f13.net

EULAs are boring, nobody wants to read them, so let's pretend they don't exist. So, what is morally right:

1. Blizzard banning you for making yourself able to solo an instanced raid dungeon in WoW.
2. Valve banning you from Steam for making your gun more powerful in Half-life 2.
3. Firaxis permanently uninstalling Civilization IV from your computer for adding more money to your save file.

Where would you draw the line?

(http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j39/JakHayes/Gay20Thread20congrats.jpg)

Don't cheat in competitive multiplayer games?

You draw the line at the ban.

Cheating up to and around the edge of the ban is perfectly acceptable, if it wasn't, you'd be banned for it.

(http://users.rowan.edu/~astill71/OfficeUKGay.gif)

Do you have any idea how long I've been waiting to use that thing?

In a perfect world, you'd draw the line using some sort of document drafted by the publisher that outlined what constituted acceptable use of the software and what would happen if you violated it.  If you didn't like the terms, you could just return the software unused and get your money back.  That way nobody would have to have stupid arguments about where the line was, because it would be clearly defined and everybody would know where it was going in.  If you thought somebody broke the agreed-upon rules, you could take them to court.

Oh wait, that's called a EULA.  Never mind.

You read the document. if you don't agree you don't play. Punk.

This is not going to go well.  At all.







And am I the only one that noticed just how fucking toothpick skinny the Hoff is in that picture?  Gary Colemans legs are just as big as his.

Jesus, man.  Eat a cheeseburger or 100.

You cheat in a single player game- and its covered under 'don't ask don't tell' policy
You cheat in a competitive multiplayer game- you are affecting other, unwilling, players and deserve ban.

Also there is no such thing as morality, there are only actions and consequences.

1. Blizzard banning you for making yourself able to solo an instanced raid dungeon in WoW.
You're cheating. You can do this until caught.

2. Valve banning you from Steam for making your gun more powerful in Half-life 2.
You're cheating. You can do this until caught.

3. Firaxis permanently uninstalling Civilization IV from your computer for adding more money to your save file.
You're cheating. You can do this until caught.


It's actually very intuitive. You know you're doing something that was not intended. Ignorance is not really a valid argument in these cases. You didn't accidentally make your gun more powerful nor accidentally find, decrypt and modify your Civ IV save file. Those were intentional acts of advantage seeking. ...

This is a foolish and unrealistic notion.

Cheating is ingrained in our brains, from "beating the test" tips (as opposed to "learning the subject" tips) at school. straight up through built in cheat codes in our single player games, to defiance of the rules of the road by our police forces, and defiance of the rules of war by our leaders. Rules exist as flexible boundaries that are intended to be pushed against and tested. Or, at least, that's what the real world has taught us.

Rules are created in a way that rewards anyone who can break them and get away with it, and being that our defenders of the EULA are only human, someone will always get away with it. Hence, so long as humans are human, and rule breaking continues to be rewarded, people WILL ignore the EULA, and people WILL play anyway.

Now that that's been established. What do we do to fight the inevitable? It's not futile to try and reduce cheating, just silly to think that cheaters will obey a bunch of boring words with "PLAY NOW" and "QUIT THIS GAME YOU JUST PAID FOR" buttons under them.

lawl this thread is gay, amirite?

So what.. you thought it was just the wow collective that thought your 'friends' were asshats, and somehow the rest of the masses at F13 would read this 'what if' thread and validate your views? 

lawlz.

No one should care what I do in single player games as long as I'm not sharing it with the rest of the world.  If they do, they're just creepy.

I played a game of Madden once where I didn't throw a single pass. I handed off to Priest Holmes on every play for the whole game.

I knew I was doing something that wouldn't work in real football, but I did it anyway. Then EA came to my house and hit my gamecube with a shovel, breaking it into pieces.

So the moral of the story is, it is 100% clear what the developers intend because we are all clairvoyant.

---

In all seriousness, Signe is right. Single player game = who cares. I can cheat at Madden single-player or just masturbate with it, who gives a shit?

1. Blizzard banning you for making yourself able to solo an instanced raid dungeon in WoW.
Already banned for this one.
2. Valve banning you from Steam for making your gun more powerful in Half-life 2.
VAC2 is pretty weak. I have never been banned from steam.
3. Firaxis permanently uninstalling Civilization IV from your computer for adding more money to your save file.
I hate RTS games.

