A Hacker's Plight

[Kasreyn]

The problem has always been, since the first days of D1 (and earlier, in MUD's and other games), that certain people are just too immature to take their enjoyment from a game without infringing on others'. It's selfishness, pure and simple.

Virgil Tibbs once posted an angry email he got from a PK with the usual garbage like "PK's are just better than you whiners" and "We're seeking the challenge of competing!". I hereby offer an open challenge to ALL D1/2 PK's, EVERYWHERE: If you want to prove your good intentions, then start, sign, and turn in a unanimous petition to Blizzard that Hostile Mode in D2 require BOTH parties to select hostility. What's the matter?? Ohh, so it's not ACTUALLY about challenge at all, huh? Thought so. In fact, it's about whacking some poor guy who's just trying to have fun, laughing like a mentally retarded loon, and proving you're just another immature schmuck. Skill? Don't make me laugh. Yep, lots of skill required to FB someone in the back in Hell/Hell (D1). Yep, lots of skill required to fire endless GA at town entrance in D2. If PK's really WERE better PvP players than co-oper's, they would have no problem with a mutual hostile requirement in D2. But just imagine how they'd bitch at my little idea. Point is, they're too useless and selfish to get any joy from playing the GAME; they just play a meta-game called "get my jollies by hurting others".

As to the hacked items: I don't have and never have had a problem with people cheating on their own, or in groups composed wholly of cheaters. I kind of look down on them, but hey, they bought the game too. It's when their cheating affects others, like the current situation on Battle.Net, that it becomes intolerable. But of course, they WANT to involve everyone in their cheating. For one, it makes them less likely to be clearly identified as wusses (cheating is a crutch, no one with a brain can fail to understand this). For another, if they can smokescreen Blizzard with thousands of accounts with hacked items, maybe Blizzard won't pull another massive purge. If there were a clear demarcation between cheater and legit, Blizz could easily purge the cheaters; so, it's in the cheaters' best interests to keep things confused. Finally, they just plain and simply do not understand that some people WANT to play the game legit. It's like they think someone will appear at their house and give them a cookie if they can get every number on their screen to show "999999999". My experiences playing a BNM and a BAR on D1 Bnet made this clear. Those who weren't busy offering my naked butt hacked gear were busy calling me a hacker. They refused to be satisfied unless I joined the Dark Side like them. =P

If I could say one thing to CanisMortifer, it would be this: "We ARE superior to you, not necessarily morally, but certainly in terms of gameplay skills. We're just plain better at the game than you and your "veteran" friends. Want to prove you're as good? Cast off your crutches then. Burying your head in the sand won't make it go away. Learn to take responsibility for the effects your actions have on others. Oh, and find something better to spend your money on. Computer game items on eBay? You're about 50 light years away from where you'd need to be to intercept the next available Life. Get movin'."

Just my (rapidly devaluing) $0.02.

-Kasreyn

[--Pete]

Right on!

--Pete

[Olon97]

I'd love to see a mockup ad similar to the drug war series "Here are a couple teens sharing a joint -> this is the dealer that sold it to them -> this is the family in Columbia murdered by the dealer's supplier."

"Here are a couple people dueling with godly items they bought on ebay -> this is the dealer who sold the items to them -> these are the HC characters that died during a lag spike caused by the dealer's supplier." :P

If only I had artistic skills and knew how to use flash...

[Archon_Wing]

ptff... to all pk's, get some actual dueling skill. :)

And we're just better than what's his name because we're not that desperate over a game. :P

[Luna]

Agreed Kasreyn! *claps*

BTW, what have you been up to? i haven't seen you in FOREVER! Still on AIM?

[Kasreyn]

LordKasreyn is my screenname, as it ever was. My computer was busted for about 9 months, thus I was unable to keep in touch. Glad to know you didn't forget me. ^_^

IM me some time, I'd love to say hi. ^_^

-Kasreyn

[Occhidiangela]

Nice to see you still kicking about the Diablo world.

