What is cheating?

Lots of us, though I guess I was never a fan of MUDS. Heck, I remember playing the single player "Hunt the Wumpus" and having quite a bit of fun with it (younger folks always thing I'm making fun of them when I mention this game). I always referred to ti as a "SUD"

As for the question of what is cheating my personally opinion is that it is something that give someone an unfair advantage against another person (note that is *against*, not *compared*). You will note that this also has a game mechanics portion to it - editing stats, weapons, and all sorts of things in a single player offline game is VERY different (in terms of cheating) than doing so in Unreal Tournament. In the offline game the main thing is that you have fun - you are only hurting the NPC's and I can't say I really care. However an AimBot in a competitive FPS hurts everyone else trying to play legitimately and your "fun" is in ruining others fun.

As such, in games like GW I mostly don't care - power leveling, purchasing gold, and the vast majority of those things aren't a big deal. At worst (and I do think this moves them into the realm of worthy for Anet to ban) they make legitimate players not be able to afford player driven basic equipment (runes, materials, and such) due to inflation. Due to the nature of a PvP character they gain *no* advantage to do so against other people, in PvE as long is it doesn't cause inflation against other characters you only affect your own game.

Same thing with the wiki, safely grinding titles vs doing them "for real", and many other things. I can assure you that someone who achieved Legendary survivor by beating all the games along with missions has a MUCH greater sense of personal accomplishment (all the titles are really good for) than someone who did FFF until they got the title. However, if the person who got it with FFF finds such a thing fun then who am I to tell them not too?

In short I find cheating to be ruining others fun in order to further your own. Just be aware that no matter what you do you will ruin *a few* others fun (a lesser degree that simply "others" or "many others" and unavoidable) so once you get to that point it is a question of do like like Chicken or Beef?

RMT, TexMod, GuildWiki are are all degrees of cheating. But, in my view, not all cheating is equally harmful.

The most harmless cheating is figuring a way to move the main storyline along when stuck. Be reading a Wiki, a player is only cheating himself. Designers had expectations that working through the puzzle is part of the experience, but few players have problems with this form of cheating anymore. It's like cheating in solitaire.

At the other end of the spectrum is cheating that harms the experience of other players in a competitive environment. The Diablo examples already given are good ones. When players figured out how to modify the traffic being sent between games to insta-kill each other, that cheating ruined the game. This type of cheating has many characteristics the harmless, cheating-yourself type does not:

1. It uses external programs never envisioned.
2. It violates the EULA.
3. It makes fair competition impossible.
4. It directly harms another player's experience.

To me, whether cheating is harmful or benign is a function of how many of above points are involved.

To me, RMT is nearly as bad as Diablo-style traffic modification, since it hits points 1, 2, and 4. Most of the ingame gold is made using bots in violation of the EULA (1 & 2). It creates ingame inflation making it more difficult for non-cheating players to acquire items normally since everything becomes more expensive (4).

If you consider being among the first to acquire rare items ingame part of the "competition" of PVE, then it arguably involves point 3 as well. I find this connection weaker than direct PvP competition.

What about using TexMod for a cartography title? I find this the be more benign than RMT, but worse than using the Wiki. It uses an external program (1), but Anet has stated that this is not in violation of the EULA. The only competition involved is competition to acquire numerous titles - which as I said is a bit weak. It does indirectly harm other players in that those who invested a lot of time getting the title without this type of aid have the value diminished because it is now less rare. Cheating? Yes. The worse form of cheating? Hardly.

Anyway, that's my framework for thinking about it.

^^ but all of that is in Diablo 2 or in games like WoW where the equipment gives an advantage over other players.... In GW there is no advantage recieved by buying gold online...as all max items/armor are equal.

The only advantage it may give is in GW2 where minipets/titles may grant certain ingame advantages through the HoM.

The sad thing is anytime you have tradeable goods in any of these online MMO's or MMORPG's you're going to have RMT. The only way to stop it is force everyone to get their own items within the game for themselves meaning there is no money or economy only "no trade" droppable items. You'll still have resources you'll need to gather for your armor and/or other gear. But, there will be no way to trade between other players for any item drops and most especially high end gear. (except across your account for your other characters this would be allowed)

A game like this would only have one avenue of sales then and that would be character selling like Everquest had...I remember the first level 50 wizard went for like $10,000 on ebay. lol But, of course it takes a very long time with "no trade" items to regear up another level 50 wizard.

