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Anger at the gate of games


Lonemankane

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Hey everyone been thinking a lot lately of why people get angry with others/ gate keep others if they use glitches or just ask for help on games such as say dark souls, doom 1 or 2 Est. I just had something like this happen to me with payday 2 and it both annoyed me and made me question why people gate keep things.

 

I mean I get where they come from as it happen to me on dying light with the bow you earn in the dlc but from where I stand. I see why they use the glitches. I just normally think why waste your breath on getting pissed off with people using glitches or getting help as if I got pissed off at everything others did that I did the hard way I wouldn't ever get to enjoy anything at all.

 

I mean I don't think I could of grinded for the 100s of hours for the cursed pure blade stone in demons souls as that is pure bs same with other games like say borderlands 2's dlc raid boss master glee you can fight him normally or just kill him with the door making it an easy fight.

 

Sorry for rambling on and on just trying to get what I got in my head out there and see if anyone wonders the same or don't and if they have any idea why as I thought it might be a good topic to talk about.

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Well, it's a nice subject to talk about. I was thinking of something similar the other day.

 

I think it may be due to how some players see themselves against the rest. There's some sort of unspoken status if you overcome some challenge in a game without abusing the mechanics or something. Quoting EA, "... a sense of pride and accomplishment." On a personal level, you feel great when you figure out a solution and do it "the right way", because the effort is worth the reward. It's understandable, we are competitive beings since inception, it's in our genes.

 

On the other hand, we are currently living in an age of immediacy, rushing to the next thing, and thus, not everybody has the time to spend grinding. There's a whole lot of stuff to do on a day-by-day basis, so gaming shouldn't be a chore either. You game to have fun, not to continue working. If there's a way to speed up the process, I'll take it. Honestly, sometimes they make it sound almost like CFW cheating. Back in the day this didn't seem like a big thing. Cheat codes were the law. But since there's "achievements" and "trophies", people feel like a fast way to do something gives them a stain on their efforts. I've felt that sometimes, but in the end, you are gaming for yourself. You keep doing it because you feel good, enjoy the plot, the mechanics, whatever rocks you.

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Situations that may have been annoying once / maybe still could annoy me:

 

You spend hours doing a trophy, finally achieve it, then a later patch comes out that simplifies that trophy or a glitch is discovered to negate the difficulty. I wouldn't be annoyed at someone using that glitch but there's no way of knowing that I would have done it the difficult way.

 

You spend hours doing a trophy, someone else achieves that trophy but it was through share play / someone did it for them, they then spout how easy that trophy was when they haven't a clue.

 

I think that's why the trophy list for Celeste upset a lot of people, there is no way of knowing those who actually completed it properly (difficulty 10/10) and those who used Assist mode (2/10).

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18 minutes ago, FawltyPowers said:

Situations that may have been annoying once / maybe still could annoy me:

 

You spend hours doing a trophy, finally achieve it, then a later patch comes out that simplifies that trophy or a glitch is discovered to negate the difficulty. I wouldn't be annoyed at someone using that glitch but there's no way of knowing that I would have done it the difficult way.

 

You spend hours doing a trophy, someone else achieves that trophy but it was through share play / someone did it for them, they then spout how easy that trophy was when they haven't a clue.

 

I think that's why the trophy list for Celeste upset a lot of people, there is no way of knowing those who actually completed it properly (difficulty 10/10) and those who used Assist mode (2/10).

 

I can appreciate that, but I have to ask a question.  Who do you get your trophies for?  Do you get them for yourself as proof to yourself that you completed something difficult?  Or do you get them to allow others to see how good you are at beating something difficult?  One way isn't better than the other, but I would argue that if you are in the former camp, it would make no difference to you how someone else got them.  If you belong to the later camp, than absolutely it would muddy to waters so to speak, and your achievement wouldn't garner you as much admiration as you may have hoped.

 

Personally, I wouldn't care if my list was private and nobody but me could see it.  Actually, I don't think I could be in the later camp, as my ego could not take the fact that there are so many others out there who are simply that much better than me.  I enjoy watching AGDQ and SGDQ, but it always affects that part of my mind that becomes sad when I see others who are so good at something, and I look at myself and think that I am not great ay anything in particular.  I may be good at a bunch of things, but never great.

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55 minutes ago, starcrunch061 said:

Well, I would never call myself a "gatekeeper". To be honest, for years, I awaited the explosion of my hobby of choice. I've loved games since I got a Sears VCS at the age of 5. That's over 40 years now, and for much of that time, I was ridiculed for my passion. 

