I''ve been holding out on posting to this thread (excellent discussion, btw!) because I felt I had nothing to add. However, it seems I may.

quote: Original post by Wavinator
Good point. Maybe a better word for what I''m thinking is "overrides." The player would be used to playing by certain rules, and would then be able to violate those rules from time to time.

Max Payne! Bullet time! In Max Payne (haven''t played it yet) I hear the player can slow down the rate of action/response of every other object in the world, like those scenes in John Woo movies where the hero drives with two guns blazing, while maintaining normal reaction time for himself. What makes it special is that bullet time is a resource, it gets used up and replenished according to the game''s mechanics so that the player has to consider where and when it would best be put to use.

Bullet time is, in essence, a "cheat"; it allows the player to defy the normal rules of physics, and yet it is incorporated into the game in such a way as to not cause any guilt or sense of "failure."

i like cheats only for 1 player games or cheats that dont
effect multiplayer games.

cheats can let you explore the game more after you win. thats fun.. ever tried flying around Quake or counter-strike maps looking for easter eggs !! .. thats fun ..

but i HATE cheats for multiplayer games.. spoils the fun for everyone..



{ Stating the obvious never helped any situation !! }

Hey, Feeling Good, welcome to Gamedev! And Wav, you''re a moderator now? Cool.

In response to your original question, Wav, I''m not sure how dangerous cheats or "overrides" would be to the player''s suspension of disbelief.

Suspension of disbelief is the responsibility of the designer, to be sure. But when a player uses a cheat, he is willing to accept the unusual behavior of the game. He makes a conscious effort to modify the game in a particular way.

I think there is an important difference between those game world inconsistencies which are created by the designer and those initiated by the player.

But then, of course, there is the problem of game balance. So many cheats are all-powerful. The standard invincibility, for instance is too much in most games. (Which is one reason I like your limited version.)

A major problem with discussing this is that every game is unique (or should be, anyhow.) Cheats which work well for one game may be entirely inappropriate for another. And as for "overrides", clearly they must be tailored for each game, since they constitute important elements of the gameplay.

Perhaps the best we can do is to identify the fact that careful consideration of the impact of cheats and overrides on a game is bound to lead to the creation of a better game.

(By the way, if I say "ahdghalkerhgi", are you going to edit it out of this thread?)


Jonathon

quote: "Mathematics are one of the fundamentaries of educationalizing our youths." -George W. Bush

quote: Original post by Wavinator
For example, let's say you've got a game where different areas are of a different difficulty level. Some are ridiculously hard, but constrained to the level. Some players could just tough it out, and if they're good enough, make it through. Others, though, could stay in the safer levels until they earned enough for temporary overrides.

I think that this is an excellent design idea. It allows the player to beat areas or levels in a couple of ways:

a) By being physically very good at the game (i.e. having good reflexes and being able to dodge enemy attacks and stick it out with a smaller weapon).

b) By waiting and building up their players stats (in this case their stats may include `powers' that would normally be like cheats) and then going to beat the area.

c) The 2 above reasons add stratagy to the game.

--Edit--
I think that things that are normally implimented as cheats, as long as they are balanced and limited, can be implimented into a game to improve it.
--/Edit--


Edited by - compumatrix on October 3, 2001 5:26:57 PM

quote:
The ideal game should adjust itself to the skill of the player, always giving him a challenge, but never quite bringing him to the point of utter frustration.

This isn''t always true. Much of the fun of a game is comparing how good you are against others. If any beginner can finish the game in the same amount of time as a good player can, then this source of fun is gone. I remember a Quake add saying "Only 1 out of 7 players is a winner. Chances are you are not one of them" Such a game clearly shows no interest in helping out lesser players, and for good reason.

If the game allows a player to choose the difficulty level so that lesser and better players can have the same challenges on different difficulty levels (as most of the games do), both problems are solved (allowing competition and stopping frustration)

------------------------------

Cheats are by definition the breaking of the game''s laws. They always break the suspension of disbelief, by definition. This doesn''t mean they are not fun.

Everyone remembers the guy in the blue suit in Half-life. I once caught him in the open and I had about half second to shoot at him (I had no chance whatsoever to get near him, I had to climb some stairs, and in the mean time he would enter a door and after that was nowhere to be found). After going again and again at him only to watch him enter that door, I had a brilliant idea, opened DLH, found the fly cheat and so I could catch up with him and empty my magazines at him. Needless to say, he was invincible. But that "GOTCHA" feeling when I was flying to him felt GOOD.


But a player shouldn''t have to use cheats to go through the game. He should be reminded that he is a cheater and that he should finish the game without cheats. Warcraft did this by. But the best example is Tomb Raider II. At the end of the game the player is supposed to see Lara going to the shower. Well, I tried it (using jump to next level cheats - I had to play the last level though), and of course, at the end of the game, just before entering the shower, Lara put a bullet through my head

TRII also used this clever way to fight save game cheats - the less you save during the game the more you see of Lara at the end.


