Let me preface this…I have almost no working knowledge of any technical aspect involved in game design/development. I cannot tell you what is easy or difficult for a game team to do in regards to cheats and other exploits.
With that said, for everyone attacking the game developers, let’s not forget where it all stems from.
The players.
Pure and simple, the problem is the people who choose to exploit these holes in the game. Any game for that matter. The problem is so widespread, across all platforms, that people willingly and happily throw the accusation around like it’s air.
Before attacking the people behind this game, or any game, point the finger first at those that think this is acceptable. Point the finger at the people making how-to videos.
Am I advocating some solution to this problem? Nope, don’t have one. You just can’t take the sh@##* out of some peoples attitudes. I’m simply asking you take a moment to think about the real problem before ranting across the forums.
So I’m going to play devil’s advocate here. As I tend to agree with you. And anyone who’s seen me post over the last 2 years knows I typically defend Funcom.
However, they still need to address some of these hacks. They have their servers which have no active moderation, so these hacks are extremely detrimental to those servers. While I could care less if they decided to shut those servers down, until the time that they decide to, they’re responsible for them.
They also have us non-official players and server admins. We’d like to see these things fixed too. We actively moderate our servers which HEAVILY mitigates the ability for players to cheat in our communities. But anything to help prevent it in the first place is going to be welcome.
With that said. I still agree with you. These players are the scum of the earth. We’re not talking about harmless fun here like when a kid puts a Game Genie on his NES in his living room. We’re talking about a pact between players.
When you cheat in an online environment and break that pact with other players who spend their effort, time, and good faith. You harm that player through that falsehood. You disrespect them by violating their trust. And you harm the general community as a whole.
This isn’t me or others taking our time in the game too seriously. We’re here to have fun. And through general good faith agreements we agree to have fun together. Imagine if you said you were going to rent a space for a party that was scheduled and you don’t. Everyone shows up but the space isn’t available. Everyone brought the food, the music, the entertainment. And you just wasted all that.
Sure no one is physically harmed. But you just ruined the good fun and event by doing so. So it is for that reason that cheaters, exploiters, and such should be treated like the trash they are.
There is a few solutions. But I doubt this forum is the place to discuss such things. It goes into deep societal and cultural issues that would need to be addressed and goes way outside the scope of the game the forum is about.
Well, the way I see it the problem is two fold. The fact of the matter is no matter how “polished” a game is people are going to go out of their way to find ways to exploit it. This is not nearly as prevalent in single player as it is in multiplayer games but it still exist there as well. The reason it is more prevalent in multiplayer, because people have this “need” to gain some form of unfair advantage over “the other guy” even if it means breaking the rules or exploiting things which were clearly never intended to function the way they are being used. So in that part of the problem I do agree with you that the blame lies on the players.
The other part of the problem however does lie with the game company, regardless of which game / company you are talking about. Once a known exploit / cheat / whatever is being used they need to implement ways to eliminate it and penalize the players using them. You can argue that a lot of game companies do not really do much in that respect regardless of their claims to the contrary. So, we will use Conan Exiles as an example. Under-meshing has been an issue for how long? How has there not been a far more simple means of reporting such occurrences and far stricter punishments dished out to squash these practices while they continue to work on fixing the issue in their patches. Almost every patch over the last what, year now, has mention fixing under mesh this or under mesh that, yet it still prevails on all server, at least pvp official servers anyway.
So yes, it is the players fault for breaking the rules / exploiting the game. But it is also the companies fault for not enacting reasonable measure to eliminate the problem in a timely fashion. But the problem started with the players. Sorry for the wall of text rant.
This is technically true, but also completely useless.
If someone mugs me in front of a policeman and runs away, obviously the blame lies with the mugger. Not with me, not with the policeman, but the mugger. And yet, if the policeman didn’t do anything to help me, I’m right to complain.
I’m sorry but this has to be a pretty ridiculous question.
That would be like asking if a solution to boxers putting nails or weights in their gloves is to stop boxing altogether. The solution there is obvious. Check the gloves and severely punish those who do. In addition you foster a community/culture that looks at those who do this sort of thing as scum of the earth.
There may be some blame on the developers part. Again, not an area I can easily comment on. My point being simply that at least some of the blame is on those that exploit such thing.
While it’s an unfortunate response to hear, I have to agree with you. I get why some people don’t like dealing with private servers but you do get a lot less of these things simply because of (hopefully) active admins.
Ok so this makes sense if the only issues were cheaters but there is a lot that allows the cheating and most of the issue with Conan are not cheats its issues that promote the cheats and to be honest if the bugs that allowed the cheats were fixes ASAP instead of months later be less cheating.
If the exploit is not in the game , cheaters can not use it!!
Plus the fact that horses are over powered the PVPers say, bosses are not in correct places, thralls are over powered but so stupid they can not even walk out of fire or will stand and let someone beat on them till they die unless you come into view. You get lost in rino and die, when my thrall is with me he can not hit a boss that is big as a house with his bow but if he turns that bow on me puff dead two shots, no missing. Or oh yes the bug you log in and dead in your bed for no reason other then game decides to kill you IT. Thralls can not walk over rocks and get stuck and lost for no reason. Oh yes or the thralls that just disappear out of thrall list for no reason. Nothing in the logs just puff gone.
Also to be honest how would a youtuber be at fault for showing a bug that has been left by the game by the devs, sometimes its the only way to get that bug noticed cause lets be honest here, have seen the same bug on this forums reported over and over and over every patch and most of time it will be fixed, most of them are and then again in the next next patch its back.
The above are just a few minor ones to be honest we all have gotten used to , we report them and they get removed but no word on fix, then get reported again in a few weeks by someone new to the game normally as us old timers are just used to them now. So where the real blame lays, really I have been working in QA for over 20 years, the real blame is with the issue that first allows a cheat, the cheater can not cheat if no exploit. If you have a back door open, a way to cheat there will always be cheaters, its in somes nature so you lock the door , plug the holes and it might never be possible or even easy to stop every cheater turning a blind eye to some issues for months will not make it better and it sure as heck will not make your player base happier.
Do I condone cheating in any way, heck NO not in the least but I think the Devs need to plug these holes when they are reported and the cheaters banned , just gone, a few bans and people know Funcom means business and is not gonna let the cheaters get away with it and then the issues fixed to stop others.
I get your point and I agree with it. But it came embedded in a post that criticizes people for “ranting across forums”.
I don’t condone abusive posts or personal attacks on developers, and I never will. But I also believe people are right to criticize them for their handling of the exploits and exploiters.
In this post, you sound as frustrated with cheaters as the people who rant across the forums are frustrated with Funcom. I’m not against either kind of posts, as long as they’re all civil. That said, I still harbor a fool’s hope that Funcom might change due to criticism on the forums. Call me cynical and jaded, but I harbor no such hope when it comes to cheaters changing their ways because of a post like yours.
Oh no, don’t get me wrong, I was not targeting for the intent of attack. As you yourself have seen and commented, however, there is quite the deluge of people simply ‘going off’ in the forums without offering a solution or even going through the proper channels.
I’m simply pointing out that there are two sides to the coin and to be honest, I’ve actually never had to deal with any of these problems. I started the game in single player and moved onto private servers with good admins. Sure, I’ve encountered various forms of cheating in other games but I haven’t been effected by anyone on Conan. I simply feel for those that have.
