Author Topic: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments  (Read 2548 times)

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TheHeckler!

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Below is an old letter sent to me through Mullah Omar last year, I never actually saw it until a few days ago. Although a respone has been a long time in coming, I wished to give my thoughts to this persons questions and arugments.

Quote

Hi,

These are just a few questions, and they?re not intended to be:

1)   A ?dig?
2)   Moaning
3)   Anything like the above

Don?t get me wrong man ? games are there to be enjoyed by the user however they want, in spite of differing opinions.

Greetings, sorry it has taken such a long time to respond to your inquiry; when you submitted that question I was not active with the TKC community. I would be happy to answer for you now (if you are still interested that is) although I can only speak for myself, as I am no longer an administrator/moderator at TKC. That being said, I would be happy to say here that having read your letter, I would not put it in any of those categories.

Basically, you state in your FAQ that cheats will not be used to crash a server. Does this also include causing a server to grind to a halt due to spamming of like, water towers among other things, in Armed Assault? Because there was 1 time that I am aware of myself, that TKC was used on a server and 100?s of water towers were spawned, and the server had to be rebooted (Okay, not the ?entire server? ? just the Armed Assault one). This did, nonetheless, inconvenience the rest of the players who weren?t using TKC? What?s your stance on this ? do you support it whole-heartedly, or would you condemn this sort of behaviour, especially if somebody hadn?t said anything to prompt it?

My personal stance is that I would not use such a hack if it was not prompted/instigated. I might use it on a test server, or a TKC hosted server (or other cheater friendly server) to have fun with it. If I found the operator(s) of a server launch some sort of an attack on TKC in any way (beyond the typical verbal bashing that is), then I may resort to it as a means of reprisal. With whatever influence I may still have on the TKC community, I would encourage members not to use a hack designed to crash a server unprompted. I also want to point out that it is possible that the person using the aformentioned hack may not have been intentionally trying to crash the server you were playing on; it may have been their first time using the hack and they simply got carried away in their moment of fun and unintentionaly crashed the server.

You also state you?re not out to ?kill? a game. Let me propose a small scenario to you:

You produce cheats and use them for Armed Assault
Existing players become increasingly frustrated at having to password their servers in order to prevent TKC cheats being used
These players stop playing ArmA/give it up, and don?t buy future expansions, thus decreasing sales for Bohemia Interactive
People decide if they want to buy it, but find forum posts saying ?There?s too many cheats?, and so decide not to buy it
The game is then only bought by those who haven?t seen the forum posts/want to try the cheats


Granted, that?s a worst-case-scenario, but you while you can deny this is not the case, you can?t be 100% sure, surely? Again, how do you view this sort of scenario ? if it were to happen, would you be proud, or disappointed? I can only assume it?s not the latter, but please correct me if I am wrong.

As you stated yourself, this is a worst case scenario, and in my experience it is rare (if ever) that a game's following reduces to such an extent solely due to cheaters. Although I will concede that some players do decide to leave a game under those circumstances, I will also point out that there are other players (such as myself) who would be attracted to a game in order to experience such cheats. I personally believe that in most cases, game companies charge significantly too much for their games (yes, I've heard the counter arguments in regards to the costs it takes to produce games, but my stance has not changed on this issue). Therefore, I do not mind when a multi-million (and especially multi-billion) dollar company suffers some financial losses due to the cheating issue. Would I be proud or disappointed if a game were to die strictly due to cheats? I would be disappointed, I feel that in most cases there is enough virtual ground for players on both sides of the cheating fence to coexist.

Relating to an earlier post, you state that your activities are not illegal. While it is a grey area depending on what you?re doing with your scripts, surely it is unfair? Do you not feel that, for example, if you?d bought a game and were trying to enjoy the multiplayer aspect of said game, you?d wish to do so without somebody forcing their beliefs on you (?I like TKC, and think cheating is fine, so you should all see this too?). You also say ?However, limiting the use of our gameplay mechanics to our own servers would be pointless?. May I ask why you believe this is the case? Surely if you liased with server owners, you?d find those who wanted TKC on their servers? Surely you could also develop a way to stop your material on servers who do not want it, and distribute that program as well as the cheats?

