Socrates
Mar 18, 2001, 10:04 PM
Greetings, all. A few days ago, somebody in one of the hacker MBs asked how it was at all possible that their use of hacks, cheats, dupes and codes could affect anybody elses game. The mistaken ntoion that your actions affect no-one else online is a common one among cheaters, dupers, and even a number of people that would never touch a Gameshark to save their lives.
After asking if he was serious, or merely rhetorical, I provided the answer below. I thought it might be of interest to some of the folks over here at PSOWorld as well, so here ya go. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif
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Fair enough. Assuming the people here can hold a straight, serious discussion (I know there are a few respectable folks here, but there are a lot more on this forum who seem to think that standing up for their position involves nothing more than lobbing some grade-school insults and swears at their opponent), I'd be happy to explain my views on the subject, and if anyone can provide solid arguments or debate to challenge me, I'd be happy to continue.
Incidently, before I get any lame flames back about the fact that I apparently put waaaay too much time into a response of this length, trust me, I've been working on this for the last couple of weeks. Instead of rewriting the same response over and over, I just started keeping it saved in a text file, and I edit and change it as new info, cheats and arguments become known to me.
And, in case anyone thinks I am some weaselly little teenager, I'm 31, hold down a job in the internet industry, and a have a family to support. So no, I don't spend 20 hours a day online with these games, and I'm not one of those people that want to put 800 hours into the game to find every single rare. I spend probably a little too much online than I should, but the realities of life are that I have to put food on the table for my family. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif
Okay, having provided a bit of a baseline, on to the actual response then:
First off, the issues goes far beyond just duping. As even a casual skim over this and other forums can tell you, the majority of people that dupe items will end up using cheat codes on their characters if said codes are available. And a significant number of those people will also use hacks and such (like casting techniques in the lobby) that are known to have a chance (even if it may be slight) of disrupting other people's games, such as corrupting the color tables, mangling inventory, freezing their DC, etc.). So it is an escalating progression -- if the resources are available, most dupers will become cheaters, and many cheaters will become hackers (although, to be perfectly honest, I don't consider them 'hackers' in the true sense of the word; they are rather "script kiddies", since the vast majority of them don't know how to hack on their own, but are competent enough to follow someone else's instructions. And yes, for those younger folks in the viewing audience, "script kiddies" is used as a derisive term).
Part of the appeal of PSO is the ability to find, after playing the game diligently, a number of special 'rare' items.
Item creation/duping and the vast proliferation of said items effectively hamstrung this element of the game. Part of the intended fun of the game is in finding rares that you've never seen, and perhaps, if you're lucky, a new rare that very few, if any, other people have seen. That has been stripped away by the intense duplication of the rare items -- several weeks back, a double saber was an impressive rare, because relatively few people had them. Now an overwhelming number of people do, and people just getting online for the first time will see a vast number of them their first day or two. With alarming frequency, the same 'devaluation' of other rares, such as Spread Needles, Chain Sawds, etc. is rapidly increasing as more and more dupes of these are flooding the game.
Many people have had far less enjoyment out of the game because one of the goals of the game -- finding rare items -- has been stripped from them. What is the point of trying to 'beat' the game and find a new rare if you've seen it a hundred times online already? Further, several of these rares are ones that, according to reports, were supposed to be 'locked' items that could only be available as rewards for solving forthcoming online quests. Why should SEGA provide those quests now when those items has spread like wildfire across the system?
Further, playability online is also decreased because the sheer power of some of these weapons can only be matched by their intended rarity. A Spread Needle can virtually devastate any room on Normal level, and makes very quick work of the same on Hard and even Very Hard.
Most players enjoy playing online, but what fun is there to play with a team only to discover that the 4th-level character next to you is using a cranked-up duped Spread Needle to wipe the room clean of monsters before you even can get within range? It becomes an exercise is frustration, because you never get any of the XP or satisfaction of beating the monsters.