 

But a strange thing happened. Games happened, and now...I'm not sure I'm pleased with the result. It's like the old Hegelian dialectic. My thesis that games were worthwhile, and the anti-thesis that games were a waste of time finally formed the synthesis of...this. And what do I see? I see many people using games as a way to judge others (like the gatekeepers here). I see people contending that gamers are misogynists, or racists, or hyper-violent would-be terrorists, based on tortured narratives that only find purchase on the internet. And then the internet reactions to this nonsense are far worse than anything most gamers think, but we're all painted with that same brush. 

 

"Dude on twitter makes homophobic remarks. ALL GAMERS ARE HOMOPHOBES!"

 

And let's not forget the proliferation of games which serve simply to deliver some message, while hiding under an aegis of "art". Plenty of games do nothing more than tell a story, but it's a story that would never find purchase anywhere else EXCEPT in video games. Were such a story published as, say, a novel, or a play, it would (rightly) be called pablum. But if it's a video game, then it's ART.

 

Things like that affect me. I know it's not the same as the OP's original point involving easy mode, or trophy glitches, etc., but I can't really say that those things don't affect other people, since I wouldn't allow anyone to say that the proliferation of the "games as art" and "games for social change" movements haven't affected me, even though I attempt to steer clear of such conversations.

 

Any examples of this? I can think of some that take full advantage of the interactivity of the medium to enhance storytelling more than they ever would be able to in a novel/play/etc. (Edith Finch and Gone Home come to mind), but you're making it sound like a negative so idk.

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Pride I guess. But it's still very weird, we just seem to be unable to decide on what kind of competition we want to have as trophy hunters. Amount of trophies? Profile level? Amount of plats? Average plat rarity? Amount of ultra rare trophies? Completion rate? What is it?

 

Like for some reason it just works out for speedrunners. They're ultra competitive but also have one of the most supportive communities out there. Meanwhile we're still screaming at each other about whether doing Mayo is okay or not, whether glitch = cheat, whether we should whitelist GTA V online hacked trophies, whether we should respect a high amount of plats or laugh at it because they're easy stacks and many many more stupid made up problems.

 

The way I see it we should either have more clearly defined cathegories to compete in (and that means really thoughtfully designed so no dog can complain) or just remove the concept of competition for this hobby. The second option is less realistic than the first one. But splitting the competition into tinier groups that can compete within the rules they chose might be a better solution than what we have now.

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50 minutes ago, madbuk said:

Any examples of this? I can think of some that take full advantage of the interactivity of the medium to enhance storytelling more than they ever would be able to in a novel/play/etc. (Edith Finch and Gone Home come to mind), but you're making it sound like a negative so idk.

 

Ah, clever boy. You nearly had me!

 

But I'm not here to debate the merit of games as art, or of games as social change. As I said,

 

1 hour ago, starcrunch061 said:

Well, I would never call myself a "gatekeeper".

 

and

 

1 hour ago, starcrunch061 said:

I attempt to steer clear of such conversations.

 

But my point remains the same: I understand how some people might be bothered by something that, on the face of it, should not bother them at all, because there's no real reason, on the face of it, that games as art should bother me at all...

...

...but yet it does.

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On one hand, I can sympathize. You get the same thing in real life. Some kids have parents who buy them everything, including a car when they turn 16, while others have to earn every dollar. Is it fair for them both to claim equal ownership over the car? Should people be rewarded for taking shortcuts in life? Would it bother you if someone achieved the same result, but through a lot less hard work and dedication?

 

On the other, we're talking about video games here. There are more important things to get worked up over.

 

Either way, a milkshake always tastes better when you earned it.

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I get some of the gatekeeping logic. I mean, let's just look at shareplay as an example.

 

Some games take a lot of skill, practice, and dedication to earn the Platinum. Far more than some are willing to put in to earn the trophy themselves. So instead of putting in the time and dedication to get good enough to earn it themselves, they have someone else do it for them via shareplay, and in some cases PAY THEM to do it. Are people saying they don't understand why someone who put in all the time and effort, and went through the heartache and frustration to earn that plat is angry at someone who had it handed to them for free?

 

Sure, it's out of our control, and we should focus on ourselves instead of others, but I don't think that makes it any less upsetting. Earning a hard trophy should be like a right of passage. It's something trophy hunters can look at someone else's profile and know, "They went through the struggle too to do something great." and can show their respect and appreciation towards the other person, and who knows? It could even lead to an interesting conversation or strike up old memories.