My other suggestion to the cause is have the bosses not drop the same items over and over. One time the boss you fight in one place might drop X superior thingy and then it wouldn't drop it again for 100 battles and some other boss somewhere's else has the item you might be looking for and there would be quest givers/npcs that would give you clues and hints about where the item you are looking for might be the next time.

Of course your market and craft players hate this type of idea because it takes their type of fun out of the game. But, welp sometimes you sacrifice the few for the enjoyment of the many. You'd still be able to craft, but, you'd have to get all your own resources. I think this is a better way because then you have other avenues of the game you can play.

I really hate the way you obtain all armor in GWs it's the worst I've ever seen as I'd like to be able to loot it off of dead enemies instead of having to buy it all the time. It's more fun looting and finding what you want and need than it is to BUY it in the first place. But, some people just can't stand being left behind and the "no trade" method would put everyone on an even keel and they'd either have to do it the right way or pay out the nose for a character completed like the ole EQ ones.

What is "fair" in your mind? Who defines "fair"? I believe that there's a concensual/social side to it and I'm trying to get to it in this thread. If a game mechanic offers you something and you exploit it "to the max" by using a textmod (previous example I gave is: display a skill to use when your opponent uses particular skills, could help with interrupting), is it "fair"? RMT for example may not harm your gameplay experience but are like parasites earning money on Anet's business and the product that we bought.

Auto-kill bots are clearly unfair and cheating, trying to explain the contrary would only be hypocrisy. I'm more interested in the situation that are not obvious (well it's subjective of course, depending on how much you know about these things).

Interesting point! Even if GW is not a pure MMO, we're all in the same economy, so RMT and farming influences all, to a more or less important extent depending on how much you value your stuff (15k armor is nice to have in HoM). Similarly, PvP people are all in the same ladder, so what happens when people get a small little edge thanks to textmods (I don't know if this is happenning, please PvP people elaborate if you will!)? A bit like what happens in real life when industrial production is brought into the equation, with mass economies and cheap workers (Asia is the center of the RMT world).

We go back to the (moral) argment of "do whatever you feel like doing". I'm wondering (it's a question) whether you can actually ignore the influence that your actions have on the whole community. By FFF-ing the easy way, you push your guild ahead of others, is it fair to the guilds that work the hard way? I perfectly understand the sense of personal achievement, and I think that their behaviour would show values that would attract people with the same values (idem for the FFFers). But then there's the point when guilds are ranked and compared, and people male opinions not on first-hand experience with players and guilds, but "hear say" which work differently.

(I don't understand the "chicken or beef" point in English, would you care to explain?)

Totally agree. But I didn't want to put this definition because it's so difficult to know what people feel (I don't know if you remember this thread on the GMC textmod, you'd have the 2 extremes of people wanting it banned and people wanting it as a normal feature in the game) and this leads to flaming. Plus you can actually screw a community by "playing" a nasty game on these points (like trolling on GWG and provoking people on these issues; e.g., on the day of the "mini polar bear affair" you'd see a lot of Q&A that looked like attempting to heat up the debate, creating more threads on the topic)

- I don't see what would be morally wrong for trading money to service, even though I admit seeing those gold ads and spammers everywhere irritates me to core. Any accomplishment is trivial, because the method for doing it is always the same. When you see hard mission ahead of you, it's no problem to check wiki page for help, get perfect builds etc. There's very little leeway for this "skill" everyone is talking about. On other RPGs as you progress in the story monsters become harder, but that doesn't mean they become more *challenging*, as all challenge can be countered by leveling up your own character and farming bosses for better items - doing that easy job x1000 times to make all other jobs easy too.

Games are good when the challenge they offer is pure. Most computer games are ridden with gimmicks and I wouldn't consider them competitive at all. When the first impression and immersion is gone, people start realizing all the faults the game has - just look at this forum.

- Exactly and here's the thing: if game's integrity against all forms of cheating and dubious exploits is strong and achievements are such that they indeed require skill to reach, then accomplishments have prestige value.

But Guild Wars fails to meet those requirements.
Gladiator - sync in RA with your perfect guild team with vent against monkless parties.
Legendary Survivor - play carefully to get to Lutgardis. stand back and let heroes kill everything, then HFFF your million exp.
Legendary Cartographer - download texmod to instantly see what you've missed.
...list goes on...

Only games I've seen meet these requirements have been Chess and Go. There's no gimmicks whatsoever, pure thinking gets you reward.

