To cheat or not to cheat...

[Ratsmack]

Okay, here's a question that's been bothering me. Well, two. Okay, first of all, what does everyone think about this situation: A person has a high-level char that they've showered with love and time, time, time. Now, after a full game of item hunting and exp boosting, they begin to disconnect, when suddenly, their memory card falls from the controller. After they get their frantic screaming under control, they find that the game will no longer accept that memory card's data and...boom, goodbye char. Pissed and angry, the person goes out and buys a Gameshark or some cheating device like that, only using it to get back their char. Technically, that IS cheating, but I realized if they ONLY use it to get back their old stuff, then they didn't do anything wrong. Personally, I'd probably be okay with rebuilding my char. But I seem to have no beefs with people who only cheat their char back from the land of PSO bugs. Whaddaya'll think? Second question: A person has a level 80-so char, and decides "well, it's time I tried a force". Now, after fighting some and getting up to an adequate level, the person thinks "Hmm...I have these rare weapons and items I won't be able to use." And gives them over to their lower-level char. Many, many, many people do this. I don't. I don't like the idea, I consider it cheating. I mean, the char who will use it didn't earn it, so technically, that's cheating as well. Again, whaddaya'll think?

[Glider]

To me, Its funner to get up to level 100, then be level 100. I say don't cheat.

PSO: Glider

Member of the Sonic Team [Leader]

http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thesonicteamhq

<font size=1>[ This message was edited by: Glider on 2001-02-28 01:38 ]</font>

[Warlord35]

I don't like the gameshark thing, cheaters are just people who don't have the skills to do it, or on the other hand they could just not want to spend the time&effort to do it the correct way. The item hand-me-down thing on the other hand is ok, because the person using both characters earned it with one of them, so it doesn't matter.

[DaHumAn]

don't cheat

[DarkWolf]

The cheating to get back your stuff just isn't right... I mean, in all fairness, think of those who could afford just PSO, but a Gameshark is too much, or those who have MORALS... But trading items within your own characters, I have no qualms with... Sure useless items make good Meseta fodder, but it'd be a waste to find an Inferno Bazooka with a force, yet you have a perfectly good hunter who could use it on your other VMU... or what if you like your costume color, but your mag color just reeks... http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif

[Ambrai]

Well I do email backups every other day (I work in IS bill me). So if that happens I wont lose too much...

[segagameplay]

as for the second question... Isnt the idea of the game supposed to be interaction amongst charecters? Giving powerful weapoins to lower levels doesnt mean they can use them... i my self often give rare items as rewards to newbies who play well with me. I used to give money but alas inflation.... now every other person has 999999.

[Bman]

I think that in the case of a lost character, using a Gameshark to get back to where you were is reasonable. What's the harm? Character loss is obviously a bug and not a design goal of the game, so what's wrong with working around it?

Handing items to a lower-lv character of your own (AKA "twinking") is frequently debated. I did this once or twice in Asheron's Call, to get an idea of what it would be like playing a different type of character. I do consider it to be cheating, but I just don't really care if people do it. If someone doesn't consider leveling up a new character to be fun, why force it upon them?

[kazee]

I am very tempted to cheat NOW!!
WHY??
I BSODed yesterday and lost all my weapons, items and lv200 MAG....
DANG...I HATE BSOD http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_frown.gif

[Ambel]

Kazee clam down lol ^^

u are the MAMAK team right? No worry then.

MAMAK team rulez!

[kazee]

Yeah..Ambel..I'm cool http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_biggrin.gif
You should know i won't cheat coz this is not the first time i encountered BSOD......
BUT this is getting really frustrating.

[Roaddogg]

Yup just backup your saves and you will be okay i tried it and love it now i can play and never worry ya know

[Drake]

On the Game Shark issue:

Granted, using it to recreate a deleted file is not *as* immoral as producing a level one hundred character (or a Spread Needle, Twin Brand, et cetera) out of thin air... but cheating is still cheating, no matter how good a reason you have.


On the hand-me-down issue:

Swapping items between characters is banned in most hardcore RP MUDs, and I can see why - it causes items of extreme value to suddenly materialize in the hands of poor novices for no IC (In-Character) reason, and that disrupts the RP environment.

*However* - this is an important distinction - this isn't that kind of game. Most people in PSO have names like "IamSuperman" or "REDRUM666" (and let us not forget the legions of Goku and Vegeta clones :P), and maybe one character in a thousand has a history, a distinct personality, or any motivation for fighting besides "I want an Inferno Bazooka!!" ^^; --My point here - I know I'm not being very clear --;; - is that it's more of a player-centered game than a character-centered game... so it really doesn't matter which of a player's characters earned an item, because the *player* earned it. See what I mean? ^^;;

[Ratsmack]

Call me stupid for saying this, but I think the cheating to get you char back is not cheating. Like Bman said, what's the harm? You EARNED that char, having it taken away by a bug is simply not fair. I'm saying JUST to where you were. I don't see anything more cheating about that than backing up your char, something that a lot of people don't know how to do or simply can't. The second one I think is cheating. You take the challenge out of the game if you're a level 20 walking around with a twin brand and three masterabilities. Same as cheating, although you did at some point EARN those items, the char that's using them didn't.

[kazee]

I have not started cheating but i was quite close to doing so...coz i encountered BSODed for the 4th time now.....very frustrating.
My characters are OK but all my items have been reseted.....i have some cool weapons too like the needle and c-bringer.
Question: is it moral to cheat on items/weapons/armor if u encountered item reset?
Answer: I am not doing it for the moment [still has a bunch of good friends that can help me recover the items].....but if it happens another time....i would probably cheat http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_frown.gif

[segagameplay]

You are not your job.
You are not how much you have in the bank.
You are not the contents of your wallet.
You are not your fucking Khakis.
You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.
You are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of
the world.

