PSA: Cheating results in negative unlock progression

[♥♥♥♥ Goblin]

Note: I don't like cheaters in multiplayer as it ruins others legitimate experiences/success. However I don't think multiplayer anti-cheat solutions should affect single player.

I don't play this game for the leaderboards. I have played the game normally and have also played while cheating (not for leaderboards, note my previous 'cheating score' has never been beyond 600) by adding extra gold to my runs to experiment with cards/relics (without having to rely on RNG since there is no sandbox mode) so I can buy certain cards/relics in shops.

However a recent update has 'cheater detection' (solely for leaderboards) which also affects single player progression :( If the game detects you cheating, you get a -999 "cheater" score at the end of the game (which, when hovered over, says something like "If caught cheating twice, your score will never appear on the leaderboard").

That -999 applies to unlock progression, so you lose progression if you are using cheats for that purpose.

Although I personally don't care about the progression system, it does suck that leaderboard's anti-cheating algorithm affects single-player progression. If the devs are reading, I think you should change that since single player != multiplayer.

For other people who are looking at modifying their single player experience, so long as you don't care about your unlock progression or leaderboards, you can still "cheat". If you need unlock progression, you can edit the files found in the game directory under "prefs" and change the classes unlock progression number to something high. The next time you die, this number will be used.

[Shadowlight]

Publicado originalmente por vomder:

Just get rid of the leaderboard problem solved, everyone wins.

I agree, they are totally broken already. I'm not sure how or why people do that but it is just stupid.

[Brokenshield]

It's checking for cheat engine, just turn cheat engine off at the last moment and it apparently works. What's SUPER worrying is that it's checking.. what is running on your system. I looked into it and replicated what you did and then just turned off cheat engine the second run to test it and it didn't detect ♥♥♥♥. This means it was actively looking at what my system was running that WASN'T slay the spire.

Hey devs, don't snoop on your customers.

[ravengage]

I don't currently use any of the 3rd party cheat engines but I'll still +1 this. What I do with the game I bought on my SINGLE PLAYER experience is nobody's business but my own.

[Reya]

Publicado originalmente por ravengage:

I don't currently use any of the 3rd party cheat engines but I'll still +1 this. What I do with the game I bought on my SINGLE PLAYER experience is nobody's business but my own.

I would also like to say that I do Not use any Cheat Engines for anything, I merely want the game to have the Potential for people to Mod it.

Also If this game is check what other program are running as Folsomdf has reported then the game should make that clear and give the option to opt out (At the cost of online features)

[♥♥♥♥ Goblin]

For those interested, the jar in the game directory can be opened with any archive viewer and you can see what libraries/scripts they are using.

For those wanting "progression", navigate to the game directory and 'preferences'. ie. ...\steamapps\common\SlayTheSpire\preferences

Edit STSUnlockProgress and change the values in there to unlock things / set your current progress.

As for cheating... whelp, just edit STSPlayer and change cheat_count to 0 and fun_count to 999. It seems if cheating is detected but cheat_count < fun_count, then you don't get the cheating flag at the end of the game (tested with 5k gold via cheatengine and cheatengine was open when I beat the run).

In the same file, ..._SPIRITS, setting these to 1 enables the "choose something from the landwhale" at the start of the game.

To the dev: Any chance on telling us how to unlock your debug mode?

[.//slayer]

Publicado originalmente por JuRiOh:

Publicado originalmente por C0ck Goblin:

Re: Play the game it was designed to be played.

See: Skyrim/Fallout Modding.

TL;DR: If we were meant to play a game it was original designed as, we wouldn't have 9 billion Skyrim mods altering everything from crab appearance to dragon dong size.

People add/remove their own game mechanics/obstacles/items/etc to improve their experience. This can be applied to any game of any genre. Sometimes you want a super weapon to steamroll content, other times you want a weak weapon to "see how long you can survive".

