Poll: Do you respect hackers?

#2

Why would I?

#3

Apparantly some people see a problem with hacking but dont think hackers should be treated like dirt.

#4

I respect players if they hack, but I do not want them in my guild. I’ve met a lot of nice hackers, and nice people shouldn’t be treated poorly for their choices.

#5

They shouldnt be treated like dirt, but they got an unfair advantage comparated to normal people. A hacker with pro stuff is a noob

#6

Hacking is bad, but it isn’t something that people respect in others. Having advantages over other players makes the game not as fun and annoying for others. Sure, they shouldn’t be destroyed for hacking by the community, but it’s not something to be respected.

#7

I try to treat people with respect on the basis that I want to be a respectful person rather than based on the whether or not I agree with them or whether or not they have made choices I think are bad.

#8

@BQuiver @Slowmine @Troximo @Herdidi @MatthewTea @Yanguzzzzz @FanFunny @Lolopon @SinnLos

That applies to all cheats, not just the ones that annoy others directly.

#10

since this poll didnt ask for anything else, i wouldnt respect hackers, but that doesnt mean i don’t respect any hackers, i have a few friends who hack. I just don’t respect hacking, although hacking in my opinion would be a very painful thing, you would constantly have to hide your hacks and only use them in certain times. You have to make sure not to send pictures and such, for that reason i respect them.

But conclusion, no.

#11

Simply put…i don’t mind hackers as long as they don’t affect my style of gameplay…
I like the fact that I have to work for what I get…
If hackers think otherwise…i got no problem honestly

#12

I treat hackers the same way I treat others. As long as they are decent enough, I’ll talk to them. I’ve encountered quite a few decent people who revealed to me that they were hacking after getting to know them. For example, I rushed a lab for the first time ever, and I felt like it was a huge accomplishment. I got nothing from the boss, but one rogue thanked me. He then tanked all the shotguns from the Horrific Creation. Without taking a single damage. It was just me and him by then. So it goes to show, you can’t tell who hacks and who doesn’t. You can assume that everyone hacks, just like how I was accused of hacking when I got loot from all five dragons in a Lair of Draconis, even though two of them were just t4 prisms. Even if I don’t like what they do, I still treat them the same way, as they are just digging holes to bury themselves in.

#13

Would you respect something you found on the bottom of your shoe?

(I answered no)

#14

I’m kind of in between, knowing that I myself have hacked in the past, but not to the point where I don’t see the problem with it. I treat all players the same, except for warriors and littleahri type people.

#15

Technically, it could just be lag. Not saying it was, but it could have been. If you don’t see damage appear above someone’s head, either they narrowly dodged it on their screen, tanking it on yours, or they abused a disconnection bug that lets you leave a decoy and then teleport after the decoy vanishes (from a viewer’s perspective). They might also have done that accidentally, it does happen more often with people who have bad internet.

If you see damage appear above someone’s head/hear a sound of them taking the hit and then they don’t get the status effect that that bullet is supposed to hold, then you know you’re dealing with cheats. Otherwise it’s really hard to prove/pinpoint.

For example, when you have really local lag, you can shoot through 1-block walls. It can be hard to tell who’s using a hacked client and who’s not.
There are also people who connect to a server on the other side of the world so that they can abuse the lag, imo that’s pretty much the same as using a hacked client, but it’s not officially against the ToS.

#16

thats not a hack

#17

Could you please explain that a bit further?

#18

Cheating bad

Legit good

Not the case

#19

If i see a hacker i just continue with my day and if there are in a shatters shooting threw walls I accept that because it helps make the shatters go quicker which to be honest i like ,so I don’t have anything against a hacker. Besides probably a quarter of this game has multi’,fame-bot,hacks or notifys so they will probably just eliminate the multi boxers because they were kind of big problem.

#20

why should I respect someone who refuses to respect the game itself?

#21

So[quote=“Mynamerr, post:17, topic:9731, full:true”]

Could you please explain that a bit further?
[/quote]

Holy cow, @mynamerr. You get the double gold star. I have been waiting a long time for someone to ask me for that. Thanks for engaging.

… for example…

I own a keyboard/mouse which are capable of macro recording and playback.

If I record a macro to hot swap between weapons, abilities, rings, etc… This would not be hacking, deca has no right to dictate what equipment I use to play their game and I would not need to use a modified client or use a script to interact with the game. The only script would be what controls my own equipment, which is not a violation of the tos. However, this would give me an in game advantage. Whether or not this is “cheating” would be subject to a great amount of personal bias. Many players would consider it to be cheating emphatically because it meets whatever threshold they have in their own minds for “an unfair advantage”. However, in large segments of the gaming industry macros are a completely normal part of computer gaming.

Now I’ll push that example in either direction a little bit.

Back in the day, right clicking on a flash game in your browser would cause the game to freeze your inputs. It took a surprisingly long time for the devs to be able to disable/reassign right click, and lots of folks who played back then will remember at least one harrowing moment when their character charged into incoming traffic because of an accidental right click. What if I used auto hot keys just to reassign right click to drink an HP pot? Is this hacking? The interesting thing here is that if I use the mouse software to reassign right click to change the input so that my computer registers the click as if I pressed the “1” key, I am not violating the tos. But if I use ahk to execute a macro on right click to move my mouse to the first slot in my inventory and double click, I have used a script to interact with the game itself, which is a violation of the tos.

