RE: [GD-Design] Off-line vs. on-line play and cheating

[Jamie F. <ja...@qu...>]

<snip>
I'm procedurally generating a BIG universe -- millions of star systems
and millions of planets.  The odds of two players claiming the same
piece of rock are very, very slim.
</snip>

this, of course, assumes players are equally likely to hit any piece of
rock. if you have a Frontier style system where everybody starts at one of a
few locations, the places close to the starting points are likely to be
claimed many times.

<snip>
I'm not too worried about this part, it's actually things like "Hi, I
just logged in, check out my Armada Buster Level 999 Battleship that I
acquired after hacking my data files"
</snip>

no accompanying replay, no ship :) still hacking a data file, but trivially
generated by the game, and very hard to hack, i believe.

i agree with Jeff, that we really need to know more about what the players
do offline and online to be able to attempt to solve the problem in design.

jamie


-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
Brian Hook
Sent: 22 July 2002 19:21
To: gam...@li...
Subject: RE: [GD-Design] Off-line vs. on-line play and cheating


> one issue of balance here has to be: can you play the game
> offline and _never_ come online?

In theory, yes.  Take a game like Elite, StarFlight, etc. then imagine a
menu item that says "Go on-line".  That's basically what I'd like to
achieve -- make the game fundamentally interesting and playable for
single person, but allow for a social aspect as well with on-line play.
I think this is what Blizzard accomplished with Diablo, although I'm
aiming for something with a larger scale in terms of universe.

> irritating to have everything you'd ever discovered
> permanently listed as 'claim pending'.

I'm procedurally generating a BIG universe -- millions of star systems
and millions of planets.  The odds of two players claiming the same
piece of rock are very, very slim.

> possible solution, but maybe too intensive: part of the claim
> verifying process downloads a replay of the claim, and plays
> it back to make sure it's not a complete fib.

I'm not too worried about this part, it's actually things like "Hi, I
just logged in, check out my Armada Buster Level 999 Battleship that I
acquired after hacking my data files" that have me more concerned.  But
in the end, it's all the same thing -- hack the data files locally,
connect on-line, and then throw the universe out of whack.

So as stated in another post, I don't think solving this with technology
is going to be tenable in the long run, I think something with the
design should arbitrate this.

Brian



-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
Welcome to geek heaven.
http://thinkgeek.com/sf
_______________________________________________
Gamedevlists-design mailing list
Gam...@li...
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
Archives:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=556