Custom clients: Cheating and player retention
Posted: Fri Oct 19, 2012 4:50 amI 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.
.. 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.