Brilliant analysis hallomik! I'm almost wondering if there's anything else to say after that

I can see one way to express the problem: it's to use your rule (3), but implying that there's an implicit "competition" in PvE with things like showing titles or posessions. Although this does not seem at all like a rule that people would agree with because many expressed the fact that it does not matter to them.

Exactly! You said it yourself: what's morally wrong in RMT (it's actually a bigger business than that as it includes a form of spamming, plus it's sometimes related to more normal forms of spamming and even hacking/botnets) is that it introduces disruptions and naturally (though it may not start like this, there's been news of "legal RMTs") will lead to more aggressive techniques, due to economic pressures (a point to discuss on the thread Reflections on Commerce in MMOs and Virtual Economies). Though you may always find ways to classify this out of the "morality" field, it clearly is part of the bottom of the problem.

But this disrupts the balance of the game. Plus accepting that it (e.g., Gwiki) can be made 1000times easier is opening the door to automating it, i.e., bots.


Agree. At the same time, I think it also comes from the diversity of things offered by the game.

IIRC there are ways to cheat in chess. Plus there's always the question of "is bluffing cheating"? Very interesting reads here and here. Plus look at this serious article on cheating in chess:
http://blogs.britannica.com/blog/mai...heat-at-chess/

Cheating is something that gives an unfair advantage in a given situation. I really could not care less about mapping or additional information, but if you're getting advantages in combat or pulling money out of the air, that's a problem.

I don't consider syncing an 'unfair advantage' because random arena is random and that's what happens sometimes. A way to send a TA team into RA every time I'd look at differently, though.

Also MUDs are awesome.

IMO: RMT, Wiki, TexMOD, are all cheats. Some are just less disruptive and less damaging as others. Using Wiki to get detailed information on dungeons or questing is not really harmful at all. Would one be ruining his/her gaming experiance by Wiki-ing the details, to some degree, yes, to another, no. Using TexMOD to get GMC is another issue. Its a cheat yes, but it is available for ALL players.

Ursan is not a cheat. Its provided by to us by Anet. Using it is not a cheat, it should not be nerfed. Its there, leave it. BTW, I don't like nor use Ursan. I despise the "form" skills as much as I despised the "worm" in Nightfall. I like MY char, MY skills, MY weaps. /endrant

The only "cheat" I concider to be disruptive and damaging is RMT for gold. We in GW have an in-game economy based on supply and demand. Should 5000 players buy 100k then, in turn, spend that 100K to buy Obsidian Armor then that would be nearly 500,000,000 gold spend on Ecto and Shards, driving the price of both up severly and thereby raising the prices of everything else.

QFT.

If it feels wrong, don't do it.
And for gawds sake folks...don't brag about an exploit you have found...and then post it step by step!!
________________
PvE Helpful Hint #3249: Yes, monsters DO get DP too.

Its all relatve. Thats all i got for mow <--thats right.....MOW

EDIT: Anet already does a "legal RMT". Its called the skill unlock packs. Virtual items for real world money. We already bought the game and there is no added content with these unlock packs. Only giving people, for real world money, what others have to work in game to get.

"What is Cheating" is a moral question and different to each person based on
individual morality, life circumstances and upbringing. What is cheating to one may be fine to another.

Technically you are cheating if you break the rules of the game.

Other things people could consider cheating

Buying certain titles or paying someone to complete certain titles for you.

Getting runs or mission run throughs.

Afking for anything even the lucky title / Afk Farming

buying gold/items

looking up how to's

taking advantage of a bug

Taking advantage of other players (scams)

There are probably too many to list.

I am not saying I agree with all of the above I am just giving some examples of how some people may feel on this issue. There is no right and wrong to this question in black and white but rather a large area of grey that most people's opinions will fall into.

True. And false. At the same time.

You can't get definite black (or very dark grey) or white (or very light gray) answers, but that shouldn't stop you from trying to. And I think, as I said before, that a game (it's different if it's not a game) that wouldn't set some values (as Anet has been trying to, though it's far from perfect) would become anarchy in the long run. If you simply hope that the community will fix itself, you're wrong for one very simple reason: it's much easier to destroy than to create. So cheating does hurt the community, sometimes people simply don't notice and so don't bother.

Once more, I'll say that hallomik broke down the problem into very nice 4 building blocks: external development, EULA, fair competition, and harming gameplay. You can disagree on the meanings because of your subjective experiences (someone who's played only half of the 4 GW games in NM will not feel the same way as someone who completed them both in NM and HM, and maxed KoaBD), but the situation gets back when you twist the words. We've already seen that with cheaters trying to brag their feats and suddenly turning very hypocritical when put in front on the fact (I think that the thread A Little Confession to Make... can show that).

