The Gold exploit

[BIGeyedBUG]

Gahh! I really should go to bed, but This Just In... :yawn:

A bot has already been built around Grinding.

The chances of gambling a unique are 1/5000. Not very good, but apparently good enough. Since the subject can stay in game, it gets around Blizzards methods of keeping MFrun bots from entering and reentering games.

Sleepytime now. :sleep:

 

[ULTIMATER]

Gahh! I really should go to bed, but This Just In... :yawn:

A bot has already been built around Grinding.

The chances of gambling a unique are 1/5000. Not very good, but apparently good enough. Since the subject can stay in game, it gets around Blizzards methods of keeping MFrun bots from entering and reentering games.

Sleepytime now. :sleep:

Could you post a source?

 

[LprMan]

Time for another post...

I wouldn't consider this cheating, but as said, it is really cheesy. I tried that trick yesterday, but it was too much clicking/hassle and extremely boring. I rather do Pindle runs than sell the same item over and over again. And if you ever pick the items up which drop while you are playing...even any socketed/plain elite armor will net you 35k, same works with wands/staves/scepters and class-specific stuff quite often too. And if you run Meph for example, just pick the rares he drops and sell them to Ormus. Easy and fast way to get gold and even some very useful items. How many of us have really got anything really cool by gambling? And who wants to gamble all the day? There is so many better ways to get stuff out there, trust me

In my opinion, it is not worth the time after all

 

[ULTIMATER]

Lprman:

Most people doesnt have more then 4x2 spaces free while MFing. Gheeds Misfortune doesnt make that a problem. And as you said, i think this is really cheesy, but not cheating. Its just buying and selling a item, producing more gold then you ever need.

But gambling for a WF still wont be a stroll in the park . . .

But i sence alot of great rings, ammies and circlets in the tradethread from now on . . .

Why did i bring this up? :scratch: :bonk:

 

[LprMan]

Lprman:

Most people doesnt have more then 4x2 spaces free while MFing. Gheeds Misfortune doesnt make that a problem. And as you said, i think this is really cheesy, but not cheating. Its just buying and selling a item, producing more gold then you ever need.

But gambling for a WF still wont be a stroll in the park . . .

But i sence alot of great rings, ammies and circlets in the tradethread from now on . . .

Why did i bring this up? :scratch: :bonk:

I always have 4x2 spaces free, it just makes picking stuff up so simple. If nothing great unique/set drops, I pick something worth 35k gold then, maybe even 2 items like that if my cube is empty

And while running Pindle, he drops items worth 35k gold quite often, just pick them up and sell to Malah when starting next run. That doesn't "waste" much time and no-one could say it isn't legit

 

[jiansonz]

... and maybe it is even cheating to use /players8 to level and reach hell faster just to get your hands on sweet items. This too is unfair, at least from a Bnet-Players point of view

Huh? How can /players 8 get you to Hell faster? In my experience, /players 8 makes the game a lot slower (2-3 times, even more if you go HC, since it also gets much more dangerous and you must play safer). There is also the isssue of about 5 times as many town visits to sell stuff.

I use /players 8 to get lots of more items (more chances of good finds and a richer character (i.e. more gambling)) along the way and a couple of more levels, athough the difference on a full clear up to Hell is not that great (you get to level 74, compared to level 67 on /players 1).

 

[ULTIMATER]

I always have 4x2 spaces free, it just makes picking stuff up so simple. If nothing great unique/set drops, I pick something worth 35k gold then, maybe even 2 items like that if my cube is empty

And while running Pindle, he drops items worth 35k gold quite often, just pick them up and sell to Malah when starting next run. That doesn't "waste" much time and no-one could say it isn't legit

But it isent as fast as 25k every third second? And i cant see the unlegitness with buying and selling the same item over and over.

Noone would complain if you lost gold on it, right?

 

[LprMan]

But it isent as fast as 25k every third second? And i cant see the unlegitness with buying and selling the same item over and over.

Noone would complain if you lost gold on it, right?

Yes, it isn't as fast. And about the unlegitness...some people won't call it legit, even if you do so And thats the only real problem with this whole issue

 

[ULTIMATER]

But what happens in the whole action that is unlegit? :scratch:

If i call it a reward for finding a Grinding weapon with a highlvl char,does it sound any better? Maybe Blizz did it with intention so highlvl chars (needed for gambling good stuff) could gamble alot to get the good stuff? ^^

 

[Jaffa Tamarin]

And while running Pindle, he drops items worth 35k gold quite often, just pick them up and sell to Malah when starting next run. That doesn't "waste" much time and no-one could say it isn't legit

Actually, I could At least, I would say that it isn't legit enough for me. I consider MF-running makes collection of high-end equipment too easy even for untwinked characters, so I choose not to do it. And if I were to get into trading, I wouldn't want to trade with characters that do it.

