OS Roundtable: What do you think of Cheatgate MLB 2K12?

[wudl83]

Quote: Originally Posted by Happy29

Well haven't you played sports in your life, weather it be high school college, or whatever level it may be? What's some of the first things the coaches teach you? It's where those grey areas are in the rules and how to exploit them to your advantage over your competitor. It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

What? You must live in a strange area. My sports coaches never tried to teach me some things like that lol

[Aggies67]

Quote:

It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

Then why did you write:

Quote:

If you're not cheating you're not trying.

[bkrich83]

Is anyone surprised by this? Trying to exploit games or flat out cheat has permeated online gaming since it's inception. Whether it's Madden, or Halo, or COD, people are always trying to take the easy route when playing games. It's perfectly acceptable among a large part of the online gaming community.

It's crap like this, why I don't even bother with contests like this, or play others online. I'd rather just enjoy the game, for what it was intended to be, than spend my time trying to find holes in the AI, or limitations to the game, or loopholes.

It's obvious these people played the game in a way that was not in the spirit of the contest. They simply didn't care or didn't know any better.

Either way, this is a big who cares for me

[Yeats]

Quote: Originally Posted by Happy29

Well haven't you played sports in your life, weather it be high school college, or whatever level it may be? What's some of the first things the coaches teach you? It's where those grey areas are in the rules and how to exploit them to your advantage over your competitor. It's not cheating it's exploiting the rules to your advantage.

Hard to understand why you're now trying to defend that first statement of yours, lol. Nobody is taught to cheat by their coaches. (Other than by Greg Williams, ha!) And if they are, then that's one seriously f'd up coach.

[geisterhome]

think cheating sucks when its abt such a amount of money, but hey this just reflects the society we are living in!

[Happy29]

Quote: Originally Posted by Aggies67

Then why did you write:

It's an old saying in racing.

[Iceman87GT]

Caley Roark,

It may not have been mentioned in the rules (which was a definite oversight by 2K), but messing with the opponent's line-up destroys the integrity of the score.

The score was directly tied to the opponent's line-up for that day, not upon which team you faced. So playing the Red Sox without Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Justin Pedroria in the line-up should not get the same amount of points as facing a line-up with those players. Unfortunately the difficulty was set based upon the MLB Today line-ups, meaning if you could manage to alter them at any point without voiding your entry your game against a deflated Red Sox line-up would get you just as much point as a game against the actual line-up.

Basically had the Red Sox actually gone with a line-up without those 3 players in real life the difficulty would have been significantly lower. It's not 'creative thinking' it's straight up cheating, you can't choose your opponent's line-up in real life. And its ridiculous to suggest that someone who plays against a line-up missing 3 of their best hitters should get as many points as someone who accomplished the same thing against a line-up with the 3 best hitters.

There's no grey area here, 2K screwed up by not ensuring it was impossible to alter the MLB Today line-ups or at the very least not having dynamic difficulty ratings if changes were made, but those who compromised the integrity of the score are just as guilty. I'm tired of people who exploit rules or game glitches getting a pat of the back because they found a way to exploit the system. Its not creative, its not smart its straight up dirty. Our culture has shifted dramatically in the wrong direction, we should all be condemning these people yet there are far too many people who either don't care or are evening commending them.

[CPRoark]

Quote: Originally Posted by Iceman87GT

Caley Roark, It may not have been mentioned in the rules (which was a definite oversight by 2K), but messing with the opponent's line-up destroys the integrity of the score. The score was directly tied to the opponent's line-up for that day, not upon which team you faced. So playing the Red Sox without Adrian Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Justin Pedroria in the line-up should not get the same amount of points as facing a line-up with those players. Unfortunately the difficulty was set based upon the MLB Today line-ups, meaning if you could manage to alter them at any point without voiding your entry your game against a deflated Red Sox line-up would get you just as much point as a game against the actual line-up. Basically had the Red Sox actually gone with a line-up without those 3 players in real life the difficulty would have been significantly lower. It's not 'creative thinking' it's straight up cheating, you can't choose your opponent's line-up in real life. And its ridiculous to suggest that someone who plays against a line-up missing 3 of their best hitters should get as many points as someone who accomplished the same thing against a line-up with the 3 best hitters. There's no grey area here, 2K screwed up by not ensuring it was impossible to alter the MLB Today line-ups or at the very least not having dynamic difficulty ratings if changes were made, but those who compromised the integrity of the score are just as guilty. I'm tired of people who exploit rules or game glitches getting a pat of the back because they found a way to exploit the system. Its not creative, its not smart its straight up dirty. Our culture has shifted dramatically in the wrong direction, we should all be condemning these people yet there are far too many people who either don't care or are evening commending them.

Thanks for the clarifications. What's still unclear to me is whether the line-up changes were made via some kind of exploit or simply by using the menus. Did it require some kind of code, pausing at the right time, or swapping controllers? Or, could you just pause the game before the first pitch and fiddle with the line-ups?

There's a key difference in those two things, for me. One requires some outside technical knowledge and circumventing the way the game functions. The other is a natural function of the game that anyone could have found and used.

You are correct that you can't choose your opponent's line-up in real life., but neither can a pitcher choose his opponent. Looking at the leader board, there are a lot of Halladay's vs Cubs and Pirates. I guess my point is we can't apply real world situations to what is simply a virtual recreation.

While not a true mirror, look at really competitive video games like StarCraft, old school arcade games, or fighting games. The most skilled players have memorized frames of animation and event times down to the second. This doesn't seem to be in the spirit of the game, but has become a staple of those competitive arenas.

If 2K is laying that much money on the line, I think they should have prepared for users to milk every ounce of advantage out of the system.

Thanks to your post, I have a clearer understanding of how the scoring worked and completely agree that a player who beat the Red Sox with their lineup intact should have a better score than those who did it against bench players. That's a scoring issue, and the fault still lies with 2K (I think we both agree on that).

However, the act of exploiting a game's inherent shortcomings, to me at least, doesn't constitute cheating. Just like Steve Weibe memorized the fireball patterns in Donkey Kong, a player figuring out how to face a weaker line-up isn't necessary breaking the rules. However, if Steve hacked his board or a 2K player tweaked software, that's a whole different story. That's the part of the story I haven't been able to get a clear answer on.

We need to see this contest as a video game, not compare it to real life baseball. However, I completely agree that it is a shame that the scoring is broken and that 2K hasn't done anything to fix it.