Re: Terms of Use "soft rules"

David Sirlin did a big writeup on why such "soft rules" are silly:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2567/soapbox_world_of_warcraft_teaches_.php

(Point #6 addresses the ToS thing directly).

Re: The rest

I agree that it would be a much better move to roll back if necessary. That is way, way better than punishing "exploiting," which gamers have been doing as part of their quest to explore the game space and play the damn game.

Much thanks! (Sorry for the late reply.)

You didn't do your research on this. This bug was originally discovered on the 10 man run (at the time 10, 25, and the heroics therwith were on separate timers) which the world first had already been attained. The guild exercising this exploit had practiced on it in the 10 man before using it on the 25 man to get the world first, THEN decided to report it to prevent other groups from capitalizing on it. What they weren't aware of was they were being monitored by GMs who caught them using it intentionally. Only after the ban and removal of the title was done were the exploiters claiming they didn't know.

Even if the guild in question held off reporting to prevent other guilds from using the same exploit, the encounter was ill-designed by Blizzard itself. Pinning blame on players -- the very same players Blizzard challenges with high-end raid content -- is way, way grimier than what the guild did.

So it's okay to blame Blizzard for players discovering, hiding said discovering, than abusing said discovery of a situation that no one in their right mind would commonly use? No one is clarvoiant enough to predict all occurances (and I dare you to prove to me a gaime that is perfectly designed) and Blizzard fixed the problem when they were made aware of it. The ones punished were punished for abuse of the exploit, not for the exploit itself. Get your facts straight.

Entirely irrelevant. Anyone trying to succeed at the game will, by virtue of wanting to succeed and having this challenge before them the designers are asking to be conquered through player creativity and skill, find every edge.

EVERY edge.

In fighters, that means any "exploit" that gives an advantage (e.g., CvS2 roll-canceling).

In platformers, the same (e.g., the slide-jumping "exploit" in certain Megaman games, including 3 and 7).

And so on. When developers start asserting that players need to check themselves and predict what developers intend, devs are the ones unreasonably asking for clairvoyance. 

My facts are straight. Yours, however...

The "fun" argument comes up often, and honestly I'm not sure why. I have a lot of fun figuring out how to break a game. The Blackheart infinite I mentioned? Rest assured I am having fun watching your character's body helplessly bounce up and down as I infinitely tag you with demons, confident in my ability to keep the loop going which a developer did not intend.

I am not responsible for anyone's fun but my own. Don't misunderstand; I would prefer if my opponent, or teammates or whatever were also having fun, but that's their call. If they're going to be salty over so-called "unfair" play, and fail to find the counters, find the wholes, formulate their own strategies, and otherwise *play the game*, I can't change that. Nor would I; one of the fallacies about griefing is that it's something someone does to someone else (which is wrong).

Fighting game tournament bans are more complex than you're suggesting. Infinites are not normally banned, unless they're game-breaking (dead body infinites, which most good devs iron out of their games) or you're playing with a backwards community or something (Smash, and even there it varies). Certain characters are banned because of exclusivity, and in rare cases where they're overpowered (ST Akuma, the untested EX/gold characters ArcSys keeps including in console releases for some reason); ideally, the reasons behind the ban are solid, and character bans are very easy to enforce.

Fighting game tournaments -- at least any worth their salt -- do NOT ban tick throws, infinites (barring dead body infinites), exploits (TAC infinites in UMvC3, like eleventy things in MvC2), etc. Doesn't happen. Because there's no reason to.

"I am not responsible for anyone's fun but my own."

Here's the problem, you might not care about anyone else's fun, but the developer/maintainers of the game does and if they have to decide between one person's enjoyment and several people's enjoyment, they are definately going to take the latter. And when your concerns and theirs conflict, you don't have any solid ground on which to stand on.

That said, between the article and the replies you've given, this reads to me as "the big-bad company is being mean to the poor innocent exploit abusers!" and trying to create an "us vs. them" mentality when it's rarely so simple.

That's great if you have fun finding exploits. That isn't the issue here. It's the use of exploits in a public multi-player environment. That's like using a cheat device on an online game and saying, "Well, everyone can use the cheat device if they wanted to." But what you're failing to understand is that most gamers don't share your opinion.

A lot of your examples have to do with the FGC, but it's a controlled environment. Exploits are regulated in tournaments, making that topic irrelevant. That's why I didn't go into specifics.

What about games like CoD? When a player uses an exploit to go outside or under the map, killing unsuspecting players, do you really think that's OK just because anyone can do it? It's obviously not an intentional part of the game. It's cheating, plain and simple. I'm sorry, but I'm not a cheater. When your fun starts to effect everyone else's fun, then your presence is no longer welcome, and it's nobody's fault but your own for getting banned.