Yes i know it has nothing to do with pso. But wasnt fight club cool?

[Tiny_Tim]

I see nothing wrong with cheating in PSO for any reason; if that's the way that player enjoys playing the game, then so be it. Personally, I find it a lot more fulfilling to work my way up from scratch, but that's because I've the time and patience to spare. Maybe some of those "cheaters" just don't have that luxury?

[LastUtopia]

I feel compelled to say something about this, since I am a victim of the VMU slipout and losing a character (as everyone knows). But first, a quick story:

As some of you know, I created my replica Last Utopia and went online to Puck 9, telling those who were there at the time what happened. I got two suggestions:

1)Start over with a Force or Ranger
2)Use a Gameshark to get back to the level I was.

Although it seems ok to regain a lost character through cheating, I still think it's wrong. And after 6 days and 32 hours of play, I'm level 31. It's been a much more satisfying expereince than just getting it back in 5 seconds with a cheating device. And as I believe I said once before:

"Cheaters are like foreign diplomats who didn't pay their parking tickets, they should be dragged from their cars and beaten!"

Anyone know where I got that from?

[Drake]

In response to Tiny_Tim (whom I cannot quote, as the board seems to think BBS-style quoting is a form of HTML :P):

So they should be allowed to gain in five seconds something that takes the rest of us one-hundred-plus hours... just as some kind of compensation for being born without patience or having a lot of schoolwork? --;

It doesn't seem right to me. There's nothing in the rules that says "Feel free to cheat if you're too busy to play it the real way." If Sega wanted that, they would have put a convenient level select feature on the creation screen, right under name input. --; --And at the risk of sounding like a complete lunatic, I have to point out that the player is free to decide his/her own priorities; nobody is *forced* to place outside obligations (school, housework, dating... sleeping... et cetera) before PSO. The more important the game is to you, the more time you will put in, and the better your character will be - that's the way it's meant to work. Admittedly, I'm not one of those people with jammed schedules, so I wouldn't know what it's like to have to decide between PSO and algebra homework*... but I don't see anything really unfair about it. I doubt that the average casual player (you know - the sort whose mantra is "Who cares? It's just a game" :P) will be absolutely crushed if he/she never gets strong enough to beat Dark Falz on V-Hard. ^^;

*Maybe going out with friends would be a better example. One could argue that if you don't do your algebra homework, your parents will take away your game privileges and you won't be able to play at all. :P


<font size=1>[ This message was edited by: Drake on 2001-02-28 15:12 ]</font>

[ReikenFeralsbane]

well my friend lost his lv 80 character like 5 times man.....hes rubult him 4 times..that nutty, poor guy, so he finaly used our friends gs to get back to lv 80, i meen he lost his hours spent and items, rares, and faces, hes suffered enough, im not against using GS for revival of a character. but it goes to a point, just dont go over the limit that you had.....see i have no reason to cheat, i back up my character every night, so i can sleep well at night. as for hand me downs, yes i have done it, im not to pleased witbh myself....but playing online with low level characters is getting tuff, so many low lv thiefs its insane, i keep getting jacked up with veridio. giving him the better stuff helps me from dying....but i know that thievery is common and i should just take it like a bitch....but just so no one reems me, yes i do feel bad for giving veridio high lv stuff...
http://eviltapion.tripod.com/lordsofvirtue.jpg

[Xaken]

Personally I'm against the idae of using a GameShark for anything.

Many years ago I had fun with the Game Genie on my Nintendo because you could alter the game dynamics to make a new experience. Modern "cheating devices: where not made with that in mind. The GameShark is purely there to give people things they didn't earn (in any respect).

In the case of getting back a lost character, I still find it unsettling. Mostly because you are manipulating data that in a way is it's own from of corruption.

Backing up is fine to me (unless you use is as a duplication trick), and infact is very smart. It's a loop hole that Sega just happened to forget to correct, but is in no way a bastardization of the intentions of the game.

Finally, for swaping items between characters, I'd firmly agree with Drake. This is not some hard core RPG trying to create a "realistic" world. It's a game to have fun damnit. As some one else mentioned, this is a community game, giving things to others is fully within the design structure of the game. I concent to the "hand-me-down" parctice on a limited basis because I want to get full enjoyment out of some of my rare finds (like my frying pan that was useless by the time got it, but was much fun for a new character). Sure, if you want to keep your people separated, that's fine with me, but this is not an issue to judge others by. It's a personal choice and nothing more.

[Ratsmack]

Okay, first of all, Tiny Tim? If they don't have the time to play games then maybe they shouldn't...oh, I don't know...play games? Personally, I am a high school student with the hardest classes I can possibly take as a sophomore, yet, somehow, I DON'T cheat. The time excuse is utter bullshit. You want to take a short cut through the game? Fine, go ahead, just don't come online and start strewing twin brands all over the battlefield and acting like you're the best damned player that ever graced the online world. You're a newbie if you cheat. Plain and simple. You can't play yourself to a high level, actually, so you're LESS than a newbie. Second, Feralsbane's argument was the best so far. People steal his weapons from his lower level char, so he gives stuff to his lower level to make up for it. Still, I stick with my philosophy that hand-me-downs are bad. Xaken, as for you, I can't see how you condone giving items to characters that didn't earn them is okay, while getting items you DID earn, but were bugged away from you is so horrible.