Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

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Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby ZtyX » Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:50 am

I think a lot of people out there playing Salem enjoy using the customized clients. I login and logout of all 3 clients many times a day depending on what I'm doing.

.. And these clients are good to have right now. But that's only because the official client is a barebone skeleton and lacks features that are very useful to have, even essential to be competitive.

.. I was very sceptic at first and I took a leap of faith using a customized client. I did it because the developers approved it. Principally I am against it, and I know I can't be the only one who thinks it's fishy business.

At the end of the day, using a customized client is shady business and gives users an unfair advantage. Personally, I would prefer for the developers of Salem to include the important features of those customized clients into the default client and for the creators of those customized clients to simply discontinue them. I don't think digging deeper down into this can lead anywhere good. It's simply too controversial and unconventional to allow customization of a game client. It isn't far to go from a customized client with some features to a hack. Essentially, the custom clients are hacks of a sort. Actually, me and my friends refer to these clients as "cheater clients" in every day language. So there you have it.

Also, selling modules for money is a horrendous idea as it would widen the gap between players that will spend money and those that won't or can't. That will upset a lot of players and there is no doubt that many players will use that as an excuse to quit Salem. People come up with all sorts of excuses why they shouldn't play this hardcore game and it's best to keep things as clean and fair as possible to give them less arguments to use. A friend of mine quit basically because he said cheating was a big problem in Salem. In his mind it's all very true, he feels he can back up his claims on that subject. However, the real reason why he even started getting so damn negative and refuse to play was because his character was killed. He did create another and he did play and train it. But then of course he found out that some players are cheating and that was it for him. .. Another friend of mine quit because he had to work in real life, but he half blamed the 2 custom clients and that it's unfair, etc..

I understand that you can't keep everyone happy and this is a niche game. But, it's important to be professional and clean so that people don't rage unneccesarily. We all want to play in a populated world and we don't want friends to quit just because they experience problems in the game. So a clean and professional atmosphere will at least prevent some mudthrowing and whining. Maybe I'm naive, but it would be nice if people would simply admit that they are too weak to play Salem. Another thing is the way moderators work on these forums. Honestly, they're nice guys. But it's very unconventional that they're typing their own opinions with their moderator account. I think another important step in making this project more clean and professional would be to enforce a policy for moderators to be using a private account and keep their true identity a secret, if they want to discuss the game as players.

Moved post from this thread. Discuss.
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby Ass_Kraken » Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:11 am

At least wait until loftar gets to work with the client. They said they would add a radar and have less ****** ui. Botting is of course something they wouldn't add, but instead they should (and most likely will!) focus on making botting obsolete by making whatever they're botting less boring/labor intensive.
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby Procne » Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:33 am

Did they say sanything about locking the code and compiling client to native code? Or are they planning to allow custom clients forever?
Last edited by Procne on Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby DonnEssime » Fri Oct 19, 2012 7:56 am

ZtyX wrote:At the end of the day, using a customized client is shady business and gives users an unfair advantage. Personally, I would prefer for the developers of Salem to include the important features of those customized clients into the default client and for the creators of those customized clients to simply discontinue them. I don't think digging deeper down into this can lead anywhere good. It's simply too controversial and unconventional to allow customization of a game client. It isn't far to go from a customized client with some features to a hack. Essentially, the custom clients are hacks of a sort. Actually, me and my friends refer to these clients as "cheater clients" in every day language. So there you have it.


As is stated on both this forums (at least I think) and on H&H forums, the clients are allowed simply because the devs accept that their own client is as bare-bones as they can get. The point is they would rather work on the core game itself, rather than a fancy user port, and since we haven these awesome modders (enderwiggins in particular, with APXEOLOG coming into the picture for salem), they decided to make the client they think we deserve (batman reference in here somewhere)

ZtyX wrote:Another thing is the way moderators work on these forums. Honestly, they're nice guys. But it's very unconventional that they're typing their own opinions with their moderator account. I think another important step in making this project more clean and professional would be to enforce a policy for moderators to be using a private account and keep their true identity a secret, if they want to discuss the game as players.


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Seriously, I don't have any problem with mods/admins playing the game like normal. Face it, the forums are part of the game for seatribe games. I think they're doing a WONDERFUL job, using their modly/godly power green
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby Vibe » Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:28 am

I disapprove custom clients as well. I realize they're amazing work and provide some features that you simply cannot play without, but later when they add stuff like botting and scripts and whatnot is borderline cheating/hacking. This is why the main client should have all these useful features and just disallow using custom clients.

Well, they did say they are reworking the UI. I have my hopes up.
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby anox » Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:44 am

The game itself is bare-bones. If you were to read some of the interviews that are floating out there, the devs readily admit to that fact, while noting that many changes are planned (vis-a-vis the game-play, the content, etc.).
The way Salem has been put together so far gives me a lot of confidence that greater things are indeed in store for us, far-reaching game-altering changes, and superficial ones like a new native client (which I would love to get back to).
So ... patience, little ones.
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby Gacrux » Fri Oct 19, 2012 8:57 am

I have to disagree I think that as long as custom clients keep modifications "limited" we should be fine, botting of course will be an issue one day, but as of right now the player base is around 200 players. I also have to say that three custom clients really help as far as radar and terraforming, so it's not really game breaking.

And as far as moderators are concerned I think the job they do, being unpaid is very good.

Ps. Can anyone elaborate on the "selling modules for money" :D
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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby TotalyMoo » Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:04 am

I'm not going to comment on the client stuff because I have been in this discussion way to many times before.

ZtyX wrote:Another thing is the way moderators work on these forums. Honestly, they're nice guys. But it's very unconventional that they're typing their own opinions with their moderator account. I think another important step in making this project more clean and professional would be to enforce a policy for moderators to be using a private account and keep their true identity a secret, if they want to discuss the game as players.


But as for this, I don't understand your reasoning.

Every time a mod does not write with green text, he/she/it is just a normal user like anyone of you's.

Why should we add another layer of deception just to hide what the mods think and do?
I never managed to figure out something clever for my signature on Paradoxplaza, and I doubt I'll do it here either.

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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby Dallane » Fri Oct 19, 2012 9:20 am

god why are we still talking about clients?

fact is until jorbtar makes a real client we are stuck dealing with custom clients. get over it. you want a advantage? learn to code.

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Re: Custom clients: Cheating and player retention

Postby alloin » Fri Oct 19, 2012 1:46 pm

What about mods saying stuff like this ? I'm sure a publisher from a commercial-live game loves mods who make statements like that :D
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