About yesterday's AMA

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

F2p hardcore non pay to win ARPG, at any rate. I play Smite, which can be hardcore (but I play it in a casual way) that works brilliantly. Lol, dota, world of tanks etc are all f2p and hard core. They work.

Just that particular combination doesn't work.

Off-Topic Warning!

How is Smite/WoTs? I hear mixed things.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

F2p hardcore non pay to win ARPG, at any rate. I play Smite, which can be hardcore (but I play it in a casual way) that works brilliantly. Lol, dota, world of tanks etc are all f2p and hard core. They work.

Just that particular combination doesn't work.

those work because they all require player skill, to less or more extent, depending on the game. arpgs require items (and some knowledge, but not a lot)

and even if it wasnt f2p...we would have a lot of these issues. I mean, lets not kid anyone and admit that in d2 cheating ran absolutely rampant. bans never stopped people in d2 or d3, even though you had to actually buy an account every time you were banned. poe being f2p is one less hurdle for those guys.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Only if those other companies do what GGG did: openly and daringly play the ethical card.

I should clarify that by ethical I mean purely in terms of monetization. Ethical mtxes are non p2w, and typically overpriced to represent less a fair transaction and more a token gesture of support.

I'm no stranger to after sale modifications or shady consumer behaviour.

I've cfwed psps, I had a disk doctor for my super Famicom. I had a collection of mp2s and ram music files. I had fifth generation pirated anime vhs tapes. I have absolutely no qualms about any of these. They were all about getting access to things I otherwise couldn't.

Because Sony, Nintendo, etc...all made their money out of me up front, and because it was never about stealing things but access levels. I'm not justifying piracy for the sake of it. I've never felt comfortable just downloading something I could buy.

But this is less about that than outright breaking terms of service and talking about it on the product's official forum. That would be a very short lived experience anywhere but here.

You're also comparing a very large, rich as fuck company to GGG, which is the sort of thing only a myopic consumer would do. It never occurred to me that jailbreaking or cfwing a mass produced, overpriced product was on par with cheating an indie f2p game. They're essentially different scenarios.

Now had Apple given away the iPhone, and then offered more blinged out versions for a price, all the way up to the Ruler of Apple model at $12,500, and thrown in free phone service... And people still tampered with the iPhone despite Apple saying they couldn't, and that tampering allowed them to use the iPhone in ways that not even the highest supporters could, ways never intended by Apple, then hell yes I'd be just as up in arms, especially if Apple failed to deal with that. A company's silence on these matters is seen as acceptance. Oh, the cops saw me doing it and didn't arrest me? Must be okay then.

But Apple didn't give the iPhone away. They made their cash up front. As far as I'm concerned, that's the end of the relationship. A better analogy would have been if people could hack iTunes to get faster dl speeds or cheaper/free content.

So you're ultimately asking me if I'd care as much about this hacking if GGG had sold PoE as a profit-focused company rather than given it away and relying on good will initially and semi-necessary addons later.

No I would not. Didn't care about it in Diablo -- I ran Bobbafett like just about anyone else, and I learned how to hex edit to create my own items. I never used god mode, but liked the character saving options. Exact same attitude as people are using here: I only use the hack for lesser things, not REAL cheating.

I've already detailed the core difference. GGG want to keep playing that ethical card, but if they can't seem dedicated to upholding those ethics, they're going to lose their biggest supporters. Of course, losing me hardly matters at this point. They got my cash. The answer to that implicit threat would also reveal GGG's ethical stance.

I didn't buy a Grandmaster pack right away. That was a big shift for me, considering I was the first diamond, and had my Ruler pack arranged within moments of the announcement. Think about that for a second. The GGG that was got 15k+ out of me without a thought or hesitation. The GGG that is almost didn't get 500 out of me.

They sold 250+ diamond packs, in fact. And they haven't done so relatively well selling big packs since. We went from 1-1.5k packs selling like crazy to weekend stash tab sales and a 500 dollar pack based pretty much solely around a train wreck waiting to happen.

That spanned say, 2 years. Closed beta to Release. Distinct drop in chunky support, greater reliance on volume of smaller sales.

Compare this to the early days of Diablo and Diablo 2. That franchise only got bigger and bigger in those first few years and then exploded after about 5 years.

I don't even believe in PoE2 at this point.

And this is due, in a large part, to GGG's meandering ethics and values. I have no freakin' idea who they think their market is anymore but it ain't me and by extension, I expect it ain't the other gen Xers who loved d1/d2 and can afford to support a company trying to go there again. The ideal player of PoE right now has no job, no social commitments, little to no ethical exposure, complete dedication to the game and as such is probably less inclined to care about GGG themselves.

