OT: Cheaters
 

Before you all go and freak out, I am not talking about SEIV or PBW. What I am talking about is other games.

I recently discovered that I am a naive fool when it comes to cheaters and games. In every game there will be those who cheat. It is when that game becomes so saturated by cheaters that one begins to understand that cheating has become the black market of the On line / Multiplayer universe.

Games such as Tribes, Counter Strike, BOTF, Quake 2, Quake 3, Unreal Tournament, and even Elite Force and SEIV have all fallen pray to these Lepers who love to cheat.

I just discovered, after nearly a month of game play, that the on line game Black Nova Traders, is a cesspool of cheating. It really sickens me to find out how naive I really am. To have been beaten by a cheater, and to have all my hard work stolen from me by a cheater just makes me want to find the server this game is one, and hack it. Then again, I have no hacking skills, so that in turn really angers me. Sorry, cheating happens, and it is an on line gaming way of life.

The sick thing is that no one seems to be able to stem the tide. The faster the game developers fix the exploits, the faster the hackers hack the game.

When Tribes became as bad as Counter Strike, I stopped playing it. The developers could care less, as they were interested in other issues such as fixing bugs. Commendable, but off target a bit. You see, once the word got out that CS was flooding and swamped by cheaters, no one played. So Sierra had to do something. They recently, Last month, released a new patch for HL to fix many of the known hacks. Well, new hacks are now popping up and the game is once again falling back into that quagmire that cheaters love so much.

Is there no light at the end of the tunnel? I think there is. I think that in time, developers will become so desperate to stop cheaters that they will make it a part of the gaming license that if the player is detected cheating, more than once, then their CD code, registered to them, will be Banned from all game servers for X amount of time. If cheating continues, it will become a permanent ban.

With the ever increasing anti-theft, owner verification programs, and smarter copy prevention systems becoming more and more aggressive, I can see a time when using a pirated copy of a game to play on line with will be a thing of the past.

People say it can not be done, or where there is a will, there is a way, but I say to that, your right. And those who develop these games will eventually find a method that will ensure that although the game can be hacked and copied, it can't be played on line.

In the end, cheaters will loose the incentive to cheat. Cheating is a self-destructive pattern that can only lead to one's loosing interest in a game. If you know you are always going to win, winning becomes less and less important. Once people know that you’re a cheater, who'll want to play with you?

I have learned my lesson about Black Nova Traders, and have stopped playing that game. If the cheaters are so fricking desperate to be top dawg in that game, then I say they can have it. Besides, the banner pop-ups were getting to become a major nuisance.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

[rant]
When I hear stuff like this it makes me even more appreciative of Malfador that they do take the issue seriously and make an effort to fix those problems when they come up.

My pet theory about this kind of stuff is that these people aren't relly interested in winning or losing the game itself. The real game they are playing is against the developer, not against the people in the game where they are cheating. Many of them are amatuer programmers, or even professional ones but are stuck in unsatisfying jobs. They see the developer of the game doing the things they they want to do, and feel like they could do better if only...

a)They had more time
b)They had more money for startup
c)They weren't being held back
d)Life wasn't so unfair

blah, blah, blah.

It's really very sad actually. Instead of getting off their butts and making this "Awesome game" they have floating around in their heads and actually learning how the real world operates, they choose instead to show their skill at programing by destroying the hard work of others.[/rant]

Geoschmo

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

I don't play any PBW games because of the weenies that do this sort of crap. Same sort of shock and depressing wake-up call happened to me about 10 or years ago. It's pretty sicking, I saw the same sort of thing at university. Cheating seemed to be the 'cool' accepted norm.

Indeed, by now, I am convinced that honest, moral, upright behavior toward your fellow human being is the exception to the rule.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That is really a depressing way to look at life my friend. I would have to say that the people I have met here at these forums have proven to be very nice people indeed. Always helpful and always willing to talk.

If what you say is accurate, and I am not agreeing or dissagreeing with you, then I would venture a guess that in "that" mind set, the game is all about money and power.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

Tenryu

most people are just wrapped up in there own world and it seems that they are that way. Careless perhaps but on the whole do not wish for harm to occur to others.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

Gentlemen,

RANT ON
Having played games Online now for far too long (20 years? -- starting with compuserve on an apple) I have encountered cheating in every game. Whether it was a 1st person shooter like Tribes or Everquest (*Everquest is a HUGE discussion in and of itself), a strategy game like Mechcommander or StarCraft, or an edventure game like Diablo I have always found cheaters.

Some of those games had a fantastic and enthusiastic player community that stomped down hard on cheating. The best example of a player community IMHO was the StarLance Mechcommander league. There were instances of players and whole teams cheating, yet the retributive actions taken by the player-body and adminstration of the league cleaned up the problem player(s) quite nicely. (I miss Starlance - it was very good - in its time.)

Starcraft and Diablo were games that had rampant cheating and I soon left them in frustration and anger.

Some folks might make the general statement that all cheating is done by 13-16 year old puberty ridden boys. However, I have seen instances older (age 40+) established players, male and female, taking advantage of an exploit or hack in a game or league system.

Cheating is always sad, and I find that I have become fairly inured to it. If it ruins the gaming experience for me or my team, then I leave the game behind and find a new one.

RANT OFF

&lt;~sigh~&gt;

Cheers!
Trajan

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

I just seriously don't understand how people can cheat not only once, but keep doing it. To me it's the most low thing they could possibly do. I mean that takes the challenge of the game away. When I get a game I'm looking for a challenge, not a blow away with cheats. That's why I've taken up PBW, to play against human intelligence(sp) and have a challenge, the AI got to be a little bit too easy. But it's no fun if you cheat, and when you cheat you take the fun out of the game for others, not just yourself.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have to agree, unfortunately. In a more real-world example, the company that one of my friends works for recently announced, in the spirit of open, honest communication, some changes they were making in preparation for acquiring another company. Instead of being praised for their VOLUNTARY disclosure, the market panicked, assuming that the company was using false honesty to cover fraud, and the stock value fell 50% in the span of a single day. I guess the moral here is to lie, cheat and steal because the general population assumes you will anyway, and will just punish you more for honesty than deceit.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

The only reason, and this is the only reason, is that cheaters are losers that can't stand losing. The only way for them to win, however, is to stack the deck in thier favor mid-game.

In the past, I've seen players in SE leave because of cheating whether they did it or were a victim of it.

The tide of this war will have to start changing sooner or later. Sadly, we are going to have to drag our morals and ethics through the dirt before they can. What I'm taking about is that we need a group of people to find these hacks and cheats for MM and help him fix them. They will also have to investigate possible cheaters by simply playing them in games and cheating.

If a game is played between cheaters, one will cry 'he cheated!' and when we ask for proof, it'll expose them as cheaters one way or another.

Re: OT: Cheaters
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, this is already being done. It's unfortunatly way too much of what I do at PBW. But it's worth the effort IMHO.

But it doesn't require any violation of ethics on our part. You can find cheats and hacks playing games on your own computer. You don't have to do it in an actual Online multiplayer game. All that does is call your motivation into question. So my suggestion to anyone out there that feels compelled to seek out these hacks and cheats, do it in test games on your own computer, and report your findings immediately to Malfador. Don't share this knowledge with anyone in a forum. And don't do it in PBW games, under ANY circumstances, even for "testing" purposes.

Geoschmo