Herba Tactus is anti-cheat, anti-cheese and anti-exploit but pro min-maxing
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Recently it has become clear that many people in the community are throwing around phrases incorrectly
(both on purpose for their own benefit but also without understanding connotation).
Educate yourself below so you don't accidentally cause drama:
Exploiting, Cheating, Cheesing and Min-maxing --
The differences between them explained
Cheesing
Finding a way to skip mechanics in a game to make content easier. Not mutually exclusive to an exploiting.
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cheese example: We chose not to kill adds in a boss fight to spawn the next phase of the boss to control the next phase spawn.
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Exploiting
Finding a bug in the game that is not part of your normal gameplay of a class and changing your usual play pattern to exploit that bug.
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Exploit example 1: "We climbed above the dungeon to skip the whole thing. I wouldn't have done that in my normal gameplay but there is a bug where you can phase through the ceiling so I decided to exploit it."
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Exploit example 2: "We killed ourselves on the boss and started resetting our godstones to bypass the cooldown and spamming it. The godstone has a bug which allows me to bypass the described cooldown. "
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Cheating
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Using various methods to create an unfair advantage beyond normal gameplay. i.e doing something that others do not have access to outside the realm of normal gameplay.
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Various examples of tools one might use to cheat:
- Modifying game code to gain an unfair advantage.
- Modifying game assets to gain an unfair advantage.
- Stealing information from somewhere you are not supposed to be authorized to have access to.
- Gaining access to information that others do not have access to by unfair advantage of a third party (by whatever means).
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unfair advantage - something in which others through normal gameplay do not have access to.
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Unfair advantages =/= cheat(ing). Information can be gathered legitimately to have an unfair advantage, however, its on the duty of the game community and developers to not accidentally or intentionally give information to individuals that would create an unfair advantage in this case.
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Examples of cheating:
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- "I modified a game file so that I can <do> <something> better"
- "I activated my third party tool to <do> <something> better"
- "I tricked a staff member into giving me information they shouldn't have given me"
- "Taking malicious actions against your competition in order to create an unwarranted penalization against them"
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Cheating is not mutually exclusive with exploiting or cheesing
Min-maxing
Min-maxing is the character-building strategy of maximizing specific desirable abilities, skills, and/or other stats/powers of a character and minimizing everything else, seen as undesirable.
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min-maxing IS mutually exclusive with cheesing, exploiting and cheating.
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In a given situation, you are no longer min-maxing for a legitimate reason if you use any method that does not naturally occur within the game.
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min-maxing example 1: "Lets time our skill usage one after another so that we may keep our buff up for the party to deal more damage"
min-maxing example 2: "I want to get every millisecond of health regen and damage increase I can so i am going to make sure to press my teleport button on cooldown"
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NOT a min-maxing example: "Let's stand on top of the boss room to avoid all his mechanics"
These are strong words and you should carefully apply empathy before including it in your sentences otherwise you will look like a bad person.
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- Cheesing makes it sound like the encounter was easy to do by anyone who did it that way ; remember that, anything you call a cheese should truly come under the cheese definition (feel free to refer back here if you forget)
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- Exploiting makes it sound like the individuals who you believed exploited does not care about competing and just want the reward. This degrades their achievement significantly. As soon as you say someone was exploiting, you are attacking their character too, so be careful how you use it. In real-world history and current day, exploitation has extreme connotation so it is read and used in an extreme manner. Please make sure to refer to the definition of exploit before throwing around the phrase when describing situations.
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- Cheating ; You gotta actually know for sure before you call it out and if you do, be mindful of the other person's reaction. Nobody likes a cheater and as soon as you call someone a cheater that will be stuck with them for a very long time, to the point that they will act defensively and be alienated from said communities -- Keep in mind, that most people are playing videos games for fun and if they are very actively social, they are probably not intentionally cheating to ruin the experience for others and by calling them out, you should be doing it because it's directly affecting other peoples gameplay experience.
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- Min-maxing ; By saying that someone is min-maxing, you are essentially letting them know, that you recognized they have been practicing and thinking about how to utilize their class and roles mechanics in the best way possible. This is a positive and non-toxic compliment you can give when someone has truly min-maxed something. The less you acknowledge it when you see it, the saltier you may be perceived as. Empathizing with success is positively received thing that influences people better than negatively attributing others.
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Final Note:
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I really hope this helps everyone in the community to form constructive discussions on min-maxing in MMOs and not inadvertently demonizing other community members because the words were incorrectly used -- Please be mindful that it is perceived as toxic if used incorrectly.
Be responsible and do not abuse these words within your phrasing to fit your narrative or for your own self-serving benefits.
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Wrote by yours truly, J