 

However, what if the person who you gave respect to or reached out to just says, "Lol, it was easy with shareplay." They're instantly not part of the club because they never went through the struggle. You don't want to acknowledge them because they don't understand what it's truly like to earn the platinum themselves.

 

I'm personally not like this, and won't judge others for taking the path of least resistance, but I totally understand why someone would think this way. It's kind of an elitist mindset, but all they really want is for others to share that same excitement and sense of achievement that they got earning the trophies legit and by themselves.

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Well this hits super close to home for me. xD I used to be a INSANE elitist when it came to games I played like League of Legends or TERA and boy the effort wasted caring about other people instead of what I was doing... Yikes. I've mentioned this in various other places, but people need to realize most gamers just want to have fun at the end of the day. Such a waste of time and effort to be worrying about what others are doing. It's beyond your control and shouldn't have any effect your personal gaming/goals/achievements. Being an elitist is so draining. In regards to trophy hunting, I'd rather see more trophy hunters of all types than have someone get upset because I brought them down for what they like to do. The only time these days I'll get upset is if someone comes at me with the same eEgo attitude I used to have. I'm here (in the gamingverse) to have fun, not be ridiculed and judged for what I like to do.

 

Sadly, in the end you'll always have some eEgo elite people who like bashing down people on both sides of the playing field. "You're not good enough, you used a glitch, blah, blah, blah.. blah blah blah" all the way to "I'm so much better than you because I completed this in half the time of you using this exploit hahahaha you sux git gud". I don't get this. Cheat codes/game shark/glitches/exploits have been around since forever in games. In a way, it's almost an artistic form of finding unique ways to break the game. Just look at all the speed running games/gamers and how happy they get breaking these games. Then, look at all the players who legitimately speed run the same games without using glitches and exploits. Each sector is happy in their own right. Why? They are having FUN doing what they like to do. Period. End of discussion. So, if you like to run games "legit and skilled"? Find people like yourself and go have fun competing among yourselves. Like to glitch games? Go for it. Each side has to stop treating the other like they are somehow disgusting, vile human beings. It's despicable. What's the use of getting angry over something someone else did? Nothing. No benefit. No reward. Nada. Goose egg.

 

So I find it so amusing how the speed running community shares secrets, tactics, glitches and exploits for the purposes of making each other better/speeding up the game. Yet in this hobby if you're really struggling with a trophy and ask for/get help/shareplay, you could get pushed down for "lack of skill" or some other ridiculous reason. Let's take Dark Souls. Me personally, I never used the summoning system when I played through it. Others definitely did to earn the same stuff I did. Do I go hunting these players down, bashing and mocking them? Not at all. At the end of the day, I completed the game the way I wanted too, they completed the game they wanted too. We both move forward and are happy with our results. It's not that big of a deal, honestly. What's next? Using guides makes you a "inferior" gamer? Can't play co-op enabled games cause using two players instead of one makes you, personally, a terrible gamer to be shamed for all time? Please.  

 

The "hard to bite" truth for all of us is that at the end of the day in 5.. 10... 20 years from now, literally next to no one but ourselves will care what you did on your PlayStation, what trophies you glitched for, earned "legit", what games you played, how "skilled" you were or anything like that. The games we play today will be long, long dead by that time and people will be focusing on the fresh and new games of that era, up and coming pro-gamers, current best trophy hunters, tackling new challenges and the cycle repeats again. Only thing that matters is can you look back and say you personally had fun doing what you did? That's pretty much it. No one else gives a damn.

 

Ever since I stopped worrying about what other people do, life's just so much sweeter not only in games but in the real world too. If you glitch for a trophy it took me hours to earn, more power to you. I earned it my way, you earned it your way. Nothing to get worked up about. I will never understand why some people think that the way they play their games somehow translates to them being king of the castle over everyone else. You're just a player like everyone else, woop de doo. That's why the only question I'll ever ask people is: Are you having fun with your gaming? If so, great! If not, maybe you need to work on that, cause that speaks more to your own heart than what others are doing. 

 

Thus concludes my thoughts on the matter. I will continue spreading the gospel of not giving a damn and hope it catches on someday. I'm sure more people would be mellowed out if they thought the same way. >x>

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Here's the thing with gatekeeping when it comes to trophies and such.

