Exploit (online Gaming) - Common Types

Common Types

Common types of exploits include:

Duping

Duplicating items or money.

Lag and disconnection exploits

A game with inadequate lag handling may let players intentionally cause lag for themselves to cause an advantage. Similarly, a game that lets a player disconnect immediately with no consequences may let players exit a game without suffering a loss. (Shogun 2: Total War)

Geometry

Taking advantage of how the game world is built. Typically the goal of these exploits is to reach normally inaccessible areas or take unintended shortcuts in the game world. These are commonly achieved by going through walls, crossing invisible barriers made by the programmers, or scaling ledges not intended to be climbable.

Twinking

Taking advantage of design flaws in the game's gearing system in order to appear better than you actually are. Because of the EULA which twinking does not violate, it is very commonly patched in order to prevent such an exploit from posing a serious problem.

Movement speed bugs

These usually allow the player to move faster than intended, such as bunny hopping. Many of these have been embraced by certain games, such as skiing in the Tribes series.

Safe zones

Places where a player can attack with no risk of being attacked back. This is often a form of an exploit in the geometry (terrain) of a game—however, a game may have areas that make players within them safe (especially in PvP games/zones where the opposing faction(s) may not enter) from attack while not disallowing the safe players to attack.

Game mechanics

Taking advantage of the systems that make up the gameplay. A game mechanics exploit is not a bug—it is working as designed, but at the same time is not working as intended. Things such as hitting an enemy in a zone then running off, knowing that when the enemy soon despawns you will get full credit for the "kill", as you did 100% of the damage to it (even though the damage did not kill it). Such as in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, where online you may come between a fight and it would not be a team battle, and characters would help one win. That means they would let one of the characters they are trying to help win, hit them then intentionally run off the stage to get the other player credit for killing them.

Each game has potential for exploits unique to that game's rules. For example, in World of Warcraft, wall-walking allowed a player to climb steep mountains that are supposed to be impassable to get into unfinished areas or make one's character not attackable by mobs or other players. EverQuest had an exploit in player versus player analogous to weight cutting in sports whereby a player would intentionally lose levels by dying in order to compete against lower-level players while wielding higher-level items and skills (game mechanics exploit). In the game City of Heroes people were using teleport powers to place others inside the PvP zones' watchtowers which, originally designed as props for atmosphere, had no way in or out if you could not teleport (the towers have since gained a doorway).