One way to make cheating acceptable is to also avoid confronting its moral side. If you make it a semantically-void concept, it becomes totally normal, despite being detrimental to the whole community. In hallomik's 4 points, this is akin to saying that the words "fair" and "harm" are overloaded and that the players that use them are over-reacting (see the discussion on bad language and swearing where people will simply tell you: if you can't stand it, quite the game; or don't use the internet if you're not prepared for that).

(on the last point, I remember reading a serious article on how the rich countriers are cheating in the (real) global economy, sometimes simply inventing notions to semantically avoid the real problem of unfairness to harmed poor countries)

Well the wiki is a different story. It's almost like the difference between buying a Game Guide and buying a Game Shark. One guides you, but you still have to do the work. The other can skip the work for you with a simple God Mode code. I also see the wiki like having Coles Notes for Hamlet in high school. They help, sure, but you're still left with actually putting the information to use on exams. I personally don't read the wiki for anything other than referencing items. I never use it for missions, or quests. I'm a player who likes figuring out things for herself.

Unfortunately, in regards to mods, I can't give any reply. Not that I don't want too, but I simply don't know much about GW mods to give any sort of opinion on how they work and what mods are available. I would like to think that Anet watches closely the mods that are made available for Guild Wars and I'm sure they act accordingly towards any mod that impacts & gives a clear advantage to players in regards to actual game mechanics which can influence everyone.


As it comes to game honor, I can only agree. Admittedly I have not been a Guild Wars player for as long as others. I had my one year birthday on Christmas. GW isn't unlike anyother online game where the community is divided by players attitudes and styles. Narrowing it down; You'll have the honest player who will do nothing to risk their account and the player who, at any given opportunity, will exploit and gain advantage over everyone else, with the attitude of "To heck with them, it's all about me". While the only thing Anet can do is enforce its rules, the bulk of responsibility of how healthy the community is - that's up to the community itself. You'll always have the "Eric Cartman" syndrome player. It's unavoidable. I just hope that those Cartman's will always be outnumbered.

I don't and never will use exploits, scam players, talk down to new players, use mods, or say I'm better than anyone else because (and this is the biggest reason) I respect the game too much. I do see myself as a guest in someone elses home. Afterall, I didn't spend thousands of dollars to develop, write, code, draw, and produce this game. All I do is play it. It took me all of 30 minutes to buy, install, sign up, and play. To some that may be hard to believe that I respect the effort and existance of GW, but I do. I've been involved in too many games and gaming communities where it was basically online anarchy and noone in the able positions to fix it would fix it. Places where it took over a year to fix simple party bugs. Places where updates were, at best, once a year. Places where GM's would side with "Hackers" so the GM's wouldn't have their accounts risked. Compare that here where we have contact and communication with community relations, where the game makers provide updates, balances, and are involved in taking down anyone who attempts to hack, scam, dupe, and damage the integrity of their product; We really do have it good here and I'm grateful for that.

I've gone off tangent and I apologise for that, but let me close with this. I will agree, "Cheating" can be a broad term and why it should be taken as individual circumstance based on each instance and weighed against any harm it may, or may not cause, against the EULA, and if it impacts the community involved in a negative manner. RMT does impact me because it does impact the economy I share with everyone else. RMT does impact me in regards to getting PM spam messages. RMT does impact Guild Wars and the product because it involves trading materials that do not belong to the players, but regardless, involve real money exchanging hands.

I'd also like to mention what someone else posted about Anet already doing Legal RMT with skill packs. While on the surface that would appear to be correct, except you're not actually buying the skills. You're buying the service to access those skills. Just as I purchased EoTN through the store; I didn't physically buy the towns, areas, items, skills, hero's, and so on. All I've paid for is the access and service to those areas. I'd compare it to buying an additional movie package on my cable, like Shotime, or HBO. I'm not buying the actual stations for posession. All I've bought, or paid for, is the service to access them. This is why RMT services for buying gold is such a dangerous and slippery slope. What you believe you're buying to "own", gold or items, you're not really buying as a posession. The item doesn't belong to you, but you've shelled out real money for it. The gold you've paid for doesn't belong to you, just as it didn't belong to the person(s) who sold it to you. The $100 you paid to get the gold DID belong to you.