With respect, I believe in regard to these points/arguments you have presumed overmuch. I do not find that TKC attempts to force their beliefs on other players; it is not our mission to force other players to necessarily like or embrace cheating; they are free to dislike or disapprove of it as they see fit. However, what TKC would like to accomplish is to have the majority of the gaming population accept cheats and cheaters, even if they do not necessarily agree with them. I personally do not agree with those who are adamantly against cheats or cheaters, but I accept that they exist and will continue to do so.

On your second argument (distributing a way to stop TKC's cheats), in general this would not be possible. Although I concede I am no expert at coding, I believe in general in order to stop the cheats we release would require a server side patch. In order to code a server side patch, TKC would need access the source code of the game, which is all but impossible to obtain. If TKC ever got the source code to a game it would enable the community to create an endless supply of cheats that would be nigh on impossible to stop. However, this all assumes we would want to prevent the cheats we create, and with possible rare exceptions, this is not the case.

Just a few points, and I hope you are able to reply 

Thanks,

J H Fowler

It was a pleasure to read and respond to your mature and well thought out questions and arguments. I hope I have answered them in a satisfactory manner for you, and would welcome any further discussion or debate from you on these or other issues.

Regards,

...TheHeckler!
« Last Edit: August 27, 2008, 10:04:21 pm by TheHeckler! »

ZOldDude

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #1 on: August 18, 2008, 11:12:46 pm »
As it turns out,one or two of those in TKC do in fact have sorce code for some of the games.

*While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*

TheHeckler!

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #2 on: August 18, 2008, 11:34:06 pm »
As it turns out,one or two of those in TKC do in fact have sorce code for some of the games.

Of a major release, commerical game, that is currently supported? If so, then I'm impressed. I haven't heard of a leak of a major source code since the Half-Life 2 Fiasco 5-6 years ago


M. O.

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #3 on: August 19, 2008, 02:06:58 am »
Nice reply, you're (still) a talented writer and our #1 theorist. He must be surprised about the delay though. But it's quite fun when you think about it. :icon_laugh
Heckling is an art, and game hacking a science.

ZOldDude

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #4 on: August 19, 2008, 02:09:08 am »
As it turns out,one or two of those in TKC do in fact have sorce code for some of the games.

Of a major release, commerical game, that is currently supported? If so, then I'm impressed. I haven't heard of a leak of a major source code since the Half-Life 2 Fiasco 5-6 years ago


PM sent. :wink2

*While we crash and burn, small, low tech, agrarian societies such as the Hmong in the mountains of Laos will continue on without so much as blinking an eye.*

Oynky

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #5 on: August 19, 2008, 02:53:28 am »
Nice reply, you're (still) a talented writer and our #1 theorist. He must be surprised about the delay though. But it's quite fun when you think about it. :icon_laugh
Couldn't say it any beter then that.  :icon_magician

TheHeckler!

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #6 on: August 25, 2008, 11:46:09 pm »
I'm glad I haven't lost my touch through the years, thank you both.  :smile

Jimmy

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #7 on: August 27, 2008, 01:12:45 am »
Interesting read indeed.


MrMedic

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #8 on: August 27, 2008, 02:45:58 am »
I'm glad I haven't lost my touch through the years, thank you both.  :smile

sorry m8 i got about 3 lines in then started talking to the misses , must be good though :)
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Subsky

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #9 on: August 27, 2008, 08:39:10 am »
Finally a half decently constructed argument written by someone over the age of 12- or one that is presented in that way.

Responses like "fuk off TKC u fkn hackers get a life u loser faggots" show a sign of weakness and frustration in the player- which only enhances my fun factor.

MrMedic

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Re: Response to a well mannered Anti-Cheater's questions/arugments
« Reply #10 on: August 27, 2008, 08:44:14 am »
good point subsky
« Last Edit: August 27, 2008, 07:38:17 pm by MrMedic »
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