The idea of a "hard core free to play online only ARPG" was, in a way, doomed from the start. It relies on financial support from people who pretty much don't have time to be "hard core", and the label " hard core " alone is going to attract gamers who put so much time into the game that they develop unrealistic demands on the devs.

This has happened. There is a huge ethical gap between big supporters and big players.

And instead of realizing this and getting back to making a game big fish want to support, GGG seem determined to cling to the antiquated notion of trying to please vocal minorities. To not rocking the boat even though it's sporting massive ruptures and the only way to fix those involves rocking the damn boat. They post prolifically on a forum that basically encourages cheating, and remain silent on the forum they themselves built. They pander to freeloaders openly but privately treat their big supporters like shit, turning the design a unique process into a chore, forcing people who put in thousands of dollars to remind THEM about their obligations.

Where any other company, even ethical ones, clearly rewards its best customers, GGG punishes and ignores theirs! This is "fairness for all" flipped on its fucking head.

I don't know what the next set of supporter titles and packs will look like, but I doubt I'll be getting them in a hurry.

Your Ruler has spoken.

Not as a big a supporter as you charan. But I've also poured substantial financial support believing that GGG has an ethnical stance and excellent game worth supporting. I still have faith in GGG and look forward to support them. But the points you raise here are VERY valid and if they continue down the slippery slope, I would too have to reconsider the level of support I would provide.

PS: just filed my custom avatar design. Let's see how that goes :)

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

I'm very conscious not to say these things directly to GGG because when I've done so in the past, I've been expertly placated, reassured and as a result supported one more time and yet...here I am again.

I will not forget how I feel now, even if I fall in love with Act 4.

These rants are important to me in that way. Theyre a reality check i can revisit over time. Others have expressed dislike for it, so I'll leave it at that.

Yes, it does seem GGG is the kind of company you can have legitimate complains or ideas to but they'll still try to argue with weak reason and then end up doing something completely different or contradicting later on.

It's like they want to do everything their way, even when it comes to the most basic things there is this struggle of either their way or the highway.

They're nice people but a very inexperienced company. And it shows.

Here's to hoping act 4 is something major with new enemy types, areas, gems, gear, item levels and an even better passive tree.

Seeing as this thread is likely garnering more notice by GGG than most, I would like to add one more item to the QoL list of wants that should be very easy to implement.

Please use different colors for currency depending on value. How many times have I missed a mirror, divine, eternal, or exalt because it looked the exact same as a wisdom or portal scroll ?

Actually that would be an interesting statistic ..... what is the ratio of valuable currency drops to those drops actually being picked up?

So, I've just read the whole thread, and boy, what a frustrating read. Sorry, but this post is going to be a bit of a vent at the total lack of critical thinking skills that I see on the part of a wide range of posters in this forum.

The thing that amazes me the most is how many people are going off on a rage trip about cheaters purportedly justifying their actions. The attitudes of the people going on about this seem to be downright dogmatic in many cases.

It's interesting how many of them talk about ToS's or ToU's. They say stuff like "It's GGG's game and GGG's rules and this stuff is against the ToS's and ToU's" as if that kind of statement somehow carries all of the moral weight in the world. Their conclusion is generally that the OP is a cheater and should be banned, or is therefore a bad person, or is morally bankrupt, or any one of a range of things like that. But all of those points are just ad-hominem about OP, and do not address any of the real issues that arise because of the situation.

It makes me wonder whether, as individuals, they're all religious. You know, the kind of people who accept divine command theory as the one source of moral truth, and are thus incapable of engaging in any moral reasoning of their own, beyond what they are told by authorities. The kind of people who never bother to examine the foundations of their own beliefs.

Nobody, not even the self-admitted cheater, is trying to justify or condone the actions of cheaters.
Yes, cheating is fucking awful, and you shouldn't do it. Nobody here, not even the OP, is arguing with that claim. Get the hell over it.

Now, sure, given that he's admitted that he cheated, it might be reasonable to expect that he should be banned. But GGG are the only ones here that meet the STR/INT/DEX requirements to wield the BanHammer9000™. They're clearly aware of the situation, and however much you lot prate on about banning OP, or OP's moral failings, probably won't make any difference to whether they actually do it. This ties into what CharanJaydemyr wrote, which is quoted just below.

So, raging at and arguing with OP over what he has done doesn't actually serve any purpose. Everyone, including OP, understands your rage. So let's move past it, PLEASE.

The most relevant thing I have seen in this thread was when CharanJaydemyr wrote:

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We have reached a dire juncture when hacking and abusive posting is perceived as the way to be heard on legitimate issues.

There are several important points to notice in this. The first and most important point has two parts.

1. There are some legitimate issues in the game which have not been addressed (and which the hack, incidentally, provided some solutions for).

2. Because of the length of time over which these issues have persisted, and not been dealt with, members of the community have come to feel like they are not being heard.

