What is cheating?

Another good post Fril

They shouldnt enjoy their black market because it's other people profiting from their game. (Or is it? in my devils advocate/ conspiracy theorist mental voice) And yes the way they have the rules set it's a gainst the rules and is "cheating".

The big irony is like the poster i responded to points out, the items ppl will pay big for in GW dont even make them tougher players, a trait that is funny to me, because it reminds me of Second Life so much- you dont need anything in SL it's all just there to play digital barbie with.

I dont know if there is any way for GW to emulate what second life does, I just know SL doesnt have the same "RMT"/economy issues at all, and even though very hard to classify SL as a game, lots of people play, and even though GW is a game more proper, lots of people are kinda just hanging out looking pretty....

lol

In other games RMT is extremely harmful because they give players a direct advantage through superior gear. In GW all the money in the world is not going to help you complete the objectives any faster so from that perspective is not an issue.

There is however a percentage of the community that play to collect in game wealth, a portion of the game that RMT ruins. RMT needs to be stamped out to preserve the gaming environment for these people.

Why MMORPGs are called roleplaying games when there's little actual roleplaying taking place besides storyline elements? Helpsites, fansites and this talk of "economy" really turns off all immersion for me and reminds me on every turn of how technical pieces of code games really are.

For example, the polar bear pet is now rare - people are willing to pay hundreds of ectos to get themselves one, which equals hundreds of hours spent on nothing but sitting in front of computer doing repetitive grinding. Yet ANET programmers could at any moment flick a switch and make that minipets appear on dungeon chests. I can never unlearn the fact that everything we do in the game is just altering variables for our characters and where's the glory in that?!

To be honest I'd rather go do something which gives me something to be actually proud of. If you can play, heck, poker you're going to turn profit some day. Everyone knows what poker is and can relate their own experiences. Try to say that you're HA champ and get laughed off by being mere abuser of broken builds or game mechanics on the very site dedicated to fans of game. If you want to get experience and I don't mean experiences points now, go to national park and see real nature and real animals. As soon as servers shut down people will realize what a big waste of life playing games like this really is. Until then keep yourself lulled in dream that your titles matter, because of another upcoming game that is going to be just the same. What a vicious circle for addicts.

aapo: how relevant is your post to this thread? (it's more about economy than cheating, isn't it?)

- I think the main point was that in-game items have only sentimental value if anything. Whether RMT is cheating or not depends on rules of the game, I don't see how anyone can consider it morally wrong because of reasons stated in my previous post.

What's the relationship between your first post and the morality of the issue of cheating?

As it relates to Guild Wars, I think that it is almost impossible to "cheat."

About the only thing I could think of would be to actually hack something server-side to give yourself an advantage in PvP, but that's about it.

In PvE, there's nothing I could do that would alter the game for anyone else, so what would anyone care? Imagine if I hacked the game to give myself every title and minipet, max gold and a billion ectos. That wouldn't change your game one fraction.

I realize some people did something close to this with item duping, and A-Net had a different opinion, but I don't feel that any of that had an effect on my play or enjoyment.

- I'm not responsible for your reading comprehension.

It comes down to two issues, both which can be related to one another. First, the specific rules of the game. Second, legal issues.

Each online game has its different rules and regulations. Sure, for the most part, 95% of all EULA's, ToS, Agreement Terms are all the same, but not all. I'd like to think of it like University classes. For the most part all classes have the same basic rules of "Cheating". These would include things like no cellphones, no headphones, keep your eyes on your paper at all times, no talking, any quetions must be directed to the Professor and not another student.

Then you have individual class rules based on perhaps the material and who teaches the class. For instance, in my Project Management classes we're permitted 1 note card, front and back, with any notes we choose to put on it for our exams. My prior, Management Theory, allowed no use of any material and to be caught even with a notecard, or notes in the palm of your hand, WOULD be cheating.

While it's nice to have those aids in one class, I have to obide by the rules of each individual class. This is no different in games. Whether I like them, or not, I have to live with them. According to the EULA here, RMT services are against the rules of their classroom. Even if I were to believe that RMT services aren't harmful, or don't create liability issues for the company, I still don't hold rights to break those rules set forth.


To expand on that thought, keep in mind all we've paid for in regards to Guild Wars are the resources needed to use the service they provide. Kind of like me with my digital cable. I've only paid for the service. The modems, routers, and digtial boxes do not belong to me. I have no rights to sell those items, nor do I have any rights to sell my provider account information.

Same can be said for Guild Wars. We do not own the items. I don't own my Kaolin Domination Staffs, or the 6 Wingstorms sitting in my storage. We might be in posession of them, but they are not 'ours' and therefore hold no rights to profit off those items for real world money. This is where Reason 1 begins to morph with Reason 2 of legality issues. This is to say that Guild Wars, like many other games and their parent companies (and I'm sure you would too if you were in that position) are protecting themselves from liability in cases of fraud from these services. It's why not only sellers, but also buyers, are banned for RMT.

