Benefits/Drawbacks of highly custamizable games. -or- Extreme Ability class gap. -or- Where exactly does cheating begin? On the topic of games that have higly customizable features, typically accomplished through an in game scripting language. Ex: Quake .cfg files Benfits: Highly customizable. Make the player behave exactly as you want it to. Bind Bind Bind to your hearts content. Script that tough Jump sequence. Drawbacks: Too customizable? Make the player behave exactly as you want it to. Bind Bind Bind to your hearts content. Script that tough Jump sequence. LOL, you see what I am getting at. My thoughts... In playing any game, at some point you start to get fairly good (or you stop playing it forever). In a highly cutomizable game (Quake 3 as reference), at this point, winning and playing well seem to take over enjoying the game for its ''wow'' aspects. For instance, I could have my environment set to look dark and spooky and neat--as intended--but instead it is brightly lit and less defined to ensure maximum framerate and visibility for maximum fragging. Is this overkill to allow this in a game? When the ability to tweak the game to improve expert playability at the known expense of the creators'' original vision is introduced, are we seeing a good feature or are we detracting from the game too much? Does this make it too difficult for newbies to have a good experience with veterans? No newbie is going to hang with a veteran. And no semi-newbie is going to hang with a veteran running a highly tweaked system. Does this introduce a (so to speak) rich/poor class gap that becomes overly discouraging to the new and/or uninformed? Cheating sucks. If you are playing a multiplayer game, don''t cheat. But what is cheating? Downloading an AIM bot? Yes, that''s obvious. Downloading a wall hack? Yes, that''s obvious? Copying or writing a script to do a sequence of maneuvers? Well, its getting grey. Sure its cool to have a multi layer zoom available, but the newbie has no chance of acquiring this on the level. Contrast this with knowing where a rail gun is--eventually Johnny newbie will find that rail gun. But then perhaps, eventually Johnny newbie will go online and find my zoom script. How about tweaking network settings? But then, how about a 56Ker playing a T1 connection? So things are out of your hands, why not give everyone the option to optimize for there situation? But what about those who do not know of these capabilities? I tend to figure that it all comes down to the game. I also think that Q3 is overly customizable, and leads to too much cheating. But after playing for a while, I want a more sensitive mouse, etc, and I agree with that being a worthy customization. Your thoughts please...when/where does it cross the line? Is there a line? --OctDev The Tyr project is coming...

I think that he is not trying to lean in one direction or another. Just asking the question: anyway. I think that when someone uses a script to make themselves jump/duck, then fine, because I can do it manually w/ no problem and I kinda pride myself in being able to do it. Someone may argue that when you do it manually sometimes you might mess up, but the jump/duck script NEVER will, except if the person hits the scripted button to early or late or whatever. So you might argue that the script takes the human element of error occuring: consider if you are in a messy situation and you are bit nervouse, you might mess up a manual jump/duck, but the script will make it so that your character acts inhumanly perfect in a messy situation, even though you yourself are freaking out.. see what I mean?
Now a jump/duck just reduces pushing 2 buttons to 1, but what about 3 or more seperate body maneuvers in one scripted button? To me that is getting stupid, because you multiply the argument that I listed above.

I personally play manually, and I do VERY well, both at Q1, and CS, Tribes, and I pride myself in being able to keep my cool and still be able to perform delicate, skilled moves, not just hit a button and let the computer do it for me like a little no-skill chump!

Thats my take on it.

I''d probably start a war with this comment, but the Quake series weren''t so much games as they were engine demos. In other words, Carmack makes more money from selling his engine to other game making companies then he does from actual sale of the game. Not that the second is an insignificant number, just when programming the engine, that was the primary thought on his mind. When he finished the engine, it was passed on to the development team and his active participation in Quake reduced to drawing design docs and giving pep talks. With this in mind, its no wonder that Id arranges quakefest. To bring the gamers together and put a small message out to other companies, "look what my engine will get you."

As to customization in a game, this is totally at the discretion of the developer. They have control over what the player can be doing. if they want you to cheat, they leave in quicksave and cheat systems. As a developer, if you don''t want this, then don''t include it. On the other hand, if your a gamer, my only advice is to stop buying the games that you don''t like.

-> Will Bubel
-> Machine wash cold, tumble dry.

The one problem with player customizations is the possibility of exploitation(which brightness and macros do to a degree) and these exploitations being used to gain an advantage over the other players because they don''t know or are limited from doing the same thing. Even in the earliest days of (popular)online games like MUDs and such, people have put together macros to heal themselves or cast spells.

So the only things a developer should have to worry about in this regard, really, is making sure that whatever advantage gained is not overwhelmingly great, and that it''s not an extremely complicated process for a new player to reach the same level.

Making the world furry one post at a time

quote:Original post by munkie
Everyone knows graphics are not everything. But your post would say otherwise. You''re saying people are getting too much into their frag count, rather than enjoying the "wow aspect" (visual aspect). The game was meant to be PLAYABLE. To have great gameplay. Wanting a higher frag score is PART of that. The point of the game is not to oogle at the graphics, it''s to have some damned competitive fun.

You''re missing the point of the post completely. I did not state opinions saying graphics are everything. I merely commented on an increased focus on tweaked gameplay leading to an inversely proportional focus on graphics. The intent, which I thought was clear, was to discuss the merits and weaknesses of such designs, from the standpoints of both gamers and developers.

This then led to two concurrent discussions, the first being on whether this discourages newbies from trying to compete with players who have been playing for some time, or are familiar with a previous version, etc. If you had never played any quake game before, do you think you would have a lasting good time on any public multi-player server right now?

The second discussion revolves around where to draw the line for the definition of cheating in a multi player game. If merely changing client side variables is ok, why do some servers dissllow certain variables and limit others'' thresholds? Something to think about.

quote:To simply answer your question again: No, Quake 3 is not crossing any lines.

I understand your point. However, Q3 is just a tangible example that many of us have experience with. The real question remains a comparison of the benefits/drawbacks of highly customizable games, and this should be further elaborated to clearly intend multi-player games.



--OctDev

The Tyr project is coming...

quote:Original post by TheEnderBean
I think that he is not trying to lean in one direction or another. Just asking the question:

Exactly.

quote:I think that when someone uses a script to make themselves jump/duck, then fine, because I can do it manually w/ no problem and I kinda pride myself in being able to do it.

This can lead to an interesting situation that I hadn''t thought about before. Include base scripts with the shipping title. Now the newbies have these scripts and are made aware of them. Then, the trully elite are encouraged to perform these feats without the use of scripts. I have never even considered implementation before, but perhaps adding a % error to all scripted (multi-button) commands, so that trully perfect and consistent execution can only be achieved by masters who do it all manually. That...would...be...elite!


--OctDev

The Tyr project is coming...

quote:Original post by Inmate2993
I''d probably start a war with this comment, but the Quake series weren''t so much games as they were engine demos.

Agreed in some respects. Perhaps I seemed overly focused on quake in my original post. I meant it only as an example to help clarify the generic situation.

quote:As to customization in a game, this is totally at the discretion of the developer.

I am curious. If you were developing a mp game, and you had the choice between the two, and you had 1000 top notch programmers working for you so it made NO difference either way (perfect world sceneario) which would you choose and why?

--OctDev

The Tyr project is coming...