Referrer log fun
2007-06-04 20:25 - some-customers-suck security
It’s definitely amusing going over my referrer logs and seeing people searching for “puzzle pirates cheats”, “puzzle pirates hacks”, or “puzzle pirates exploits” visiting my blog. Do you really think that I’d post information how to break into a game I develop on my blog? I certainly think I’d be willing to publish a postmortem of any major problems in the hopes of giving people a better of how Three Rings works on the development side. However, I find it very disappointing how many players want to devalue their own experience and those of other players by seeking out ways to gain an unfair advantage. Puzzle Pirates has only had a few large-scale incidents (Whitefire’s multi-million poe pillage a number of years ago comes to mind), and each time we were able to track down the problem and correct it fairly quickly. We closely monitor the economic state of the game for anomalous activity, receive tips from upstanding players about possible bugs, and have the ability to track all item and currency transactions within the game easily. Other game studios almost certainly have similar degrees of rigor over their respective products. It is not possible to get away with cheating in modern massively multiplayer online games; trying to cheat ruins a good portion of the fun. Don’t even try – chances are that you’ll just lose your account without any gain.
On that note, I’ve been contemplating putting together a number of proposals for a GDC panels regarding customer support systems and anti-cheating mechanisms. But more on that later…
Words? [1]
Why won't people RTFM?
2005-12-21 22:38 - puzzlepirates some-customers-suck
Geez. This is like the tenth bug report I’ve closed out that has to do with missing graphics, which is always caused by corruption of the installation directories, which is always fixed by a reinstall. I even tell you not to report it, and to reinstall, in the triage page tree before you hit the bug report form. How much clearer does it get than this?
Triage page:
What type of technical issue can I help you with?
- My poe/doubloons/items have disappeared.
- There are blue areas on my screen, or missing graphics in the puzzles.
- I’m trying to paint my ship/shop and it says that I don’t have enough money!
- The issue I am experiencing was not described above.
Click on blue areas…, and you get:
Most problems with graphics glitches, blue regions of the screen, and missing buttons and panels are caused by missing files in your local Puzzle Pirates installation. To solve this problem, use the following instructions:
[snip (reinstall instructions)]
/em headdesks.
