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Cheaters Under The Microscope
1up.com has a piece up examining the reasons and rationale behind the online gaming cheater. From personal pride to pure cynicism, the realm of the cheater has many ways in. From the article: "Using grenades and jumping on friends' shoulders can help you get ridiculously high and reach far-off boundaries in Halo 2. Players like Joe32 call it creative thinking. Victims of sniper fire that seems to come from another world call it cheating."
Cheating because you don't have time to compete with the people who play 6-8 hours a day is a LAME excuse.
Some people have natural skill and are gonna own you no matter if you are one who plays 6-8 hours a day and they only play it once a week.
I find that in-Game features can reduce cheating in addition to providing better gameplay.
The article mentions Halo 2 on Xbox Live, which as everyone knows uses a Ranking system to match teams up. Thus you are much less likely to be playing in a game with people 100 times better than you. I find that playing in games where the teams are evenly matched can be fun and thus reduces the "need" for people to cheat. Games that somehow balance the teams are much more fun to play in. Yeah we all like being on those teams where you completely own the other team... but you are also going to end up on the other side of that sometimes, where you are the team getting destroyed. And that's no fun.
Another Game Feature I think helps reduce cheating is in Call of Duty. There is a feature that can be enabled in multi-player games called the 'kill-cam'. It shows you the last 7 seconds or so before you died from the point of view of the guy that killed you. I find that watching the kill-cam from time to time reduces the perception that it might have been an 'unfair kill'. "He couldn't have possible seen me!" "I shot him a thousand times and he didn't die!". etc.
In addition the kill-cam helps reduce camping (since you now know where they were when they killed you) and it might even give you some tips on how to play better.
Agreed. They should have an overall "Skill Level" that goes up with ALL experience. Then have a modifier for each game type.
Player: Bob
Level: 10
Deathmatch: 3
CTF: 0
TDM: 7
If all values started at 0, Bob gained 7 levels in TDMs and 3 in deathmatches. The server would have to show both the game type number and the overall, so you can see that if Bob is in a TDM, he spends most of his time playing TDM (7 out of his total 10). Drat, guess I can't take that idea to the patent office now...
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
The GP is right, why shouldn't you be allowed to use a team mate shoulders to get a bunk-up?
Here's a favourite quote for me:
Other gamers give themselves an edge by using a mouse and/or keyboard with today's USB-friendly consoles, which increases accuracy and cuts response time--it can be an insurmountable advantage. But, as one anonymous cheater explains, "It's not illegal--it's just using the best equipment available. Anyone can do it."
Not *gasp!* a keyboard and mouse!
I remember playing a MUD long ago. Somehow I triggered a bug where my character couldn't take damage. After exploiting this to level up about 15 times, a god finally saw what was going on, erased my character, and banned my netblock.
I was sort of shocked.
Anyway, the point is, the game "allowed" me to do what I was doing, I didn't hack anything or apply a modification to something, but the behavior was buggy, and at least in that game it was considered cheating to take advantage of such a circumstance.
Which leads to the dilemma, how do you determine when a particular aspect of gameplay was intentional, or not intentional? For all I knew, some god had blessed me with invincibility for unknown reasons.
"I hate "cheaters" as much as the next person. But I would have to agree with the grandparent's post, that level design should account for such things."
Personally, I don't call it cheating if both sides can do it. It may make the game un-fun, but it's hardly cheating.
I doubt that distinguishment means much, tho. Usually cries of cheating happen when somebody's losing. At that point, they're not terribly discriminant of whether or not the other guy was actually being unfair.
Just once I'd like to hear "Hey man, it's really not fun for me when you do that. Could you please try another tactic?" I'd be more than happy to comply for the sake of making the game fun, but instead everybody's a 'gay faggot llama'.
"Derp de derp."
Actually, I have heard that. When I figured out how to use some particular move in Soul Calibur over and over again to defeat just about anyone in under 30 seconds. They (my hallmates in my dorm) nearly kicked me out of the tournament.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Rape. . . this whole cheating thing is just like rape. . . its a consent thing, if everyone playing agrees that you may use map exploits then it is fine, the same with cheats. If everyone is using their own cheat, and everyone agrees to play by these rules then it is fine.
So basically, when you don't have consent, you get to go to "jail" and get "butt raped" by 6' 450lbs Bubba.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Yes. It's a valid strategy.
If you really don't see a problem with a game strategy that results in every single player being bored out of their minds for 45 minutes, then we'll just have to agree to disagree and hope that we never end up in the same game.