So long as modding/cheating doesn't negatively affect multiplayer, then it should be encouraged as having the ability to mod adds replayability and improves player experience. Even multiplayer games have seen modding (ie. any fps where you can create custom maps).

ie. Imagine someone releases a hack to change the starting card loadout of ironclad/silent. This could be a feature the devs plan but haven't released yet. The "mod" adds some fun to the game that people may enjoy. So long as it doesn't affect multiplayer/leaderboard, it isn't hurting anyone but instead improves the enjoyment.

"Offline mode" is a perfect option for modders. We don't need achievements or leaderboards to enjoy the game.

If you could change card art or sounds/visuals of minions, that is one thing. Giving yourself 10.000 gold to buy everything in the game, which trivializes the challenge of the game is another. If you can make the game artificially so easy that you can unlock the hardest achievements at ease and falsely inflate the unlock percentage, you interfere with my online experience. I for instance enjoy going for the hardest achievements that only 0.1% of players have(say reach floor 200 in endless mode), if you can just cheat it and all of a sudden 4.9% of players have it, it reduces my motivation. If your cheating doesn't grant achievements or impact the online leaderboards, I wouldn't care.

Achievements shouldn't serve as a basis for restricting or allowing cheat codes. Leaderboards are a different thing - they can be controlled to a reasonable degree and therefore can serve as a measuring stick for competitive players. However, disabling achievements for using cheatcodes makes no sense, because there are already 3-rd party tools that let you unlock any number of them in any game, so their rarity becomes a moot point. It's not "messing with your online experience", it's just the way the system works.

[JuRiOh]

Publicado originalmente por .//slayer:

Publicado originalmente por JuRiOh:

If you could change card art or sounds/visuals of minions, that is one thing. Giving yourself 10.000 gold to buy everything in the game, which trivializes the challenge of the game is another. If you can make the game artificially so easy that you can unlock the hardest achievements at ease and falsely inflate the unlock percentage, you interfere with my online experience. I for instance enjoy going for the hardest achievements that only 0.1% of players have(say reach floor 200 in endless mode), if you can just cheat it and all of a sudden 4.9% of players have it, it reduces my motivation. If your cheating doesn't grant achievements or impact the online leaderboards, I wouldn't care.

Achievements shouldn't serve as a basis for restricting or allowing cheat codes. Leaderboards are a different thing - they can be controlled to a reasonable degree and therefore can serve as a measuring stick for competitive players. However, disabling achievements for using cheatcodes makes no sense, because there are already 3-rd party tools that let you unlock any number of them in any game, so their rarity becomes a moot point. It's not "messing with your online experience", it's just the way the system works.

Achievements can be seen as competitive too. Who or how many players were able to achieve X achievement. You cheating an achievement that others have worked hard for devalues their effort and falsifies the achievement statistics. That's like me printing out a fake harvard degree or wearing a fake war veteran badge, I haven't earned them, but I display them.

The 3rd party tools are not in accordance with Steams subscriber agreement however. While Valve doesn't particularly care too much(what a shame), some developers(i'd say those with integrity) actually hand out game bans for cheated achievements. Cheating achievements isn't just cheating yourself, it's disrespectful to the gaming community. And that's not how the system works, it's just how certain individuals cheat the system.

[Dinosaurs]

Hey developer here,

Just wanted to discuss what we added and what we're planning on doing based on this thread that has seemed to exploded.

We mainly added the cheater bonus in the score screen to let players know that their scores will no longer be uploaded to the leaderboards if they cheat twice. This is because uploading scores for cheated runs are not a good thing for the leaderboards.

However, we didn't mean to hinder unlock progress with the negative score. We had just assumed that people who had cheated would probably just unlock everything by cheating anyway- apparently this was NOT the case.

We're pretty much eliminating the negative points (-99) but keeping the bonus to let players know that if they continue to cheat their scores will not be uploaded. We don't expect that people who modify the game wish to upload their scores anyway.

As some of you know, we don't mind people who play the game however they want- there's some unsupported modding going on and we're okay with that. In fact, we made a channel for them in our official Discord channel!

Hopefully this sheds some light into what has occurred, what will happen, and want to remind you that we want players to enjoy the game however they wish.

