Blizzard, why are you remaining silent on the layering exploits? Why aren’t you banning the streamers that are utilizing these exploits to gain an unfair advantage?
You aren’t supposed to be able to reset layers in order to farm experience, rare blues/epics, and reputation at an INCREDIBLE RATE by hopping layers INCREDIBLY FAST.
Right now you can do that. You can AOE a pack of rep mobs, swap layers in mere seconds, then AOE the exact same pack of mobs, swap layers in seconds again.
You can also farm a rare mob or a blue lotus spawn spot, swap layers in seconds, then farm it again, then swap layers in seconds, etc.
This is an EXTREMELY detrimental exploit. Blizzard/you specifically stated that layering would have a cooldown to prevent this exact exploit, yet this is exactly what is happening.
The general consensus on why Blizzard allows this:
Streamers provide a massive source of revenue for Blizzard at zero cost to Blizzard. Because of this, Blizzard refuses to ban them for exploiting layering. If Blizzard banned them, they would lose a massive source of revenue (free advertising).
WE DEMAND THAT BLIZZARD STOP THIS!
This exploit ruins the economy. This exploit ruins PVP. This exploit ruins the experience by giving cheaters the upper hand.
My guess is they’re still formulating how to deal with this issue. Addressing it now without a plan could just hand out an empty promise. Be patient, I’m sure they know the issue at hand.
They added it to the game knowing what could be done using them, so technically its a feature not a bug/exploit, if you choose not to use said feature, that is on you.
there is absolutely zero reason anyone should be layer jumping more than every 10 minutes. increase the cooldown substantially and the problem solves itself.
If that is the case they should have no problem making that statement to clear the air. I do not think that though, and they should be worried about the people who see this as exploitation and will abandon the game.
The uneven handling of what is an exploit and what is not by Blizzard is irresponsible. Let me remind Blizzard and others defending layer hopping as legit:
Exploit . An exploit (known as “exploitive activity” by Blizzard ) is a method of playing the game in a way not intended by the game developers to gain an advantage over other players.
But their reaction to other things like raid instance farming shows they are willing and able to fix things they see as bugs. Leaving layering in as it is just shows us the need for a cohesive world free of layers. You cant call something an unfair advantage because you choose not to take advantage of it.
That’s like choosing to buy coffee when someone next to you is giving away free coffee then complaining that someone else got free coffee and you paid for yours.
Can someone explain how this is an exploit? Layering was designed to do this exact thing, how can you punish someone for joining a party with their friends.
The raid dungeon thing was a cut and dry bug with xp bonuses being improperly calculated. The layering debacle is more of a ‘we failed to properly predict how this would be exploited and abused by players’ issue, which isnt quite so cut and dry.
its not ‘unfair’ because literally anyone can use it, but anyone who thinks it isnt making a mockery of the classic experience and having some REALLY messy effects on the ingame economy is delusional.
Layering was meant to enable you to group with your friends and distribute game load across multiple servers.
The exploit is a person is “hopping” between layers every few seconds, enabling them to (for example) farm the Black Lotus herb every few seconds, FOREVER.
The easy fix would be to limit the speed at which you can layer swap. For example, once you swap layers, you cannot again for 15 minutes. Or 60. Or 3 swaps every 2 hours/etc. Instead, you can swap every second forever. That is the exploit.
So i am not wrong, now if a boundary was set such as a limitation to how often you can swap layers and you found a way around that said boundary (limit) then this would be exploitation of the system.
Since there is no set boundary or rule stating you can not do this, then players are free to layer hop as much as they would like.
I am playing devils advocate here, trust me i do not agree with these practices whatsoever as they create an unstable economy and create an unfair advantage.
Yep I agree that players using these exploits need to be ban. I see a screen shot from Tips discord channel where 1 player has stacks and stacks of arcane crystal. The player should be given a 3 day ban, remove all the players gold and arcane crystal then let him restart.
This is really the damning thing. They could easily have mitigated the abuse. The fact they didn’t shows a massive lack of foresight.
Knowing all of these people who got in on it early are going to be in control of the economy going forward just makes me not want to bother. I’ll still level up and maybe mess around but there is little point trying to do anything competitive.