I don't consider people who do MF-running to be cheating, since they haven't agreed to be playing by my rules. I just consider them to be playing a different game

 

[Fafner]

I agree with Lpr and Durf, now that I tried it (better not preach on something you don't know about, except maybe heroin use)...if you have ever gambled 2 million you know how worthless that can be. It would take like 15 minutes or so to get 2 million if you were a fast clicker (and I'm thinking 15 minutes is a generous assessment)

So, at first glance what I thought could be a devastating bug for our economy is completely useless practically, so go ahead do it, use it. I dare you...I would love to see how long it takes a bug exploiter like this gamble Tyreal's might.

I'll make more money running pindle or meph or whereever with my Gheed's fortune, ali-baba, and goldwrap equipped.

 

[RTB]

Gahh! I really should go to bed, but This Just In... :yawn:

A bot has already been built around Grinding.

The chances of gambling a unique are 1/5000. Not very good, but apparently good enough. Since the subject can stay in game, it gets around Blizzards methods of keeping MFrun bots from entering and reentering games.

Sleepytime now. :sleep:

The odds of gambling a unique is 1 : 2000, and for set it's 1 : 1000. With enough time one can gamble a Tyrael's Might, but gambling uniques on a regular basis is impossible, no matter how much time you have.

I use this feature and I don't trade. So it doesn't matter what I do, it won't affect you.

 

[BIGeyedBUG]

The odds of gambling a unique is 1 : 2000, and for set it's 1 : 1000. With enough time one can gamble a Tyrael's Might, but gambling uniques on a regular basis is impossible, no matter how much time you have.

Oops, my mistake. But you'd have to admit 1:2000 instead of 1:5000 doesn't exactly reduce the implications of Grinding, right? And the whole point of that post was that there are bots to take advantage of this, that can't be tracked by Blizzard's methods, and that will probably have quite a bit of time on their hands.

I use this feature and I don't trade. So it doesn't matter what I do, it won't affect you.

Well, you affected me a bit by calling it a "feature", but I'll be alright.
I'm curious though--there's been several people here who've said it's a complete waste of time--why do you use it?

 

[NSXdreamer]

All the bots you are talking about, do they even work on SP? If not it doesn?t really matter now does it? And if you think gamble your time away is fun, there is not much I can say. Maybe I'll use it to get some gold to resurrect merc when I'm broke, but I'll definitely not stand next to gheed and do the three click routine, heck I don't even gamble that much with the gold I collected while MF.

That being said, you aren't going to convert anyone to your view, if they don't agree with you to being with. For the bugs (FE) that are detrimental to players, no one would say anything, but a bug that will benefit players, people just start screaming "CHEAT!!!!1111oneone". Anything wrong with that picture?

Besides, it didn't even work for me.

 

[BIGeyedBUG]

This post is mostly addressed to BIGeyedBUG.

I agree with HBeachBabe. It, in my definition of the word, cannot be considered a cheat because it is allowed in the game. If I understand you correctly, then anything not in the "spirit of the rules," so to speak, is considered a cheat.

The problem I have with that is that I personally would have to consider ATMA under that interpretation. Single player DII was never "meant" to have a way to mule items, outside of Open or TC/PIP games. ATMA serves as a way to circumvent that restriction. It's a third party program that alters the time commitment necessary to the game. One could argue that it saves time and that you could do it eventually by yourself. Well, that's the same argument botters use.

Please note that I'm not arguing against the use of ATMA. I love ATMA, and I'm glad this community allows for and encourages the use of such a wonderful program. I just think that if you're a strict adherent to the idea of the "spirit of the rules," you can't accept ATMA. Course, that's just my opinion. I'd be interested to hear what the counterarguments are.

In short, I consider the gold exploit a bug much like Marrowalks or GA/pierce. Cheesy, but people'll likely use it anyway. It's more or less up to the forum community to determine what is or isn't acceptable. Unethical, maybe, but not a cheat. <shrugs>

I look forward to continued debate on the subject.

I think the use of ATMA is a subject that's been better covered elsewhere, but I'll offer you two approaches to that concern.

1. If you look at SP as being a seperate game from Realms Diablo, then yes, it definitely is a cheat. No way around it, for reasons that you articulated very well. Not just by my definition, but also I think, by HBeachBabe's (who I'm sure will speak up if I'm stepping on her/his toes). However, if you say that there really is only one Diablo game, just broken up into different populations, then it allows you some wiggle-room. ATMA's basic muling use gives SPs no more than Realms players have easily at there disposal. In fact, it does no more than make a cumbersome process in SP without a 3rd party program much easier, and even pleasant to use. I think this is the position of the SPF, and by extension dii.net.