 

Glitches and whatnot is absolutely fine for playing the game, you bought it and absolutely you can do whatever you want with it (within the terms of service). If you get someone to come help co-op through Dark Souls that doesn't make you any less of a gamer. And with glitches, just look at speedrunners, you want to go tell them they suck at the game? Haha!

 

But trophies in themselves are like a special stamp for meeting a special goal, finishing a bonus challenge type of task. When other people cheat them it devalues it for everyone else. Most of the time these are additional challenges and people seem to feel entitled to have everything even when they can't do it. If you can't beat the hardest difficulty setting in a game that's absolutely fine, not everyone can, it's not made for you and that's okay because not everything is. Hard modes often exist for the small percentage of players (heck, statistically most gamers don't even finish games let alone chase extra challenge). When you go through some patch removal or something to exploit some game breaking glitch just so you can be given the same 'status' as someone who painfully went through a hard mode you can surely see why they'd act so gatekeeping to those achievements. 

 

Think of achievements less as 'a virtual picture' as some like to devalue them to in order to mock trophy hunters etc. and like what they are, a visual representation of a successful task, much like real world trophies and medals. If anyone could buy an official Olympic gold medal for whatever they wanted and be put into their records what would be the damn point of the Olympics? I'll just go buy more 100m Golds than Bolt and be higher than him on the leaderboards, why work for it? xD

 

It's absolutely stupid to gatekeep gaming as a whole, completely agree with that so much and it does frustrate me when people try to gatekeep games from so called 'casual gaming scum' (just let people enjoy things!) but when it comes go achievements there's good reason for them to be gatekeeped a bit, otherwise they do just become a random little picture on your profile and nothing more.

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Because you won't git gud, and then like in everything in life you just skipped and didn't solved a problem:). Cheating is cheating, nobody likes unfair moves, even those for whom this is a way of life. And anger comes also from people who won't git gud dealing with this.

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10 hours ago, Sir_Bee said:

I have never, and will never understand why any one gamer thinks that how they play this hobby is better than how another person plays this hobby.  Even those who want to cheat their trophies, are perfectly welcome to do so, if that is the part of this world they enjoy (being on the leaderboards is another issue, but that is one of fairness, not that one is somehow better than the other).

 

When someone else wants an easy mode in Sekiro, or wants to use a glitch to get the jump rope trophy in FF IX, it has absolutely zero effect on you doing them normally and enjoying your game.  We as a group should want more people to experience and enjoy what we all love, not be elitist and push others away ...

 

My issue with cheating in FFIX is you're robbing yourself of such a great experience. :( And it sucks when using blatant cheats that was never intended doesn't disable trophies, because so many will just use them and miss out. Also, FFIX could have been a really cool platinum if it wasn't for this. I don't care at all if you cheat the skip rope stuff, that stuff always was a total hassle and just completely unfair, and on the PS4 it seems even more unresponsive. But it ruins the Excalibur II run.

 

Sure, I can still do it legit, but it removes some of the experience everyone who gets it have, like a shared experience. The way it is now however, do as you please, just do know you're just missing out if you cheat throughout the entire first playthrough of the game.

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I tend to focus more on my completion percentage than overall number of platinumes/trophies, attempting to clean up old lists and generally play the crap I've payed for over the years but haven't touched yet. How another player chooses to do that is up to them and largely doesn't effect me. I'll be honest, this thread is the first I've known of the supposedly 'gatekeeping' in achievement hunting. I'm aware of peoples issues with Ratalaika Games and the odd comment about methods for retro game rereleases/compilations, but I've never really seen someone just out and out say "GTFO easy trophy fuck". A few discussions aside, this sounds like an imaginary issue.

 

14 hours ago, panikooooos said:

Even if you take real life trophy hunting as an example, which are the animals hunters display on their wall? Have you seen anyone displaying a rabbit's head for example? They display animals who are considered dangerous, rare and took some skill to kill.

 

This is needlessly pedantic on my part, but generally speaking, rabbit hunting is seen as a difficult sport because unless you're using traps, it requires long range low caliber rifles and pinpoint accuracy on something that can move a mile a minute. Hit the wrong part of the animal or use an 'easier' weapon and the rabbit will be basically blown the hell up. Additionally, any hunter wishing to display such a kill wouldn't mount the head, they'd have the body stuffed.

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Some heat thrown in this topic. But some interesting responses that I want to quote and respond to...