If Guild Wars operated like the economy operations and designs of Project Entropia, it would be a different story. However, the design of GW, compared to PE is a completely different sport.

It's not cheating because it doesn't give the player any meaningful advantage. In PvP, there's almost no practical difference between a pimped pve and a pvp char. In PvE, it's fairly quick and cheap to get a character max armor and a couple of cheap weapons. PvE is beaten by knowledge, not equipment, so the rich dude's extra shield sets and armor swapping ability will mean relatively little. Not to mention you're playing with people, not against them.

Cheating in an online game, to me, is using some form of program or code beyond the game's original programming to provide an advantage over a stock user in a competitive game type. If there were some way to boost your armor in PvP beyond what is possible in the game, or make a mod such that your target's energy was displayed while targetting him, a user of such would be cheating because it would provide him with an advantage not available to a stock user.

Cheating in a single player game is completely different to me, because it's not griefing another player. People who use their game genie on NES to beat Silver Surfer and people who find a way to hack god mode into an online FPS are two entirely different types of cheaters, almost to the point where you really need a different word to differentiate the two.

For me, my opinion of gaming has evolved to the point where I think that the only way to be considered "cheating" is hacking into the server and changing things. If you want to do RMT, then by all means you're spending your own money that you've earned in real life for something else and all the power to you. Things like ursan-way, if anet really wanted to fix it they would and since they don't I think it's a part of the game. I would only consider ursan-way cheating if an exploit was found to make it better (maybe after it was nerfed). 5 Years ago, and I would say different, but gaming in general has already developed to the point where if you need help, you can get it.

I think for the most part, the community defines whats cheating.

How many of you have played monopoly? Probably most people reading this. Now, how many of you have played monopoly following the exact rules listed in the box? Free parking is just another space on the board, nothing special there. All properties are auctioned. No houses or hotels until you own all properties in a color.......Ok, so you modified the rules a bit. Was that cheating? Not if everyone was ok with it.

The same is true in GW. I would define cheating as anything that the game designers didn't intend to happen and that the community frowns upon.

Wiki - I don't consider using wiki as cheating. After all, the designers have their own wiki and regularly contribute to it. Even the Prima strategy guides that are available for every game ever made were printed with the blessing of the game designers.

Textmod - This is a grey area. Arenanet has unofficially said they are fine with it, but I don't think they thought of all the possible ramifications. Using it can offer some PvP benefits and the cartography mods do make the game easier.

RMT - Definitely cheating. Does it hurt other players? I believe it does in an indirect way. Others have to put up with annoying gold seller spam on forums and ingame. Others may never be able to afford some high end rare items (minis) as well without resorting to RMT. (And no I'm not saying that all of the wealthy players ingame used RMT, so don't misquote me)

Hacks - I don't know that there are any working hacks for GW, but I think we can all agree that this is cheating.

Bots - Gaining ingame loot while sleeping. Uh yeah. Definitely cheating.


Going back to wiki. I think this has to be a personal decision on how you want to play the game. If you use wiki for everything and never even attempt a mission without reading wiki first, then I think you are cheating yourself. Its much more fun to complete a mission and earn masters without outside help, but there are very few players that can complete all the campaigns without some form of help and I think the game designers intended this.

Who has more fun? The player that struggles thru Prophecies fighting Charr, dwarves, centaurs and Mursaat to finally arrive triumphant in Droks after defeating the Lich Lord or the player that reaches Old Ascalon, pays for a run to LA and from there a run to Droks and sits back and lets others run him thru all the missions.

I got annoyed with a guildie last week. We both went into a dungeon that neither of us had attempted before. He immediately pulled up wiki and read the entire tips section out loud and loaded up all dungeon maps to lead us thru. I would have prefered to explore on my own and referenced wiki later if we failed. Nothing like a sense of accomplishment.

- I hope you do realize (I doubt it) that RMT does nothing to "economy". If someone (anyone) gets gold pieces from monster drops that gold stays in game until he spends it. RMT is transferring money from character to character, a bit like you can trade items between your characters via storage. Is storage in your opinion damaging the economy?

Bill has 5 apples. He gives them to Sue. Sue gives the apples to Bob. Bob gives them to Mary. I guess there's 20 apples worth of economy-damaging trade going on! Can you people please think these for yourself before making idiotic posts? That 500K example is nothing more than illustration what happens if person buys 100 globs of ecto at 5K each.

