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Cheaters Under The Microscope

Posted by Zonk on from the give-a-hoot-don't-cheat dept.

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."

36 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Cheating is NEVER fair by KDR_11k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    To lose consistently to people who got better than you by playing six to eight hours a day while you're at school or worksome people cheat just to even the playing field.

    Cry me a river. Perhaps you should try playing with people who are your skill level instead of wanting to be the Rambo of the higher leagues.

    --
    Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
    1. Re:Cheating is NEVER fair by kniLnamiJ-neB · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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!
    2. Re:Cheating is NEVER fair by n0wak · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is true... for a while. The thing is, if you're dominating so much, the ranking tends to increase far more rapidly. It took me far, far fewer games to get to rank 10 in team skirmish than in big team skirmish, which I mostly started playing Halo 2 with.

      In that sense, the rankings are working as good as can be expected.

      Where it falls apart, though, is when you want to play with your variably ranked (and skilled) friends. In that case, the games can get a bit mismatched (especially if you're ranked by "clan" and not be individual ranks).

  2. Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by Zangief · · Score: 4, Insightful

    you call them cheaters?

    I call that bad map design.

    1. Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by tolan-b · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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!

    2. Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by HiVizDiver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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. I think it's using terrain/available objects to your advantage if you can climb on a comrade's shoulder to access a higher place, for example.

      If we want to argue that games are becoming more and more like real life, if I'm in a combat situation, I'd do whatever it took to get myself the upper hand. Unlike real life, however, there aren't any "laws" (to use your analogy) that say you can or can't use a method like that to gain an advantage, unless the server specifically states that when you join it.

      Deliberately hacking code or using scripted cheats, however, is another matter. That's maliciously exploiting programming and altering it to gain an unfair advantage, in a way that is not available to everyone else - the definition of "unfair", I think. That then falls under the realm of "fix it" in terms of the coders/developers need to address that certain vulnerability.

    3. Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by NanoGator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "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."
    4. Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by rekenner · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Totally agreed.
      That was my first thought on reading the summary... It is creative thinking. Hell, don't you get damaged if you grenade yourself up somewhere? You're just that much easier to kill after that. Or if you have to use a teammate to get somewhere... That's time both of you could be off helping your team kill, depending on how long it takes to get somewhere.

      If the player can't be damaged once they reach their destination, I can understand how that could piss other players off... But, that's still just bad level design.

    5. Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by Saige · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can't believe they used that as an example. Anything like that is completely NOT cheating. Grenade jumps, jumping on another player, fancy trick jump, etc - those are all completely valid techniques and anyone who considers them cheating is full of crap.

      Level glitches - like the superjumps on various maps, the old trick of pulling flags/weapons through walls, those are also not really cheating, since anyone can do them. People who abuse them to grief people are not cheating, but still deserve negative feedback.

      Standbying (the modem glitch mentioned), and now the whole problem with hacked files - now that's cheating, and those people need to get their asses banned like NOW.

      --
      "You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
    6. Re:Just by jumping on someone else's shoulders... by porcupine8 · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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?"

      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.
  3. Its not cheating if its in the game. by HellPhish · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My stance on cheating in video games is that its only cheating if you modify the client app or take advantage of something that other players can't take the same advantage of.

    Simply put, if the game allows it, it is part of the gameplay. It may not be the most obvious way to play, nor may it be how the manual TELLS you to play. As far as I'm concerned, anything allowed by the engine is totally fair.

    There is no such thing as an unfair advantage.

    1. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by Have+Blue · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem with that approach is that it turns the game from "who can play the best" to "who can perform the best exploit the fastest", which is a completely different game from the one you may have intended to play when you joined the server.

    2. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by pclminion · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Simply put, if the game allows it, it is part of the gameplay. It may not be the most obvious way to play, nor may it be how the manual TELLS you to play. As far as I'm concerned, anything allowed by the engine is totally fair.

      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.

    3. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by Gulthek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If it's allowed by the game and the level, then how is that not "who can play the best"?

