Should glitches and uber-shortcuts be advertised or kept secret?

[SaturnReturn]

Well, we probably all know by now that there are (or have been for some cases) ways to improve times and scores in HD that are considered unacceptable by some, but perfectly fine by others. But what do people think is the best way to deal with these methods?

Should we:

a. Keep them a secret as long or as far as possible so that as few people use them as possible; or

b. Show everyone so that we all know what is possible.

c. Leave it up to the individual to do what they consider fair/right - because ultimately it's just a game.

d. Sit around shrugging because we're really not sure.

I guess there are arguments both ways. If you know what the methods are for getting a massive shortcut, for example, and how much time it will gain you, then you can look at the top of the leaderboards and more easily tell what kind of time you can achieve with a particular method. Connavar's site can be used to filter out any methods where consensus says they are unacceptable, so it isn't too much of a bother for anyone close to the top (which I suppose raises the question of how to achieve consensus and not just start arguing about it). But further down the boards it would be quite irritating for a person in, say 50th place, because they wouldn't have anyway to tell if someone used the methods or not (well maybe in SL, but less so in TT, for example, where they could have used it on one lap and then done 4 normal laps).

So is it better to try and prevent these methods being used, perhaps by not showing them in videos or discussing them etc? What does everyone think?

I'm not looking to directly question any particular method here, or whether it is acceptable or not - just wondering what people's views are on how to handle them.

I vote d. - I just don't know.

[yeldar2097]

Keep them secret so people like me don't use them to get illegitimately good times.

Keep them secret because the boards are a disgrace.

If you find a glitch/board-breaking shortcut you have a responsibility to keep it to yourself and not to use it. We all love the game (a bit too much in some cases ) so we all know that it's important to preserve the integrity of the boards blahblah etcb.

I'm right you know

*Jedi mind trick hand movement*

[SaturnReturn]

Well then I'll add a further question:

Once the method is out there and a few have used it, is it fair game for anyone to use it? Once there's one video of it, should anyone using it then post a video so we all know they're using it?

[Temet]

Good idea Sat
My personal feeling : they must not be public ... simply because the reality is that you can't trust everybody.
Some people showed me a lot of glitches with private vids because :
- they trust me not to use them (I didn't even try actually),
- I'm really too bad to worry anybody on the ranking board

We all know some people used glitches to get #1 on the rank board, and we all know some would use these glitches to get a good rank, even if they are modest pilots.

Let's be honest and fair, let's use our skills and training, not the defects in the game

[Woopzilla]

Since I feel some people seemed to have misunderstood my post in the other thread I'll say it here:

-It should not be shown.
-It should not be used.

This is because it seems way over the top for a shortcut. I'm not too sure that a consensus will ever be reached though because in essence it's similar to BSB. If people can't agree upon BSB, then there's a fat chance that a glitch like shortcut will.

In my 'personal records' I can see a time that wasn't uploaded (I don't how long it's been there or if it was Single or Multi) but now I'm scared to upload it because it would be rank 3... People will now go: "Ohhhh you set a good time after seeing that video? I see...". But I know 100% that I NEVER use exploits.

Too bad there's no hope for a magical wipe of the leaders and a bug fix patch. *dreams on*

[KGB]

I'd love to see them all, I still don't know where this famous Seb climb (is it reverse?) glitch is . I could never be bothered to use them anyway. Who cares about the tables these days, they were corrupt a long time ago. We all know who the top pilots are, and who can get good times and we can usually spot a glitched time. Who's gonna send me a link to them all .

Out of interest can someone name the tracks that these glitches/Uber shortcuts appear on as I can only think of Moa rev and Talons (rev?) as what I would think as glitch. I may use what you call a Uber shortcut myself without realizing.

[SaturnReturn]

That's a good point Ken-chan. How will the community even know something is considered unacceptable if they've never seen it? Some things are borderline, which tends to be the cause of controversy, so surely some people have to know about it to judge it. People have different standards too. Some could consider the Ubermall Reverse shortcut too far as it misses out that really tricky chicane on the hill. How do we know what's crossing the line if we don't know where the line is?

[mic-dk]

Security through obscurity has never, and will never, prevent secrets from getting out. It's good practice to lay it all open to the community, and soon someone will find a new way to break your program. That gives you a chance to fix it.

Except...

We don't have anyone to actually fix the problems.

I have come to accept that the in-game leaderboards are beyond repair, so in my view, it can't be broken any more than it already is by revealing all the glitches. As others state, Connavars site is The Truth when it comes to real rankings.

That still leaves Saturns questions on what to do with eg. a TT with one glitched lap and how a consensus is reached on whether or not something is a glitch or a clever shortcut. I vote D on this...

[KGB]

All these glitches and shortcuts have been found by the best players anyway. People forget sometimes that it still takes a lot of skill to pull them off. With the Ubermall reverse shortcut my success rate has to be 20% at Phantom. I do think it is just a shortcut though, the same as CP rev, Sol 2 for/rev (over/under the wing) and Moa for. Errr...not sure what my point is now, I'll post it anyway . It's hot and I've been drinking .

[leungbok]

I agree with you Kgb, about the shortcuts on ubermall, chengou reverse ...
They're old tricks and are considered as legitimate to all wipers for what i know. But on one side they can be considered too as glitches because they benefit of a lack of respawn. Maybe we can consider them as an exception because they follow approximately the track's path.
The long range shortcuts like sol2 or moa reverse are an other problem IMO, the time benefit is too huge and you avoid to race on a big part of the track.
To make people understand i recently found accidentaly a glitch wich allows a lap of less than 10 seconds on a track at phantom speed ! In that case i could avoid 70% of the track, which is a total nonsense.

