Hacking: An Ethics Discussion

[Unclean]

Just opening up this question to everyone...

 

Do you think it'd be OK to use an aimbot if the accuracy was at a reasonable level? Say there's a sub-par player out there that uses an aimbot to become a very good player, but by no means the best. This increases the difficulty level of your opponent, but not to an unreasonable level. Like if their hit rate was at 20%, and the aimbot bumps it up to 40%. Is this OK?

 

 

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I'd argue this is OK. I would prefer to have that challenge there with more players, as long as it didn't go too far (e.g. blowouts). Personally, I'd never use one -- I'd rather do well or not so well based off my own merit alone, but if it makes the game more challenging? To me, more challenging = more fun.

[mohawk]

I'd argue no.. actually, more like No Way!

 

Its cheating imo, plain and simple. There are alot of players out there that cheat, who still aren't very good... doesn't make it okay...

[Magruter]

Cheating is bad period...

[Nick Soapdish]

any artificial means of an advantage whether it be by player models, marker dot on screen, or any aimbot is unacceptable in my opinion. there's a wide range of players and digital steroids should be illegal.

[Mr.Cool]

yea....its still cheating....and cheating = bad

[JackieChan]

cheatings bad... mmkay? you shouldn't cheat because cheatings bad...

[Altron*Aequitas*]

Yeah I am going to have to agree with everyone else. Cheating is cheating. Besides the player using them will not get any better... with an aimbot you would never learn how to shoot accuratly. I think time on an aim map would be much more usefull and fair to others.

[anonymo]

*frantically trys to rub red dot off the center of screen*

 

I can kind of see where you are coming from unclean, but you have to remember that no ones accuracy is ever a constant. If someone is using an aim bot that bumps their accuracy up by 20% (which i don't think is even possible) then that is effected drastically if they start aiming slightly better themselves

 

Does anyone else consider being M2 cheating? I DO!

[J. Dunlavy]

The penalty for using an aimbot should be death. Not in the game, but police should come to your house, arrest you, and put you on death row where you will meet your end when Stuttering John administers a lethal dose of Peet's coffee.

[JackieChan]

I wish more people would suspect me of hacking... makes you feel good about yourself. My internal autoaim and azn speed hacks.

[Assassinator]

I feel it's like the saying "give 'em an inch, they'll take a mile" if you started by saying a quazi-aimbot is acceptable, then what else eventually becomes "acceptable" hacking?

 

I am with the sentiments of everyone else, cheating = bad.

[w8t4time]

you cannot buy skills

 

and no! any form of taking the game an altering it for an advantage over other players is wrong for any reason.....

[Allanon]

I agree with everyone else. Sure it seems like a good idea that someone could say use training wheels to ride a bike, but what this person would be doing is having someone else ride a bike for him and saying he rode it. If that didn't make any sense, I'm sorry I tried my best to make a good anology.

 

I have seen so many people cheat and it sickens me also, I'm normally not even 60% accurate with my shots, but I would never do that. Sure I'm a pretty stinky player but it's still fun. Besides, as everyone says it takes the fun out of it.

[Lunk]

Yeah I am going to have to agree with everyone else. Cheating is cheating. I think time on an aim map would be much more usefull and fair to others.

Ditto.

 

I've found when I take time to play on one of the aim servers my accuracy improves greatly when I jump back over to a normal server. Just because the aim servers are so fast paced.

[Xterminator]

When it comes down to it, cheating is cheating. When one player has an advantage over another, doesn't matter how slight, it's unfair. I think i speak for most of us, if not all of us when i say that we learned how to play the game by good old fashion practice. I'm not the best player out there, i have my good days and my bad, mostly though i'm average. I'm happy with my playing skill.

 

If you need an aimbot to help you aim, then you're taking the wrong approach. When i wanted some practice, i created my own server with bots and when i felt comfortable with my skill, i upped the bots and their skill to make it harder. It's like working out with weights, you start of small and work your way up. Instead of building muscle, you're building experience. Aimbots are NOT necessary, they're just an easy way for a new player to be good as soon as he/she starts playing the game

[Unclean]

Thanks for the replies so far - keep 'em coming!

 

Most of what I read in here is "cheating = bad". But humor me here... WHY is it bad in the scenario I outlined above? I think the closest to answering this question was the last post:

When it comes down to it, cheating is cheating. When one player has an advantage over another, doesn't matter how slight, it's unfair.

I'm not asking if it's OK to disadvantage another player or give advantage to another player... I'm asking if it's ok for some people to use an aimbot to level the playing ground. Say if there was some server variable or something that could automatically adjust the accuracy level for the aimbot, to make sure all games were as close as possible.