      If you only perform actions allowed by the game itself (no hacking, network tricks, scripting, etc) and you win then...you played the best!

    4. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by torinth · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Simply put, if the game allows it, it is part of the gameplay. It may not be the most obvious way to play, nor may it be how the manual TELLS you to play... ...nor may it be a sporting and friendly way to play, but fuck all that because I want to be king!

      There's a distinction between fairness and ettiquette. Sure, only violating the prior makes you a cheater, but violating the latter just makes you an asshole.

    5. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What about the undefusable bomb on the updated cobble (since fixed) or practically every map back in 1.3? What about throwing grenades under floating boxes and walls, causing grenades to be silent (making it easy to hear who you hit, and exactly where they are), and causing flashbangs to be much more powerful and impossible to avoid? (Doable in nuke, train, inferno, aztec, cobble, just about any map that has big open areas).

      What about boosting through thin ceillings? (assault, militia, dust2,others..)

      Theres so many bugs that unless you're as big of a nerd as I am, you're already at the disadvantage. My personal opinion is that since all of these have been around since day one, they're valid gameplay tactics. Valve's changed far too many things to not touch any of these, obviously they're allowing it. I suppose it all boils down to quakeworld. Rocket jumping has to be the single best bug in gaming history, along with all the other quakeworld bugs(full air control, trimping, wall strafing) that make it still the most fun game to just run around fragging in.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    6. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I can think of two different scenarios regarding this, a good one and a bad one.

      Firstly, in Doom .99, in a deathmatch we figured out pretty quick that if someone was about to kill you, RUN FOR THE LAVA! Kill yourself and deprive them of the point. This was amended in later versions of the game so that you would be deducted one kill if you killed yourself.

      Second, I don't think the Quake developers anticipated the concept of rocket jumping or bunny hopping. However, these are now integral parts of (almost?) all FPS.

      In other words, if an exploit is actually bad, it should be eliminated by the developers. Otherwise, the meta-rules of the game are as correct as actual rules.

      Personally, I hate all snipers in games, I don't think they enhance the fun of a game for anyone but snipers. Once upon a time, people sniped by increasing their mouse sensitivity and narrowing their Field Of Vision settings of the game engine. That was even lamer. I do accept that this is an opinion, and I respect that people disagree, but I despise snipers.

    7. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by Sancho · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is a case where the owners of the games decide what is cheating and what isn't. Probably, everyone could have exploited that bug, but in the MUD, you're probably not doing so much playing against other players as against the system. As such, you've gained an advantage that the system likely can't take advantage of (although the MUD I used to play on actually had a bug where MOBs could become invincible...)

      Sounds like the admins on your MUD were intolerant of bug abuse. The problem I have with this is where the line of "bug" meets "unintentional effect", which is where the Slashdot blurb implied that the story was going. For another MUD example, the same MUD I played on with the invincible MOB bug recently had a player wipe. Basically, they wanted to start over as there were some players who simply destroyed the economy with all their money/possessions. They also wanted to make some inherent engine changes, which required that they start over lest some players have a distinct advantage over new players.

      Anyway, part of the reason for the wipe was the economy, right? As it turned out, there were numerous places in the game where items could be harvested free, with no fighting or monetary investment required, and very little time required. This meant that players were able to start buying back all the stuff they'd originally purchased and bankrolling money, which meant that the wipe had little effect on the economy. Given a few months of this behavior, we'd be right back where we started.

      The administrators didn't seem to take too kindly to this behavior. There were threats of deletion, banning, etc. In the end, the items were simply reduced in sale price, and I don't know of any deletions. Nevertheless, it was absurd to even consider deletion in a case like this, for the very reason this subthread started. It was a part of the game, anyone could do it, and it /certainly/ wasn't breaking a rule or exploiting a bug. People were simply not playing the game the way the creators wanted them to.

      Another MUD I was on for a /very/ short time required large amounts of roleplay. It's hard to create a system like this, of course, so the effective restriction was that if you gained levels too fast, you obviously weren't roleplaying enough and thus you were deleted. Again, it's a flaw in the design. If you want people to slow down their levelling, it's easy enough to code that in. There's no reason to force people to play the game in a way that's more restrictive than the game allows.