Sure, you could simply not play with them, but if they came into your game, why should _you_ have to leave? Most dupers and cheaters that do the above actions will not bother to leave even if you ask them politely. So instead of having fun online, you have to quit the current team, start over in a brand new one, and hope that the new one will not be subject to the same thing. Sure, you could password-lock your team, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of being a 'multiplayer' game, and meeting new people, doesn't it?
Beyond that, one of the important social aspects of the game -- trading -- has been severely curtailed. Dupers and cheaters don't have any need to trade, because they can get as many of whatever they want whenever they want it. Antis also are trading far less, because they are concerned about being cheated in a trade (and let's face it, while not a direct connection, I don't think an increase in the number of trade-cheaters, item thieves and hacker codes are unrelated). Either that, or they are concerned that the item they get may be a dupe, and thus possibly subject to wiping (or worse) at some point in time by the new server mods as they are implemented.
And, even beyond all that, having these items almost immediately available to low-level characters completely distorts their view of how the game was intended to progress in difficulty as one gets farther and farther into it, and they end up beating the game far before they ever should, and as a result, they have far less reason to play the game again next week. And far less reason to recommend the game to their friends, which has a direct impact on the sales of PSO (see below).
Okay, that's just some points about how simple duping (and cheating, as well) affects other people. Obviously, the use of actual hacks, such as being able to cast spells in the lobby and thus possibly directly affect other's games) are directly affecting other people, so I won't bother to go into that.
Now, let's look at how duping, cheating and hacking can affect the PSO game itself, Sega, and the ability for us to get further PSO games, or even further Dreamcast games:
Long-term Playability:
Like many games, a relatively experienced gamer, with no cheat codes to speed things up, can complete PSO in a comparatively short time. That's fine, but repeat play is an important factor in games -- people are going to be more inclined to pay out forty or fifty bucks for a piece of plastic if they can feel that they will be getting more than a day or two's worth of enjoyment out of it.
One of the ways PSO garners repeat playability is by making the rare weapons exceedingly rare (too rare, some might say). Thus, even though you may have completed the game on Normal, more and different rare items will be available the more you play and the more harder levels you explore. Beyond the above social ramifications of duping, etc., there are other consequences as well.
As any marketing person will tell you, word-of-mouth is the world's best advertising. Nothing can make sales steady and healthy like the positive reccomendations of friends and other people. However, that cuts both ways -- nothing can kill a game off as quickly or as surely as _negative_ reccomdendations.
So far, word-of-mouth has been very, very positive for PSO. Now, that's not saying that it's a perfect game. Far from it; there are some gaping holes in the game design and implementation. But overall, and especially in light of the fact that this is the first game of it's type for a console system, it's been a big crowd-pleaser.
That, however, has been up to this point. Increasingly, that is starting to slide. Firstly, if things continue as they are going, you will get more and more new players in the situation I speculated about earlier, in which they realize the game "seems" to them to be too easy, or horribly unbalanced. They will not go back to their friends with glowing review of the game.
Further, a number of players who do not cheat will be playing less and less, because as a result of all the rampant duping, etc., they are not having as much fun. Again, the word-of-mouth from them will be "it used to be a good game, but it's not worth it any more."
Lastly, and perhaps most damaging, will be reviews and magazine/internet articles. Over the last week or three, an increasing number of gaming sites and such have been talking NOT about all the good points of the game, but rather about all the rampant thievery, cheating, duping et al. that is occuring online. In short time, this will also be reflected in traditional print media.
People do not want to buy a game that is overwhelmingly in the news for the problems it is having.
Okay, that's about the impact all this has with regards to PSO itself. Beyond that, however, it could have ramifications in the long run for other games.
For example, just yesterday it was announced by SEGA that while they will be releasing the PSO version 2 append disk in Japan, they "have not decided" whether or not they are going to do so in the US.
Why not? Cheaters and hacks, that's why. As many people have said, PSO has, up to this point, done extraordinarily well in sales here in the US; phenomenally well, actually. So financial factors cannot be the reason. Further, virtually all the actual programming and code is already in place because of the existence of PSO to begin with, so translating/reworking the code to run on US-model Dreamcasts is also not a major hurdle.