 

Wouldn't that virtually eliminate unbalanced teams? Every match would be a close one.

 

I wish more people would suspect me of hacking... makes you feel good about yourself. My internal autoaim and azn speed hacks.

I get speed hack and aimbot accusations daily... I just collect 'em like trophies or ears. People just don't know how to identify the difference between hacks and legitimate skill. You should jump in UT sometime and rack up a few accusations too.

[Magruter]

There's no suspense in an aimbot. One on one with the bomb ticking... ...you don't get nervious as a nub, you know your aimbot will help you out. People have worked hard to get thier accuracy to where it is. An aimbot is just cheap and easy.. I think this game would go downhill fast. I think Goldeneye for n64 has an aim helper. Which got you in the area of the enemy but you had to pull the trigger, it was VERY lame.

[stutters]

When it comes down to it, cheating is cheating. When one player has an advantage over another, doesn't matter how slight, it's unfair.

I'm not asking if it's OK to disadvantage another player or give advantage to another player... I'm asking if it's ok for some people to use an aimbot to level the playing ground. Say if there was some server variable or something that could automatically adjust the accuracy level for the aimbot, to make sure all games were as close as possible.

 

Wouldn't that virtually eliminate unbalanced teams? Every match would be a close one.

for the sake of argument, let's assume that i'm really good and the person(s) i'm playing against are not. or maybe more pratically, they're really good (great) and i suck. leveling the playing field by giving me an aim-assistant makes it more fun for me (the suckee) and likely more fun for them (the pnwer).

 

but that's momentary and shortlived. by giving "shortcuts" to people, several things are lost:

- discipline

- appreciation

- comprehension

...and in the sense of cs/ut, "teamwork."

 

why bother putting forth an effort when it'll just be made fair?

 

 

wait, this isn't some weird ploy to get me to uninstall PTBx, is it?

[MrDuke]

I understand your statement; it's similar to a golf handicap but online and instantaneous. Cheating outright in golf is unacceptable (score mods) but the handicap system is acceptable.

 

Instead of modifying their gameplay (swing) modify their stats, assuming they care about that kind of thing.

[appalachian_fox]

Unclean,

 

This is from a guy who's no longer an active online gamer, FWIW. I think adjusting hit levels, if everyone knew what was going on in the server, could be a good thing. It might not help their aiming skills, but that would (I imagine) depend on what exactly it does. It's not like it's guaranteeing a hit, maybe just fudging a hit box or two on occasion. This allows a player who is willing to learn the strategy and tactics stack up with people of higher skill to learn more quickly...you know, in an ideal world where we can separate the most dedicated players and train them separately. It certainly solves the problem of creating a bot that can "think" as well as shoot.

 

It does raise some other questions, though. For instance, perhaps the answer is not to improve the aim of some but to introduce more randomness at a distance, thereby reducing the accuracy of others? I know that's quite a charge, and will probably meet with quite a lot of resistance (even though it's just an idea, not an actual proposed solution...flame on!). However, maybe that can be part of the total package.

[Xterminator]

Unclean i understand your point of view how it'd be nice to help the underdog learn the game easier by having an aimbot. But i think that a good player must earn his skills rather than install them. Now lets take this a little further. When a player who uses an aimbot to help him/her out in a game reaches a peak. Would they stop using it? or continue to use it every single time they play. I understand that as an aid in training it's a good thing, but what happens if you grow a dependance on it (i'm speaking generally). What is to stop someone from getting a better aimbot to take them to the next level?

Edited July 24, 2006 by Xterminator

[mrX]

Cheating's illegal:

 

§ 2915.05. Cheating, corrupting sports.

 

(A) No person, with purpose to defraud or knowing that the person is facilitating a fraud, shall engage in conduct designed to corrupt the outcome of any of the following:

(1) The subject of a bet;

(2) A contest of knowledge, skill, or endurance that is not an athletic or sporting event;

(3) A scheme or game of chance;

(4) Bingo.

 

( No person shall knowingly do any of the following:

(1) Offer, give, solicit, or accept anything of value to corrupt the outcome of an athletic or sporting event;

(2) Engage in conduct designed to corrupt the outcome of an athletic or sporting event.

 

© (1) Whoever violates division (A) of this section is guilty of cheating. Except as otherwise provided in this division, cheating is a misdemeanor of the first degree. If the potential gain from the cheating is five hundred dollars or more or if the offender previously has been convicted of any gambling offense or of any theft offense, as defined in section 2913.01 of the Revised Code, cheating is a felony of the fifth degree.