    8. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by Have+Blue · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a difference between a strategy that lets you act in ways the other team doesn't expect, and a "strategy" that results in the spirit of the game being broken because it cannot possibly be countered by any non-cheating action on the part of the enemy.

      For example, a common event that would fall into this category in Halo 2: Hiding the bomb. In the Assault gametype, one team has to carry a bomb into the enemy base to score a point, and the other team has to stop them. If the game clock ran out while the attackers were in the middle of an attempt to plant the bomb, it would enter "sudden death", and the game wouldn't end until the attackers succeeded or were driven off by the defenders. So, what some bastards would do is take the bomb and simply hide- they would ride an airplane (the only one in the level) to the top of the map and sit there. Eventually - I've seen this go on for 45 minutes or more - the defenders would give up and leave the game, leaving an easy score for the attackers. Are you really saying this is a valid strategy, or the fault of the developers? It's people being assholes, plain and simple.

    9. Re:Its not cheating if its in the game. by Have+Blue · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  4. I almost buy... by faloi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The "hey, I'm just exploring new parts of the map that I have to glitch to get into explanation." Except that there's nothing stopping you from setting up your own game to play around with people of a like mind-set WITHOUT running roughshod over some other players.

    --
    "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
  5. Find a good server by Grand · · Score: 2, Informative

    and stay there. For the games that I play, I find a couple of servers that are almost always full and have PLENTY of admins. So when you play, there is a good chance of an admin to be on. Once you find a server you like, stick it in your favorites and play there often.

    1. Re:Find a good server by oni · · Score: 3, Insightful

      bingo. And the sence of community is great too. Knowing most or all of the people you're playing with is different from an anonymous game in the same way that online is different from single player. It's a whole other level of fun.

      Tonight is my quake 3 threewave night (I know it's old but it's still fun). There are five guys that I've known for years and we all meet up once a week. If one of us is having a good night, he'll get congratulations and kudos from everyone else, as opposed to bitching and ranting on an anonymous server. If one of us is having a bad night, we'll all be good sports about it. A lot of times I'll even let someone kill me so they wont feel bad. As opposed to being called a loser and a noob on an anonymous server.

      Playing with your friends rocks. It's the only way to go.

    2. Re:Find a good server by The+boojum · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yep, that's the way my UT2k4 iCTF clan handles it. We've found most of the anti-cheat mods out there tend to make the game lag horribly and don't even catch many cheaters anyway. So we've taken to just having a large group of admins around to keep an eye on things and hand out bans.

      Social problem, social solution...

      (Of course, why people still try to cheat when they see players with our tag around is still a mystery to me!)

  6. Game Features can reduce Cheating by Tenzen01 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Bah. by bk_veggie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I used to spend a ridiculous amount of time playing Urban Terror , and frankly, some of the 'cheating' he mentions actually kept the game interesting.

    I understand nobody wants to play against wallhackers and aimbots, but what is wrong with using avatar pyramids to gain access to higher levels? If the devs didn't want people to get there, why the heck did they leave it as a solid surface?

    Good sentiment, bad execution.

  8. Re:One Advantage of Consoles by scolby · · Score: 3, Funny

    Plus, if you're on a console and you see your opponent cheating, just reach over and yank his control out of the socket. Revenge is sweet.

  9. Thats not cheating. by Darune · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This guy isn't talking about cheating, he's talking about exploiting holes in the engine. Thats not cheating, thats taking advantage of the world.

    If you, or anyone with enough practice, can do it, then it's not cheating. If you have to modify the client, or the datastream (in a netowork game) then thats cheating. Outside influence = cheating, finding logic holes = exploring.

    Sounds to me like he just can't do that grenade jump exploit, and is crying about it ;p

    Personally I love looking for glitches in games, just usually they aren't too useful when I find them.