I would only draw the line at hacking accounts and servers.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

No, I'm pretty sure he meant RTS.

Really Tedious Stategy

Terra Nova is over there (http://terranova.blogs.com).

Single player: cheat away.
Multiplayer: don't be a fucking douchebag.

It's pretty simple.

Oh so there's a history to this thread?

Nobody cares if you cheat at Solitaire, but they do care if you cheat at poker.  Can YOU figure out the difference?

Oh yes:


...followed by...

I cheated in this thread, considering that this thread is entirely pointless, does it make me a bad person?

I cheated in this thread, considering that this thread is entirely pointless, does it make me a bad person?

Exploiting a dupe bug, very nice.

H4X0rZ

Ew, yeah, what the fuck is wrong with the Hoff's legs?

But Blizzard isn't the sole owner of all aspects of WoW.

At the same time, that has nothing to do with what tkinnun0 asked in the first post. I just thought he was either being provocatively niave or sociopathic :)

Yes, and yet, some people simply cannot get it.

Here's a bold prediction: in the future, adding multiplayer will not be a technical problem, so most every game will have it.

Do you engage with society often?

Heh. Welcome to 2000.

Yeah, you're right.  The title and scenarios outlined have NOTHING to do with that tread at all.  He didn't bring up "Blizzard doesn't own everything in WoW!" as a counter-argument to his friends getting banned in a manner similar to scenario #1 at all!! How silly of me, ha ha.  I have to go kill a cat now.

Oh, hey, all I've got to go on is the Cliffs Notes Endie provided about the history behind this. His questions have a definite 'this happened to a, err, "buddy" of mine once, yea, that's it' ring to them. I just don't know which of these eleventybillion threads that conversation actually took place in.

It started here: http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8569.0

I participated in this thread.  Therfore I own it, or something.  Right?

For some reason I thought you'd participated in that thread.  I was cranky & tired. Hugs & Kisses.

You don't own the thread, but you might own your own comments. All this should become very clear from reading the Terms of Service. You did read the ToS when you registered to f13.net, didn't you?

So then if I hack the board to give myself a postcount of ten billion and grief-title everyone with "UO is teh awesome" Schild can't ban me, right?  Because I own some shit, or whatever.  I mean that is basically what it comes down to for your WoW buddies.

(http://www.theworldtakes.com/mike/posts.jpg)

Prior to the post, I hadn't heard about their guild. They played on US servers and I don't, for one.

From the limited information presented in the thread I think their members couldn't take a break from their characters and couldn't bring themselves to delete them, so they exploited and didn't really try to hide it. In other words, they wanted an intervention, and they got it.

Yes, scenario 1 is based on their story. It is presented in a single-player context without the human interest stuff for the sake of a more theoretical discussion.

I hope this is a full enough disclosure about my "buddies".

Ah, that one. Hadn't read it yet. Thanks for the link. Now I get it.

Sounds like it all comes down to this:

Remember when I said "sociopathic" earlier? :)

See? I agree with Signe sometimes.  :-)

Pretty sure somewhere, deep in a Department of Homeland Security bunker, someone is right now plotting ways of finding out who every single person in the country with a single player flight sim program is.  Gotta keep tabs on all those would be terrorist hijackers (it could be ANYONE!!11!!11one!one)

Drugs and flares.

....

What?

On the topic of people with an overly-large sense of ownership, there was a creepy moment in CoV last night. I was winding down for the night, logged in as an alt on Mercy Island (newbie zone). There was a TheHulk- character and some twat was getting really bent out of shape about it OMG I'M REPORTING YOU-type shit. So I started to ask why he was so upset and he got into how he was protecting his game. Apparently, the failed marvel lawsuit (and setting aside the fact that Cryptic has marvel IP rights atm) was enough to scare this guy into policing the newbie zone and reporting newly-made IP infringements. I was shocked by that level of bootlicking. He got very worked up about how we signed a EULA and whatnot, it was pretty funny. I have to admit I taunted him for a while, and pretty much the entire zone started figuring out ways everyone's names were IP infringements (I called the bootlicker on stealing that cat from the smurfs' name ;)).

Some people need to get a fucking life. But I guess that's why they are so 'serious' about mmo. *shrug* I did have a sudden urge to make a Wolverine, just to be a prick.

....