To the point, as ever. :)

[kandrathe]

Absolutely! :P I was also cross, and thinking that you can read that kind of crap all day in Battle Net Forums. But, CanisMortified has shown that if you give the cheater a pen, he will convict himself. Unless he is suffering as the pyschoanalytics described, that is, self delusion's to reinforce his twisted world view. But then we see that all the time in outrageous claims like, "99.99% of the people on Battle Net cheat!" Doesn't that sound like THE argument that all adolescents use to justify their bending to peer pressure?

It is those few (maybe a few dozen to a few hundred at most) malevolent hackers that begin the tide that are the danger to the game, and it is them that Blizzard should find and prosecute(within what powers they have).

The next layer are those that wouldn't or couldn't figure out the hacks, but if they are available or anyone else is using them they will as well. I find there are many of these people who do not love or like to play the game, but rather enjoy being the "bullies" of Battle Net, and finding that their skillz are lacking to those of *real* gamers they resort to cheats.

And then, there are the passive peer pressure followers of the illicit trends. The "Well, if everyone has ____, I guess I will too." crowd. They are most numerous, and in the latest purge (of mostly maphackers) are the ones who really got burned. Hopefully, most of the A and B group were also in the the C group as well. Unfortunately, I don't think they went far enough. I would put out a 30 day announcement that any "illegal" items in your inventory risk getting your account wiped. Then, write a daemon process to crawl through accounts, checking for outrageous stats on items (or even have templates of the most common bugged or hacked stuff)., and axe a few more thousand accounts.

[Bolty]

Seems that most people fail to recognize their arbitrariness in deciding what is cheating and what isn't, and treat it like some sort of absolute.  For instance, some of their arguments are hostile to other things I value, such as modding, bnetd, and D1 Legitness.  If their arguments crystalize and they then encounter such things, they won't respond well to them.

Well FoxBat, I need someone to argue with. :)

Cheating = bad
Modding = good (right, Finnan Haddie?)
BnetD = could have been good, but was abused and twisted into something it wasn't originally made for - and I think you and I have fought over it before.

-Bolty

[CorwinBrute]

Dii.net has a new article, this time defending botting.
http://diabloii.net/columnists/a-prophecy.shtml

Those self-apologizing botters are my favorite kind of lamers, always talking about how smart they are because with their bot they can "have a life", which legit people obviously don't have.

As someone once said : "there is no pleasure greater than being called an idiot by a moron".

[Brista]

I liked the line about him waking up after a hard night's botting only to find his accounts had been deleted :D

I just saw this which seems to summarise the mindset very pithily:

when the 1.10 patch comes out will that delet like occy rings,bvalors,and duped stuff.
becuase if so no one will have anything to mf with and stuff becuase almost everyones items will be gone

It really is another world :blink:

[Archon_Wing]

Yes, they have such a life by being so concerned with getting those items... ;)

[Baylan]

That is disgusting. Truly disgusting. These people sicken me, the world, and my little brother who doesn't even know who they are. I wish the person who wrote that, and those who support it the worst of luck, the worst of b.net's wraith, the worst that can happen to them on the internet. May their reputation be tarnished, may their computer fry, may their monitor fall on their foot.

Cheating is never excuseable. Ever. It disgusts me that people continue to make excuses to cheat, and I refuse to accept any of them.

[Kasreyn]

Cheating is IMO acceptable as long as it affects no one else. I have no problem with someone using Jamella's trainer on an Open character, hacking it to a level 99 monstrosity, and doing whatever they want, as long as they never join a game with a legit character in it. It's when a cheater and a legit are in the same game that cheating becomes a bad thing.

If cheaters were all innocent, Blizzard could solve the problem with two new realms: USCheatEast, and USCheatWest. On these realms, no cheats would be disallowed, no accounts purged, no items deleted. Cheat your #$%&ing brains out. Unfortunately, a minority, but too large a minority, of cheaters do it for the enjoyment of ruining legit play. So even giving their own cheating realm wouldn't change things much.

