Can you justify cheating in a poorly designed game?

[Chun Liroy]

I did it all hombres, I did it for the lulz and the fact that it made the game more enjoyable. Feels good man. Game was slow as fuck back in 2005.

Niggas blatantly bot, but I get banned for making a fight more interesting? Blasphemy!

Spoiler: show

Not to get too off topic but my friends were banned for asking a couple while exping if they shit in eachothers mouths for foreplay. And another said something like "Sup dirty niggers" in party chat by accident.

As far as the definitely of cheating, I think that it goes under a different definition when it comes to MMOs. Cheating in single player games I define as looking up how to do things in strategy guides, like puzzles or how to get a "secret" thing done. In this MMO I think that things like hacking the game (ap radar, clipper, spellcast, some windower plugins to an extent) are cheating whereas windower and most of the plugins are more of a tool that should have been in the game in the first place.

Oh and your real name can't be shaddix...

[Colenzo]

i just didnt do it around random people, thats why i never got caught

[shaddix]

It is my real name. Irish or something.

Sucks when meeting people they always call me chaddix or make a bunch of dick jokes.

[dejet]

It is my real name. Irish or something.

Sucks when meeting people they always call me chaddix or make a bunch of dick jokes.

funny names are always fucking great ways to break the ice.

[Jex]

Name: Justin
Age: 21
Location: Las Vegas
Play-style: Hard core
Average time spent playing: 18-20 hours a day till i turned 21 lol

I have used Kaces,Arenz,Windower,Flee hacks... I use anything that isn't 100% detectable or won't get me instant banned.
As for as RMT, I honestly see it as people can spend there RL money on anything they want. I have made plenty of money off this game and why shouldn't I? I put my time and money into It having an income return should be no problem.

[Blasta]

I've only played XI, so I don't really have any other game to compare XI to, but I'd say that XI was pretty fucked up. Just the fact that changing gears cannot be done with 1 macro is so dumb. I don't mind cheats if the game is messed up just like XI is, but the worst cheat is definitely a cheat that directly causes frustration to another player(s). These would be claim bots. However the high competition is probably the #1 reason for claim botting, so I'm not going to judge them too much.

I played for 4 years (playtime 400 days), Windower most of the time and claimbot for 1 month.

Name: Kasper
Age: 21
Location: Finland
Play-style: HC'ish
Average time spent playing: 6-8 per day, 12 on weekends (7 days a week)

[SaviorSelf]

How is the game poorly designed? I can see a poorly designed system for a particular area of end game, but the entire game?

I was not trying to include the entire game, but as others have mentioned, there are some glaringly obvious things that were pretty poorly designed, i.e. macros being 6 lines while the game is very 'gear-swapping' oriented. HNM system where the first to claim gets it, latency issues. Not being able to see TP of party members, or MP of alliance members, which one could argue that it is a MMO and communication is important instead of frowned upon. Can you justify your reasons for buying gil or selling it? Is one worse than the other, and how so? What about buying an account if you were falsely banned for whatever reason, or lost your account to a 'friend' jacking it? It would be considered 'cheating', but I'm looking for the context around scenarios that implore others to see it in a different light.

How do you all feel about this as a cheating scale? Add some more things in there? Move some around?


One of the things I wanted to focus a lot of the assignment on was the few years of confusion/disappointment/struggle with Absolute Virtue and his poor design. If peopl have some dates as to exact release date (late 2005) and the instances when he was killed (found one on here in September '08 that most people seemed impressed at, but still didn't read on to find what method was used to kill) and the attempts made/how they were patched. I remember the wall of justice, a LS on my server held him for 42 hours to try and win but ultimately ended up letting it depop because JP's GMed the group because they wanted to fight JoL (which in itself is another flaw in game design imo for what could be such a long fight, although not so much now). Since the game has become considerably easier since we were able to attain 76+, I don't want to focus too much on Abyssea because I think things are pretty okay in that aspect. I admit I haven't had much play time inside (but do have a great linkshell when I do go! [join omniscient or die]) but if you have a concern, feel free to voice it here. Maybe this could end up being the voice of reason for Square Enix lol (okay.jpg)

Few quotes to go along with the topic.