What if I just used ahk it to disable instead of reassigning right click? I once had this conversation with someone who insisted that it was cheating, even if instead of using a program I jammed a toothpick under my right mouse button because it would still give me an advantage in game (some of us already knew all you Mac users were cheating scum).

Now let’s step back in time a little further.

Many of you will remember an ahk script called quick speech, created by (our forum mod) BMJ. Among the features of quick speech were: disabling or reassigning right click, assigning keys to common phrases like “sarc here” or “would you be a gentleman and offer a heal, good priest?”, quick teleportation, and item swapping. The original developers of the game (wild shadow) were supporters of quick speech and considered it to be a great community addition to the game. Today using that script would arguably be a violation of the tos, and the only reason many of us don’t consider it to be cheating is because we remember a day when that type of community contribution was lauded instead of vilified.

Shortly after kabam bought the game, they made a point to say that they supported quick speech, but asked us to remove discussion of third party tools from the forums. Another controversial item during that time frame was the uomo sprite client. Many of you have probably seen uomo’s awesome sprite work, and some of it has made its way into the game now. Anyway, uomo created a beautiful set of sprites reimagining and embellishing many of the common enemies of the game, without changing much of the outline or size of the sprites. Somebody got the idea to put together a modified client which did nothing to change the gameplay but reskinned many of the enemies using uomo’s sprites. This may sound sacrilegious to today’s playerbase now because of the proliferation of hacked clients and the years of vitriol, but at the time many players saw this client as completely harmless fan support of the game. No in game advantage was created Kabam had to tread lightly because of the overwhelming support for the client, but again asked us to remove the discussion from the forum. This sprite client was actually the first time that the current concept of “any modified client is bad” was introduced in the reason community.

It was also during this time that rwt was first officially prohibited. Although wild shadow never endorsed rwt sales outright, they never took a strong stand against it either. Rwt sales happened on the wild shadow forums, and many very well respected players sold their items from time to time, although there was always a divide amongst players as to whether or not this was “legit”. Personally I was an advocate of ugc trading, or any form of trading where the money spent actually went into the game, and since the devs were not selling items themselves I never considered rwt to be a loss of potential revenue for them. Anyway, kabam first took a strong stance against rwt and fanned the flame of disapproval toward it so that most players considered it cheating, and then released their own rwt items, first swearing that they would never sell top tier items, and then uts, and eventually releasing sts through mystery boxes. Somehow the stigma survives that buying rwt items is considered “cheating” but buying Nexus items is just a normal part of game monetization. Is it “legit” to buy an acclaim from deca but not “legit” to buy it from some other shop? It may or may not be ethical from a business perspective, but you’re kidding yourself if you think that one transaction is a more legitimate form of in game accomplishment than the other.

To me these are business considerations. I try to support the developers of the game and their right to make choices with their own property, but I think it is important to realize that because they chose one thing does not mean that morality itself has changed. And 90% of players calling each other scum bags will do so not because they are full supporters of the developers, but because they are afflicted with indignation against what they perceive to be immoral behavior against themselves. That’s why these conversations tend to revolve around whether or not this or that “affects me and my gameplay”.

Here’s something that affects your gameplay: today you can turn off some particles in the game. Many players begged for this option because the nature of a flash game creates unnecessary lag when trying to render particle effects, but the devs just never got around to it. So this feature started getting implemented in all the hacked clients, and the progression of hacked clients pages this, HP bars and text, and even the correct function of /server into the game. These are all “features” that we enjoy (or get to choose from?) because of the hacking community. Personally I wish these things could have happened without that push, but it didn’t.

Where is the moral outrage over muling, for example? Have you ever heard of a guild saying “we don’t accept dirty mulers into our guild”? If you have, they are the exception rather than the rule. Deca actually had the strongest stance against muling that I have seen from any of the developers, but it has been arguably a violation of the tos for at least kabam’s ownership of the game.

How about mreyeball? All of realmeye exists because someone decided to write a bot, in spite of the tos violation, to track players and their data. Of course, each of the development teams has supported this because mreyeball has always been a supporter of the game and is also very careful not to adversely influence the players or the way the game works. However, admitting this double standard requires that we recognize that it is possible to create scripts or even modified clients that are not entirely bad. And if that’s the case, we must draw a line somewhere about what is and is not okay according to our own judgement. And when we do that, in my opinion it is a basic requirement to recognize that maybe somebody else draws the line differently than I would, and I should probably respect them in spite of the difference.

Now, since I’ve already written another Stupid Wall of Text I’ll refrain from going on to talk about fame trains and exploits, but these also I have seen players use as reasons to demonize and harass one another and I have to wonder about people’s values.

Personally, I value decency and civility. I think showing respect earns respect, and I think I am much more capable of influencing the people with whom I disagree by doing so respectfully. At the end of the day I don’t think it is “legit” to treat other players like trash because they crossed a line you drew in the sand. It may not be cheating at video games, but it’s also not the moral high ground. If you can’t treat a fellow human being with respect because of something as trivial as video games, maybe you should also think about whether or not your sense of morality should dictate how you treat other people, especially when they’ve done something wrong to you.

Personally I never used any kind of script, even one that would just disable my mouse button. I’ve never used a modified client of any kind. I’ve never shopped at an rwt shop. I don’t even use mules. But I haven’t always considered these things to be wrong, and when I have I have still considered it to be human decency to treat the people with whom I disagree with respect. I hope that if I am on the other side of that argument, others will do the same for me.

#23

I have no respect for hacking, but I do have respect for players. I dislike it a lot that most people I know hack but that aside they’re still my friends and I wouldn’t let a game change that.