 

16 hours ago, Sir_Bee said:

I have never, and will never understand why any one gamer thinks that how they play this hobby is better than how another person plays this hobby.  Even those who want to cheat their trophies, are perfectly welcome to do so, if that is the part of this world they enjoy (being on the leaderboards is another issue, but that is one of fairness, not that one is somehow better than the other).

 

When someone else wants an easy mode in Sekiro, or wants to use a glitch to get the jump rope trophy in FF IX, it has absolutely zero effect on you doing them normally and enjoying your game.  We as a group should want more people to experience and enjoy what we all love, not be elitist and push others away ...

 

I'm sure most of anyone who played Jak 2 and Jak 3 used the orb glitch. I used the orb glitch, but according to every trophy hunter that is perfectly acceptable since that has pretty much been the norm since they were released on the PlayStation 3 back in 2012.

 

Now most people just go to the Debug Menu. Boom, all trophies done in just a few minutes, you don't even have to play the fucking games. PSNProfiles is perfectly fine with people doing this, and it's allowed since they can't be flagged for using the Debug Menu.

 

My problem comes when people start bitching about things like Wolfenstein 2's Mein Leben, or asking for games like Monster Hunter World to have the grind drastically reduced. People want the easy way, that's the world we live in now especially with today's technology.

 

I hate the elitists like most of everyone else here, but I also hate when people bitch something is too hard and they want to nerf it, even though it was perfectly fine beforehand.

 

15 hours ago, starcrunch061 said:

Well, I would never call myself a "gatekeeper". To be honest, for years, I awaited the explosion of my hobby of choice. I've loved games since I got a Sears VCS at the age of 5. That's over 40 years now, and for much of that time, I was ridiculed for my passion. 

 

But a strange thing happened. Games happened, and now...I'm not sure I'm pleased with the result. It's like the old Hegelian dialectic. My thesis that games were worthwhile, and the anti-thesis that games were a waste of time finally formed the synthesis of...this. And what do I see? I see many people using games as a way to judge others (like the gatekeepers here). I see people contending that gamers are misogynists, or racists, or hyper-violent would-be terrorists, based on tortured narratives that only find purchase on the internet. And then the internet reactions to this nonsense are far worse than anything most gamers think, but we're all painted with that same brush. 

 

"Dude on twitter makes homophobic remarks. ALL GAMERS ARE HOMOPHOBES!"

 

And let's not forget the proliferation of games which serve simply to deliver some message, while hiding under an aegis of "art". Plenty of games do nothing more than tell a story, but it's a story that would never find purchase anywhere else EXCEPT in video games. Were such a story published as, say, a novel, or a play, it would (rightly) be called pablum. But if it's a video game, then it's ART.

 

Things like that affect me. I know it's not the same as the OP's original point involving easy mode, or trophy glitches, etc., but I can't really say that those things don't affect other people, since I wouldn't allow anyone to say that the proliferation of the "games as art" and "games for social change" movements haven't affected me, even though I attempt to steer clear of such conversations.

 

 

Interesting angle.

 

Back then most parents saw video games as a waste of time because obviously.... they didn't grow up on them. My own mother used to get me Nintendo 64 games some 20 years ago and she often wondered why I was so obsessed with them.

 

Baby Boomers are probably the last generation that was raised on old fashioned ideals and didn't particularly see gaming as something worthwhile. A number of Millennial parents that were once my high school peers and college peers are perfectly good with gaming, because like myself they grew up on them. Though it irks me a little when they place their 2 year old kid in front of an iPad all day, but that's another story for another time.

 

The whole misogynist, racist thing is taking things too far, I'll admit that.

 

What I will say is the video game industry is hearing towards a SJW centric, political type of platform. Mortal Kombat 11 was heavily scrutinized for it's SJW agenda and other crap, not really surprising since this is the direction we've been heading towards. I've spent the past decade playing games to escape real life, not to be reminded of it. AAA games are supposed to tell a compelling story, but sometimes I can't look at the art as much as I look at something that was made to make a shit ton of money and to push a political agenda.

 

15 hours ago, Sir_Bee said:

 

I can appreciate that, but I have to ask a question.  Who do you get your trophies for?  Do you get them for yourself as proof to yourself that you completed something difficult?  Or do you get them to allow others to see how good you are at beating something difficult?  One way isn't better than the other, but I would argue that if you are in the former camp, it would make no difference to you how someone else got them.  If you belong to the later camp, than absolutely it would muddy to waters so to speak, and your achievement wouldn't garner you as much admiration as you may have hoped.

