123 replies to this topic

[Jamian]

If the author of a quest does NOT want people to use cheats, then it's common courtesy to not hack into his quest to enable cheats anyway. The whole idea of this program is disrespectful to people who spend their time and bust their behind creating a quest for people to play for free. Respect the way it's supposed to be played or don't play it at all.

[David]

If the author of a quest does NOT want people to use cheats, then it's common courtesy to not hack into his quest to enable cheats anyway. The whole idea of this program is disrespectful to people who spend their time and bust their behind creating a quest for people to play for free. Respect the way it's supposed to be played or don't play it at all.

This.

 

This is what I am concerned about. That people will use this program even though the quest creator doesn't want people to hack into the quest. It's simply courteous to not cheat on someone's quest especially if they spent so much time making it. It's simply rude. 

 

That's mostly my opinion. I'm not going to continue to debate this anymore.

[strike]

Maybe if there was a script that deleted your quest file if you exited full screen mode it would stop people from using this. Zelda Shark can only be activated through exiting full screen mode. A message at the beginning of the quest could say" WARNING: If fullscreen mode of this quest is exited, then the quest will delete itself  to prevent hacking". I've literally never heard of someone playing in smaller screens before (maybe Russ but...) so I don't think it would be a problem. I don't know if it would work and it's rather extreme and primitive but until scripts are written I think it might work.

 

-Strike

[Koh]

I don't play games in Full Screen because I'm a multitasker.  Placing such an arbitrary limit is silly.  Also, why should the quest creator care if you cheat?  As long as your cheating doesn't affect other's enjoyment of the game, it's free game; how would they know you cheated anyway, unless you openly said so?  You have no idea who's cheating and who's not, until it becomes something that affects other people like Pokemon and the hacked Pokemon floating around.  That's a different story.  This is literally for people customizing their singular experience.  Heavens forbid anyone doing anything to make their gaming experience the best they can make it.

Edited by Koh, 30 May 2014 - 12:55 PM.

[Russ]

Maybe if there was a script that deleted your quest file if you exited full screen mode it would stop people from using this. Zelda Shark can only be activated through exiting full screen mode. A message at the beginning of the quest could say" WARNING: If fullscreen mode of this quest is exited, then the quest will delete itself  to prevent hacking". I've literally never heard of someone playing in smaller screens before (maybe Russ but...) so I don't think it would be a problem. I don't know if it would work and it's rather extreme and primitive but until scripts are written I think it might work.
 
-Strike

So aside from the fact that this is impossible... no, this is just downright asinine. For starters, yes, people do play in windowed mode (myself included, as well as basically anybody who streams ZC so they can see the stream chat). Even if it were possible to do something like this, the cons far outweight the pros here. Have you ever seen a case come up where a publisher puts in DRM to try to stop pirates from playing the game illegally, but in the end hurts the honest paying customers more than the pirates? That's very much the kind of situation deleting a save file if windowed mode is enabled would do.

[Avaro]

Wow Strike, that was an extreme and evil idea. xD Sorry, but forcing people to play in fullscrean is stupid. Seriously though, I'd appreciate a way to prevent this program for my quests.

[Jamian]

Also, why should the quest creator care if you cheat?  As long as your cheating doesn't affect other's enjoyment of the game, it's free game; how would they know you cheated anyway, unless you openly said so?  You have no idea who's cheating and who's not, until it becomes something that affects other people like Pokemon and the hacked Pokemon floating around.  That's a different story.  This is literally for people customizing their singular experience.  Heavens forbid anyone doing anything to make their gaming experience the best they can make it.

 

If I create a quest and invest literally days, weeks... of work into it I want people to play it as intended. If the quest is too hard for them I want them to explore the game world to find upgrades / figure out better strategies / develop their ZC skills. If they're going "it's too hard, I'm just going to cheat" it defeats the whole point of having spent hours adjusting the difficulty, encouraging the player to think of better fighting tactics or to look for secrets etc.

Edited by Jamian, 30 May 2014 - 01:25 PM.

[Rambly]

Maybe if there was a script that deleted your quest file if you exited full screen mode it would stop people from using this. Zelda Shark can only be activated through exiting full screen mode. A message at the beginning of the quest could say" WARNING: If fullscreen mode of this quest is exited, then the quest will delete itself  to prevent hacking". I've literally never heard of someone playing in smaller screens before (maybe Russ but...) so I don't think it would be a problem. I don't know if it would work and it's rather extreme and primitive but until scripts are written I think it might work.

 

-Strike

i personally hate the idea of being forced to play on an ugly stretched screen and being forced to interrupt any multitasking activity (i like talking to people while i play quests yanno) just bc a few overly proud people don't want people cheating in their Oh So Precious Zelda Fan Games.  why hamper others' experiences just to hawkishly maintain what you believe is the One True Vision for the quest?  what about people that stream quests?  they pretty much have to play windowed.

 

some people will cheat. i think cheating is stupid but if people want to it's their prerogative, like it or not.  can't stop it; not effectively.  i think people that are anti-cheating just need to maybe focus their energy, ingenuity, and productivity on improving their quests, not on futile anti-cheating mechanisms.