Those are the most relevant points of this thread. If you want to complain about the OP and the fact the OP hasn't been banned, and to ask for him to be banned, or give him a hard time, go make another thread for that purpose in the appropriate forum. That's not what this thread is about.

It's a pity that CharanJaydemyr got caught up in raging at the OP, because aside from that everything else he said was so coherent, so on point.

There are several reasons that there's no point in raging at OP:

1. To some extent, cheaters and hackers are inevitable. If it had not been OP it would have been someone else. OP is just the messenger. Don't shoot the messenger. (If you just want him banned on principle, that's fine, but don't use it to derail the issue.)

2. It is just straight up wrong, factually inaccurate in moral terms, to suggest that GGG has total independence from the community in terms of game design decisions, and control of the PoE IP.

And so,

3. If nothing else, OP's post, and CharanJaydemyr's subsequent commentary have highlighted issues that have arisen in terms of the availability of communication between the community and GGG. That's a good thing.


Now, I imagine that point 2 will probably cause a bunch of people to do a bit of a double take here. So some background on me, briefly. I did undergrad psychology, I wrote my dissertation on the philosophical justification for intellectual property, and most recently I've been looking at political philosophy and revolutionary acts in response to oligarchy, and hierarchical power structures more generally.

So what I want to point out, about point 2 directly above, is that there are some bloody good moral reasons for thinking that GGG ought not to simply have full control of everything to do with PoE's IP. That's actually a real argument. It's important to understand as well, about that argument, that because it is a moral argument, it does not depend on legal matters. Not unless you think that the law determines moral truth, which is a hugely controversial thing to assert.

Second, even if you were able to refute those moral arguments, which you won't be, you would then have to deal with the fact that, psychologically speaking, the kind of subversive behaviour we're seeing, hacking and so on, is exactly what psychological theories would predict given GGG's unresponsiveness towards the community. Even economic theories, which are usually inferior to psychological theories in terms of predicting behaviour, would predict what is happening here. GGG are a company producing a product to fill a need in the market. But they have stopped communicating effectively with their customers and as a result there is a market for the needs they are failing to fill. The market has provided a solution in the form of a hacking tool. It's no coincidence that the hacking tool's development had the property of being much more responsive to its community's needs than GGG has been to their community's needs. Surprise surprise.

Think about it for a moment. If GGG lack the ability to respond to the needs of their community, if they are unwilling to develop the features that their community actually want in the game, what will be the ultimate outcome? People will cease to support GGG, there will no longer be sufficient cash flow to keep the business in operation. What will suffer as a result of that? It will be the game itself, the PoE IP itself, that will suffer the most. Chris Wilson and the other GGG staff might personally suffer a little, but they're smart folks, and will move on to find other jobs, in other places, or to produce other software products.

But if they maintain sole control of the PoE IP, unresponsive to the community, and it dies as a result, then they will at least be partly culpable, if not wholly so, in the ultimate failure of that IP. This hacking, therefore, is one of the responses available to the community to try to get GGG to behave responsibly with their IP. These kind of subversive responses to detrimental hierarchical control over public community goods are not only inevitable, but they are morally justifiable when the controlling authority no longer respects the community it presides over.

Notice as well, nothing I have said in this post is intended to justify cheating. This stuff can be used to justify hacking to fulfil community needs, with respect to the IP, that are no longer being properly discharged by the controlling authority. It's just unfortunate that hacking can at times also be used to cheat, but that does not imply that all hacking is cheating by default. Particularly not just because some hacking doesn't comply with some silly ToS/ToUs, which are themselves just parts of an oppressive hierarchy of control. The ToS/ToUs are like social contracts. They remain applicable as long as the controlling authorities fulfil their end of the bargain. If the controlling authorities fail to uphold their end of the bargain, which always has to include responsiveness to legitimate demands from the relevant community, then the controlling authorities forfeit any right to be upset about breaches of the ToS/ToUs, or the total departure of their community, which are the only two options that really remain. So, bottom line, stop waving the bloody ToS/ToUs around like they're the end of the story. They're not.

@Charan

I can't help but regard your frequent expressions of disappointment as being puzzlingly misplaced. I'm also a supporter, and when I give GGG money, it isn't because I expect their passions and priorities to always match up with mine 100% (or else it would be moddable and have an offline mode, natch), it's because I'm willing to support their passions and priorties regardless.

I've only been here since open-beta, so perhaps promises made in the beginning were broken, I don't know, but from my perspective, PoE's evolution has always been a sensible one. The balance changes over time, while largely reasonable, are guaranteed to contain cases where specific builds were not adjusted with absolute precision, or move in accordance with my personal preferences.

Even if you don't like where the game has come, I can't comprehend what sort of expectations you had going in that lead you to post as you do.