What?
[/quote]

Imagine your favourite console shooter, but with a button which instantly shows all the other players from your area who are playing right there beside you, allowing you to chat, exchange ammo or whatever. In this brave new future, you being a douchebag depends on someone doing the math on your Shooter Guy Points(TM) and making a fuss about it on their blog.

single player games an an aberration, like, duh.

shooter guy points, dude.   :mrgreen:

Um. Oh?

Me being a douchebag has more to do with me hating 99% of online gamers. Or at least that overly vocal 5% that I'd really like to work over with a baseball bat. And poke in the eye with a knife. Morganti.

In short, I have no clue whatsoever it is you're trying to ramble about and the kids are getting scared.

Also, these kids with their chat. If I want to talk to someone, I'll go visit them.

Why is there that one guy on teamspeak that thinks he's in radio and has to keep the empty space filled?

Mock him until he cries and quits.

OK, once more in excruciating detail:

1. Person A cheats in the single-player portion of the game with seamless multiplayer.
2. The game keeps a tally of Person A's score which is visible the few times Person A goes online to check demos of other games.
3. Person B sees the rate of Person A's point accumulation and makes a fuss. Why? Perhaps there's prizes involved.
4. The fuss reaches a critical mass forcing the game company to react.
5. Person A is now banned from both the single-player and multiplayer portions of the game.

This scenario is inspired by Gears of War: Emergence Day (http://www.gamerandy.com/archives/2006/11/gears_of_war_av.shtml).

Edit: what I'm trying to ask is, can you own a game in which tradional single-player and multiplayer have fused and become inseparable?

I don't understand your question. Define "seemless" multiplayer. Do you have to be online to play single-player mode?

Hmm. My brother had his "The Flaming Hulk" (pink and gay!) changed to generic superhero_string_of_digits rather quickly. I think it was his habit of running up to people and screaming that their costume/superhero concept offended him. Then dancing at them.

This was before the Marvel lawsuit was settled, so I suspect it was "The Hulk" part -- not the flaming gayness.

If you are competing in an online leaderboard to win prizes clearly it is a multiplayer game, and anyone who allows people to play offline to get leaderboard points is a fucking moron to boot.

Emergence Day is apparently a clusterfuck, but you know what? If you want to play offline just unplug your fucking console from the wall. Problem solved.

In your moronic scenario the "single player" portion of the game is a multiplayer contest.

Yes, but only intermittently. Let's say the price of the console is subsidized by advertising delivered to the console.

In the scenario, I'm thinking going from single-player to cooperative multiplayer won't interrupt the gameplay; you just push a button and receive an in-game radio transmission telling friendly players are in the next room. Since all of this is built into 3D engines it will be added to all games, because developers have paid for it in their licensing fees.

You have no idea how technology or game design works. But I will not be mean.

To go from single player to co-op you have to design a game that plays well co-op. It makes sense to make a multi-player game that you can play by yourself, but a single-player game that you can play with others is quite different.

There are always lag issues but much more subtle things to consider as well. Does it make the game too easy? Do you have to fundamentally change the design of levels? Do the two players really even interact? Can the other guy take all the limited power-ups?

Even if I could press a button and magically have Super Mario Brothers turn into a co-op game where some random internet stranger was playing along side of me, why would I want to? Do I reallly need 3 other Dantes playing next to me in DMC? Or another Solid Snake sneaking around killing enemies before I get a chance to?

What you are describing would work well for many games, but really the idea there is to start with a co-op game and allow it to scale down, not the other way around.

If single-player cheating affects the multi-player game then at the minimum the player should be banned from the multi-player part of the game. I'm a little more ambivalent about banning the player from the single-player as well, assuming that was possible. In your example, if the "prize" you earn in single-player is useable in multi-player and assuming it has some meaning gameplay effect (i.e. it's not just something trivial like a costume change) then that would qualify.

Edit: fixed typo

If the price of anything is subsidized to the point you have to keep it plugged in to download ads or do something else equally asinine, you don't own it.  You've signed a lease of some sort at a point in the transaction process, or you got snowjobbed by the place you bought it from, and should return the hardware/ software.

In either event, you've agreed you do not own what you have physical possession of.  The real owners of the unit/ software can deny you access for whatever reasons they've outlined in that agreement.

Wow, I honestly never thought this thread could get worse than how it started.


When that is the high point of a thread, something is very wrong.


Cheating is bad mmm'kay.

