Haxor and Life Lessons

CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄ƷDer Millionendorf- Icrontian
edited April 2006 in Gaming
I have no ability to relate to people who derive joy from cheating in a MMOG...

It is just as unstimulating and lacking in productive challenge as reading the 'hint book' before playing an adventure game, but with the added bonus of ruining the game for people who actually like to play the game as it was designed.

I also have trouble relating to people who play only to win, and use underhanded or cheap tactics to pull it off, but how is it even remotely fun to win because you actually cheated? Where is the challenge? Where is the mental stimulation? Where is the freeking GAME?

The answer is 'nowhere'... These people are not playing a game anymore. They might as well write themselves a little program that just lets them push a single button, which activates a "You win" message!

I can even understand the person who makes a 'hack' for these games. He's playing a totally different game, not against the other players, but against the designers of the game. The people who then use these hacks are not playing a game against anyone, they're just pushing the 'I win' button...

Frankly, the attitude is entirely alien to me. I can barely stand to win competitive games at all, because I know that it means others are losing.

Here's the thing:

I've been playing games my whole life, and computer games have been my primary hobby for about twenty years. My favorite games are those that allow me to work with and/or against other players instead of the computer. I always have respect for my opponent, and try to help them with pointers and new strategies. Even when my opponent is a complete stranger, I love to see someone who was at a loss a few minutes ago, suddenly understand and learn to counter my strategies. Even in simple games, a complex dialog occurs between opponents from which both emerge victorious because they were able to learn from their opponent(s), and have become a better thinker, and better problem solver, or even just a better judge of timing and spatial accuracy. This is the true wonder of games in any medium, and is why I love them so much: They teach the most important lessons: How to think and solve; how to communicate; how to win, lose, and live graciously; how to be a real, complete person.

All of this is undone, and even reversed when one cheats. All of the value of gaming is utterly lost, and the person is less for the experience, learning nothing.

I'd say that this aspect of gaming is much more dangerous than violence or sexuality. I'd implore all parents: Observe your child's gaming habits. Ensure that they are not downloading hacks and cheats, especially in games where they are competing with other real people. If they have these bad habits, please take them aside and explain the concepts of sportsmanship, and gaming for fun, rather than for the win. If possible, expose them to a real gaming environment. Teach them Stratego, Backgammon, Pente, and Battleship. Show them how to win and lose with a smile, and play the game for the challenge and for the social connection to other people. Don't let them grow up without a sense of what gaming should be.

It may seem like a little thing, but imagine these children as adults:

Who would you rather do business with: The man who laughs and congratulates you when you put under PAR, or the man who drags his club when he putts?

Who would you rather marry: The woman who revels in the challenge of the strategy of Pente, learning from every game, or the one that moves the tokens when your back is turned?

Who would you rather have as a friend: The guy who whoops and hollers at every frag, no matter the team it comes from, or the guy that sulks and makes excuses when he looses then rubs it in your face when he wins?

Good sportsman ship is a bigger part of everyone's life than they think it is, and how any one can bring themselves to cheat, especially in an environment where it truly makes the game unplayable for those who do not cheat, is completely beyond my understanding.

Then again, there are a lot of things that people do which I simply cannot understand the motivations behind.




Cliffnotes: The prevalence of cheaters in MMOGs upsets me, and makes me fear for the future of our society. The post is long and disjointed, showing both my passion for the topic, and the late hour that the post was written.


Also:

Gunbound is dead to me, now. This is thru no fault of the game designers, who are good at what they do.

Comments

  • RiversCuomoRiversCuomo Missouri New
    edited August 2005
    .....and dont do drugs!

    Really though, cheating is for low life cowards. I like finding glitches and exploring levels(like in halo) but I would never use them against another person for a win. People take it to far to see the "You win."
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited August 2005
    Cheating in MMOG comes down to schlong envy. Someone sees someone else who has a bigger one (or thinks other people have bigger ones) and so they go download a "pill" to make up for their perceived lack of girth. Its stupid and infantile and its one of the reasons I stopped gaming online. I haven't played a computer game in 8 months now (I used to play 6-10 hours / week as a release). I still want to keep playing but too many years as a CS / DoD / NS server admin has jaded me pretty severely.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Don't forget the "raging" aspect. Some people cheat not to win, but specifically to get off by making others miserable, or ruining others' enjoyment of the game.

    It's just an online reflection of offline personality problems.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    While there is still no reason to do so, some people cheat because they can profit from doing so. When I was still playing D2 a lot, people were copying items and running bots that would kill monsters over and over for the loot, and then would sell the items on e-bay for real money. Doing so fubared the economy, and generally made the game less enjoyable.
  • NomadNomad A Small Piece of Hell Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Don't forget the "raging" aspect. Some people cheat not to win, but specifically to get off by making others miserable, or ruining others' enjoyment of the game.

