Naturally. You and I got off to a rough start, but I acknowledge your points as they come. Everybody plays games for their own reasons. For myself, I don’t give a feathered < CENSORED > about where I end up on the Leaderboards, as you rightly pointed out, but others do. For the people who care about this, it could be very upsetting.
I’m going to say something which might upset you, though. Please understand that it’s not against you, or others who might want to compete in the spirit of honesty and legitimate opposition.
What you want appears to be a legitimate victory. What others want is just their name in lights. It is not difficult for me to believe that somebody might take advantage of a mistake in the way DIII servers are run for personal gain. It wouldn’t even be the first time.
Yes, D3 on PS4 is rampant in seasons with save wizard cheats. It royally ticks me off. homerjnick and myself have been working hard for a long time to get save wizard off d3, without any luck. Sony is aware of save wizard and investigating with their legal department. That is all Sony have told me when I raised the issue with them.
That’s more progress than what I would have expected. Sony isn’t exactly a small company; they should have plenty of ammunition to fight with, should they decide to actually do so.
Part of the problem I see is people who don’t understand the impact cheating has on a game which has a community and competition. They’re pretty much only thinking about what they want, and not about how it might affect others. IF someone did it to them, it would be wrong, but if they do it to others…well, that’s just being competitive.
I played Avorion for a while and, while its modding community is mostly honest and intelligent users who want a more challenging and fun experience, I can’t say the same for most of the players I’ve encountered. There was a bug which allowed users to board and capture pirate ships and glitch them out with 100x the stats you’d be able to achieve with a player-built ship. When discovered using this exploit, the biggest offender proudly replied: “It’s not my fault that others don’t cheat.” Classic pro-steroid defense. Disgusting.
I could offer other examples, such as one of the idle games I play on another site. People are always demanding I tell them my exact layout and strategy, thinking that they’ll jump to the top of the leaderboard instantly. They don’t want to be good at the game…they just want the title.
Nick and myself have been long standing champions of protecting legit players in D3 on consoles, in particularly the PS4. Nick has provided outstanding videos time and time again, demonstrating exploits and cheats on the PS4, hounded Blizzard, and all for naught. It is exceptionally frustrating for us, as well as every other legit player. Nick has more tact than me, that much is obvious. I have little patience for crappy customer service, and once offended by said company, I lose faith very quickly and will be quick to criticise. Blizzard needs to put its money where its mouth is, in my eyes, in order for me to forgive them. So far, they fail to do so at every single step. This does not enable good faith with me, it only serves to further tick me off and alienate me from what was once a great and innovative company, focused on listening to customers. But, that was many years ago.
Then I have one question for you: If you do become so disenfranchised with Blizzard that it ends you up quitting their products for good…who will protect the legit players?
We don’t agree on everything, but I think what you’re doing here is a very positive thing. Lots of players cheat, but some of us want to actually be able to enjoy the game honestly. That becomes harder with illegitimate scores. Somebody has to be the one to draw a line.
If I’m no longer part of the community, why continue to care?
Thank you. homerjnick is the real force here though. He’s worked tirelessly hard to show the cheaters in action. I have supported him as best as I can, as often as I can.
I believe in fair and equal playing grounds for all players. The people with modded gear know they are cheating. The people using save wizard know that they are cheating. They are deliberately flaunting the rules because they know Blizzard is inactive in policing the PS4 LBs.
The problem with dealing with save wizard is proving that they have either reverse engineered the game’s code via cracking it, or if they did a clean room process. If the former, then they have violated the DMCA, enforceable in many countries. Do Sony and Blizzard want to waste millions of dollars in legal battles for a win that will see them not get any money back…it’s great for the players, but a bad investment in $$$$…that is why we aren’t seeing any action.
Doesn’t mean jack to us, as far as I’m concerned anyone who works for blizzard that should be maintaining some sort of customer service doesn’t know what the $&@$ that even means or how to even respond to their base whether it be pc (which they respond to even if their answers are bland and $&$$) and then you got us, were treated like MAGA fans in Hollywood by blizzard. I wish their mother taught them anything because it’s clear their all a bunch of godless heathens that don’t believe in anything but themselves.
this… this is why capitalism doesn’t actually lead to the best products. because often, enough of the market is willing to tolerate a shtty product that making it better costs more than it’s worth. it’s they Riot doesn’t take a more proactive stance against toxicity. it’s why Blizzard (or probably Sony in this case) doesn’t do more about cheating. fixing those things can negatively impact their bottom line which is profit not quality product.
This has been my experience on other platforms too. Banwaves for example that would take out some accounts of a mutli-boxing botter but leave other accounts in the group active so they didnt quit… just restart and PL… cost of doing business and profit for the producer… then they con the crowds with how they took out such and such a number of bot accounts.
Not sure if anyone’s getting it right unfortunately.
I wonder sometimes about introducing the automation features botters use into the game if it would level the playing field and make it not worth cheating. The platform would need to be designed in such a way to make it work. Then everyone can set their chars up to be busy when they’re not having fun playing. Automated content generally doesn’t work well with harder stuff that relies on intelligence, so you play to do that and they can build the more substantial rewards into that feature.
Would be interesting to see it thought through more. I think they’d have to be prepared to adapt the game design as botters adapt in the initial stages, but I reckon the player base teamed up with the devs could outwit them with the tools and weight of numbers at their disposal.
That almost sounds like say you could unlock a skill at a certain paragon that your character would do x amount of bounties per hr while your offline. You won’t get the experience but the cache.
I hadn’t considered how to apply it in D3 or how well it would apply in D3’s current design… possibly cause I’m virtually playing it as a single player offline game. I have thought it through more in other games where the bots were visible in open shared environments. They had a PvP focus too which made the PvE side a bit of a chore sometimes.
But that’s the general idea… the stuff that’s so mundane, unskilled and repetetive that we can do while watching TV for example could be automated (as botters do), but not pushing rifts to the limits where there is skill and challenge.
I can say from D3 perspective I’d really like it if I could instruct my avatar to make a quantity of crafted items from maquise gems for me to salvage later though… say base it on the gems in my avatar inventory (not store). Use the time for better game/life balance… save game time for doing fun things.
