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.
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Agreed. Layering is meant for server stability. It’s not supposed to be used to help you make gold, rep, or exp.
You all laughed at me when I was still mad after they said they were removing layering in phase 2. Should’ve never even been in phase 1. Most they should’ve ever done was put it in the 1-6 starting zones and disable it after that. Then remove it in phase 2.
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well we don’t know their intentions, so until they say it’s an exploit it’s not.
Same thing as phase hopping in retail but no one complained about that, ever
It sucks for the economy and shouldn’t exist but “exploiting” is a pretty loaded word that is not applicable here
Yep. This needs a hotfix ASAP. This is gamebreaking in its current form. Allows players to completely avoid PVP encounters and completely destroys immersion. If they don’t ban people for abuse and hotfix this it’s a tacit endorsment of layer hopping, which is about as far away from the spirit of Classic as one could possibly imagine.
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So by joining a group at convenient times I’m now an exploiter? The reason we’ve heard nothing from blizzard on this issue is because they know that they royally ****ed up by adding layering into the game.
How is joining a group playing the game in a way not intended by the developers? If you design a system that is so bad that just joining and leaving a group breaks it, it’s probably a terrible system that shouldn’t be in the game. There’s no clever macros involved, weird interactions with instanced servers you have to bug out, or really anything to it other than just joining a group with literally anyone. This is blizzard’s fault, not the player’s.
But please tell me how you would differentiate between someone joining and leaving groups as they go to various quest objectives (ie, playing the game normally) and someone who is “exploiting” layering by doing the exact same thing.
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Yes you are if you’re doing it more than once or twice. No need for any further answer.
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Simple solution - After a player has joined a new layer they cannot join another one for 30 minutes. Most people join a layer to either 1. Group for a dungeon or 2. Join a friend to quest/farm both of which will take longer than 30 minutes typically. By creating this que it will eliminate instant respawn farming.
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Layer hop count coupled with combat log parsing per hour.
Source: I am a software engineer
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Frankly, at this point simply putting a cap on the number of times you can join a party of other players equal to 6 an hour would be more than sufficient.
The folks who are abusing it are doing it so they don’t have to ever run from place to place to gather things and if they’re doing actual quests or even trade in chat there is no good reason to hop in and out of groups more than once every 10 mins on average.
Don’t enforce it until they hit 6, then you make them wait an hour starting from the first time they switched parties. Nice happy medium IMO.
As it stands, people are on one of three sides of this issue.
- They’re victims of the destroyed world PVP and server economies whether they know it or not, this IS happening on every server and faction.
- They’re exploiting it openly and eventually getting suspensions/bans.
- They’re doing it carefully and quietly and getting away with it.
Ok mr software engineer, that still doesn’t solve the issue of players getting banned legitimately for just playing the game. Again, you’re calling for people to be banned for joining groups with other players.
If youre beta testing a product and your userbase points out a way that a system can be abused, and you choose to ignore them and leave it anyways, the best course of action is to obviously blame your userbase right? That’s a hallmark of good software design?
How can it not be intended when it was designed and implemented by Blizzard?
100% AGREE!
Blizzard won’t ban this because the popular streamers are exploiting this and Blizzard is making millions from free advertising.
Blizzard DO THE RIGHT THING! Ban exploiters and fix this issue!
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It’s definitely disgusting, mages already made extremely good gold and with layer hopping they are reaching Rothschild levels of wealth very easily.
Blizzard probably should look at this.
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I assume it will be a suspension and a wipe of the exploiting character.
how many times have you joined 7 individual groups of people you can’t see in the course of less than, say, half an hour? Because if you’re not doing that then his suggested solution wouldn’t affect you.
If you’re grouping with people you see killing the same mobs, it wouldn’t affect you because you aren’t hopping. If you group with people too far away to tell, run out, do quest, and repeat, it won’t affect you because that takes longer than 30 minutes. if you camp a node and hope till it respawns that’ll flag you fast.
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The amount of money some of these people are ROLLING in is disgusting. I’m typically not affected by what others are doing, but it is straight ruining any chance of an economy. Those who have this gold can literally control markets with ease.
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I remember a dude on myserver grabbed control of pretty much the entire auction house back in the day. literally anything that was put in that was cheaper than his items was bought within 20 minutes, relisted at a markup.
He got banned after about a week. So while they’ll have an advantage, Full economic capture is probably not going to be tolerated.
Well first of all mr gnome I wouldn’t have released a broken product and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Secondly, there are ways to flag accounts. 50 layer hops per hour is not “normal” behavior. And even if it is we can flag it for further review by a human.
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This isn’t a court. You don’t need to prove something beyond a reasonable doubt. (Most of us) are adults here and know what looks like what. A child with chocolate smeared all over their face denying they ate the donut isn’t going to fool anyone. It would be trivial for Blizzard to see who is exploiting and they should be banned. They’ve banned for exploitation in the past as well. I remember a guild getting banned for exploiting a mechanic to down Arthas. They deserved it. Just because you “can” do something in the game doesn’t mean you should. Layer hopping for farming is absolutely exploitation and everyone doing it should get 30 day bans minimum. The sweet thing is that these vans usually come in batches so you won’t know it until the ban hammer hits and then the tears will flow.
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