Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-50.139.165.174-20131214201932/@comment-11490363-20131217233315

Godofcyanide wrote: Here's the thing.

Players were playing with the code Mobage distributed. Did they intend for the code to work that way? NO... But, as we've seen a million times before, these episodes are shipped out pretty much untested except for their most basic functions. And players can do nothing but play with the code Mobage has given them. As long as the player is not altering game files (as the cheaters I called for more punishment on were doing), he is playing with the code that he was given and should make no assumptions on whether or not something was intended.

If he tests the waters and tries to find their loophole, he can report it... But there's zero incentive to not use it, nor is there incentive to not share it. As the code fix may or may not come quickly - but most likely won't - there is no reason not to utilize any advantages in the code you were given while you can. Especially given that, most times, these bugs stymie players' ability to progress in the rankings, and those bugs are often the last ones fixed.

Consider the first PVP episode. For five days, the critical hits were brutal, and no one was sure it would be fixed, and a lot of players burned resources competing for tier 1 that players who conserved resources for the last day were able to massively capitalize on that. There's very little difference here, other than capitalizing here required an extra hurdle to jump through that may not have been apparent to all players. However, that's a perception and experimentation issue. Honestly, were I playing this episode, I would think that a "no opponents" message WAS the bug, and would explore all possible options at circumventing that which I saw as preventing my progress. If I find nothing, so be it. But if I can defeat that which I see as a bug in the episode at startup that hinders me - and, given TFL's past, is all too common and easy to assume - I sure as hell will, and I will make the most of it.

Why is that cheating? If anything, it's only cheating after the fix is in and the episode is working as intended... AND you have to alter code to accomplish it. Otherwise, it's another programmer error and not my, or any of our, responsibility. I get where you are coming from but there is an objective definition for exploit and cheating, and emotional arguments are not valid.

Did people knowingly take advantage of a bug in the code? Yes. There is no other answer, everyone agrees that that is the case but they don't consider it cheating. It is however exploitation. This is an objective fact. I consider exploitation of a bug cheating. The game designers did not intend for this to be possible. Yes it is a bug and they are stupid poo poo heads, but that does not make it acceptable to rape such a loophole. As has been discussed previously, most other games explicitly state that exploitation of bugs is an offense. If you want to hide behind their TOS then fine, but that is lame. You can find a country where killing a woman for looking at you the wrong way is legal, would you go there and take advantage of that loophole? Common sense!

Your incentive to not cheat, the only incentive you need, or should need, is that it is the right thing to do. Do you get a medal every time you don't kill someone? Why should you need incentive to not cheat by exploiting a bug here?

And being screwed by a bug is different than taking advantage of a bug. Other players playing normally after you got screwed by a bug is not cheating because they are not exploiting anything. you had a choice when the game was bugged (crits issue) to play or not play. If you play, you can't claim people that did not get affected are cheating because they did not get screwed, that was your choice.

People keep saying that they did not alter code bla bla bla, altering code is not necessary for cheating to take place, exploitation of bugs *is* cheating. Other game vendors recognize it. It is common knowledge. Try taking advantage of a bug in Microsoft Live or PS and see if they agree with you.