Yea, that's pretty much why I consider RMT to not be cheating. People can spend their own money and as long as it doesn't disrupt the state of the game's economy it's fine. Botting is something else, though.

Good point.
And on a side note: I wish all guru threads were this mature.

I don't know, I wouldn't consider buying gold to be CHEATING per se. Cheating to me is using hacks, scripts and exploits - a person who used the guildhall glitch to transfer his minipet to pre-searing would to me be a cheater, but someone who buys gold to deck out his avatar in the most expensive gear isn't a cheater.

The person who buys gold is, on the other hand, an idiot who doesn't understand the concept of "game", that the fundamental idea is to have fun while doing, but to me he's not cheating.
The only ones who have a reason to be upset about gold-buying is the publisher of the game, as they're not getting a piece of the action even though it's their intellectual property.

Personally I feel reading guildwiki while playing through the game the first time is far worse, and even those are more idiots than cheats, as they're only screwing themselves out of the fun of exploring and problem-solving (and then complain that PvE is boring).

For some people, they like playing a video game as the're watching a movie. Everything is basically pre-scripted like a movie by reading a guide. Because that exact thing will happen. I guess they find joy in watching their character do stuff automatically pretty much.

Yes it does and I hope to definitely make that clear to everyone now, so that we don't have to discuss it anymore. Let me put you the equations this way (note: this is waht I think happens, I've got no inside knowledge, it's all from what I've gathered so far):

Anet decided the drop algorithm and rates based on the content that they created, i.e., missions, quests, armors, weapons and other things. So it's fair to everyone ... as long as you play the game. Bots do not play the game (as in "following the storyline", they only do what's necessary to go where they need to go), they massively farm with only one objective: amass huge amount of money while minimising the amount of resources (time, computer) invested. Because of this, a lot more money is created for them, which they transfer to other players for money. So far, I'm only describing the situation and it may look innocent. But the problem lies when these RMT buyers suddenly get huge amounts of money and spend it on items that other players farm while playing the game, like ectos. The suppliers then sell very quickly at good prices to these RMT buyers, but they also ask the same good prices (they're not going to change their price based on the person) to other players that don't RMT. So these players have to work harder to get these ectos and are thus affected, because the price they pay for their ecto is directly influenced by RMT.

Here is where the sophism in your story lies. Your comparison with the GW situation is biaised because you confuse some elements:, Bill does not "have" the 5 apples/ectos, he either worked hard to get them (if he's not RMT), used a bot to get them for him (if he's an RMT seller) or paid money for them (he's an RMT buyer). In real-life you'd be the 1st or 3nd Bill, the situation of the 2nd Bill is more the problem in MMOs. At the end of the chain, Mary may not "look" affected by how Bill got his apple, but she in fact is, because Bill's method will influence the economy and drive the price she pays (yeah, your story of "giving" would be nice, but that's not what we're discussing here).

So what do you think of my explanation of why RMT is a cheat in the previous post I wrote? (I don't want to focus on RMT in this thread, but I guess that if it's the main point of discussion of everyone, that's what we'll discuss)

P.S. to Numa Pompilius: the word "idiot" clearly is a judgment which highlights the moral dimension of the notion of "cheating" (not in the best way in my opinion, but I get your point). Let's not go this way in this thread, as it'll very quickly become a flame-fest with accusations flying around, and this is totally counter-productive.

If you are married and you sleep with someone other than the one you married.

Well... It is annoying to Sue that Bob gets 200 plat without effort, when Sue has to play the game for weeks to get five, but is it cheating?

I suppose an argument can be made that it's cheating because it violates the EULA, but on the other hand it doesn't impact other players - at least in Guild Wars the items Bob can buy for his plat doesn't give him any appreciable in-game edge. To me cheating is obtaining unfair advantage in the game, and hence I have a hard time seeing it as cheating.

I realize that my view is somewhat inconsistent - in games like WoW Bob could buy himself an edge over users who have not bought gold, making it clear-cut cheating.

The effect on economy, however, seems irrelevant to me. The bots flood the market with both items and gold, leading to mudflation (when Guild Wars was new, even purple weapons were sellable and no item at all cost over 100K; today only a small proportion of perfect gold weapons are sellable, and there are items with a value over 1M, ie gold has become less worth but so have most items).

However, the guild wars economy could nosedive into hypermudflation due to botting all it wants, and it will not affect my gaming as long as the prices of core services are not affected. The state of the economy matter to people who trade with other players, something I do only indirectly, through the traders.