Of course not. But you could at least answer my question, couldn't you?

To me it becomes cheating if it involves something third party that gives the cheater an impossible advantage. TPPK bot from Diablo2 is the worst i can think off since it spontaniously kills characters wile the killer is in town.

Condition of Diablo2 : Dead.

I guess it was even easyer back in the early and naive days when you could simply use a program that allowed you to "set player X health to 0"

I think aapo is pro RMT, powerleveling, ect because he/she believes any accomplishment in a video game is trivial anyway.

If it's a single player game than I think cheating is trivial. If it's a competitive game, then cheating is considered unsportsmanlike. It degrades the enjoyment of others playing the game.
And as I said before I think there are lots of people who even see PvE rpg as competitive, in that it involves prestige. Prestige is just about a part of any game with social networking elements to it.

Very nicely put, and a great point you're making! Indeed, we have to abide by "unread rules" that are called EULAs, and strictly speaking they basically say that everything on the server (including our characters' information) belongs to Anet.

But that's not the case of the GWiki for example (may be why Anet created an "official" one?) or textmods you install on your client computer. From what I've read on GWG, this is against the EULA (no 3rd party program) but it is tolerated by Anet, because it does not really harm their business and increases the player's experience at no cost for them. But where do you put the limit of how acceptable a textmod is? The one for GMC can actually be used to get the title very quickly (there was this thread a while back saying that some people claimed to have gotten the GMC in a day!), I've heard people saying that some textmods do (or may?) give an advantage in game by highlighting certain factors (like skills used) and displaying usefull information (like what skill you should use when the opponent uses a certain skill?), so I guess a lot of people would agree that this is cheating?

The rules can and are bent all the time. We're not even lawyers to understand the EULA, but we have to agree to a certain "spirit of the game". I remember very clearly reading a lot of GWG threads where basically some players were complaining of the lack of "spirit" in other players' behaviours, either because they use textmods to achieve title more easily than the first did, or because they show no politeness or no "honor". I'd even tend to agree with these people, because in the long run, a game will be more successful if it is supported by its "values" rather than by its (technical) means.

But I feel that MMO sort of more and more escape this discussion. Socially speaking, it becomes less about how we behave (something that takes time to do) rather than things we have (instantaneous rewards?). And because of this, the notion of "cheating", in the sense that "rules" (based on the values) are bent or violated, does not apply the same way. One can basically say "it works for me" and "get away" with it, a bit like in real life when people say "it won't hurt people if they don't know".

Are politicians cheating when they bent the meaning of words?

Clearly somebody forgot to tell the tens of thousands of people who still play it.

It's not the biggest game in the world any more, but it's far from dead. Just like GW is far from dead, despite how many people in this forum seem to think it's 5 months out from it ... >.>

I'm not very familiar with initials when dealing with games. what does RMT stand for? sorry for the newbie question but can't be helped. after i know i may beable to participate in the discussion.

tyvm for any and all replies.

The problem with Diablo2 is that only the cheaters remain. Especially in hardcore. On softcore, there is only farming and rushing. No normal gameplay whatsoever. Zero.

So Diablo2 is a walking corpse only populated by the hopeless addicts who stopped having fun years ago. People who want fun are bullied out of the game or are forced to solo, wich defeats the purpose of being on line.

Or do you think it's normal that most level 90+ characters didn't even complete all quests or activated all waypoints?

RMT=Real-monay Trading. Or "gold selling" if you will, the business of selling virtual gold for real money.

Buying your FoW on Ebay is just stupid because it doesn't give you any advantage.Exept that people will accuse you of Ebaying. Some players love that kind of reaction even if it's true, but i just don't think a smirk is worth real cash.

oh, ok, thanks for the explaination. Yes i agree buying gold or items online for real money is cheating because it gives players huge advantages over everyone else. if i have 100 bucks a week to drop on gold/iitems and no one else does then i have an unfair advantage.

games are suppose to be about enjoyment, and sometimes competition. but competition is pointless if skill plays no part. RMT eliminates skill. In diablo 2 lod i had to deal with this, people buying HighRunes to make runic items, they would spend 100-200 bucks and have perfect gear with no effort, i worked for 6 years to get my gear and some of it wasnt even perfect.

i consider RMT cheating and against the spirit of gaming. people who buy gold/items to get an advantage in their game are "Noobs" in the truest sense of the word. and i hate the word noob. They are without skill, this is why they need to buy gold/items.

Well... to be honest most of the point of Diablo 2 is farming, unless you're low-level or something similar. There just isn't that much lasting appeal apart from attempting to get better stuff.

Of course, you also get people who just buy their equipment, probably from the dupers... and THEN what do you do...