So the only likely possibility for why they may not release it here is if they feel that it's just not worth it. Why release a game, even an append disk, if the same thing that happened to PSO happens to this one?
Unlike online PC games, the info for a console multiplayer game is essentially 'hard-wired' into the CD that the game came on. With minimal server-side activity, they cannot make mods or updates to the game to stay even with the hackers as PC-based online games can do.
And I am quite certain that if they decide NOT to release the append disk here in the States, we can pretty much kiss away chances for getting PSO2 over here as well when they complete it.
And, to step even farther into the realm of conjecture, what is happening with PSO right now may well also have an impact on the future of the Dreamcast console _itself_. As everyone is aware at this point, the Dreamcast is a "dead system". That is, it's no longer being actively produced. That means game designers will only bother to make games for it if they see it as being worthwhile.
PSO was considered by many to be one of the "last big deals" for the DC, what with all the new systems looming on the horizon. If it does well, then it's entirely likely that game designers will continue to support the DC with new titles. If it does not do well, however, or becomes dragged down with server-side mishaps, duping, cheating, hacker-induced BSODs, and other such criminal/social mischief, what sort of signal will that send to the game designers? A clear signal to not bother, and start concentrating on other systems itself.
I will admit that these are, to some degree, worst-case scenarios. However, I will also say that they are far from being impossible.
Further, some people have said that this is all SEGA's fault for not patching the holes and such in the game to begin with. Well, that is one of the weakest arguments I've heard yet, and it just goes to show that there is a severe lack of personal responsibility around. Just because you find a security hole does not mean you are beholden to exploit it, and even more strongly, you are certainly not beholden to placing that information out for public consumption. Because the simple fact is that a vast number of people out there are simply not responsible enough to handle that sort of information. I would no sooner give them a lobby-magic code than I would hand them a loaded gun, because they do not have the maturity to be able to handle either in a responsible manner.
Don't get me wrong; I am not against hacking (in the 'pure' sense of the term; that is, the quest for knowledge and a seething curiosity to see how things work and what I can do with them). But the hacker ethic always used to be one of responsibility as well. How times have changed...
- - - - - -
If anyone has any comments, supporting or opposing arguments, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!
Socrates
After asking if he was serious, or merely rhetorical, I provided the answer below. I thought it might be of interest to some of the folks over here at PSOWorld as well, so here ya go. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif
- - - - -
Fair enough. Assuming the people here can hold a straight, serious discussion (I know there are a few respectable folks here, but there are a lot more on this forum who seem to think that standing up for their position involves nothing more than lobbing some grade-school insults and swears at their opponent), I'd be happy to explain my views on the subject, and if anyone can provide solid arguments or debate to challenge me, I'd be happy to continue.
Incidently, before I get any lame flames back about the fact that I apparently put waaaay too much time into a response of this length, trust me, I've been working on this for the last couple of weeks. Instead of rewriting the same response over and over, I just started keeping it saved in a text file, and I edit and change it as new info, cheats and arguments become known to me.
And, in case anyone thinks I am some weaselly little teenager, I'm 31, hold down a job in the internet industry, and a have a family to support. So no, I don't spend 20 hours a day online with these games, and I'm not one of those people that want to put 800 hours into the game to find every single rare. I spend probably a little too much online than I should, but the realities of life are that I have to put food on the table for my family. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/icon_smile.gif
Okay, having provided a bit of a baseline, on to the actual response then:
First off, the issues goes far beyond just duping. As even a casual skim over this and other forums can tell you, the majority of people that dupe items will end up using cheat codes on their characters if said codes are available. And a significant number of those people will also use hacks and such (like casting techniques in the lobby) that are known to have a chance (even if it may be slight) of disrupting other people's games, such as corrupting the color tables, mangling inventory, freezing their DC, etc.). So it is an escalating progression -- if the resources are available, most dupers will become cheaters, and many cheaters will become hackers (although, to be perfectly honest, I don't consider them 'hackers' in the true sense of the word; they are rather "script kiddies", since the vast majority of them don't know how to hack on their own, but are competent enough to follow someone else's instructions. And yes, for those younger folks in the viewing audience, "script kiddies" is used as a derisive term).