(2) Whoever violates division ( of this section is guilty of corrupting sports. Corrupting sports is a felony of the fifth degree on a first offense and a felony of the fourth degree on each subsequent offense.

 

HISTORY: 134 v H 511 (Eff 1-1-74); 139 v S 199 (Eff 1-1-83); 146 v S 2 (Eff 7-1-96); 149 v H 512. Eff 4-3-2003.

 

[w8t4time]

BINGO!

 

lol

[Chief]

I'm not asking if it's OK to disadvantage another player or give advantage to another player... I'm asking if it's ok for some people to use an aimbot to level the playing ground. Say if there was some server variable or something that could automatically adjust the accuracy level for the aimbot, to make sure all games were as close as possible.

 

This sounds like a communist gaming utopia...a server where everybody's average tends toward 1:1 over the long run.

 

In China, Chairman Mao would take the people who set the curve and put them in re-education camps and teach them that their skill should never have gotten better than the rest.

 

In Cambodia, Pol Pot would jail the server leaders and execute their families.

 

In Soviet Russia, Stalin would ship those same people to Siberia and make heroes of the gamers most benefited by the pseudo-hacks.

 

In Cuba, Castro would offer free medical training scholarships to the worst gamers and call the good gamers that escaped to America (to play on free servers) traitors.

 

Bottom line, IMO, not everyone gets to be good. Even fewer get to be the best. Enhanced players are hackers, and any game designer that coded in a balancing factor to handicap noobs/nubs/nublets or below average players would do a great disservice to the community of FPS players.

[Guest ash-]

Just opening up this question to everyone...

 

Do you think it'd be OK to use an aimbot if the accuracy was at a reasonable level? Say there's a sub-par player out there that uses an aimbot to become a very good player, but by no means the best. This increases the difficulty level of your opponent, but not to an unreasonable level. Like if their hit rate was at 20%, and the aimbot bumps it up to 40%. Is this OK?

 

 

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I'd argue this is OK. I would prefer to have that challenge there with more players, as long as it didn't go too far (e.g. blowouts). Personally, I'd never use one -- I'd rather do well or not so well based off my own merit alone, but if it makes the game more challenging? To me, more challenging = more fun.

 

 

Alot of people deride cheating for being unethical but you have to think about it from a newbies perspective who has just started playing CS. Is it ethical for all the really good players to beat up on newbies and insult them in the process? No. Is it fun to get your butt kicked constantly? No. This is why cheats exist, they are a backlash against the really good players. The keyword in all of this is fun; when you mix good players with newbies, someone is going to be robbed of their fun and unfortunately, this is something that is very common in Counter-Strike as there is no matching service like Xbox live or any sort of ranking system.

 

I dislike cheaters, but also I dislike skilled players who brag, boast, and insult newbies even more. I used to cheat during the 1.1-3 days before VAC scared me off. Why did I cheat? Because cheating was literally destroying the game at the time and it was already bad enough that I got my butt kicked even by legit players, so I gave in and downloaded a cheat. During the time that I cheated I actually had fun, I learned alot about CS, cheating, how cheaters play, the layout of the maps especially, and I actually became skilled! It took me awhile but I was finally able to compete against the good players when I disabled my cheat. I would have probably given up on CS and online games in general had I not cheated.

 

While wallhacking, I learned which walls were actually penetrable and the best angles to shoot through them. I also discovered who else was wallhacking by walling them. It was kind of funny because I would dink someone in the head through a wall and the next round they would do the same thing to me and before long we'd be in a cheater war. You would be amazed at how many cheaters I discovered by doing this. I caught atleast 5 cheaters per server during the 1.3 days. Then there were many more who would only enable their cheats as a last resort when other people started blatantly cheating by speedhacking or headshotting the whole server.

 

One thing that has always stuck with me about cheating is being able to spot cheaters with low sensitivity aimbots. These are the guys that bind their aimbot to a mouse button and only enable it when their crosshair is within range of a target, when they just got dinked in the head and are ready to die, or at the end of a large spray of bullets to make it look like a luck shot. Skilled players have a snap reflex that allows them to pull off similiar feats, but nowhere near as mechanical looking as an aimbot. You can clearly see an aimbotter lock on to specific body parts like the chest or head after their target has died since you must disable the aimbot when you are done. I have not cheated since 1.3 and I have no clue how far cheats have advanced since then, but I still notice players who use the low sensitivity bots.

 

Before anyone says it, I do not cheat anymore. Valve has done a great job at scaring away the average gamer from cheating. VAC has made cheating go underground and public cheats are a thing of the past. I still recognize players that cheat though. I never say anything though and just let VAC do its thing as it is the only solution we have for cheaters.

Edited July 24, 2006 by ash-