 

Personally, I wouldn't care if my list was private and nobody but me could see it.  Actually, I don't think I could be in the later camp, as my ego could not take the fact that there are so many others out there who are simply that much better than me.  I enjoy watching AGDQ and SGDQ, but it always affects that part of my mind that becomes sad when I see others who are so good at something, and I look at myself and think that I am not great ay anything in particular.  I may be good at a bunch of things, but never great.

 

I learned a long time ago that there will always be someone better.

 

I look at guys like TheYuriG, Floriiss, Danny_Johansen, Beatminaz and SlimSanta94. All of them active trophy hunters with a profile here on this website. Floriiss has 100 percent in Crypt of the Necrodancer which is generally regarded as one of the hardest PSN games with trophies. Some of his other accomplishments are extremely impressive, and I can probably guess he is a talented gamer. I will probably never outdo guys like him, because truthfully I'm pretty average.

 

Speaking of AGDQ and SGDQ, I'm sure you've seen Super Meat Boy. Those guys are far more talented at the game than I'll ever be. One of the best players 100 percented Super Meat Boy within 8 to 10 hours, and considering how hard that game is, that is impressive. It took me over two years to get the platinum in Meat Boy, and it may very well be the most impressive platinum I'll ever have.

 

The fact of the matter is, there is going to be someone better. Millions of people play baseball, with some hoping they can reach the Minor Leagues. Guys like Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are few and far between, they are simply the best of the best.

 

I stopped caring about competition ages ago. I basically set my own goals for trophy hunting, I don't give a shit what other people think about my account unless I specifically ask them to do a review of me.

 

Play what you want, get the platinum trophies in games you want to play, and move on. You'll be much happier and satisfied than to worry about how said person got said trophy, or how people over at AGDQ are so fucking good you can never hope to be half as good.

 

Overall I'm basically average, but I'm fine with what I'm doing.

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17 hours ago, TonicLemonIce said:

Like for some reason it just works out for speedrunners. They're ultra competitive but also have one of the most supportive communities out there. Meanwhile we're still screaming at each other about whether doing Mayo is okay or not, whether glitch = cheat, whether we should whitelist GTA V online hacked trophies, whether we should respect a high amount of plats or laugh at it because they're easy stacks and many many more stupid made up problems.

 

13 hours ago, SanctifiedSword said:

So I find it so amusing how the speed running community shares secrets, tactics, glitches and exploits for the purposes of making each other better/speeding up the game. Yet in this hobby if you're really struggling with a trophy and ask for/get help/shareplay, you could get pushed down for "lack of skill" or some other ridiculous reason.

 

There are huge differences between something like "speedrunning" and "trophy hunting". First of all, even glitched speedruns take a lot of practice and skill to pull off. Try for example doing the "Sen Fortress"-skip in Dark Souls... It ain't that easy, and that's not the hardest glitch/skip in the game. Or take Mirrors Edge.. That's still one of the most difficult games to speedrun, even with all the glitches that have been found. 

 

But most importantly, there are different leaderboards for glitched and glitchless speedruns. We don't have that here. We don't have separate trophy lists for glitched / cheated games and legit games. Consequently, if someone cheats a trophy that I myself earned legit, it affects my own stats as well: it affects my average rarity. And before anyone comes around telling me that the average rarity stat doesn't mean anything, others care about their number of platinums, about their number of trophies, etc... I care about my completion percentage and average rarity. 

 

And there is a difference between using an in-game option to make a platinum easier, like in Celeste, where assist mode doesn't disable trophies (which it should in my opinion, but that's another discussion), because I can decide not to play that game if I don't want to support the devs decision. But when I do a game legit, like Hollow Knight, it hurts to see that game sitting at a (currently) 8.33% platinum rate when it should be a sub-2% platinum. And @Sir_Bee you could now ask me if I play games for myself or for others, and I will again mention that even though I play for myself, all the people that cheated Hollow Knight have a direct influence on my own stats. 

 

To make a more extreme example... Take Super Meat Boy. I'm not going to argue whether the game is as hard as its reputation, but it is generally accepted as a prestigious platinum, requiring plenty of skill and practice to get. It is sitting at 0.2% here, which is already too high anyways since there are still many people that cheated the platinum, but it's low enough. Now tomorrow an invincibility exploit is discovered. Suddenly every second person has the SMB platinum. Would that be right? Would that be fair to the ~300 people that did it legit?