Part of the appeal of PSO is the ability to find, after playing the game diligently, a number of special 'rare' items.
Item creation/duping and the vast proliferation of said items effectively hamstrung this element of the game. Part of the intended fun of the game is in finding rares that you've never seen, and perhaps, if you're lucky, a new rare that very few, if any, other people have seen. That has been stripped away by the intense duplication of the rare items -- several weeks back, a double saber was an impressive rare, because relatively few people had them. Now an overwhelming number of people do, and people just getting online for the first time will see a vast number of them their first day or two. With alarming frequency, the same 'devaluation' of other rares, such as Spread Needles, Chain Sawds, etc. is rapidly increasing as more and more dupes of these are flooding the game.
Many people have had far less enjoyment out of the game because one of the goals of the game -- finding rare items -- has been stripped from them. What is the point of trying to 'beat' the game and find a new rare if you've seen it a hundred times online already? Further, several of these rares are ones that, according to reports, were supposed to be 'locked' items that could only be available as rewards for solving forthcoming online quests. Why should SEGA provide those quests now when those items has spread like wildfire across the system?
Further, playability online is also decreased because the sheer power of some of these weapons can only be matched by their intended rarity. A Spread Needle can virtually devastate any room on Normal level, and makes very quick work of the same on Hard and even Very Hard.
Most players enjoy playing online, but what fun is there to play with a team only to discover that the 4th-level character next to you is using a cranked-up duped Spread Needle to wipe the room clean of monsters before you even can get within range? It becomes an exercise is frustration, because you never get any of the XP or satisfaction of beating the monsters.
Sure, you could simply not play with them, but if they came into your game, why should _you_ have to leave? Most dupers and cheaters that do the above actions will not bother to leave even if you ask them politely. So instead of having fun online, you have to quit the current team, start over in a brand new one, and hope that the new one will not be subject to the same thing. Sure, you could password-lock your team, but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of being a 'multiplayer' game, and meeting new people, doesn't it?
Beyond that, one of the important social aspects of the game -- trading -- has been severely curtailed. Dupers and cheaters don't have any need to trade, because they can get as many of whatever they want whenever they want it. Antis also are trading far less, because they are concerned about being cheated in a trade (and let's face it, while not a direct connection, I don't think an increase in the number of trade-cheaters, item thieves and hacker codes are unrelated). Either that, or they are concerned that the item they get may be a dupe, and thus possibly subject to wiping (or worse) at some point in time by the new server mods as they are implemented.
And, even beyond all that, having these items almost immediately available to low-level characters completely distorts their view of how the game was intended to progress in difficulty as one gets farther and farther into it, and they end up beating the game far before they ever should, and as a result, they have far less reason to play the game again next week. And far less reason to recommend the game to their friends, which has a direct impact on the sales of PSO (see below).
Okay, that's just some points about how simple duping (and cheating, as well) affects other people. Obviously, the use of actual hacks, such as being able to cast spells in the lobby and thus possibly directly affect other's games) are directly affecting other people, so I won't bother to go into that.
Now, let's look at how duping, cheating and hacking can affect the PSO game itself, Sega, and the ability for us to get further PSO games, or even further Dreamcast games:
Long-term Playability:
Like many games, a relatively experienced gamer, with no cheat codes to speed things up, can complete PSO in a comparatively short time. That's fine, but repeat play is an important factor in games -- people are going to be more inclined to pay out forty or fifty bucks for a piece of plastic if they can feel that they will be getting more than a day or two's worth of enjoyment out of it.
One of the ways PSO garners repeat playability is by making the rare weapons exceedingly rare (too rare, some might say). Thus, even though you may have completed the game on Normal, more and different rare items will be available the more you play and the more harder levels you explore. Beyond the above social ramifications of duping, etc., there are other consequences as well.
As any marketing person will tell you, word-of-mouth is the world's best advertising. Nothing can make sales steady and healthy like the positive reccomendations of friends and other people. However, that cuts both ways -- nothing can kill a game off as quickly or as surely as _negative_ reccomdendations.