I just think that saying all cheating of any kind is horrible is an extremist viewpoint. As long as he cheats alone, no harm is done to anyone but the cheater (he IMO wastes his time AND cripples the development of his playing skills). Why, I cheated today even: after beating Fallout for the first time (LOVE that game!), I loaded up a trainer to try out a character with 10 Luck, just to see if what the manual says about random encounters is true (it is! I got the Alien Blaster in under 5 minutes! O_O). I've already deleted the character, since it wastes save space. But apparently according to you, I should be burned at the stake for this.

-Kasreyn

[Brista]

Cheating is IMO acceptable as long as it affects no one else. 

I've been thinking about this

From a sort of civil liberties perspective then of course, you should be free to pursue your happiness in your own way. If mowing down easy monsters with an invincible character is more fun then you should be free to do so

However, what does cheating, if you always cheat, do to your outlook as a computer games player?

I have a friend who always cheats at computer games if he possibly can

I actually know him from pen and paper role-playing where he is a very different person.

Now we've tried a few times to play hot seat games and it drives my friend into paroxysms when he loses. He has been known to storm out of people's houses swearing. He only enjoys himself when he is winning and can't bear to lose

He is at his happiest playing on his own in god mode, mowing down legions of helpless opponents. He rarely plays any games with other people because he doesn't like competition while being intensely competitive

Now I don't think he plays any online games. But hypothetically, if he played D2 would he cheat? I think so. (Perhaps, to his credit, this may be precisely the reason he doesn't play online)

Guessing at his motivations there is a mixture of rivalry, desire to impress, a taste for uberness in his chosen form of escapism, and a hatred of losing

Now this brings me round to the question I would raise here.

If you always cheat when you play computer games privately how can you possibly adjust to playing fairly when you venture online?

[--Pete]

Hi,

Cheating is IMO acceptable as long as it affects no one else.

I would say that cheating is impossible unless someone else is involved.

To cheat, one must deviate from the agreed upon rules. And, ultimately, a game is its rules. So, if one deviates from the rules, one is playing a different game. Changing the rules without telling the other players is the essence of cheating. So, if playing solo, there can be no cheating. One is simply playing a different game.

This "different game" might take many forms. Turning a strategy game into a mindless arcade game. Trying experiments to understand how the engine works, or to determine game parameters. Or just seeing what you can do for the hell of it. As long as it involves no one else, it isn't cheating for there is no one to be cheated.

And that leads us to the concept of mods. Basically, they are changes of the game that all the players have agree upon. Which is why there is no question of a mod being a form of cheating. Of course, in practice, it is the better players looking for a greater challenge that make and play mods, but there is nothing in principle that excludes a mod where all the players are gods.

In any discussion of cheating, the central question that must be answered is "Who is being cheated?" If the only answer is "Myself" or "No one", then there is no cheating. Note that that is *not* a simple question to answer. Indirect results need to be evaluated carefully. Even if the effect of an exploit on other players is indirect and subtle, it still exists and thus the exploit is cheating.

Now, when carefully thought out, many things the people consider cheating are not. Many of the things people gripe about are legal yet cheesy. Twinking, rushing, leeching are all examples of things that are legal yet frowned upon by the "legit" community.

So, "legit" is not the opposite of "cheating" but rather a quality standard of play that excludes cheating but also excludes many fair but cheesy loopholes.

--Pete

[Kasreyn]

I was working from a definition of cheating as "doing anything to change the game in your favor", but your definition makes much more sense. ^_^

Thanks for the input.

-Kasreyn

[FenrisWulf]

Heh, yeah, I think your definition would be a bit too comprehensive, Kasreyn. :P For instance, by investing 20 points into Fury for my Werewolf, I would be cheating, since it certainly changes the game in my favor. :)

[Brista]

Beautifully thought out and expressed, Pete :)