Edited by Rambly, 30 May 2014 - 01:36 PM.

[LinktheMaster]

I think my main problem here is people act like almost everyone is going to cheat.

 

C'mon, everyone.  Have more faith in the Zelda Classic community than that.  Will there be a few bad apples who will abuse this?  Yes.  But they ruin the experience for themselves.  I bet you the percentage of people who use this to bypass stuff are going to be really small.  Remember that other cheat tools have existed in the past, and that didn't lead to quests being ruined because everyone was cheating through them.

 

All I ask is that everyone calm down.  This isn't a sign that the world is ending.  Most people aren't going to use this.

[JetBox]

First, I have to say, I always play in windowed mode, and never play in Fullscreen mode.

 

And about the cheating aspect. I semi-agree with cheating. Like said before, if you sue it to help test your game, it is perfectly fine, and may find bugs and other things which the development of the quest will improve. Also, let's say your playing a game, and the boss is really hard, because you have to have to kill him by exploding bombs on him, but you run out of bombs to use. I think cheating is justified it which you are using bombs to further your experience by not dying and having to go buy/grind for bombs over again. This could also be used for arrows and health. Small cheating, such as refill health and magic is very minor, and I normally wouldn't have a problem with it.

 

But when you use the quest to make it easier in other aspects is where it shouldn't be allowed. Let's say there is this really hard block puzzle that is super confusing. You have no idea how to solve it, so you use cheats to just get the reward. Honestly, that is really dumb, as the creator probably worked really hard on making that hard puzzle, and the intent of the puzzle was to be really hard it took a long time to figure out. By that you are skipping game elements. Also, if you want to go somewhere fast and are to lazy to walk, you can just teleport there with cheats, which is ruining the game-mechanic of places being far apart or something. 

 

I can understand when things, like screens of bosses get too hard so you use cheats, but never abuse them. Back in the 1.9.2 days of ZC, I rarely used cheats, only for quests like Armageddon quest and such. But then I started using them for everything, and that isn't right. And when you think about it, I have seen people say, "Well, cheating is fine as long as the user wants it that way." But if take something outside of video games, like darts, you can just say, "Well, I think hitting the bullseye is too hard, so I will just make everything the bullseye." Then that takes away from the challenge and then what do you really gain? There was no difficulty in doing this, and you never actually did that good. You can say that for yourself, but you really ruined the game the way it was supposed to be played.

 

Cheating can be justified in some ways, but it's not really the morally right thing to do. And now with scripting, if something becomes too hard, there is an option to change difficulties. Isle of Rebirth did this, and I know DaviAwesome plans on doing this with his quests. But in the end, if someone wants to cheat, there is no stopping it. I am not going to argue if cheating is allowed or not, but you must now what you are doing.

[Koh]

Posing the same question again:  How do you know who's cheating and who's not, and why should you care?  Also, how does someone else's cheating affect you, in a non-multiplayer situation?  If and when you can answer these two questions for me, I'll give you a cookie.  

Edited by Koh, 30 May 2014 - 01:56 PM.

[Nathaniel]

I do agree that most people will not cheat most of the time, but those who wish to use them are determined to use them if they have the option to do so.  The creation and usage of such programs is inevitable.  Where there's a will, there's a way, and I think we need to accept that reality.  While I can understand people being against it, I don't think we have the sort of power to stop it entirely.

 

As for people rating something low because it doesn't work properly when cheating, while that is certainly a possibility, I see it as being rare.  I don't see it happening any more frequently than people rating a quest that they didn't even play in the first place, or played maybe less than 5% of.  There will always be "unjustified" ways to rate something too high or too low, but that is a reality you have to deal with one moment at a time.

 

However, I would be all for having disclaimers mentioned in the right places about the risks of cheating.  I would encourage AviSoft to put in a disclaimer on his program somewhere about how cheating could potentially break how some things work in some quests, as well as mentioning such a disclaimer somewhere on this site, wherever it would best fit.

[strike]

Yeah, that was stupid. My other idea was attaching malware along with your quest file that destroys your computer if it finds Zelda Shark but I don't think I'll mention that one...

 

-Strike

[Haylee]

Just saying that I made all of my posts with my phone. Either way,I will be using this program to beat the quests that I have played with game breaking bugs

[Aevin]

I do agree that most people will not cheat most of the time, but those who wish to use them are determined to use them if they have the option to do so.  The creation and usage of such programs is inevitable.  Where there's a will, there's a way, and I think we need to accept that reality.  While I can understand people being against it, I don't think we have the sort of power to stop it entirely.

You're right that people determined to cheat would seek out these programs anyway, but I wish we wouldn't encourage it by highlighting cheating programs here.

 

Aside from the difficulty balancing work that Jamian mentioned, there's also the idea of the work behind the quest suddenly being visible. If you can walk into areas you're not supposed to be, circumventing the proper warps, you can get yourself lost in areas with the wrong palette, walk through walls into areas that are on the other side of the world that shouldn't be connected ...  You start to see how the quest is assembled, and it starts to become a THING, rather than a game or a story. As a quest maker, I find it rather humiliating for people to see the junk lying around in the random spaces of the quest, and wish players wouldn't choose to do that.