Is it a bannable way to farm for vaal fragments?

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Michael_GGG wrote:

This practice will put your account at risk so I'd advise you not to do it.

That's what I thought and got me hesitated, exactly.

I don't think he meant that this is a cheating method and will get me (or whoever does it) banned for sure. If he did mean it that way, he wouldn't simply advise, he would have warned me instead. That's what I would do, at least.

My guess is that he meant that the action might be mistaken for a bot's actions.

Let me try and clarify what this means;

(He may not be allowed to reveal the mechanics, but I can guess according to what I do every day at work. My guess can be wrong too, tbh)


I, too, work as a GM at a smaller gaming company and in the game I'm shifted, it's pretty hard to catch cheaters in action. It's online but most cheaters use bots only when in single-player mode to not get caught. Thus, we observe the stats of a suspected account and we look for actions that a real player cannot reach on their own. Such as repeated high (perfect or near perfect) scores and the time interval it's done. So, bots usually point themselves out, but there is sometimes a slight line between a bot and a good player in measure of stats.

What I was suspected of when i asked the question was it might have been a similar occasion. Every game has its own GM interface, so I couldn't make sure of it.

Anyway, my guess here is, that it might be hard for a GM to tell if I just reset the map without playing or if I cleared the map withinin that very short time. Of course, it can be seen by looking at other stats such as gained exp or loot at the time period, but I don't think it shows exp per zone along with the zone ID (or maybe it does, who knows?) but a period of time instead. So if a player reset a zone a lot and gain exp or loot within that period of time, it might be taken as an action of a bot.

And i take it as a rather high possibility, based on the answer Michael_GGG gave.

Other than that, I don't think looking at the graph and having a guess would be taken as cheating, because it's not a flaw in the game's code or interface, nor created by putting the game into a bug or glitch. It's just graph-reading. However, it's up to the game officers to decide.

Also you don't even need to see the graph to do that, listening to the game ambience helps too, so it's something that once you notice, you cannot unnotice. :P

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Deadpeng wrote:

Lol. I m thinking if this guy never ever brought up this issue, neither would GGG make a stance against it.

I think they would. Knowing or not, they might even be blocking accounts that have imbalanced stats because of rapid zone resetting. This post, if anything, made them aware of that there is other causes of sharp changes in stats other than illegal ways. However, I think they have been aware of it. GMs are usually aware of many things that players haven't even heard of.

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Michael_GGG wrote:

This practice will put your account at risk so I'd advise you not to do it.

Such a bullshit answer 0_o.

Either it is bannable or it is not, just pick a side.

Put an account at risk?
Risk of what? Being investigated for botting? Don't really care I'm playing fair according to current Tos.
Risk of unjustified ban? That wouldn't be nice.

Not that i'm doing that method very often, it's really really boring, but maybe like 1h a week and i'm always pretty happy to get those frags.

This is quite a common method, and I haven't seen much people reporting bans on that.
So the risk seems a bit windy to me.

If you really want us to stop you say it clearly.

Then we can start new discussions about rarity of vaal fragments and that we need new legit methods of farming them.
So far this method, legit or not is really needed for people who like to have fun with atziri and is imho very beneficial for the players.

If this is the frame time method you're speaking of, I would say yes.
It's like you are abusing a flaw in the system and thus gaining advantage over others who do not know about this abusable flaw. If this was common knowledge and everyone was doing it, there would be no problem imo. It would probably be fixed asap.

I'm playing this game for quite some time, even I learned the existence of that method only 3 days ago in a stream.

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rockmassif wrote:

It's like you are abusing a flaw in the system and thus gaining advantage over others who do not know about this abusable flaw.

This could be said about just anything in the game that is not covered in manual.
...wait, what manual?

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rockmassif wrote:

If this is the frame time method you're speaking of, I would say yes.
It's like you are abusing a flaw in the system and thus gaining advantage over others who do not know about this abusable flaw. If this was common knowledge and everyone was doing it, there would be no problem imo. It would probably be fixed asap.

Yeah, that one, but not the only method. If you listen to the game ambience sound while entering the zone, the game simply yells as "HELL YEA I JUST GENERATED A CORRUPTED AREA!" once you notice the difference.

For everyone's sake, I won't tell what difference it makes.

What am I gonna do then? Play with the sound off?

Even if I play with no sound, I can make a guess and be right about about 90% of the time just by looking at the screen, even if the frame time-fps-latency graphs are off. (Not gonna tell how either)

So, do I have to clear the zone every time I enter, even knowing for sure that there will be no corrupted area in that one?

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rockmassif wrote:

I'm playing this game for quite some time, even I learned the existence of that method only 3 days ago in a stream.

Well, it's been around since at least October 2014. That's when I first heard of it. It probably goes back way before that too.

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Squirrel_of_doom wrote:

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Michael_GGG wrote:

This practice will put your account at risk so I'd advise you not to do it.

Such a bullshit answer 0_o.

Either it is bannable or it is not, just pick a side.

Put an account at risk?
Risk of what? Being investigated for botting?

Exactly that. They aren't outright banning accounts they are marking them as possible bots and that mark reduces the drop rates of currency etc. It is probably not bannable and you will not get banned for it (and if you do they will probably remove it), but you put your account at risk anyway.

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Michael_GGG wrote:

This practice will put your account at risk so I'd advise you not to do it.

Much appreciated!

your benefiting from something and not actually playing the game to do it.

its no different then a map hack - the map hack shows the zone, the frame counting tells you if some somethings in that zone, which is nearly the same thing.

the fact you have to ask "is this allowed" means you already know its shady and you probably shouldn't be doing, and the fact that 3 sets sell for 1 exalt, means you can get some easy exalts by simply running docks over and over, if your bored enough.

this is a oversight on GGGs end for sure, but you knowing its exploitable - then continueing to do it most certainly should lead to bans and such.

GGG should drastically reduce the spawn rates to corrupted zones in the zones that people do this the most in, or something along those lines...

but on your end, your benefiting from something and not actually playing the game, your looking at frame counters.... so don't do it, you already know its shady.