Fair enough.
I consider them stupid, because what they do is robbing themselves out of content and enjoyment they've already paid for, and for no reason. Playing-by-wiki the first time through the game show a profound lack of understanding of what gaming is all about, while buying gold is irrational because it equals destroying real-world money for no gain (even in-game gain).

That was mostly what the rest of the post was trying to define - basically anything that creates an unleveled playing field.

To me, it either creates a situation where one has an advantage over another or not, there is no "not obvious". What may not be obvious is if it is worth a ban - for instance purchasing you way to Treasure Hunter or max allegiance rank. It does confer some level of an unbalanced field however it is fairly slight. Cheating? Yes, worthy of a ban, probably not.



I'm not so worried about prestige items as much I would be for things that would be game breaking - runes and materials for you 1k armors. If you were around for the early days of UW farming you will know they type of inflation I am talking about (though that wasn't cheating simply because it was a legitimate in game tactic, but it is why things were changed).


That is an in game mechanic that is obviously somewhat supported by Anet, not even an exploit. That is VERY different from cheating - I would call it "cheap". It does very much devalue some achievements but then so do consumables and many of the PvE only skills and I don't think we can call using them "cheating" (well, some can, but lets be realistic here).

I perfectly understand the sense of personal achievement, and I think that their behaviour would show values that would attract people with the same values (idem for the FFFers). But then there's the point when guilds are ranked and compared, and people male opinions not on first-hand experience with players and guilds, but "hear say" which work differently.

The point being you have to choose one and there isn't that much difference between them. That is, no matter your choice you are going to ruin the fun of someone as many find making other people miserable "fun". From simply the standpoint of "cheating is ruining someone's fun" you can never win as you will always do that.

I don't really see things as that squishy, I don't really care what you intentions are either. It's generally not that hard to figure if what you are doing is outside of the system *and* creating an unleveled playing field - if so then you are cheating. Where it does get fuzzy if what to do about it (and of course, that is also fuzzy when it is something that isn't outside the system. Say Texmod or HFFF - but at least everyone can do something that the system is designed to handle which levels the field by a good amount).

Personally I find it best to go hard on anything you don't want in an online game otherwise it can easily get out of hand.

I do not consider buying gold to be a cheat at all. Basically all you are doing is paying someone to do something you cannot or will not. No different in my eyes than someone buying a green item in game that they could not or would not farm themselves.

Personally, I do not even see why most GW players even care, the economy for the most part is a set one, with very few things sold from NPC's varying in price and everything else in game can be gotten through drops or through player trading routes. Someone who is buying gold is merely paying real money for someone to go farm all this gold for them, so that they can buy things that other people have farmed, who in turn, take the money they got from the person who bought the gold and go and spend it on something someone else farmed.

It all comes down to the principle, how can I get the most wealth with the least amount of effort. Someone who has for instance, figured out how to a Shards of Orr run, has found an easier faster way to make 80-100k than to go out and farm enemies for it. Someone who has figured out how to do Droks runs have found an easier way to make 10-20k than to kill enemies for it. I'd say that if anything, buy gold stimulates the economy because it makes it possible for these people who have actually worked to gain items, or figure out how to run or provide a service of some sort to get customers and in turn get money to spend on other services or goods that other people have worked for.

Even if all the sudden all the bot farming, chinese gold farming and all the other sources of RLT gold stopped, what would be the benefit? An extra 20-30 gold per drop? 100g per drop? Platinum bars falling from the sky for all to grab? No, none of the above. You would merely see the prices of certain goods, traded by players drop, but since inflation had dropped, it would require the same amount of effort to obtain.

Some might say "Well, prestige armor and weapons and such would be more prestigious if not everyone could afford them." But really all that would accomplish is that people would say "Wow, that guys wearing 15k armor, must of took him ages to farm the gold for that, what a loser". Real prestigious.

But all that aside, whats the point of even bothering? It's a game. If someone wants to spend all there time farming gold so that they can sell it and not be able to enjoy the game in the least....so be it, their loss. If someone has extra real life money to spend on digital numbers and not have the experience of earning it, so be it, their loss. Either way, it is and will always be a game and in the end it does not matter. Let people do what people want to do, no matter what some people want the rules to be or what they think is acceptable, someone else will always disagree and people will go on doing exactly what people want to do. Some will be caught, some won't and there is nothing any of us can do about it other than report them (if you see fit to do so, not reporting is cool too, it's your right as a free person).

It's technically not cheating if you rub peanut butter on your... oh, wait.

