or ranged attack players on top of the rocks. However the AI design makes it simply stop attacking in a number of different circumstances.
it 100% does not fight back… and arguing the value of a lvl 64 vs 66 means you don’t understand the gs watermark system. THIS is the only boss you can exploit and solo and once your gs is 591 this 100% drops gs 600 legendries… I had a few people link me about 20 legendries they got from THIS boss. A solo person should NOT have that. You are trying to justify this because you are probably one of the people exploiting it.
Well technically speaking it can be an exploit, the issue is that the AI for the tentacle cant follow you and doesn’t reset like many ranged monsters since they can shoot you, this is quite old and it’s not a problem amazon can fix easily without changing the code of the mob’s AI.
also regarding the bunch of people that are farming that boss, they are braindead, similar to the watermark and luck system after 10 people on the spot the drop quality and quantity is horrible, plus is a waste of time because the tentacle is very tanky. this kind of thing is better done with less than 10 people, IoW 2 groups.
This “exploit” is by far the most inefficient way to raise your WM, you will be better of doing priests in Myrk or just elite chest runs or incursions. The reason being, with less than 10 people it takes forever and with more than 10 people you don’t get loot
Fighting back is trivial considering there is not much advantage to farming it over other bosses like I said. The boss at Spryla towers also has legendary drops on his table just like any boss.
Also you shared a screen shot of enough people ot have fought the boss head on with no issue either. In that screen shot they maybe shaved 10 seconds off moving off the rocks down below.
Even if a solo farmer got a bag full of 600GS legendaries, they would have far more legendaries solo farming other bosses. I understand the GS system just fine and level 64 enemies are enough to raise your watermark to 591. Once your watermark is maxed out you will be farming level 60 bosses for specific legendaries on their drop tables which is far easier than any of the level 64+ bosses.
Adhominem fallacy. I think you are over reacting to the situation. I have given a critical analysis of the situation in this thread, and like I say: grinding this boss is not as efficient increasing your water mark as other bosses are.
Personally I did farm this boss. When the videos first came out about the boss farms, there were too many groups at many of the bosses so I gave Viridulon a try. Actually I liked him because he was MORE of a challenge since his adds were deadlier. It wasn’t as boring as the others. Now that this fad has died down I am back to Scryla Tower because it is a far better way to farm watermark.
they already know unlikely any bans will come of it sadly I personally don’t care i’v not used it and struggling to get to 550+ kinda sucks but it is what it is. its been reported since the beta.
no ones justifying it… its just no one really cares as much its been ingame since the beta its been reported it’s also only bug that boarders between exploit and not so its a fine line as this happens with every mob ingame.
same with all elite chest…you can get behind most and deaggro. what you want is to punish everyone understandable but not possible when this can be done for almost every elite area. or chest.
Hell you can crouch into ore nodes and deaggro. everyone’s using it sadly. thoughts of us who are not well we fall behind so hopefully they’ll make watermark easier otherwise everyone who didn’t kinda hurt theirself lol . still going to 550 slowly while I see others rocking 600’s
Alright, so if you cannot understand why this is an exploit, you’re naïve. All mobs have a range and if they do not have the ability to get to you, they’ll retreat, the same is said if they cannot attack you. So with those two things combined, when the tentacle mob does NOT attack you and does not reset while it is getting pelted constantly, it probably means it’s bugged.
Now with this knowledge, in one of the recent dev blogs, they had mentioned, if you do something by accident and discover a bug, that’s okay, but if you CONTINUE to use the BUG to get an advantage of a situation you normally wouldn’t have, that is then considered an exploit, aka what they call, “common sense”.
It’s actually insane the individuals who think that because it is a bugged, that it’s a “clever use” of game mechanics, when the mechanic itself (retreating), isn’t happening.
There is 0 possible way you can say that I am incorrect when I’ve literally used AGS’s words to PROVE that this is indeed a EXPLOIT.
There is no clear advantage to farming this boss over others like I have said. Players who farm this boss will be in the same relative position progression wise as other players who farm other bosses. Thus, it is more of a bug than an actual exploit as defined in that blog post.
I think people are tripping over optics rather than thinking critically of the end result. Thorpe was an example of a borderlined exploit, but because of his drop frequency and loot table he did give an advantage to those who went to farm him, and Amazon has listed him as an exploit.