So far, word-of-mouth has been very, very positive for PSO. Now, that's not saying that it's a perfect game. Far from it; there are some gaping holes in the game design and implementation. But overall, and especially in light of the fact that this is the first game of it's type for a console system, it's been a big crowd-pleaser.
That, however, has been up to this point. Increasingly, that is starting to slide. Firstly, if things continue as they are going, you will get more and more new players in the situation I speculated about earlier, in which they realize the game "seems" to them to be too easy, or horribly unbalanced. They will not go back to their friends with glowing review of the game.
Further, a number of players who do not cheat will be playing less and less, because as a result of all the rampant duping, etc., they are not having as much fun. Again, the word-of-mouth from them will be "it used to be a good game, but it's not worth it any more."
Lastly, and perhaps most damaging, will be reviews and magazine/internet articles. Over the last week or three, an increasing number of gaming sites and such have been talking NOT about all the good points of the game, but rather about all the rampant thievery, cheating, duping et al. that is occuring online. In short time, this will also be reflected in traditional print media.
People do not want to buy a game that is overwhelmingly in the news for the problems it is having.
Okay, that's about the impact all this has with regards to PSO itself. Beyond that, however, it could have ramifications in the long run for other games.
For example, just yesterday it was announced by SEGA that while they will be releasing the PSO version 2 append disk in Japan, they "have not decided" whether or not they are going to do so in the US.
Why not? Cheaters and hacks, that's why. As many people have said, PSO has, up to this point, done extraordinarily well in sales here in the US; phenomenally well, actually. So financial factors cannot be the reason. Further, virtually all the actual programming and code is already in place because of the existence of PSO to begin with, so translating/reworking the code to run on US-model Dreamcasts is also not a major hurdle.
So the only likely possibility for why they may not release it here is if they feel that it's just not worth it. Why release a game, even an append disk, if the same thing that happened to PSO happens to this one?
Unlike online PC games, the info for a console multiplayer game is essentially 'hard-wired' into the CD that the game came on. With minimal server-side activity, they cannot make mods or updates to the game to stay even with the hackers as PC-based online games can do.
And I am quite certain that if they decide NOT to release the append disk here in the States, we can pretty much kiss away chances for getting PSO2 over here as well when they complete it.
And, to step even farther into the realm of conjecture, what is happening with PSO right now may well also have an impact on the future of the Dreamcast console _itself_. As everyone is aware at this point, the Dreamcast is a "dead system". That is, it's no longer being actively produced. That means game designers will only bother to make games for it if they see it as being worthwhile.
PSO was considered by many to be one of the "last big deals" for the DC, what with all the new systems looming on the horizon. If it does well, then it's entirely likely that game designers will continue to support the DC with new titles. If it does not do well, however, or becomes dragged down with server-side mishaps, duping, cheating, hacker-induced BSODs, and other such criminal/social mischief, what sort of signal will that send to the game designers? A clear signal to not bother, and start concentrating on other systems itself.
I will admit that these are, to some degree, worst-case scenarios. However, I will also say that they are far from being impossible.
Further, some people have said that this is all SEGA's fault for not patching the holes and such in the game to begin with. Well, that is one of the weakest arguments I've heard yet, and it just goes to show that there is a severe lack of personal responsibility around. Just because you find a security hole does not mean you are beholden to exploit it, and even more strongly, you are certainly not beholden to placing that information out for public consumption. Because the simple fact is that a vast number of people out there are simply not responsible enough to handle that sort of information. I would no sooner give them a lobby-magic code than I would hand them a loaded gun, because they do not have the maturity to be able to handle either in a responsible manner.
Don't get me wrong; I am not against hacking (in the 'pure' sense of the term; that is, the quest for knowledge and a seething curiosity to see how things work and what I can do with them). But the hacker ethic always used to be one of responsibility as well. How times have changed...
- - - - - -
If anyone has any comments, supporting or opposing arguments, I'd love to hear them. Thanks!
Socrates