Robert MacBride, from the Games Programs at RMIT University, provides another reason for one‟s use of cheating methods in video games. “We cheat sometimes as a form of expedition when growing impatient, sometimes as a form of salvation when our interest begins to wane and mostly as a validation of discovery,” (MacBride 303-304). The psychological reasons to cheat could be simplified to one of two possibilities. One, some people might cheat to beat the unbeatable, and two, others might cheat to increase interest in an easy game.

I like where this is going so far, and thank everyone who has participated thus far. For the emphasis here if you don't want to type out your life story (but would love if you do) why do you cheat and what is your reasoning for doing so? I know it's easy to say "cheated cause my homies were doing so" but try to really question yourself here. You wanted success with little work? Got more fun out of botting? etc, tell me your story via a post here or PM me like others have if you don't feel comfortable doing so.

[Aurara]

I botted(as stated previously) because you got more points for botting, and i didn't want to fall behind on points, as well as i figured "i use windower i broke the rules why the fuck not"

[TheDirtyHobo]

It's a game, its purpose is to be fun. If cheating helps you enjoy the game more, it is justified. If it's a case where cheating can get you banned, you have to weigh the benefits of cheating's increase in fun against the chance of being banned.

For example with XI, gil duping is a relatively high probability of getting banned, but can give you the increased fun of having better buyable gear. To me (and I assume the majority of the playerbase), this isn't worth it, so I haven't done it. To others, it is, so they have. Windower has a nearly non-existant chance of being banned, and makes the game massively less frustrating, which is why such a huge portion of the PC population uses it. And in the middle of the two, there's something like OnEvent for stunning. The chance for being banned is still pretty miniscule, but much higher than for something like windower, and as expected, there are much fewer players using it.

Then, there's a different type of cheating. For other games, especially competitive online ones, there's the majority of the playerbase that derives their enjoyment out of the actual competition, and the minority that cheats because they derive their enjoyment out of winning by any means (or alternatively, trolling). This kind of cheating is never justified, since you increasing your sense of fun is directly decreasing one or several other people's fun. Claim bots in XI fall under this category, and although I still say it's not justified, it's understandable given the harshly limited conditions of XI's HNM scene and the fact that you can't even compete without bots. It's really just a case of one person being a dick that spiraled violently out of control.

[dejet]

I really dont think there is anyone that has not fallen into that grey area at one point. That could very well fit into buying and selling items back from NPCs(tav glich anyone? )

We all have in some shape or form cheated.

[Shenrien]

Name:Kris
Age:22
Location:Wisconsin
Play-style:Hardcore in winter, casual in summer.
Average time spent playing: 14-16hrous/day winter 6-8+ hours/day summer

when I was on Lakshmi for my 4 month vacation I used pos hack tools while in an HNMLS and ended up getting banned for 3 days, which turned to be a month break from the game. While in the shell I had used their purchased claim tool for shit, and had used Wizbot for a short time for fish boting and crafting, that came to a hault tho cause sushi market is fucked.

I've never bought Gil, its not worth the price for how much you get, and even if the price was low I'd never stoop that low to actually purchase fake currency. I have always found it to be easy enough to pull in money whenever needed cause people get despite and want to buy some of the oddest stuff that has a fairly high drop rate in the game if not 100% for high prices.

I use Windower with a few basic plugins, and other third party applications (clipper, apradar) no use for claiming bots anymore there is nothing that is worth camping that hard that I need a bot for when it just respawns the next 10 minutes if I miss claim, usually not the end of the world.

[Sho]

Name: Tim
Age: 26
Location: Texas
Playstyle: Dependant on work/school; 30 mins ~ 7 hours

Use Windower daily along with Mappy only anymore. Used to use Clipper to flee-hack, and fish botted a in the past when school was rough enough to steal playtime. Stayed away from the gilbuying and bot claiming in LSes, however.

I'm almost certain you can get away with flee hacking 100% if you don't go over natural flee speed. You will get caught by the auto-jailer if you try to POS hack through objects or use 100~500x normal speed, even if you're the only person in the zone, however.

