I like :-)

[Cassius Allanus]

* Will there be any cheat codes?

Yes. But the player will have to beat challenges in order to unlock them.

I like that For those players that have cheating problems in single-player (myself included), we will be forced to earn the ability to use cheats.

[Dnas]

Same here. But....

Will they be unlockable in the sense that you won't have knowledge of them or they simply will not work untill you earn it.

If you just are told the codes, people are bound to post the codes on the internet and people will use them anyway. Which kind of makes this feature nearly pointless.

[Acumen]

The general idea was that completing the challenge would flag availability of that cheat in your user profile. The code wouldn't work until flagged. Of course, someone could just upload his profile, or figure out how to modify the profile to change which campaigns and challenges he's completed, so even if it's not cheat-code-based, I don't think we could ever get around the unlock being plastered over the Internet in some form (especially with the game being so mod-friendly).

But for those that want to have the satisfaction of completing a single-player challenge and being rewarded for it (rather than the hollow victory of downloading someone else's hack), the option's there.

[I_Would_Say]

I disagree. Some people play games for fun, and occasionally cheat here and there to make it easier. This seems discriminating poorer players (those who aren't "good enough" to unlock them.

[Quacker]

To put it plainly, those "poorer players" suck and need to get better. Cheating is never the better option.

[Dnas]

And cheating won't help them get better either.

I remember when I was bad at RTS games (still am, but not as bad as when I first played AoK) I got into using cheats and it was difficult to get out of using them.

Having people earn the right to use cheats is a far better option.

[I_Would_Say]

Some people don't really care that much about getting better. The people don't NEED to get better.

I mean, the thing you're doing is kind of like (well actually is identical to) forcing - forcing, not allowing them to do otherwise, a player to do something, even though it is benficial.

Your way just isn't fair to the noobs playing.

It's just a far worse option.

[Argalius]

I assume that there will be different diffeculty levels, so on easy it should be easy and you won't need cheats.

[Nawen]

If they are bad players, and realy wants cheats, then the will probably try until they get them. Then they get more practice. I think is kind of a motivation to earn something for the trouble

[ZeZar]

Drop the cheating thing. Its just lame to cheat!

And i surely (is that a word?) don't hope you guys will have cheat in MP?

[MarkT]

Rest assured, we're making it as difficult to cheat in multiplayer as we know how.

[I_Would_Say]

Can't you make it impossible?

[Dnas]

There's always some way to trick the program into thinking you're not entering a cheat code. Whether the involves something little like changing one file or something huge like decompiling and recompiling the code.

You can't really make it impossible, but you can make it nearly impossible that no sane person would bother to try.

[Cassius Allanus]

I don't cheat in multi-player. I'm a completely honest player in multi-player, even if it means I get my butt kicked.

HOWEVER......I have quite a cheating problem in single player which is why I like this idea.

[Lorian]

You can't really make it impossible, but you can make it nearly impossible that no sane person would bother to try.

←

That's the problem though, there are some people out there that will make a downloadable hack so any old shmo can do it

[MarkT]

Yep, but:

- The harder you make it, the fewer people will succeed. The fewer hacks there are, the easier they (in theory) are to plug.

- You can still absolutely eliminate entire classes of cheats, even if you can't eliminate every category.