2. If I ever finish one of my Assassin journals, I will have the this notification somewhere in it: "I cheated in the following ways:". At the top of the short list that follows will be this sentence: "I used ATMA for muling."

My point is, that using ATMA is cheating as far as I'm concerned. While I don't think it makes the economic premise of DII into drivel in quite the same way, as Gold Without Risk, there's no getting out of the fact that it has an impact, and probably a bigger one materially than Grinding will ever have. I just don't care about it in the way I do Grinding. ATMA adds to the pleasure of the game in many ways for me, and that's what I'm in it for. So I'm a cheater--at least in that small aspect of the game, which is no more than a tiny part of my life in general.

What I really dislike is when people say, "What I do is [positive or neutral description], anything beyond that is [negative description]. And yes, you can put "taking advantage of a bug" and "cheating" into those boxes respectively--but people do it all the time in much more serious situations. Intellectual and terminological honesty is important, even more so in regards to oneself than to ones opinions of others. Really, the second should follow from the first, right?

So thats approach #2. #1 is much more pleasant overall.

 

[wildjinn]

"What I do is [positive or neutral description], anything beyond that is [negative description]. And yes, you can put "taking advantage of a bug" and "cheating" into those boxes respectively--but people do it all the time in much more serious situations. Intellectual and terminological honesty is important, even more so in regards to oneself than to ones opinions of others. Really, the second should follow from the first, right?

This argument is not about intellectual honesty or terminological honesty. This argument is about using a loopole in a computer game. People want to sit and have a good time playing this game. If they want to use this thing for their own enjoyment, what's the problem? The overwhelming sentiment in this thread is something like, "gosh, this is very cheesy, and i'm not going to use it, but it's not something to be outlawed." Our discussion is not going to change that one way or the other--almost no one will use this, and it will still be massive cheese that takes major effort to exploit.

And terminological honesty in this situation is a poor argument. If people want to define certain exploits as cheats and certain exploits as not cheats, why can't that be appropriate? An absolute definition considering each exploit to be the same is unreasonable, especially since there are game exploits used by the computer that cannot be fixed (e.g. FE damage, gloam damage, etc...) In our case (not going into real life here), this question involves peoples' enjoyment of a game and what they accept for personal play and in trading. You not accepting this exploit is fine and perfectly reasonable. However, the trade rules are not going to be changed, it seems, and you'll have to safeguard yourself against this exploit some other way.

Worrying about this is also unnecessary, IMO. Using this exploit and some numbers and posted in another thread here (http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.php?p=1804067#post1804067), it would take approximately 33,000 hours to simply obtain the gold necessary to be likely to gamble a Tyrael's Might. That doesn't include the hours spent actually getting gambling screens with ancient armors on them.

edit: and thank you for your compliment on my guide. I meant to put that in the body of this last post, but that paragraph was cropped and I forgot to readd it.

 

[RTB]

Well, you affected me a bit by calling it a "feature", but I'll be alright.
I'm curious though--there's been several people here who've said it's a complete waste of time--why do you use it?

It's a undocumented feature, just like the Masteries and Guided+Pierce were.

I use it because killing pindle gets old too, and until I get bored with Gambling I'll have to use another way of getting lotsa gold fast. Grinding seems to be the fastest way of getting gold.

btw: D2 has no bugs, only features :teeth:

 

[pharaoh]

Huh? How can /players 8 get you to Hell faster? In my experience, /players 8 makes the game a lot slower (2-3 times, even more if you go HC, since it also gets much more dangerous and you must play safer). There is also the isssue of about 5 times as many town visits to sell stuff.

I use /players 8 to get lots of more items (more chances of good finds and a richer character (i.e. more gambling)) along the way and a couple of more levels, athough the difference on a full clear up to Hell is not that great (you get to level 74, compared to level 67 on /players 1).

It depends a lot on your character. Caster builds tend to take a lot longer on higher /players settings, because the monsters take so many more spell casts to finish off. This also means a much higher expenditure of mana, meaning more trips to town to buy potions, assuming the baddies aren't dropping enough to fuel your needs.

Melee characters, on the other hand, often do enough damage in Normal and Nightmare to finish off monsters (on /p8) in one or two hits, so their kill speed isn't compromised very much. Also, because monsters have so much more life, this means it's much easier to keep the life and mana filled through leech, since any extra damage beyond the monster's life won't leech a thing.

Physical ranged attackers like bowazons and throwing barbs tend to fall somewhere between these two extremes, depending how much damage they do, and how mana-intensive their skill sets are.

All that said, you also get a lot more drops and gold, plus a lot more exp, which means that even if you take a bit longer to get there, you're much more likely to be ready for Hell when you arrive.