[Mylon]

I don't think people cheat to win as much as they cheat to "earn" prizes. I recall that there were some prizes given away to the people on the top of the Starcraft ladder, and while I'm not sure if this is the case with Warcraft III it's probaby similar.

I've actually been considering the cheat potential of SEIV a bit, just for curiosity's sake, but I _think_ it's pretty secure given how turns can be easily generated remotely, thus it really doesn't matter what the components say they do in the player's computer, it's what they say on the host computer that matters. At least, I hope this is how it works. The other issue that could become a problem is people opening up your empire. I'm not sure if they can submit your turn for you, but that omnipresent view would make things pretty difficult. This could be potentially corrected if the save files were split up and distributed to the indivudal empires instead of packaged together.

One important thing to remember about cheating is that if it is possible, it is safe to assume it will happen. Map hacks in RTS games can be very difficult to stop because at least two computers in the group need to be aware of where every unit is and their status to prevent cheating of another fashion (invincibility, free unit production, ect...), but a cheat-free option would require a "moderator" to act as the omnipresent view and distribute limited map information to the other players. Providing this service to everyone would be very expensive with some 100,000 games going on at a time, and trusting a player to be the host gives them the ability to cheat but limits the ability of the other players to do as such.

I've had my own experiences of cheating among even my own friends. Thankfully it was in single player games, but I never really could understand the practice of using "unintended features" of the game to make it less interesting. I remember in Rise of the Triad if you plugged in the god mode code, the character never stopped yawning.

[ September 13, 2002, 15:40: Message edited by: Mylon ]