by CodenameB » Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:00 pm
I've been lurking for a while, but as someone who got their ass kicked (twice) because I was always one step behind AD's abuse of exploits, I have an opinion on this issue.
First, Q: why is H&H so hostile now?
A: There is no Sodom. Sodom, by being more or less the sole power of note in the world, was able to establish a police force in the world. Once they became more powerful than anyone else and raping noobs over and over again stopped being fun, they had nothing left to do but hunt down thieves and murderers. Suddenly there was consequences for your actions, as if you killed someone who complained on the forum, they could easily get a bored ranger to hunt you down. Once AD emerged as a power, noob death rate shot up, because people could kill people from the other side without consequence, AD couldn't avenge dead Russians near Sodom, and Sodom couldn't avenge dead English players near AD. The last several worlds have ended before one group could become a supreme power. I firmly believe that if Dis manages to wipe out everyone of note, within a month or so they will get bored of killing every single noob they see (since they all die the same way with no effort) and become the new Sodom. No one would oppose them, but they would be generally beneficial.
Q: What's the deal with exploits?
A: As time has gone on, H&H has become more about the metagame than it has been about the game. People forgot the reason that they are playing is to find bugs and report them, and instead covet bugs because they give them an advantage over everyone else. The more bugs you know, the more powerful you are, so people are hesitant to share them. Compounding this problem is the lack of dev intervention. When someone does report an exploit, nothing is done about it. This gives people even less reason to report bugs, because all you have done now is given your advantage away to everyone. I can't have been the only one in World 3 who was listening to Burg and Koya accuse each other of exploiting tobacco and having no idea what they were discussing. Siege as it is in the game is too hard to do. No one can camp a ram for the amount of time it takes. Thus, people wall rams next to walls to use them. Hell, most of the time people just jump over walls to attack the person they want to attack, no need to bother with a ram. Why build a ram when you can just build hearth fires underneath someone's town and spawn inside of it? (Seriously, fuck you forever Koya. I almost respected you as an adversary once.)
Q: What's the deal with old players changing their minds?
A: This is just a matter of people finally learning. If someone once tells you "Shit sandwiches are the best!" then years later says "Shit sandwiches kinda taste like crap." You don't go "Hey! You once said shit sandwiches were good! Stop flip flopping. Clearly you think shit is good." You just accepted they learned the error of their ways at some point. The same sort of thing is happening here. Back when I started, all I saw on the forums was "Someone built an idol next to my wall and teleported into my city, help!" and everyone would just reply "That is how the game works." "Walljumping is supposed to be there, get used to it." "It's your own fault for not knowing about it." Now, the roles have completely reversed, with newer people arguing that exploits should stay, and older players realizing just how much exploits ruin the game. (By ruin, I mean change the game into a metagame as discussed before). It should NEVER be considered the victim's fault if they didn't know how to counter an exploit.
Q: What do you mean? They should know better right?
A: It is 100% the Devs fault for not offering any explanation. Yes, it is fun to go into the game knowing nothing and learning to live off the land, but right now so little of the game is explained in game, it is impossible to play competently without using the forums and wiki and other resources. In a game that the hunting skill doesn't even tell you what it does, nor even tell you what counts as string, you CANNOT blame someone for not knowing that "Oh yeah, palisades are completely worthless," "Remember to seal your corner posts or people will lock you inside your own walls," "You fucking idiot, always use alts for keys, and for your LS, and if you ever need to go outside at all." None of that is intuitive, and none of that can be how the game was intended. No one can know that if you build a vault you can get away with whatever crime you want. No one can know that the formula for crop and tree quality depends on the soil they are planted on. These things are directly related. The game is becoming a metagame, and information is more important than ability, characters, time, or anything else.
Q: What's all this about clients?
A: Simply put, another part of the metagame. Information is more important than anything else, so whoever has the best client is more informed. No new player could know that playing the default game puts you at an inherent disadvantage to people who can snipe you from farther than you can see, can turn invisible the walls and trees you were going to hide behind, can measure the exact FEP of the food they are eating so as to perfect their character progression, or hell, as the screenshoted client shows, have a damn radar showing where harvestables are. It is only expected that clients would turn into weapons instead of tools. Anyone who didn't expect this to happen was fooling themselves. There is no other online game where part of being good at the game is changing the game interface to give you more information than players who don't. Anyone who's anyone has their own programmers working on custom tools to make them better than anyone else. I know I was using cave mapping to dig into AD tunnels in world 4 long before Ender added it. I shouldn't have to do that, I shouldn't get to do that.
Q: What about the password stealing then? What should be done?
A: And this is the million dollar question. On the one hand, Jorb and Loftar have always advocated minimum intervention. But on the other had, they have historically been very hard on anyone trying to abuse the game for their own advantage. Many of you newer than me don't remember the Fist of Jorb crushing the vaults of people who dared use them to terrorize noobs, or the times when the devs actually cared enough to open your gates again if someone walled you off. The problem is with the punishment. Some people are discouraged because they know full well even if the people responsible are IP banned, it won't help anything. Creating a new IP takes ten seconds, and making countless alts takes no effort. The only things that could be done involve punishing people who may not have had anything to do with it by simply nuking the offending faction from orbit and destroying all of their characters, walls, buildings, and items. Sure, members of Portagas&co gave tacit approval to using hacking by simply living in the same town as hackers and not reporting it, but do they deserved to be kicked out of the game? These are not questions I have answers to. What is true, and completely incontrovertible, is that if there is a wrist slap or no punishment, is that hacks, cheats, and account theft will only increase, as people will learn there is no consequence to it. Much like when people learned there was no punishment for walljumping lead to its widespread use, and learning there was no punishment for using vaults lead to their widespread use, hacking is just going to become the next weapon in the battles between factions.
Q: What about shutting down the game?
A: The argument is this: If hacking and exploiting continues, the game will not be worth playing, and will drive off players in huge droves. The older players finally accept this, they didn't used to believe this. I remember one poor guy who got wall jumped complaining and saying that allowing stuff like this will drive off all the new players and Burg just told him that there were more players then than there had ever been, so he was clearly wrong. Well, now there are fewer players then there used to be, and Burg and the other mods can see what they couldn't in their brickwall citadel. Hackers and exploiters are scaring people away from the game. Eventually there will be nothing left but hackers and exploiters, it will be the only way to play. Thus, they advocate the game be turned off, before the reputation of the game be forever spoiled. If you want evidence of this, look at a game called Fallout Online. It was (is) an MMO based on the old Fallout engine. Very few people play anymore because the game is ruled by Russian players who simply kill anyone who speaks English as soon as they spawn. The game is no fun for anyone except the people who play the Russian's way. The same thing will happen to H&H. If you don't exploit and hack, you will be wiped out. Now, newer players are saying "Well, if you don't like hackers and all that, don't play. Stop bitching and leave. Let the chips fall where they may." This is a reasonable opinion, after all H&H has been about player choice, and if the players want to be hackers and exploiters until such things are fixed, let them and don't spoil their fun. The problem with is argument is that it fails to address the affect on the reputation of H&H. Would Minecraft have caught on if people were going around destroying servers and nothing being done about it for years? People would just go "Minecraft? You mean that game where you can't build anything because some greifer will just come set your house on fire?" That's not too far from "H&H? That game where Russians just come over and teleport into your village and kill you when you start? No thanks." Thus, my short answer is this: Should the game be shut down? No. Must the game be shut down for it's own protection if the devs can't or won't actively work on it? Yes.
Finally, I have one question for Jorb and Loftar: If you have created something that ends up giving more people negative experiences than positive experiences, is that a thing that should continue to exist?