I'm not sure why you brought Doom into the equasion, seeing as the majority of online servers are ran by players, not to mention the game is moddable. You can also move faster by running diagonally in GoldenEye 007, or by perfectly-timed hops in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. But that's beside the point. These are not the kind of exploits I'm referring to. I'm referring to exploits like the one I mentioned above - game-breaking exploits that potentially ruin the game for everyone else. If someone is killing people from under/over/outside of the map and they have no way of defending themselves, then the punishment should fit the crime. As far as I'm concerned, you don't deserve a warning, because you should know better.

Exploits in fighting games are irrelevant because nobody really takes online play seriously and tournaments already regulate that sort of thing.

The argument of "these aren't the exploits I'm talking about" and "they ruin the game for others" don't hold up. The former is being selective and the latter is silly for reasons already mentioned.

But fine, let's stick to MMOs for the sake of this response, not because mentioning other genres is fallacious (it's not), but to cut down the tangents:

Vanilla WoW. Stun-locking Rogues in PvP. We know this wasn't intended by devs, given the myriad of later patches to prevent Rogues from taking someone from full health to zero while kept immobile and unable to act the entire time. Blizzard didn't retroactively ban players for doing this... yet they did for other, very similar things (finding rooftops where mages could snipe without fear of reprisal). Arbitrary. Nonsensical.

The best one can do to argue in favor of players policing their own behavior is appeal to emotion, which is logical fallacy and therefore bunk. The ideal, correct solution is for devs to patch out the problem mechanics... or incorporate the happy accidents (like the bug that made Warriors generate 1 rage every 3 seconds under the old Anger Management talent) into the actual game.

"You should know better" is, within the scope of a game's electronically-regulated environment, bunk. It runs contrary to asking players to overcome challenges by creatively using what's in the game -- sometimes in ways devs don't intend.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but your argument is flawed. Exploits are subjective, just like fun is subjective. The exploits I've argued against are ban-worthy offenses in a multi-player environment. They don't need to give you a warning. It's common sense.

As for WoW, there's a difference between an unbalanced game mechanic and a game-breaking glitch. You can't ban somebody over an unbalanced game mechanic, and that's what stun-locking was. I absolutely loathed it, but I never felt like any of those players should've been banned. They weren't invincible, unlike the mage sniping. Annoying? Definitely. But not invincible. The game was and still is unbalanced; every class has been overpowered at one point in time. Hell, I remember killing people by applying full DoTs and fearing the shit out of them. Not all that different.

You may wish to amend your response, as it's insufficient. While a ToS that stipulates a dev may arbitrarily do whatever they want is definitely a consideration (one meaning "anything may break the rules," which is silly), the argument is that they shouldn't, given that so-called "exploiting" is the result of players exploring mechanics and finding the best way to win.

Remember combos in Street Fighter 2? Exploit; unintended effect of hit stun not allowing you to block another attack. That exploit that players abused on a massive scale is the cornerstone for many, many games, not just fighters. Hell, even WoW had it (stun-locking).

Promoted Bitmob articles will appear on both sites.

Gotcha. Any tips to ensure the GB side is formatted properly? Can I touch up the GB side of things myself?

Hey Carlos. Sorry about the trouble. Unfortunately, this is all automated and temporary. I tried tweaking the formatting on the Bitmob side and hoping that would carry over to the GB side, but it wasn't working. I did temporarily fix the GB version, but I am pretty sure that won't stick. The original Bitmob one is supposed to override that, so whatever's causing the problem will keep on carrying over. :(  

I'm really sorry about this! If we're lucky, the fixes will stick, but I kinda doubt it. But in the very near future (read this: http://bitmob.com/articles/a-bitmob-to-gamesbeat-update), we should have everything working properly on GB alone, without any potential transfer problems. 

Thanks! 

-shoe

Shoe, no apologies required! An aside: I remember you from my old magazine collecting days; good to see you're still doing the games thing. 

Thanks, man! By the way...the formatting is holding on the GB article so far. Fingers crossed!

I noticed. 8.5 gazillion million jillion thank yous!

Though I still think a dev has to own up to their own error, I'll concede that if dev response was to warn players before banning, that would be way, way better than immediate banning.

I don't feel multiplayer is a playground where, in an electronic game, I should have to "check my behavior" like a real world playground; maybe it's because I attend fighting game gatherings, but there's comraderie to build when a bunch of players try to one-up each other in a competitive environment where anything in-game goes, dev-intended or not. There, the idea of "players should know better" is silly to me, and smacks of dev arrogance and laziness, like a player should hold back because a developer doesn't ensure the ruleset is polished.

Still, thoughtful feedback and I will ponder it further.