A Question of Morality, and Custom Clients

[Karede]

As nice as the cheaty bits are, I use it solely because using the default client on a big monitor is unbearable

[BloodyGuestUsers]

I will do some long wall of text on account of server being down, also because i don't feel like this is a pointless discussion or a resolved one for that matter.

But first a few links:

Here is how the game of Heaven and Hearth looks
http://www.lgdb.org/sites/default/files/115.jpg

And here is how it looks for some of us
http://youtu.be/Ac3Ccs8gmTk?t=1m24s
(please ignore the commentary, it irrelevant, also few second of watching should give enough of an impression)

Now, as a disclaimer, it's reasonably possible to prevent usage of certain features of custom clients if not custom clients altogether if J&L are willing to do so, with what priority they would decide to do it, if at all, is entirely different question.

Indeed, most players (probably myself included) would rather have updates in some other areas, and, wild assumption, it's more fun working on developing feature than slave away working on the client. However that doesn't affect this discussion, sure game is alpha, nobody expects it to be feature complete, but it also means (assuming of course it's an alpha in a sense that they want to push the game into the beta and then release and not in a sense it's a social experiment on how much dick-wavers you can make go insane about few number on the screen, which at times i honestly suspect it might be) that testing features and design ideas comes first and "OMG IM SO GOOD PVP" comes later, not much later but later. Admittingly devs stating they are ok with custom clients affect it to a much larger degree but it might or might not be a priority thing, and as such subject to change later, especially considering "walking-in-nature simulator, more or less good enough to be enjoyed on such merits alone", well, just watch the youtube video from before one more time.

Additionally i don't see how picking on people who use default client is anything but being a dick for the sake of it.

So, what advantages does custom clients offer?
1) Full screen/interface improvements like more quick slots - absolutely best feature, that's hard to argue against, this is the reason i got Pancho's client in W3 and i think many of players did so as well.
2) Lighting - this one is not as obvious. I feel like it adds greatly to the atmosphere and it actually is done pretty well (dark night is properly scary, caverns are properly mysterious), which i'm sure took quite a few hours to complete. I believe it SHOULD be dangerous to go outside of your palisade at night in the woods and miners SHOULD suffer the drawbacks and cave explorers (lolz lolz) should have problems with torches supply as well as them getting lost when their light goes out. It might be that system as it is turn out to be to grinding and tedious or some parts of it, most surely, will need to be fixed. But we wouldn't know that, because all "pro" players haven't experienced it in years, literally, and all the newb players are getting killed by pro players who hold the advantage and rarely make it to the forums where they get ridiculed on account of experience and hardly able to provide any information.

The only real argument for this is that some people schedule won't allow them to play during good day hours, this is a lengthy enough discussion for a separate thread, and, if anything, this can be enough to sadly kill this very promising system. But that and not "It's inconvenient for me to grind so i can win alpha!".

3) X-ray/hide objects - same argument applies even stronger. It makes the game easier, it gives users who are using it huge advantage over the users who does not. Does this game not supposed to have stealth mechanics? Does walking through the woodland area supposed to be absolutely safe? Well it doesn't and it is respectively. Because we can. Deal with it. Yes there is a need to see behind objects in situation where it is simply inconvenient not to (planting that crop just right next to the palisade) but for the most part it's used in situations where it cancels out honest game mechanics. Sure maybe those mechanics are half-assed and tedious, again, how are we supposed to know if nobody is testing them? Should we just act like it's all good simply because we can and "'everybody's doing it"? The argument that "stealth is *so* 2010" i find literally too stupid to try and comment, sorry.

4) Map making - same thing. Cartography wasn't put into the game because Loftar just couldn't figure out how to make dem goddarn minimaps fit together and decided to make us honest players work for it. It was an intended feature making something so trivial in other games as minimaps into an interesting game mechanic. And you know what? I liked this idea lots. Implementation could use work, sure, what in heaven couldn't? But it's not being worked on, and this is one of the examples of great ideas i used to advertise game to my friends back when i started playing in W3. I like the boner improvements updates as much as the next fellow but seriously. I mean no, it might be tedious and stupid, in which case it's worth to scrape it at that point (i think i said this three times or so already) but doing it simply because your client can do it is cheating, plain and simple.

5) Zoom-out/guidelines for characters/other stuff that didn't pop-up in my head at the time - same argument applies on a much smaller degree. Those give you *some* advantage but it isn't critical, surely not something high on priority list in any case.

And this is recurring thought throughout my rant - does custom client developer decides what game we will get or is this something for game designer to decide? Don't get me wrong, the client developer, in this case, doesn't get to decide anything either - he will just put in all he can, otherwise other developer will. Do we not have cartography, torches and danger from wildlife or cute miner hats because Jorb and Loftar think none of those mechanics were a good idea to the point they don't even need to test it anymore or because our custom client allows us?

And it's not the question of Morality in the slightest - the only people who can retain form using those features are actual hardcore players who only play few weeks at a time when new world is created or very new players who hasn't figured out how it works. Because this game is competitive and, maybe 4 years are to blame for this, much more so than it is an alpha in testing things sense of the word. Players who play for extended periods of time don't really have any choice only an illusion of one - you either use cheating software or you get roflstompped.

And yes, the game, at some things, balanced around those options assumed on but that's not a good thing, that's a bloody travesty is what it is. It either means losing what we're losing with custom clients (watch the youtube video from before one last time) is perfectly acceptable or that it needs to be redone. And the longer it's there the more stuff will pile up to a point it will be virtually impossible to fix. At the same time suffering major inconvenience for the time of rebalancing right now is perfectly acceptable, that's what "alpha" means, and unless i'm wrong about this, it means "don't inconvenience me with testing game mechanics! I need to participate in dick waving contest and be ready" is the wrong way to approach it. But maybe it's just me.

All that being said, and also me admittingly being a ranting nobody, if J&L would say "we are ok with those custom client features in every way" on the points raised i would immediately shut up and will just consider all of those WAD for better or for worse, just luckily made such by the community before the developer, not saying i would have any interest in such game but that hardly would interest anyone.

In any case, thanks for sticking with it, if you did, if you tl:dr i understand, didn't mean to offend anyone, so sorry if i did and here is for server launching soon!

[bitza]

yeah pretty much all of that has been said before many times, but with the current way the game is set up with the client/server blah blah whatever, it's really impossible for devs to stop custom clienting, and loftar has said before that he's not interested in developing interface any further as long as other people are willing to make custom clients publicly available.

[borka]

- snip - if J&L would say "we are ok with those custom client features in every way" -snip-

Jorb states already that he plays with Ender client himself ... my guess is the default client is only still there for one cause: instantplay

And in my opinion there's a big difference in using plain Ender or Union/Rizen/whatever

(no offense to Union/Rizen/Whatever client users - i personally don't care if someone wants to bot or such - i'm not competitive anyways with my playstyle )

[BloodyGuestUsers]

Jorb states already that he plays with Ender client himself ... my guess is the default client is only still there for one cause: instantplay

That isn't really answers the question. Maybe he does so for the time being, while there are more important things to work on that interface in a hobby game, that would still make this discussion valid, in an alpha stuff is expected to be broken and discussed as such.

If, however, and i wasn't following the development as closely as i might have, devs position is either that those are good features and shouldn't be fixed or they expect problem to fix itself somehow then, indeed, that would render the discussion on the subject pretty pointless. But again i didn't see anything like that, as i could've missed it, and i was confused to think otherwise with this whole "nature walking simulator" talk.