Thanks,
-Casey

[ravengage]

Publicado originalmente por Dinosaurs:

Hey developer here,

...

Thanks,
-Casey

Thank you for the response, it's great to see developers who pay attention to the players and communicate clearly. It is appreciated.

[Eagle_of_Fire]

OP says he can't care less yet post that long winded post on how he's a cheater.

I'm sorry to break it to you, OP, but the fact that you openly express yourself as a cheater reduce your credibility to me to zero. Yes, that's a personal opinion... But you also say you don't care less.

In the same token I have a very hard time taking you seriously in any way. You cheat to play the game, you essentially don't play the same game as us. Why would I care? Why would we care?

The dev(s) seem to care enough, that's at least something going for you. I guess.

[Joshtama]

Publicado originalmente por Dinosaurs:

Hey developer here,

...

Thanks,
-Casey

Thank you so much for your response, this makes me feel a hell of a lot better about your direction with the future of the game.
I would suggest a moderator lock this thread now to stop any more arguing about cheating opinions :)

[Maximum Sloth]

Well, your runs will show up on the leaderboards regardless of if you care about it or not. Some players care about the leaderboards, and knowing cheaters are able to succeed in reaching the top spots will dishearten and turn away those kinds of players.

If there were an option to opt out of being included on the leaderboards, then I think that would solve the problem. No leaderboard --> no cheating punishment.

[Sohl]

Publicado originalmente por Dinosaurs:

Hey developer here,


Thanks,
-Casey

Dude, I just wanna say. The game treats me with terrible RNG but I am loving the game to bits.
Just keep doing you man.

[Shiki]

Publicado originalmente por Gnilneelps:

Publicado originalmente por ravengage:

I don't currently use any of the 3rd party cheat engines but I'll still +1 this. What I do with the game I bought on my SINGLE PLAYER experience is nobody's business but my own.

I would also like to say that I do Not use any Cheat Engines for anything, I merely want the game to have the Potential for people to Mod it.

Also If this game is check what other program are running as Folsomdf has reported then the game should make that clear and give the option to opt out (At the cost of online features)

Again, cheating =/= modding. In fact, a dev stated on the official subreddit that the game will have endorsed mod-support in the future. Using eg cheat engine to give yourself infinite hp, gold, damage or whatever is not modding, and people using that type of cheating will probably drop the game in 2 days because "ther eis nothing else to do" and "it is so boring"; despite it being themselves that caused this in the first place. Which is not what any dev wants.

They should probably make it work like it does in isaac, using specific seeds or mods (or, in this case,blatant cheats) should disable all achievements, progress etc.

Although tbh I like them making it do negative progress. They could have done worse and just handed out bans. I mean, it is not like you need the stuff you get from progressing if you just cheat your way through the game anyways.

Tl;DR : Once they add mod-support, mods using that should (and will) work the way you all want them to, but cheating should still be punished.

[paolo.bera]

Publicado originalmente por Shiki:

Again, cheating =/= modding. In fact, a dev stated on the official subreddit that the game will have endorsed mod-support in the future. Using eg cheat engine to give yourself infinite hp, gold, damage or whatever is not modding, and people using that type of cheating will probably drop the game in 2 days because "ther eis nothing else to do" and "it is so boring"; despite it being themselves that caused this in the first place. Which is not what any dev wants.

They should probably make it work like it does in isaac, using specific seeds or mods (or, in this case,blatant cheats) should disable all achievements, progress etc.

Although tbh I like them making it do negative progress. They could have done worse and just handed out bans. I mean, it is not like you need the stuff you get from progressing if you just cheat your way through the game anyways.

Tl;DR : Once they add mod-support, mods using that should (and will) work the way you all want them to, but cheating should still be punished.

No no no your argument is invalid.
This is a single player game not a multiplayer game, i buy this game because i wanted a single player game and not a Heartstone or a ESL clone.
So if you want kick a cheater out of leaderboards it's ok but you can't remove game contents from him like unlocked cards or relics.
This is not a free game and therefore people have the rights on the contents the paid for.