Developers that abuse the system

[Azza]

Well abit of a weird title, but its something id like to bring up.

I've recently been playing age of conan. Anyone that also plays this game will know how buggy it is, but what this thread is about is game developers that use their talents to give advantages to themselves or to their friends in the game.

Now lets say your in an end game instance hoping to get your hands on endgame gear. Instance would normally take two or three hours battling your way through elites and the bosses. Ok so the game has a /stuck command where it nudges you to get unstuck in most situations. The group I was with knew that if we /stucked through a certain part of the map that we would be in unfamilar terrain.

So the terrain we clearly playable, its wasnt acting as if I wasnt supposed to be there. What made me laugh was that every boss we came to there were little enterances so that we could enter for a fast kill. Thats just what I wanted a big crack in the mountain for me to get to this boss. How the hell can coding get like that by mistake, a developer had clearly set up certain pathways and exploits for people to gain advantages.

The instance took around thirty minutes.

How can games be fair when things like this exist.

Do you think aion developers have hidden motives aswell?

[pyrocrazy]

It isnt as if the devs are telling all their friends about those "secret passageways". The people that find them deserve to know about them...

I dont see how this is abusing the system, the educated players get an advantage over the newbies....eventually they would just all become public knowledge

[mobius]

Most likely the level designed change and the old code was never removed. You just found it, good for you. It's like Old Ironforge in WOW. Yeah, it's still there but no they never intended on anyone finding it.

As for developers cheating, read up on EVE Online. Those guys are the criminal underground of game devs.

[Hellriser]

Originally Posted by mobius

As for developers cheating, read up on EVE Online. Those guys are the criminal underground of game devs.

Gimme some links plix!

[sukumei]

As a game developer myself, we would place some 'cool' dev only things in the game but still, that would be restricted to developers only. Developers are the lonely. We have to digress our game if we are to talk about it to other people. Our friends are just our friends. Even if we gave out things like secrets in the game, we will get fired because leaks in a gaming company can be investigated pretty damn quickly. It is not worth losing your job over.

Besides if the spread of dissent spreads throughout the community, it would degrade it and the game itself. Any game developer working for the dollar would not risk such a stupid thing as a leak just for their friends or the risk of failing their game.

Your contention

As a game developer myself, the existence of developer only 'cool stuff' I cannot deny. However giving out these things to 'friends' is unspeakable. The developer has to sign a disclaimer and a disclosure agreement before he is allowed on the team. Everything that we make, we have to give a reason for, every-little-thing. What if we give something that doesn't fit in the team's ideas? It is s****ed or changed to fit.
Giving out 'secrets' to 'friends' is not an option for us. The idea of a serious game developer is to develop a game for the community or rather, as many people as possible. We also work for the dollar. Any leaks in classified content can result in persecution, job lost and placing on the blacklist relating back to the disclosure agreement. Now don't you think that the thought of dissent and corruption can destroy the community that plays the game? In the end, stupid things like that are not worth it.

Azza, your contention 'are game developers that use their talents to give advantages to themselves or to their friends in the game' is seriously flawed. Next time, think of the deeper reasons behind games. Perhaps it would do a lot of people good to see how game design progresses.

[Mark]

What you may have found was a tool for testers. You know almost every game has cheat codes, right? Those codes, they're not normally just for stupid players. Normally they're for testers, so the game is easier to test.

That's probably what you found. It'll probably be taken out eventually.

[Anuxinamoon]

Testing would be my best guess as well. Even though devs like to create easter eggs, usually ones as controversial as that would not go gold. Sometimes things like that do get forgotten in the mad rush of pre-release.

As for developers being sneaky and telling people secrets. They can, if they want too. NDA's mean nothing, they can be broken. Their can be repercussions of course but usually the people who leak these things, or break NDA are beyond the companies reach.

Game development has a high turn over rate. People can get hired for 3-6 months then get fired. Its would be easy for a tester who has left the company to tell their friends about the secrets and get little to no backlash. But I doubt they would purposefully put in a large exploit to just get their friends leet gear. But you never know how some peoples minds work.

[MidnytsRose]

Lineage2 Had several of these. I found at least 15 of them. Basically if there was a seam in the graphics, it was guaranteed you could glitch through it to terrain that was not meant to be accessible naturally. Aloud for allot of different short cuts. Most the time you just had to type /unstuck and you'd appear in a completely different place. Devs know about them, only time we got in trouble for using them is during sieges to gain advantage and glitch into the enemies castles.

[pyrocrazy]

it was like the insta escape from jail in Cabal, glitch towards the walls and your out!!

and like in Knight Online/Empire (probably closed down by now) where the guild that owns the castle would be asses and close the gates to the super dungeon inside so if you knew what you were doing you could glitch through them, doesnt work during war though so i think the dev's put it there on purpose so thwart evil guilds...

same thing in Kal...


every game has these bugs

[Calindor]

It was a suprize the first time a clan leader attacking Aden castle flew up onto one of the big pillar walkways on their Wyvern and ninja'd in the castle destroying all of the life control towers ...its not a siege zone so you can fly up there.

[AtTheLeftHandOvGod]

azza are you from tpu?

[Azza]

tpu?

Sukumei i hear what your saying but this is very end game aoc and this isnt an isolated case. Ok so granted developers can add little things for themselves thinking people are so stupid that they wont come across them. The people that do find them and abuse them will get advantages, so why would a developer do such a thing? Who knows which friends he will trust with these little things. Everyone has a different a gender.

[MidnytsRose]

Yeah but the GM's aloud the Aden thing. I'm talking more the Glitch that gets you straight into Giran Castle. The Aden castle thing just made me laugh.

[LethalGT]

I sure hope not or else the elites will find them and exploit them to farm end game gear and gear up everyone and there mother in the legion so they can be that far ahead of everyone else, it's a recipe for disaster.

[BahamutKaiser]

This goes back to one of the sadest realities I bring up all the time, alot of the waiting, grinding and difficulties are just timesinks to preoccupy players, and arn't worth the time to play, it makes perfect sense that developers who have less time to play and have to work on the game would make backdoors for them to get ahead, but it is sad that some might exist to make the playing experience more fun for themselves when the game should intristically be designed to be just as fun for the subscribers, content should be worthwile enough to experience on purpose, not just to reach a goal wile doing something unenjoyable.