The reasons why I'd cheat would be to simply escape repetition of the game or multitask. As cool as fishing is with a PS3 controller for example, it's hard to say someone can sit there on their ass for 8+ hours fishing without either being bored out of their mind or crazy. Being in many LSes that botted despite myself not botting, it felt justified amongst people in those LSes at the time-- again, no one wants to stand around for 3 hours, then lose claim on anything and have that time wasted (the smart people would have watched TV or did something else however, coming back on every set, lol). Flee/Warp/POS hacking is obvious as to why people do so. Same with gilbuying.

At the end of the day, even simply using Windower is cheating, seeing as it's a 3rd party program and prohibited by SE.

[NynJa]

We already knew that Nynja from back in old BG forums :D

Funny how some people still think I'm the epitome of cheaters when you've got people posting here that they are basically RMT, who post SS's of them with GM flag's up, who talk very openly about having to bot lolabyssea NM's...lawl


as for my rap sheet: windower and its associated goons, spellcast (only got on this like a year ago), couple automated scripts so I dont get arthritis (like fame traders or for anything that requires monotonous repeats), PL bot.

I tried out some other shit in the safety of my mog house, like fleehack and position changers, but they just looked so sketchy, I didnt bother. I know people who were so blatantly open with POS hacks:
-in dynamis dead, and would actually move their corpses, right infront of everyone.
-cop gates
-rushing to NM's


Used to be hardcore, and now I just dont care. I dont think I've really done anything in 6 weeks. Last time I logged in with intent to do something, I logged my 3 characters in, changed jobs, then logged out because it took forever.

[darkepyon]

Name: Dennis
Age: 30
Location: Florida
Playstyle: Depends on the situation.

Yeah I've used windower, apradar and all that good stuff. Even in my PSO days, I did all sorts of stuff.

[SaviorSelf]

For future posts, I'm interested in what programs you do use, and for the purpose of the paper, why you use them, and your justification for doing so. I know lots of people bot, use windower, etc, but I'm looking for reasons as to why you specifically use them. If people mentioned them already, feel free to be repetitive. Many people having the same outlook is not a bad thing!

[Ganukay]

Name: Mike
Age: 21
Location: Wisconsin
Play-style: casual-hardcore
Average time spent playing: daily, 5+ hours

I've used Windower for as long as I've known about it. Just started using Multisend. I use apradar for VNMs. Never used a claim bot, was never in the HNM scene. Experimented with a fish bot when I fist started playing, but never used one on my main character, now. Proud to say I fished/bought all of my moat carp for Lu Shangs without botting. I recall getting my first staging point when ToAU came out by a POS hack because I didn't want to run through imps, die and start over. I don't see anything wrong with using most of 3rd party applications, I just use them to save time, like many others. Though claim bots irritate me when they're being used on Gukumatz and other overcamped abyssea NMs needed for empyreans.

[hey]

The purpose of a game is to have fun. If cheating allows me to have more fun, then why would i not? Fuck the rules. Having more time to play because i can get around the world instantly, instead of auto running for half an hour, or pos hacking to avoid dying at 1% of an nm, and having to start over, etc does not hurt anyone. It just makes the game more fun. As far as botting goes, although of course it does hurt others, i still did not have much problem with it. Most poeple botted hnms, so doing so was often required to simply level the playing field, but also, there was no way in hell i was going to sit around for 3 hours and not do anything i could to ensure i would not be walking away without even fighting the monster i came to fight.

Name: Hey
Age: 19
Location: NJ
Play-style: Was a pretty hard core player up until 2010, when i played fairly casually. I stopped playing in january.
Average time spent playing: 10+ hours a day from 2007~2010. ~5 hours/day 2010~2011gl

As far as what programs i used, and why:

windower: windowed mode, and various plugins. It just makes the game a lot better, in so many ways.
apradar: Mostly for the minimap, but the radar is nice of course.
lgm: Not sure why it takes so long to run through people.
claim bots: reason mentioned above
pos hacks: traveling around the massive game is a time sink i wanted nothing to do with. It serves no purpose, and hurts no one.

[catfat]

What kind of shitty school lets you do papers on this worthless subject?

[SaviorSelf]

It's a video game culture class. Believe me, when I saw the syllabus saying we didn't need to buy books and instead play Guild Wars, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Fallout 3, I was ecstatic. Then I saw all the reading and scholarly analysis', I was not so excited anymore. It's much more than just playing games (sadly).

[Draylo]

What kind of shitty school lets you do papers on this worthless subject?

Idiot.