-------------------------

Overrides however are a very common design element. One could argue that everything in a game is an override. Ammunition definitely is one. Most shooters have weapons that do more damage but consume more ammo - players can go through tougher challenges, but they can only do this from time to time lest they run out of ammo. Potions in RPGs are overrides, from the healing potion to the invincibility or invisibility potion. Swords of x monster slaying are overrides - players can get over a pack of x monsters using such a sword - even if the said sword isn''t useful in the rest of the game. Scrolls, magic wands, all consumbles are basically overrides.

In my opinion, when players start to cheat, it is often (but by no means always) evidence of a breakdown in design.

I believe this is usually because the player has reached the point in a game where the designer has used up all of his innovative ideas and is now playing for time, by resorting to unpopular, antiquated or crude design techniques such as enemy rushes (cheat used: god mode), excessive amounts of ledge and air vent crawling (cheat used: no clipping), and basically doing more of the same but making it much harder than before. Even good games, like half life, are quite prone to this.

I do not wish to imply that all games which sometimes require cheats are badly made, though this could apply to some of them.

In my opinion, it is acceptable to use cheats occasionally to defeat harder puzzles, but this always leads to cheat mode addiction.

A typical example of a playing cycle (from my limited observations) follows, using a standard FPS.

1. Player buys game and plays it as far as he can. He doesn''t mind getting killed a lot to start with, because this is a natural part of getting accustomed to a new game. If he does get frustrated, there''s always a training section these days.

2. After a few levels, the player starts to feel challenged. He may start to take more breaks between keyboard mashing, and has now reached his optimal play level (challenging with setbacks, but not impossible)

3. The player hits something solid in the game, perhaps something he is not used to, perhaps a particularly difficult puzzle. You can tell when this happens because his gameplay technique often becomes a bit repetitive, he just keeps save-restoring but not getting anywhere new each time.

Up to this point, the player probably hasn''t even thought about cheats, but now the thought will cross his mind. He will probably give the game a couple more attempts, then he will either decide to leave the game for a week or so and come back fresh, or he will go online and find out the cheat codes.

4. Using the cheat codes, the player will pass the point at which he was stuck, and most likely disengage the cheat and continue as normal.

5. Here''s the problem. After doing step 4, the player will appear to play normally. However, it is likely that (in all but the very best of games) he will soon get stuck again, and this time he will not be so patient. It is probable that he will think that the game itself must be at fault (and it may well be), that the game is in fact cheating him. If this feeling is allowed to build up, the player loses his respect for the game, and will not bother to solve many later puzzles properly, or even to think for very long about them, but will cheat instead. This is the primary symptom of cheat mode addiction.

Instead of trying to defeat the game on it''s own terms alone, the player is suddenly trying to defeat the game designer himself, by using all means necessary, including cheats.


If you''ve read as far as this, you''re doing well!!

The solutions, in order of severity

1. Alternative solutions, not necessarily with one easier than the other, but ones which are very different from each other and need different thought patterns to deduce. As a matter of principle, you should always be trying to do this anyway

2. Liberal amounts of powerups and allied npcs accessible from the location where problems arise. (and for god''s sake, if you must make infinitely respawning monsters, give the player a chance with respawning ammo too, if only in that area. HL''s mounted machineguns are a good example)

3. Only if steps 1 and 2 fail should you consider including cheats. If you do include cheats, then give them a time limit, and a small number of allowed uses, ie a wildcard system. Make sure that you find out all areas of levels that are a problem, and limit the wildcards so you''ve got one for each.

To prevent the player exhausting all wildcards, make them recharge, but really really slowly, so that there is absolutely no more than one extra one by the time they reach the next known problem area. Perhaps reward an extra one if a known problem area is completed without cheating at all. This way the player can cheat, but is not allowed to become dependent on them.

Don''t forget that this does not apply to the extremely rare but always hilarious "silly cheats", a variant of easter eggs. These are cheats which do not make the game easier in any way, but instead make really stupid things happen, to give the player a laugh. I''ve only seen these in a couple of games, but I loved it when I did. If anyone here can remember Rise of the Triad, think of the "shrooms mode" they put in that.

Goodbye, and remember: gabbagabbahey, iddqd

Phew, keyboard collapse!

Somebody please turn this into a proper article for me, it''s too damn long to just disappear after it''s spell in the forums!

Firstly, IMO, telling a player "no, you can''t cheat: we made this game, and you''re going to enjoy in the way we tell you to enjoy it" is wrong. It is akin to not permitting the player to save anywhere (sure, players can cheat by saving anywhere, but they can also quit the game and have something to eat/go to sleep/go to work by saving anywhere - if you''re really that worried about cheating, at least let the player save-and-quit anywhere: that way, it''s inconvenient to load, but not to save.)

quote: Original post by Captain Insanity
In my opinion, when players start to cheat, it is often (but by no means always) evidence of a breakdown in design.