    For example, when the maps in halo 2 seem to expect you to get out of your vehicle (say when you go from a street to a hotel), try fighting your way in. You'll probably have to bash your ghost just right, but it can fit though those tiny doorways. Then you can enjoy trying to take down a scarab walker by jumping a ghost onto it ;p

    --
    Oh crap, I'm on fire again.
  10. Cheaters are the new filesharers by realityfighter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Did it seem odd to anybody else that they talked about these cheaters as though they were robbing convenience stores or running drug rings out of their basements? Like cheating in Halo 2 is the new drive by shooting. The whole thing seems a little over the top.

    I know some people value their game rankings, but please. They're not taking anything from anybody and they're not causing harm beyond the tang of frustration (although, believe me, I know how frustrating even the illusion of cheat can be). They didn't even touch on the people who use hacks to steal your account or personal information, or anything else that's actually illegal or harmful. Do we really need an "expose" on people using cheat codes? Come now.

    You can do better than that.

    --
    A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
  11. Article should differentiate by th0mas.sixbit.org · · Score: 5, Informative

    Between glitchers and cheaters a bit better, because, quite simply, what they wrote isn't really what's going on at all.

    First off: there a huge number of "glitches" in halo 2 maps that are there on purpose. Things like jumping onto a person's shoulders in order to make it somewhere higher is partially what makes it so fun. Bungie tweaked these levels unbelieveably well, and there is a lot of skill in perfecting seemingly impossible jumps.

    The article is quite outdated. The new fad in halo 2 cheating is rather astounding. The new map pack that was released in the spring downloads maps from xbox live to the user's hard drive. People realized that while the maps were signed to prevent people from copying maps from xbox to xbox (this weakly protecting bungie's IP) they weren't really signed to prevent modification. So if you do something akin to deleting the signatures from the map the game defaults to letting you play the maps on xbox live. The result? People can use standard halo 2 modding tools to mod their maps, add autoaim, jump higher, etc.. .

    Which brings me to the second, much larger and impossible to fix, issue with xbox live. You'd think that xbox live is a dedicated service providing servers for playing halo 2, right? Wrong. In every XBL game, a user is chosen to be host. That person is the server, and as such has much more control over the game. For one, it's essentially "their game or the highway". This is what allows people's modded maps to have an effect on the game, in many circumstances.

    The modem-delay people do in games on purpose, as mentioned in the article (known as "standbying") is a direct result of xbox live offloading the hosting job to a client. Now the person who is host can filter the packets from an opponent, the game keeps running while that person is lagging out, and the host can run around lag-free killing the people who's packets are being routed to /dev/null.

    The cheaters have added a new level of complexity: they get a routing program that can route by MAC, and selectively filter out specific players during matches (as opposed to the all-or-nothing pull-the-plug-on-the-modem approach.)

    As long as the hosting is not done by microsoft themselves there is no real way to fix this issue. The maps issue is stupid; they aren't checking their own content sig's properly, but at least that's not an architecture issue and will probably be fixed relatively soon.

    In all honesty the free portals such as xboxconnect and xlink kai are better, if you can handle not having an elitist rank next to your name...

    --
    twitter.com/gravitronic
  12. Mixed bag by Sylver+Dragon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article seems to lump a lot of things into cheating, I'm not sure I agree with all of them.
    Modifying client code, stream, etc. Obvious cheating. And the offeners should be banned for life.
    Using a USB keyboard and mouse on a console. Not sure this is really cheating. Obviuosly the console is designed to utilize these pieces of hardware, and a controller sucks for FPS games. Though, some way to check and filter for this would be good. Still, I don't think that this is going to be cheating.
    Gernade jumps, rocket jumps, stacking. These are not really cheating by themselves. If you are using it to get to a hard to access area on the map, fine. If you are using it to get outside the game world, then there is a problem. I don't play Halo so I'm not sure what the article is saying exactly, but using a friend and a gernade to get on top of a tall building hardly seems like cheating. If it's putting the player outside the world and allowing them to fire without receiveing fire, then ya, it's cheating. But if it's in the game world, it should be fair game.

