2012-06-18, 01:57 PM
The bitter feelings on that comments page made me laugh.
To me, hacking motivation boils down to 3 things:
1. Empathy level: The more you put your own enjoyment above others the more temptation to cheat.
2. Anti-fun factor: The less fun/ more time consuming doing something is (grinding) the more the temptation to cheat.
3. Community: Almost hand in hand with 2, the less fun it is to catch up to the average active portion of the community, either level or skillwise, the greater the cheating temptation.
Above all else, what separates a good gamer from a crap one is empathy. If you care about your fellow gamer you won't want to cheat. The guy in that interview fails miserably on that account: You go through all this stress yet don't care that you're ruining other's stress relief? Laugh off that you suck as a gamer. Note that i said as a gamer, no need to go judging a person's whole character based on their actions in a game.
However, 2 and 3 can really give even a gamer with empathy trouble. Maple's a cesspool when it comes to 2 and 3: The broken economy is the absolute worst grind ever, either via merchanting or hunting stuff worth selling... in a game where all the ingame items have all been devalued by botters and such. Then there's the hacked items pushing legit items even further down the community curve. Throw in the tons of mesos (likely illegit) that make the average gains from grinding worthless and its easy to see why the game became a hellhole for hacking. and then when it comes to people hacking levels: Maple's now outdated combat isn't as fun compared to recent entries, though newer classes have improved it.... i just don't feel like my brain is really activated by it, which a huge problem.
If a company REALLY wants to fight hacking, the game itself, at birth and in future development: has to be designed with 1 2 and 3 in mind: add systems that reward players for helping others and not encouraging griefing. My ideal MMO would allow players to still get a fraction of quest exp for being in a party with someone who turned one in, along with an 'assistance points' system that rewards special items for being involved.
Make the grind more fun by keeping it varied, combat engaging, and minimizing repetition as much as possible. Make quests reward more than exp and a block of text, add more personality, images and cutscenes to make the story rewarding, even the frivolous ones to keep players going. Everytime a person levels, they should feel like they did a LOT of stuff and should actually be dissapointed when they reach the end.... not relieved.
And of course, keeping the community even with each other:High levels, after a server is established: have tons of money and usually inflate the economy. So much that newer players are frustrated that there's no stuff to shop for unless they grind hardcore. They're usually most tempted to cheat or buy gold. Make it so lower levels can still contribute and find items that high levels will need a lot of so they have reason to spread that wealth out. Long as no one feels rushed to 'get there' so they can finally have fun/be economically free. Motivation to hack is minimized.
It won't stop all hackers, but the ones that have a decent level of empathy would be much less tempted to dip into the dark side. This idea came to me from reading valve's statements regarding that better service will lower piracy, as such then I conclude that better, more engaging gameplay and balance has the potential to reduce hacking all the same.
Of course we all know the apparent problem with all of this: most companies... it costs money to do the research, balance and engaging content that makes such a game possible. So long as games are spending more on advertising over development, such games will likely be forever a rarity.
To me, hacking motivation boils down to 3 things:
1. Empathy level: The more you put your own enjoyment above others the more temptation to cheat.
2. Anti-fun factor: The less fun/ more time consuming doing something is (grinding) the more the temptation to cheat.
3. Community: Almost hand in hand with 2, the less fun it is to catch up to the average active portion of the community, either level or skillwise, the greater the cheating temptation.
Above all else, what separates a good gamer from a crap one is empathy. If you care about your fellow gamer you won't want to cheat. The guy in that interview fails miserably on that account: You go through all this stress yet don't care that you're ruining other's stress relief? Laugh off that you suck as a gamer. Note that i said as a gamer, no need to go judging a person's whole character based on their actions in a game.
However, 2 and 3 can really give even a gamer with empathy trouble. Maple's a cesspool when it comes to 2 and 3: The broken economy is the absolute worst grind ever, either via merchanting or hunting stuff worth selling... in a game where all the ingame items have all been devalued by botters and such. Then there's the hacked items pushing legit items even further down the community curve. Throw in the tons of mesos (likely illegit) that make the average gains from grinding worthless and its easy to see why the game became a hellhole for hacking. and then when it comes to people hacking levels: Maple's now outdated combat isn't as fun compared to recent entries, though newer classes have improved it.... i just don't feel like my brain is really activated by it, which a huge problem.
If a company REALLY wants to fight hacking, the game itself, at birth and in future development: has to be designed with 1 2 and 3 in mind: add systems that reward players for helping others and not encouraging griefing. My ideal MMO would allow players to still get a fraction of quest exp for being in a party with someone who turned one in, along with an 'assistance points' system that rewards special items for being involved.
Make the grind more fun by keeping it varied, combat engaging, and minimizing repetition as much as possible. Make quests reward more than exp and a block of text, add more personality, images and cutscenes to make the story rewarding, even the frivolous ones to keep players going. Everytime a person levels, they should feel like they did a LOT of stuff and should actually be dissapointed when they reach the end.... not relieved.
And of course, keeping the community even with each other:High levels, after a server is established: have tons of money and usually inflate the economy. So much that newer players are frustrated that there's no stuff to shop for unless they grind hardcore. They're usually most tempted to cheat or buy gold. Make it so lower levels can still contribute and find items that high levels will need a lot of so they have reason to spread that wealth out. Long as no one feels rushed to 'get there' so they can finally have fun/be economically free. Motivation to hack is minimized.
It won't stop all hackers, but the ones that have a decent level of empathy would be much less tempted to dip into the dark side. This idea came to me from reading valve's statements regarding that better service will lower piracy, as such then I conclude that better, more engaging gameplay and balance has the potential to reduce hacking all the same.
Of course we all know the apparent problem with all of this: most companies... it costs money to do the research, balance and engaging content that makes such a game possible. So long as games are spending more on advertising over development, such games will likely be forever a rarity.