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By your logic, wall-hacks (changing the wall texture to be transparent in FPSes) isn't cheating? Macros that allow you to perform actions that are physically i

• jMyles 10y ago
  > By your logic, wall-hacks (changing the wall texture to be transparent in FPSes) isn't cheating? It seems that the philosophy here is constrained by the (real or perceived) connectivity issues surrounding the withholding of knowledge other than that which the player is allowed to know. Obviously these need to be overcome. I can imagine knowledge coming in encrypted "chunks," with keys issued only for those chunks within a player's proper domain. I can also imagine other solutions. But transposing an unrelated theory of mind ("the code of the version I'm playing constitute the rules for you") seems untenable, inorganic, and in arguably insufficient defined in the first place. So yes, I don't think that, in this strict sense of how knowledge translates to cheating, that wall hacks are cheating. > Exploiting a glitch that causes your opponent to disconnect from the game isn't cheating? It seems to me that the moral responsibility here is on the author(s) - they have slighted the player by instructing, via their code, their disconnection from the game at an improper time. > Macros that allow you to perform actions that are physically impossible for a human to perform isn't cheating? > Consulting a chess engine (unbeatable AI) on your phone when playing chess with someone isn't cheating? At some level, there needs to be a dose of reality in this conversation. If I'm playing chess against you, across the table, at a coffee shop somewhere, and you are surreptitiously glancing at your contact lens HUD, playing essentially on behalf of an AI, then I guess you are not being very nice or honest to me. This is an interpersonal affront, but it's hard for me to gauge what it means in terms of sport. On the other hand, if I'm playing chess against an cloaked and anonymous adversary, it might as well be the smartest computer on the planet. And I will lose. Computers beat humans at some games. That's the reality. It makes more sense for those of us who wish to continue to evolve here at this moment at the end of time to play games that humans are good at. And there are plenty of games at which humans will continue to trounce computers for the foreseeable future. > Also, moving pieces in a boardgame when your opponent isn't looking probably isn't cheating either? This analogy is way off vis a vis the current topic. It's more like a card game in which I show you my cards and then ask you to forget that you saw them - this is what you are saying my client must do in order to provide a fair experience for you. > I agree in theory, but it's not always possible - latency is a major limitation in keeping everything on the server-side. Right, and so some concessions must be made. Here I agree. But once you acknowledge this, I think you also have to give up some of the moral high-horsery that comes with casting judgment about cheating on other players.
  • Cpoll 10y ago
    > If I'm playing chess against you, across the table, at a coffee shop somewhere, and you are surreptitiously glancing at your contact lens HUD, playing essentially on behalf of an AI, then I guess you are not being very nice or honest to me. This is an interpersonal affront, but it's hard for me to gauge what it means in terms of sport. I would imagine the sport would dub that cheating. At the very least, the sport would fall apart if it were permitted (because the individuals playing would no longer matter). I'll grab the first Google definition for "cheating" > act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination. I'm arguing that each of my examples are a circumvention of what's widely understood to be the spirit/rules of the game. Just because you can see game-state hidden away by modifying the client doesn't mean it's not "cheating". Every game depends on the players not acting unfairly when they are capable, to some extent. > It's more like a card game in which I show you my cards and then ask you to forget that you saw them - this is what you are saying my client must do in order to provide a fair experience for you. I think it's more like putting a camera behind your opponents so you can see their cards - you've deliberately added a measure to the existing client/room in order to give you a capability that your opponents don't have.
  • phil21 10y ago
    When I was younger I was more receptive to this sort of argument. I agree what you are railing about is poor design, but many times that poor security design is done because syncing games is a Hard(tm) problem - especially latency sensitive games. Thus the clients are considered part of the whole "gaming system" - not to be altered - and I'm okay with that. Those are the rules of the game. Expecting game devs to be able to come up with a "fully secure" networking protocol simply means far less games are made. I'm alright with the low security tradeoff. It comes down to the simple fact that just because you can do something, doesn't necessarily mean you should. You can justify all the hacks you want with "well you shouldn't let me do that!" but to everyone else it's the same thing as playing Monopoly and you punching everyone else to take their money. Yeah, you can do that - and I suppose you'll nominally "win" - but it's really not playing the game we all agreed on so wtf is your point? You could also build a robot that uses a webcam and USB input for keyboard/mouse to play FPS better than most humans - an interesting project to be sure. But how is that even remotely interesting from a competition sense? Even though no modifications were made to anything, it's still cheating. Your chess example is someone else playing your opponents moves. That's obviously cheating - I can't have a grandmaster sitting next to me telling me my moves can I? How is this even a question in your mind?