    It's just an online reflection of offline personality problems.

    myg0t
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Nomad wrote:
    myg0t

    exactly
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    I'm so tempted to play Gunbound tonight... I've kind-of gotten in the habit of winding down with that game before bed... But, I know if I play, I'll just get frustrated...
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    What's the story behind that?
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Did you read all that stuff at the top?

    People are cheating in Gunbound. It's worse than any MMOG that I've ever played. It's completely impossible to play the game in it's current, corrupted state.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    Yeah, I read it. I thought that maybe there was a specific example of what they're doin to cheat that made you go off like that.
  • DogSoldierDogSoldier The heart of radical Amish country..
    edited August 2005
    I too am unable to relate the cheaters. Maybe there's a book out there somewhere.. "Computer Gaming Cheats and the Women who Love them", because that lack of understanding is what truely frustrates me. I don't have much problem against cheats per se, I'm ranked 40th out of maybe 15,000 players in JointOps (but that's due more to playing time than anything) with a kill/death ratio of more than 3:1. I can smoke anybody cheating against me and maybe that's where it starts, at least the cheating aspect. I read somewhere that cheating is in fact, addictive.. once you start, you begin to see everyone as cheating. Never mind the person that just smoked you owns you, it doesn't compute. in the cheaters mind, the other guy HAS TO BE cheating. If I understood why a person cheats, I could say something positive, as opposed to "You cheating piece of &^$" .. Because noone responds well to negativity. Anywho, the people susceptable to cheating began that journey in their formative years.. and in this case, there's little anyone can do to correct it. But maybe we could modify the behaviour.. possibly some shock therapy or maybe a pre-frontal lobotomy.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited August 2005
    DogSoldier: Exactly. That is why parents need to explain and enforce good sportsmanship as early as possible.

    GH: It wasn’t a specific event as much as a change in the way the game runs that made the decision for me. The devs try to stay one step ahead of the cheaters, but the programmers are in Korea, and so have trouble making constant updates, or even knowing what is going on in the US servers. The straw that broke it for me was when I lost several games in a row in different rooms, because people were essentially farming money by cheating wins...

    Here's what happened:

    As in most games, there are rewards for winning. You get experience and money for winning, and you can use these rewards to obtain status and upgrades for your Avatar. I've never worried about this aspect of the game, because all of the upgrades are so expensive, that they might as well not exist. I've been playing the game for a long time now, and I've never earned enough money to even buy one upgrade, despite being pretty good at the game. The reason that the upgrades cost so much is because the Devs know that a lot of players cheat, and this takes more of their money out of the game. As I said, I just don't even worry about that part of the game, I play to have fun, and don't even care if other s download money-generators for themselves. Doesn’t really effect my fun.

    Anyway, the devs finally stopped this from happening with a small addition that resembles 'punk-buster' for CS, if you've seen that. Once people stopped being able to cheat with external programs, they started doing it within the game:

    You earn more money from winning than you lose for loosing, quite a bit more. So people started playing games against their friends, or themselves on another system, taking turns jumping off of the level to generate money for each other. This was also fine with me. A lot of people did it, but it didn't effect my games.

    The devs fixed this by eliminating the reward for winning a 1v1 game. That's when the trouble started.

    What happened the night I got sick of it?

    I joined a 2v2 room and began to play, and my teammate killed me (it's real easy to kill a teammate in this game), and jumped off of the level so that the opponent would win... I didn't understand at first. I thought the guy was just a fool. I went to a new room with different players, and it happened again.

    That's when I figured out what they were doing. Three people were taking turns earning money for each other by waiting for a fourth to join, then sabotaging the match to earn money... I decided to join a larger game, 4v4 this time, and it happened again! except that three of us were taken by 5 people working together.

    After that, I quit the game and started this thread. I was so mad!
  • Sledgehammer70Sledgehammer70 California Icrontian
    edited April 2006
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    Not just cheaters, but I saw recently a video from WoW of some guys who had one of their guildmates die in real life, so they held a ceremony in game inhis honor. Some asshat guild actually infiltrated the ceremony and during the event along with others who came running in massacered the whole gathering. Got it on Video and put it on the web to show off.

