05-06-2006, 09:44 PM
It's hardly worth arguing about in any case. Frankly, nobody needs to know even whether you use such a program or not. The exception would be if you engage in the practice of item trading. If you trade items with someone, it is fair that they know if such items have ever been imported into the game rather than being passed from character to character (regardless whether it is this program or Han Solo's trainer or whatever). Basically you can't consider it unreasonable for another person to consider any advantage gained from a third party program a form of cheating, and you don't want there to be hard feelings if you trade an item and then the person finds out later that you have thousands of items stored via a utility. That's simply an issue of trust. If the other person agrees with you on what qualifies as valid uses of the utility, they should have no problems making such a trade.
On a side note, one needs to be careful about making the argument that something is OK because all it does is reduce tedium. Allow me to abuse the slippery slope fallacy. :) Let us take the example of modifying the game to allow town teleport or fast walk (or the more adventurous variation of moving Adria and Wirt into Town Square). One can justify such things by saying that all they do is reduce tedium. After all, there is no risk involved in walking to Adria... you cannot die, lose life or mana, drop gold, lose permanent hp or spell points... you just use some time and it is done. One can easily extend such an argument to allow the importing of STR elixers in exchange for the destruction of 5000 gold with a level 26+ character. Just as easily, one can collect 100,000 gold, abandon it in a private game, and bump STR stat by 20 points in a trainer. Just as easily, one can collect the appropriate amount of gold, abandon it in a private game, and import a perfect KSOH bastard sword or perfect AFP with a level 28+ character. You are eliminating no risks from the game at all... only saving the tedium of several thousand shopping runs. I think everyone would consider the last case a form of blatant cheating, and therefor any form of tedium reduction involving third party programs is grey area at best. The exception would reduction of tedium in things outside of the game, e.g. using a trainer to reduce the tedium of manual character backup.
On a side note, one needs to be careful about making the argument that something is OK because all it does is reduce tedium. Allow me to abuse the slippery slope fallacy. :) Let us take the example of modifying the game to allow town teleport or fast walk (or the more adventurous variation of moving Adria and Wirt into Town Square). One can justify such things by saying that all they do is reduce tedium. After all, there is no risk involved in walking to Adria... you cannot die, lose life or mana, drop gold, lose permanent hp or spell points... you just use some time and it is done. One can easily extend such an argument to allow the importing of STR elixers in exchange for the destruction of 5000 gold with a level 26+ character. Just as easily, one can collect 100,000 gold, abandon it in a private game, and bump STR stat by 20 points in a trainer. Just as easily, one can collect the appropriate amount of gold, abandon it in a private game, and import a perfect KSOH bastard sword or perfect AFP with a level 28+ character. You are eliminating no risks from the game at all... only saving the tedium of several thousand shopping runs. I think everyone would consider the last case a form of blatant cheating, and therefor any form of tedium reduction involving third party programs is grey area at best. The exception would reduction of tedium in things outside of the game, e.g. using a trainer to reduce the tedium of manual character backup.