Flagship Studios responds to controversy

[Wolfstan]

http://digg.com/pc_games/Hellg...esponds_to_EULA_outcry

Read em and weep

 

[Bateluer]

Whats this about HGL scanning my HDD? I didn't plan on buying the game at all, so it doesn't particularly bother me, but I also know that many people will buy the game and be totally clueless about the snooping right under their noses.

 

[pontifex]

didn't we go through this with WoW?

 

[coloumb]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Whats this about HGL scanning my HDD? I didn't plan on buying the game at all, so it doesn't particularly bother me, but I also know that many people will buy the game and be totally clueless about the snooping right under their noses.

Eh - sounds like the game is only scanning programs which are running in memory while HGL is running - not the contents of your hard drive. In doing so - they are trying to keep gameplay fair rather than let the cheaters win.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Wolfstan
http://digg.com/pc_games/Hellg...esponds_to_EULA_outcry

Read em and weep

their reply makes total sense to me

if you are really *paranoid* set up HGL on a partition with *only* the beta and the SW necessary to run it
-and encrypt your other drives

 

[aCynic2]

Is it a premium MMO world. IOW, are you paying to play?

If so, I agree with it. If you had a business that depended largely on people paying to play and one cheater could drive away 10, 50, 100 honest customers...what would you do to protect your player base and ultimately your profits?

Hell yeah, I'd set up a scanner and integrity checker. I'd want to bust the cheaters and ban them. And if people closed their accounts because of a cheater, you better believe I'd take it out on the cheater, sue them for lost revenue.

If honest people want to whine, let them. I'd rather take some heat from the general public than to cut jobs because revenue is down due to cheaters.

It will always be the case...the most expensive part of running a business is the employees!

I would probably make it command activated, so it didn't suck up CPU cycles all the time. It would be a case of someone is accused by multiple people, there is a reason to suspect, a command is set to activate the scan about 10 minutes into his play. It throws up a red flag if something is detected and his name is brought before a review of his peers (not corporate management, but other players).

 

[CKent]

HGL is going to be MMO??

 

[aCynic2]

Originally posted by: CKent
HGL is going to be MMO??

I don't know. Is it? I'm not following the game's production cycle, so I'm only speculating off of this part:

This is a completely legitimate function and other leaders in the MMO space do it in an effort to stop hackers and provide better technical support. In order to stop hacks and cheats, as well as attempts at outright fraud, we may need the ability to scan our player?s computers for applications running at the same time as our game.

If it's not going to be any of that, Flagship has no business looking for cheaters in private games. That's the responsibility of the game's master.

Why would they even spend the time, money and other resources to monitor private games, solo/sp games?

So, it's going to be MMO, is it going to be premium MMO? We'll see.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: aCynic2

Originally posted by: CKent
HGL is going to be MMO??

I don't know. Is it? I'm not following the game's production cycle, so I'm only speculating.

If it's not going to be any of that, Flagship has no business looking for cheaters in private games. That's the responsibility of the game's master.

Why would they even spend the time, money and other resources to monitor private games, solo/sp games?

I'm not really following it either Which is why that raised a flag, cause I'm pretty sure i heard it'll have online play similar to Diablo or SC, but would not be MMO.

Anyway, if it's at all competitive then I can see wanting to do away with cheaters and support efforts to do so, just as I support WoW's Warden.

 

[aCynic2]

Originally posted by: CKent

Originally posted by: aCynic2

Originally posted by: CKent
HGL is going to be MMO??

I don't know. Is it? I'm not following the game's production cycle, so I'm only speculating.

If it's not going to be any of that, Flagship has no business looking for cheaters in private games. That's the responsibility of the game's master.

Why would they even spend the time, money and other resources to monitor private games, solo/sp games?

I'm not really following it either Which is why that raised a flag, cause I'm pretty sure i heard it'll have online play similar to Diablo or SC, but would not be MMO.

Anyway, if it's at all competitive then I can see wanting to do away with cheaters and support efforts to do so, just as I support WoW's Warden.

See my addendum above. I suspect it's going to be an MMO, and by that nature, 99% likely a premium MMO.

There are some free MMOs, but they are rare. Flagship is a business. They're doing it to make money entertaining the public.

 

[Skacer]

I'm all for companies scanning my shit if it means less cheaters and hackers. Cheaters and hackers are one of the quickest ways to destroy a fun game.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

People have been doing for some time... Punkbuster..


I'm all for it as long as it's unintrusive

 

[Raduque]

What I'd like to know is, how is this going to affect the single-player game? Is the cheat scanning going to prevent me from using a trainer offline to create an uber char when I'm tired of playing the game normally?

Keep in mind that I absolutely am not going to be playing it online.

 

[MarcVenice]

Of course Hellgate: London is going to be an MMO, where have you guys been living the past few months ? Might not be MMO like WoW, but more Guildwars like, but it will be an MMO nonetheless. Here's some parts I took from pressreleases.

"While some may prefer to slay demons solo, players will also be able to take the fight online*, teaming up with friends to save London in a secure, client-server environment and playing through the entire story-driven campaign for free. For those players who want to extend their Hellgate: London experience, Flagship is offering an optional subscription service which will give players access to huge amounts of content on an ongoing basis in the form of quests, character classes, demons, items, etc. More details about Hellgate: London?s online options are coming soon."