    --
    Necessity is the mother of invention.
    Laziness is the father.
  13. What an asshole by alan_dershowitz · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This asshole thinks using a keyboard and a mouse is cheating.

    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."

    People who have been playing games since Wolfenstein 3D know what the best FPS controller is, and it's the keyboard and the mouse. If no console manufacturer chose to pay attention to what PC gamers have known for over 10 F-ing years now, tough shit.

    As I've read in a review of Quake for the Dreamcast, which online could pit computer players against console players: "Playing with a controller versus people playing with a keyboard and mouse is a soul-destroying experience."

    It's not my fault people want to use a shitty controller.

  14. Playing to win by rpumarega · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is an article over at sirlin.net that discusses this. http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPa rt1.htm Here's a small snippet. "You're not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we've encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you...that's cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that's cheap, too. We've covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that's cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap." -- If you rocket jump of your friends shoulders.. that's cheap!

  15. Re:Who's The Camper...? by snuf23 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Except that - if the camper kills and doesn't move, those who he killed will respawn and remember where he is and come and tag his ass.
    It's not a gameplay problem. Sure it's cheap but it's also not necessarily a great tactic that lets you run up uber kills. Moving and killing rather than waiting to kill will always earn you more kills if you are a reasonably skilled player.
    Camping has been around as long as the genre. It's not a Halo phenomenon. Camping has been a tactic since Doom. In Quake 2 the known common camping spots became second nature to good players. You new without thinking that you were coming by a common camp spot and you changed your approach to adjust. Usually the result would be a quickly fragged camper.
    Stop whining and get even.

    --
    Sometimes my arms bend back.
  16. Its just like back in the day. . . by AcidLacedPenguiN · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  17. Sorta makes me wonder by Moraelin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, Bartle divided MUD players into: socializers, explorers, achievers and "killers". The twist being that "killers" doesn't mean PvP players, but people who actively seek to harrass, humiliate, annoy, and even hopefully drive people out of the game altother. (Others call that type of player a "griefer".)

    Basically long after "online gaming" ceased to mean only MUDs, we're basically stuck with a signifficant portion of any online game's potential player base being "killers". People who _will_ go to ridiculous extremes to get you pissed off.

    E.g., people have been known to blow real money on a new Ultima Online account just to scam some newbie. Reading some of the UO griefer sites was downright surrealistic. People were actually _planning_ to eventually get an account banned (i.e., also the money it cost) just to play it as disruptively as possible and cause as much grief as possible until they get banned.

    So personally I wonder if there aren't better way to deterr griefers than even banning hardware ids. Like, if it's possible to make a game that isn't attractive to griefers in the first place. My theory, supported by my limited observation in all these years of online play, is that games can (and _do_) differ vastly in how attractive they are to each of the categories.

    E.g., at one end of the spectrum, you have Counter-Strike. Now the game does have its merits, and there are some very good players playing it, yes. On the other hand, it also attracted arguably the highest percentage of annoying players. Why? Beats me. There is _something_ about its gameplay that suits the "killer" type very very well. (Maybe the fact that you can actually prevent another player from playing the game for a while?)

    E.g., on the other hand of the spectrum you have games like the first incarnation of PSO, where it was pretty much impossible to harm a player in _any_ way. You can't kill them, you can't lead a train of monsters to them, you can't block their retreat, you can't do anything to them. So killers would come, whine a bit, spam the lobbies with pornographic "smilies" (e.g., I've seen some running around with a very graphic and animated representation of male masturbation), but pretty soon get bored and leave. So the average PSO player was a very nice and friendly person.

    Other games, like the non-PK facet of UO, were also remarkably "killer"-free. Partially via not having much thing to do to other players, partially via Origin's policing the realm: the idiots who got creative and "tested the limits of the games and found new bugs" to harm newbies, found themselves banned to the PK facet.

    And various other games fall at various points in between.

    So basically that's what I'd like to see more game designers devoting thought to: how to make a game that isn't attractive to idiots to start with. Probably won't get past a publisher, though.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.