In single person games, it's the only way I can get through them.  Don't you be calling me bad, Eldaec!

Uh....that article is about multiplayer matches. Your scenario is riddled with logical holes.

If there is some online service keeping track of my single-player game stuff, I will firewall it. Prizes? Please.
You sure like to make up scenarios, don't you?

I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.

Don't do drugs.

Speaking of cheating, apparently Blizzard broke out their Mighty Banhammer of the Eagle and smote a whole bunch of botters very recently.

The official boards are aflame with the usual "I got banned but I never used bot_program_65! Fix this Blizz!"...of which quite a few (as expected) end up backpeddling to "I only used it once! Okay, a couple of times. Okay, so I bot for dreamfoil 24/7"

Yes, if your unique selling point is having a brilliant co-op gameplay. But consider this: how many games have realistic physics as a USP? Physics simulation is moving from novelty to everyone having some at this very moment. Various forms of multiplayer could be next, propelled by 3D engines having higher and higher level features. For example, in a current-gen engine a developer might be placing shotgun shells into closets. In a next-gen engine, the developer might be placing "ammo supplies" in closets and then saying that during this part of the level, the player should get 2 medium ammo units (equals 4 shotgun shells) per monster. Scaling this up for multiple co-op players would now be trivial and provide a passable (not great, not awful) co-op experience. Sure, problems introduced by multiplayer have to be solved first, but it makes sense for the 3D engine developer to provide reasonable solutions and allow their licensees to tailor them, if they so choose.

Hmm, so you're saying that we shouldn't be hard-coding everything with literals?  Radical.  You should write to somebody about that.

You're persistent though, I'll give you that.  And you're rapidly convincing me you're right.  Well, when I say "convincing me you're right" I mean persuading me that your knowledge of coding is limited to 10 Print "Hello World!"|  20 Goto 10

 :cry:

This thread just called, it wants to be spared the pain and to die quickly.

They did ban the wrong people (http://transgaming.org/submit-wow.html) this time. I'm sure they don't really care who gets banned though. The majority of WoW players are like crack addicts, and will hock their (parents') wedding ring(s) to buy a new copy.

People realize that diku clones are largely timesinks and use second party software to get to the "fun".  News at 11.

If I lost my the character I put all that time into, I would certainly NOT be paying another $30+ to start over.

There's a certain subtle distinction that most people miss when it comes to cheating.

If you're by yourself and you're cheating then that's fine.  All you're really missing is the game experience as the developers intended it, and instead you're getting to all that rich and juicy content right away. 

If you're in a multiplayer environment, however, everybody's expecting to play fairly.  I know that some people think that online games are just a big ol sandbox in which all the kids can do whatever they're want.  They're not.  The developer should put in the necessary blocks to stop people from cheating, but players often come up with things they don't consider, so everybody's on the honor system.  The result is that this is a game in which either everybody agrees it's okay to cheat or nobody should.

What's the harm in cheating?  Well, I could probably write several paragraphs about that, but sufice to say that everybody's interconnected in an online game, even if you can't see those connections, and cheating affects non-cheating players game experience negatively.

However, I've argued this point into the ground time and time again.  Some people simply cannot or will not believe this.   The only thing you can do is ban cheaters when you see them ignoring the majority's wishes, because clearly there will always be people who believe it is within their right take liberties with the concept of a shared game environment.

Honestly, sometimes I'm not too surprised when I see cheating happening in some MMORPGs.  Such long treadmills can push otherwise sane people to think, "Screw this.  I'm cheating, I'm getting to that content these greedy bastard developers have been keeping me from weeks longer than necessary, and if I get banned then good riddence."  It's an irresponsible choice in that it hurts other players game experience to witness that their fantasy world has leaks, but I can nonetheless see why people would be pushed to do it.  Wallhackers in FPS don't have the same excuse - learn some skillz, you wusses.

I don't know, Geldon. I have the same reaction to dikumills, but it tends to go, "Screw this. I'm outta here." Why stay and cheat? It's a sign of a shitty game design and you shouldn't waste time when there is so much gaming goodness out there. Or, you know, other things.

Length or depth of the game is not directly tied to people's urge to cheat.  There's folks who look for cheats for fucking minesweeper & solitare.

Some people just don't like being bound by any kind of rules and only want the "I win."  Wether that's getting an actual "You Win" screen or "ding-gratz max-level & uberpower."