"Flagship Studios are pleased to announce the pricing structure for its upcoming highly-anticipated action role-playing game HELLGATE: LONDON in Europe. For expectant players HELLGATE: LONDON will offer players two ways to play through Standard and Subscription accounts.

For all players, HELLGATE: LONDON comes completely free-to-play out of the box and will offer a secure online experience with features including the ability to play cooperatively with thousands of other players, trade items, join guilds and enjoy a host of gameplay and community features including voice chat and buddy lists.

For players with Subscription* accounts (?9.99 / £6.99 per month), Flagship Studios will deliver exciting new ongoing content including new character classes, areas, monsters, items and raid content, new game modes (including Hardcore, Role-Play and PvP mode), and additional character and stash slots. Subscribers can found guilds, select to nominate an officer and will have access to guild and player housing. Other features include in-game email for items, web access to characters and a place in future beta lotteries."

 

[warcrow]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Wolfstan
http://digg.com/pc_games/Hellg...esponds_to_EULA_outcry

Read em and weep

their reply makes total sense to me

if you are really *paranoid* set up HGL on a partition with *only* the beta and the SW necessary to run it
-and encrypt your other drives

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I dont particularly care and understand their perspective. WoW does the same thing and I played that for almost a year. Relax people--it could be worse.

 

[I4AT]

Doesn't sound as bad as Punkbuster's PnkBstrA service. A lot of you probably have it installed without even knowing about it right now. It doesn't ask or warn you in any way, just fuckin plants itself on your machine and runs as a service from the second your computer boots up until it turns off.

Open up task manager and look for PnkBstrA.exe to see if you have the service installed. You can remove it with this utility, and here's a FAQ on the whole subject.

I had this crap on my PC for like a month before I finally decided to Google it and see what the hell it was.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: warcrow

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Wolfstan
http://digg.com/pc_games/Hellg...esponds_to_EULA_outcry

Read em and weep

their reply makes total sense to me

if you are really *paranoid* set up HGL on a partition with *only* the beta and the SW necessary to run it
-and encrypt your other drives

I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. I dont particularly care and understand their perspective. WoW does the same thing and I played that for almost a year. Relax people--it could be worse.

The point is - so far - they are very open about what they are doing and clearly they have a few lawyers working on their ongoing EULAs. It really looks like they want to break into MMO in a big way. Think of HGL *partly* as a SP game with a long [rather linear but good] MQ and many SQs to explore that add to the overall story and *also* as a party-game evidently somewhat like LotRO where you can do the same quests online for free.

After you get bored with that - if you like - you can [optionally] pay for more continuing [i guess monthly] content and continuing Quests, campaigns, etc.

i played thru probably over half the SP campaign - as far as they let the regular beta testers go - in about 30 hours and i didn't touch any MMO aspects as i soloed everything. i am going to check out the party feature.
i like it - but then i am a 'hack n' slacker' at heart for my RPGs
:heart:

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Of course Hellgate: London is going to be an MMO, where have you guys been living the past few months ? Might not be MMO like WoW, but more Guildwars like, but it will be an MMO nonetheless. Here's some parts I took from pressreleases.

... Guild Wars isn't MMO.

 

[SniperWulf]

I still don't get what all the hoopla is about... isn't their scanner basically the same as Punkbuster or VAC?

 

[MarcVenice]

Maybe Guildwars was a bad example, it's still an MMO though I don't think HGL will be like WoW where 100's of people can meet in the same world and interact though. Perhaps more multiplayer style like Two Worlds perhaps? I dunno ...

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: MarcVenice
Maybe Guildwars was a bad example, it's still an MMO though I don't think HGL will be like WoW where 100's of people can meet in the same world and interact though. Perhaps more multiplayer style like Two Worlds perhaps? I dunno ...

2Worlds is bogus

HG:L is Full MMO like LotRO

--that is WHY they want you to pay for continuing content ... the whole damn *huge* game-world is online for you to explore either solo or with a party or even PvP [i believe].

 

[Raduque]

Apoppin, question.

Can I play Hellgate London without connecting to a server?

Because if this game is gonna be like Guildwars, I ain't buyin it. I didn't like the way you HAD to be online to play GW, even when you were soloing. Call me old fashioned, but I firmly believe that the SP and MP parts of games should be kept separate.

 

[flashbacck]

Originally posted by: SniperWulf
I still don't get what all the hoopla is about... isn't their scanner basically the same as Punkbuster or VAC?

Same here. If they didn't have a robust anti-cheat method, then people would end up bitching about all the hacks.

 

[T2k]

Dunno, it looks crappy and demo is most certainly boring so they can do whatever the hell they want by me... I'm not a MMO fan anyway.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Raduque
Apoppin, question.

Can I play Hellgate London without connecting to a server?

Because if this game is gonna be like Guildwars, I ain't buyin it. I didn't like the way you HAD to be online to play GW, even when you were soloing. Call me old fashioned, but I firmly believe that the SP and MP parts of games should be kept separate.

not now .... not in the beta ... but from what i read, i am pretty sure the SP game is available completely off-line. And i got 30 hours out of 3/5ths of the beta SP campaign.

afaik, the Devs say the game *changes* significantly depending on which class you pick including random dungeons, loot and enemies. So i am retiring my Level20 Blade-Master and trying Engineer or one of the Hunters. If it really changes, i am all over it.

And i also want to try the party experience this weekend. i'll let you know if i am spending $50 on the pre-order to keep on playing right thru the official release on Halloween.