... excessive amounts of ledge and air vent crawling (cheat used: no clipping) ... and basically doing more of the same but making it much harder than before

The worst offender of this I''ve seen is Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, in which every puzzle is effectively the same. There''s no cheat that allows you to by-pass the puzzles, which is what I actually want to do.

quote:
In my opinion, it is acceptable to use cheats occasionally to defeat harder puzzles, but this always leads to cheat mode addiction.

If a game has a half-decent story-line, I''ll often use cheats to watch it. Final Fantasy is a good example of a game that I''d be happy to cheat in to watch the cut-scenes. Perhaps that''s also a failing in the game: if the story-line was integrated into the gameplay itself, then I''d want to play the game so I didn''t miss important bits of plot.

quote:
1. Alternative solutions, not necessarily with one easier than the other, but ones which are very different from each other and need different thought patterns to deduce. As a matter of principle, you should always be trying to do this anyway

Something I try to do is provide hard but obvious solutions, and simple but obscure solutions. In Zork: Grand Inquisitor there is a ''phone that is really confusing to use. There is also a simplify instructions spell that you already used elsewhere, so many players might not think to use it again: but you can, and the phone becomes easy to use. You still have the option of not using the spell and figuring out the phone (which is what I did the first time).

quote:
2. Liberal amounts of powerups and allied npcs accessible from the location where problems arise. (and for god''s sake, if you must make infinitely respawning monsters, give the player a chance with respawning ammo too, if only in that area. HL''s mounted machineguns are a good example)

Respawning monsters are a bad idea unless you specifically ask for them. Soul Reaver does them, and it violates the rules of the game: once you kill an enemy and take their soul, they''re dead. You''re only bothered by respawning enemies if you''re in a room with a puzzle, so it''s obvious that the enemies only respawn to make up for the fact that the puzzle isn''t interesting. However, there is a way out - if you stake the enemy, but don''t take their soul, then they don''t die, and thus do not respawn.

quote:
3. Only if steps 1 and 2 fail should you consider including cheats. If you do include cheats, then give them a time limit, and a small number of allowed uses, ie a wildcard system. Make sure that you find out all areas of levels that are a problem, and limit the wildcards so you''ve got one for each.

IMHO, you should always include cheats. Also, you shouldn''t place a limit on cheats. Anytime you limit a cheat, or limit its use, it stops being a cheat, and becomes a game feature.

One idea is to allow the player to earn points on each level. You might give points for time, enemies killed, secrets found, completing puzzles in a particularly cool way, etc. Then you could allow players to buy special powerups (read, cheats) with those points. It could be that they''d have to have a certain number of points to continue to the next level, so they couldn''t cheat outragously without limitation.

This points system could be in addition to a real cheat system. The advantage of such a system is that you could also buy skills, medals, special weapons or entry to competitions with them - these would fit well into a multiplayer environment.

All your bases belong to us

personally i am against putting cheats in MY games, but i won''t suggest other developers not. some games handle cheats well; dark forces come to mind. in that game there was the ''super shield'' which stopped all of the energy based shots, of which there was the most, but it didn''t prevent the less frequent explosive weapons, or ''environmental'' damage (like falling). i enjoyed this because it made the game more fun to play i found; you didn''t have to worry about dying every thirty seconds like you do in games lately. the game played smoothly that way, and it was integrated into the game as a cohesive element, instead of being tacked on for development purposes.

it is true that to be successful the cheats should be designed into the game. it kinda detracts from the experience to open up a console and type in some code when it could be better integrated.

i was just thinking, in a sense saved games are almost a form of cheating...especially the quick save. instead of maybe giving us an invulernability cheat the developers of games just make it really easy to save and restore games...

<(o)>

I think cheats should be left in. As long as they dont work in multiplayer (which would be incredibly unfair) or at least if they do, give the same benefits to everyone. In Civ CTP for example, you could edit any of the units and so on, and you could in theory cheat like hell, but the multiplayer mode wouldnt work unless all players had matching files. So if you had given your phalanx units an attack value of 99999 then you wouldnt be able to play multiplayer unless you restored the old value, or changed everyones phalanx to Attack 99999. Something like this might have been useful to prevent the famous halflife "wallhack" cheat, where players edited the alpha value of the wall textures to make them transparent. It doesnt even have to compare the entire file, just calculate a checksum and compare those. Similarly in multiplayer quake 2, you could only use the cheats if the server had the allow cheats option activated. Hitting invincible characters at point blank range with a quad damage rocket launcher was always good for a laugh.


Edited by - Sandman on November 13, 2001 7:41:20 AM

There is only one way I would allow cheats to be in my game. Sort of a simple idea too. The old reward system. If the players uses ( I hate using these things ) x amount of cheats they lose y points for their ending sequence and instead of getting ending A, they get ending z which isnt as good as ending A, but is an ending. Replay value+1, frustration level-1, slowly killing off the social life of the player = priceless... oh how did that get in there...?

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"