I consider myself as inacceptable :

- shortcuts that gives more than half a second of gain.
- shortcuts that passes across walls or structures except the amphiseum reverse official shortcut (sol2 passes a structure, moa reverse passes across the ceiling)

[KGB]

Does this Sol2 glitch actually work, I take it is the one that you hit the lip and boost over the top track. On the video he doesn't make it.

What do you think of the CP rev shortcut then Leungbok as I've always been under the impression that it gives you about 2 seconds advantage?

[leungbok]

the gain off the shorcut on chengou reverse is not that great, but maybe more than half a second And as i said it's now an old trick used by almost everybody on the ranking so let's close our eyes on this one and the 2/3 similar
It works on sol 2 unfortunately !
About that, if you accidentaly use a glitch during a speedlap session, you must pause the game, and quit the game directly using the ps button of your ds3/sixaxis or the "quit game" option on xmb, if you don't want to save and upload that glitched time !

[KGB]

Cool! I'm going to try it now......joke. Believe it or not I once fell off the top level on Sol 2 and landed on the lower level, I had to wait about 15 seconds for Soccermums to catch me up. Never managed it again as I respawn every time.

If you suddenly find me in the top ten SL for Sol 2 you will know that I succumbed to temptation .

[AG-wolf]

It's a tough call...

on one hand, I'm really curious to see what people are doing that are considered huge shortcuts or glitches

on the other hand, I know once they get out into the open, everybody and their brother will start exploiting them.


It's not so much a big deal here on the forums, the community here has the sense enough to delineate between their "legitimate" times and the glitch/shortcut times, so people know how they achieved their time... but it sucks when a game gets broken by a handful of quirks/glitches and then the gap between "good pilots" and "ZOMG 3 SECOND LAP GLITCH EXPLOITER EXTRAORDINAIRE pilots" becomes miles wide (F-Zero GX, anyone?)

In the end, I still vote to share them. Like I said, I'm just really curious to see what people are capable of... Lots of times, these exploits and shortcuts, although kinda cheap, do require a lot of skill to accomplish... and I, for one, am always impressed when I see Really Cool Sh*t from some of the top-tier WO pilots out there.

[amplificated]

I consider these "developer oversights" to be the shortcuts where it's a close call between success and a respawn, or they've actually put in barriers to prevent it from working (e.g. bsb), or no-clipping more than just a small part of the ship through a building. If you have to carefully find your way through pure trial and error by avoiding the invisible barriers or fly through a building, you've found yourself a developer oversight to abuse.

I would like there to be a place where top (and trusted) players could find out about the latest uber-shortcuts, as it would help to discern which times/players have abused one of these oversights or not. (uber-shortcuts also look pretty cool, admittedly )
Perhaps a members-only forum on this site, as not all of us are close friends and share them with each other; though I'm not a fan of the idea of a closed off sub-community. Perhaps if it was solely for this purpose of sharing these "glitches".

So yeah, I think for the general public, these things should be kept secret, as there's no other way to help keep the leaderboards as clean as possible. While it's bad enough with a handful of players going out of their way to get abused times, it would definitely be worse if the boards were flooded by them just because every other player saw a video of it on youtube.

I think SL should have done a better job with the respawn barriers, as a lot of these shortcuts, I think, are clearly not intended to be possible.

[Dark_Phantom_89]

I'd say share them but don't use them. Yes it's a little easier said than done, but at the end of the day a glitch is just that - a glitch. It is not an indication of a true time as it has been obtained under dubious circumstances.

I don't even know most of these glitches anyway. I only know the Moa Therma and Sol 2 one, but I am aware that there are many more.

[yeldar2097]

Well as far as the CP Rev shortcut is concerned, I consider it a shortcut and not a glitch because I (one) can get within 0.5 seconds of my best TT time by boosting in a different location.

If there were an alternative boost location that would allow for similar times to be achived then the glitches would be legitimate. But on MoaR for example there is only ONE way to gain an extra 3 seconds, as with Sol 2 and Seb.

Correct me if I'm wrong (leungbok) but as far as I'm aware kingheim held the TT record on Ubermall Reverse for quite a while even after the shortcut was demonstrated in a video. Yes the shortcut is faster, but only just

The French pioneers among us work hard to find shortcuts, BRs and boost locations, but none of these will gain you 1s per lap consistently (and they all more or less follow the track as opposed to skipping masses of it and landing awkwardly).

yeldar wins

*Jedi mind trick MKII*

[blackwiggle]

This is not really a new topic,it is still a real bone of contention. and has a lot of history behind it with all the wipeouts at this forum.

If you look at previous wipeouts, take 2097 for a well known example.
There are heaps of shortcuts if you boost at the right place, fair enough.
You have other areas that you can pass through the scenery and cut out huge chunks of tracks.
Now were the times gotten by cutting out areas of track used?
Were they legit?

You have the same situation happening again now, the only difference is that your don't really have a choice about a so called "Glitched" time being recorded for all to see, where with 2097 the time could be ignored.

Interesting that Ubermall reverse was brought up.
Everybody knows the shortcut by boosting up over the chicane, but not everybody can do it.
But again as an example, there is also an element of true glitch to that ubermall reverse shortcut.
Have a look at this photo I took ages ago of my AG craft passing through the side wall of the chicane.
Is it still a short cut or a glitch?
[IMG][/IMG]

[amplificated]

I'd call that a glitch - you can do a legit boost there, but you're passing through something which you shouldn't be able to pass through. I wouldn't worry about it since it isn't going to save you any time.

[yeldar2097]

Faster to go higher and land on/past the crest of the hill, no glitch

interesting about 2097 though...hmmmmmmmmm