    WTF are wrong with people?
  • MiracleManSMiracleManS Chambersburg, PA Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    I stopped playing Gunbound around the time that became rampant. It seems to go in shifts though, and has gotten progressively worse. I've thought about downloading it and trying it again on my new system, but can't force myself to deal with the cheating.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited April 2006
    CBDroege, I completely understand what you mean, but I have a confession to make.... I used to hack horribly on halo 2 for xbox live, along with other games, but mainly halo 2. Anyway, I had a bunch of hacks for no reloading, infinate ammo, every gun automatic, super fast running, super high jumping, pistols shooting tank missiles, guns shooting incredibly powerful stuff, ect... The list goes on, but after getting the game on November 9, 2004 (yes i remember the date, im a loser), I played until July 2005 all the time. I played for at least an hour a day, it became an obsession. After playing that much, it gets old and boring, so I decided to try something new because it was different and mixed the games up. If you guys dont know, halo 2 has a ranking system from levels 1-50, 50 being hte best. You have to have a certain number of wins to advance to the next level, but basically I just wanted to get to 50 for the hell of it. I pissed off alot of people, and I've been hacked against (before i even started hacking) so i know its annoying as hell, but I can also understand the motives behind it. I never got in trouble for hacking, but I also stopped playing all together because hacking gets old REALLY fast. I played for maybe a week or 2, and then it just wasnt fun to win every single game, and never die once. O yea i forgot to mention the standby trick. It probably applies to other games too, but when you play halo 2, it selects a host for the game to be based off of, and if you get the host you can press the standby button on the modem and it freezes everyones game but yours. Everyone playing gets sent into a blue screen where it says re establishing connection while you are running around doing whatever. So basically you can press standby, go grab the other teams flag, bring it back and score. yea its annoying too.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    tmh88 wrote:
    CBDroege, I completely understand what you mean, but I have a confession to make.... I used to hack horribly on halo 2 for xbox live, along with other games, but mainly halo 2. Anyway, I had a bunch of hacks for no reloading, infinate ammo, every gun automatic, super fast running, super high jumping, pistols shooting tank missiles, guns shooting incredibly powerful stuff, ect... The list goes on, but after getting the game on November 9, 2004 (yes i remember the date, im a loser), I played until July 2005 all the time. I played for at least an hour a day, it became an obsession. After playing that much, it gets old and boring, so I decided to try something new because it was different and mixed the games up. If you guys dont know, halo 2 has a ranking system from levels 1-50, 50 being hte best. You have to have a certain number of wins to advance to the next level, but basically I just wanted to get to 50 for the hell of it. I pissed off alot of people, and I've been hacked against (before i even started hacking) so i know its annoying as hell, but I can also understand the motives behind it. I never got in trouble for hacking, but I also stopped playing all together because hacking gets old REALLY fast. I played for maybe a week or 2, and then it just wasnt fun to win every single game, and never die once. O yea i forgot to mention the standby trick. It probably applies to other games too, but when you play halo 2, it selects a host for the game to be based off of, and if you get the host you can press the standby button on the modem and it freezes everyones game but yours. Everyone playing gets sent into a blue screen where it says re establishing connection while you are running around doing whatever. So basically you can press standby, go grab the other teams flag, bring it back and score. yea its annoying too.

    *Glare* :mad2:

    That is why I stopped playing Halo 2 on Live.
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    hehe I never played XBOX Live, but in the lan parties(if you wanna call them that) my neighbors found a way to climb on top of the world in Halo 1 on one of the maps, stand there and snipe you out from the clouds. That and watching other peoples screens so you can run backwards and kill people without them being able to find you was all nessesary when you played against guys like that. Adapt or Die... But hacks, wall hacks, and such against others other than your friends is just bad.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    That's why Live and system link are cool, aside from the hacks. You don't have people that look at your screen, because they can't.
  • botheredbothered Manchester UK
    edited April 2006
    Excellent post CBDroege, I wish I'd seen it earlier. It sums up exactly how I feel about games. A game is just a set of rules, no more, no less. Play outside of those rules and you're doing something else. I have played quite a few online games, Serious Sam to CoD2, and I really don't care about winning. Obviously I play to win (because that's the point) but winning isn't what a game is about for me. It's about enjoying it. I remember finding a CoD2 server where I came top and that felt good, until I realised all the other players were around 10 years old, then it felt like cheating and I left.
    It's why I don't like sport. In the UK winning at sport seems to be everything, every match is 'crucial', it's always 'us and them'. I know so called sports fans who actually hate supporters of the other team. There is so much BS surrounding sport that enjoying it or having fun is no longer part of the equation, win at all costs. I live in a totally sport free zone, I even turn the news off when it gets to it. I see fanatic fathers buying football kits for two year old kids, I worked with a guy who hated another worker because "they beat us in the cup", it's all very sad and destructive. I don't want to come first in every game, I don't want to come last every time either, anywhere in the middle and I'm happy.
    Winning isn't everything after all, it's not even the point, it's just a bonus.
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    Well said, bothered.
  • CBCB Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ Der Millionendorf- Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    I'm with you, Bothered. I'll never understand team-based spectator sports. In the states, it makes even less sense.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited April 2006
    I enjoy the rivalry of spectator sports, but I don't understand the people that actually hate others for liking a different team.

    I agree with what bothered said on gaming. I'm happy just playing the game. I don't care if I win. Shoot, I've played many games where I've had more fun and come in dead last.
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