Cheating in Online Competitive Games

[IbanZ]

I love polls. Nothing more American than vouching your opinion between a couple of predesignated options.

A little elaboration for the middle one...
An example I will use is Pokemon Pearl/Diamond. In P/G, you can go online and battle your pokemenz to the death. It's become a problem that people are downloading their cartidge files, editing them with a tool known as PokeSav, and are reuploading the file. This, of course, is giving them an unfair advantage and are putting very overpowered, and rare, Pokemon that wouldn't exist normally in circulation. To combat the efforts, Nintendo has cut down on these trades and made it so that the only way to access the WiFi Terminal is if you have Pokemon deemed Legit. Which means they pass a test that verifys they really could exist in the game without cheats.

By selecting option #2, you are saying that creating synthetic "X", so long as it would occure naturally, is fine.

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[Otis Da HousKat]

Needs more options. I don't like cheats  that negatively affect others. Crashing, account stealing, item creation, ungodly stats.

Many cheats and hacks are helpful though. Many are created just to enhance the player's experience(like FFXI's Windower program) or for data mining. Windower is very much a game hack and against Square-Enix's ToS, but it doesn't cause harm or create an unfair advantage.

The "good guys" will always be a step behind the "bad guys". Without cheaters there is no reason to improve security. Counter measures aren't usually created for situations that never happened. That applies to all forms of security in life really.

Relevant to topic.

[IbanZ]

I'm going to add your option and allow revoting Goddamnit Badspot. One moment.

[Otis Da HousKat]

An example of an exploit I'm ok with can be found in a game I used to play called Phantasy Star Universe. Basically you leveled up your melee, ranged, and magic skills by using them against enemies.

There was a bug found with certain enemy AI that caused them to get stuck, not attack, and constantly heal themselves. You would be able to constantly attack this enemy and it would never die. Use a turbo controller or joy2key and let it go overnight and you are treated to nicely level skills.

Video example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdR9qiwdTJE

People complained that the time they put in was wasted seeing "noobs" could get high leveled skills much easier than they did. The fact is, this exploit negatively affected no one and actually greatly helped everyone. Higher level skills are a greater asset to a group than lower ones.

[NotInsaneChef]

if it's a bad game like maplestory and you hack to piss 8 year olds off then yes its good lol

[Marcem]

I remember Metriod hacks, geez, do you think it's not odd to have infinite health, double damage, and the epic cannon thing online?!  And it didn't help that Sampapa was so good. (How the forget Sampapa?!)

[IbanZ]

Sampapa got his name off of Metroid?

[Toadzard]

Hacks in singleplayer is fine. Huge gun of doom that one-hit-kills? No problem. Godmode? Also fine. But once you bring those online is where the line is drawn. But the things that I truly hate are performance enhancers. Not account stealers or anything like that. I mean Aimbotting and the like. It's truly a sad day when some people realize that they are so stuff at a game that they have to resort to cheating. By which I mean games that take skill like FPSs, and not games that you just have to spend time playing to get good, like RPGs.

[IbanZ]

I own a website dedicated to hacking FPSs. I don't do it because I "suck at vidya games", we do it because it's much more fun. Perhaps it's because I'm a troll, who knows? Maybe it's my superiority complex. What I do know is that there is absolutely no greater joy in a game than seeing someone bitch and moan in the agony of defeat. There is nothing I love more than to be able to say: "Okay, everyone goes into the Vents or I OPK the entire team." and seeing everyone scurry into the vents like a loving zombie horde is less than 5 feet from them.

[Amiret]

Second and fourth. If they don't negatively affect the person, and they can be reproduced, it's perfectly fine. But a lv100 max IV'd and EV'd arceus would be bullstuff.

[Mr.Spork]

Stick Arena is a  good example of how hacks/cheats can ruin the game.

 The game itself is awesome,but people feel the need to use their hacks. In about 95% of the Servers, there will be some ass-hat who cheats. Not to mention the people who spam the chat,like hell,just for fun. I think hacks are for those who either: A. Suck horribly or B:Just like being bastards.

[Otis Da HousKat]

My response to the topic was based on the view of MMORPGs only. Cheating in an FPS is a douche thing to do*, but it has little to no real world impact. The economy in WoW is larger and more important than most real countries in the world. Granted most of that is from stuff-hole nations like Jimbuckamzibwae it is still fairly large. Duping items or gold in a game like WoW greatly affects the transfer of real world(although still virtual) money. Almost all of it going to Asian gold farming companies.

*Cheating in a server dedicated to cheating is fine.