Buying gold isn't cheating. If you have a job, it's even logical because who would want to farm 1000k in-game if you can make it in a fraction of that time with real money? It's just arranging for a transfer of gold already in the game. That's a different issue, to me, than creating gold by duping.

In the end, buying gold doesn't get you any further than the guy who farmed.

What is cheating?

It's only cheating IF you get caught.

As my old man would say "It's only illegal if you get caught"

This is my simple view of it.

I thinks its all a matter of character. If your willing to blow real life money just so you can have this uber-luxury stuff in GW, have fun, but personally, when I see a character in town with obsidian, chaos gloves, some kind of eotn headgear, a god-like mini, but a title with obviously no skill (high wisdom seeker title), that character simply screams "I BOUGHT ALL MY GOLD!", and I simply laugh to myself to how ridiculous that person is. If your going to play GW just so you can just sit in town and look pretty, then I feel sorry for you, and no amount of in game gold can solve the problem that you've exposed how crappy of a real life person in life, and that you took the easy way out.

Personally, I've been playing this game for almost 2 years now. I have never been handed anything from anybody. Today, I am the proud owner of a character with 14 maxed titles, half an obsidian armor, chaos gloves, a torment weapon, and a mini mallyx. I definitly don't consider myself rich. All I've done was play through the game with as much intelligence ans strategy as I could master. I farmed and used my time wisely (unlike people who sit in town begging or trying to sell worthless crap for ridiculous amounts of money). I played maybe 5 hours a week, played somewhat more when my friends got into it or when I had time off.

Point is, I had so much fun doing everything I did. I never farmed if it was boring. I was stimulated to invent new things to do in order to progress. I never farmed something if it was boring or grinding. I tried new things out, most failed, but some were successful.

Back to subject oO (sorry for going off on tangent). In a way, buying gold is cheating. Maybe it doent give you a extra edge, but it does make regular players completely unable to obtain certain items. When I see ghostly hero minis selling in kamada for 7500 ectos. A player that plays GW like a game should be played; with moderation, its in my opinion absolutelly unable to gather even a fractions of that money. Even something worth anything above 200 ectos is unatainable to most players. So here's the final and undeniable answer: there are 2 markets in GW; one for the ones that earn money, and one for the people that buy money, and ill leave it at that. I have too many good things going on in my life to waste money on in-game gold just so I can look pretty in town. Take that $100 you were gonna use to buy a mini and take your girlfriend/ wife out to dinner, but then again, a lot of these people are too busy pimping out their character that they might have forgotten what real life was, or how good it felt to look good in there too.

So peace out guys, and remember: life > video games, and if you disagree, that's a whole other debate that I can win.

-the actual one and only Xsikotic

think about special scripts that can make your mesmer interupt monks casting something like reversal of fortune with power spike without any stuff that makes casting time longer
that's cheating
or use of bots..

I think buying gold is cheating
I think using texmod is cheating
I think checking wiki for mission how-to is cheating (its a walk through)

buying gold with real life money above all is the worst, because not only do you cheat yourself, you are supporting the people who "steal" other people stuff and sell them. yes, selling "digital things" that programmers/game developer make and agreeing to not violate the EULA, then turns around and sell the ingame item is consider stealing. and is an offence.

Buying gold isn't cheating, its just compensation for your lazyness or lack of skill. If someone buys gold, they are making their character awesome, but at the same time showing how pathetic and squishy their real life character is.

MUD?

Buying gold gives you no advantages over anyone else, so people are just wasting cash to look pretty. You could compare a modern day suburban person to someone who buys gold.

If ANet says buying gold is a bannable offense, then it is cheating. Cheating is breaking the rules, if the rule makers say you can't do it and you do, thats cheating.

i dissagree with the last one and others will probably too
if you're stuck on a mission you can look on for info for the mission
it's not really a cheat
you only know what to do but you still have to do all the killing yourself
it's like a GTA: you can look how to do missions, but from the second you start using the health bonus codes it's real cheating
using a walkthrough isn't real cheating
you can call runners to droks 'n stuff cheating too then

Rather than start a new thread on the topic, I'll thread-res my thread and post two very interesting articles here, people will also be able to (re-)read the whole thread:

http://www.therunescapeblog.com/2008...the-dark-side/
Runescape’s Cheating Scene: Welcome to The Dark Side

http://kotaku.com/5016502/one-wow-ga...powerlevelling
One WoW Gamer's Descent into Powerlevelling