 

And in addition, while there are many players that admit when they used an exploit or glitch, there are many more that don't, and instad put themselves in the same boat as the ones that did the same thing legit. 

 

Edited by Arcesius
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1 hour ago, Arcesius said:

And in addition, while there are many players that admit when they used an exploit or glitch, there are many more that don't, and instad put themselves in the same boat as the ones that did the same thing legit.

 

Where they put themselves is a constant fear of being caught and humiliated any moment, otherwise they would not bother to conceal that they've taken a shortcut. This must be much worse than making (or losing) progress with a clear conscience.

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2 hours ago, Arcesius said:

There are huge differences between something like "speedrunning" and "trophy hunting". First of all, even glitched speedruns take a lot of practice and skill to pull off. Try for example doing the "Sen Fortress"-skip in Dark Souls... It ain't that easy, and that's not the hardest glitch/skip in the game. Or take Mirrors Edge.. That's still one of the most difficult games to speedrun, even with all the glitches that have been found.

 

There's a difference there too.

 

I did everything in Dark Souls by myself and without any glitches. The option is there yes, and plenty of seasoned hardcore Dark Soul fans have done it I'm sure. Completely optional, but necessary for those who speed run through the game.

 

Mirrors Edge on the other hard has speedruns that are required for the platinum. So trophy hunters who go after that game will need to get the skill and practice to do those speed runs. Not the hardest game on the PS3, but a pretty respectable platinum.

 

Dark Souls in comparison is much more casual friendly. There are plenty of things you can do to make the experience much more difficult, but most trophy hunters aren't willing to go the extra mile to really challenge themselves especially if the trophy list itself doesn't require you to.

 

2 hours ago, Arcesius said:

But most importantly, there are different leaderboards for glitched and glitchless speedruns. We don't have that here. We don't have separate trophy lists for glitched / cheated games and legit games. Consequently, if someone cheats a trophy that I myself earned legit, it affects my own stats as well: it affects my average rarity. And before anyone comes around telling me that the average rarity stat doesn't mean anything, others care about their number of platinums, about their number of trophies, etc... I care about my completion percentage and average rarity.

 

There was a list for cheaters back in 2014 - 2016 when I first started using PSNProfiles, before @Sly Ripper went and did the website overhaul in December 2016. You had a list of legit players on the leaderboards, which counted... and then there were those who cheated. I found a few cheaters who had more trophies than @Hakoom, but I'm just pointing that out since this isn't really relevant to the main discussion on this thread.

 

Average rarity I feel is a good measure of what types of games people play and what their difficulty range is. People with rarity below 40 percent usually play a lot of games that require some amount of effort, people with above 60 rarity usually have a bunch of Ratalaika stacks and a bunch of easy games that are done in under a hour. This is stereotyping yes, but the way I look at it, the lower the rarity, the better.

 

2 hours ago, Arcesius said:

And there is a difference between using an in-game option to make a platinum easier, like in Celeste, where assist mode doesn't disable trophies (which it should in my opinion, but that's another discussion), because I can decide not to play that game if I don't want to support the devs decision. But when I do a game legit, like Hollow Knight, it hurts to see that game sitting at a (currently) 8.33% platinum rate when it should be a sub-2% platinum. And @Sir_Bee you could now ask me if I play games for myself or for others, and I will again mention that even though I play for myself, all the people that cheated Hollow Knight have a direct influence on my own stats.

 

You'd be looking at an extremely difficult platinum from Celeste if everything had to be done legit. Same with Hollow Knight.

 

The two later Jak and Daxter games (Jak 2 and Jak 3) would have a much lower rarity if every orb had to be collected legit and by doing those challenges. I would bet everything the platinum trophies would be Very Rare, or even Ultra Rare. Fact of the matter is pretty much everyone did the Orb Glitch, you sit there and you repeat the glitch for however long until the trophy pops.

 

The Debug Menu just completely destroys any gameplay experience. The fact that people have gotten the platinums in the trilogy without any exposure to actually playing the games really hurts me. I was a Jak and Daxter fan back in the day and to see guys earn the platinum in a matter of minutes is nothing short of cheating.

 

2 hours ago, Arcesius said:

To make a more extreme example... Take Super Meat Boy. I'm not going to argue whether the game is as hard as its reputation, but it is generally accepted as a prestigious platinum, requiring plenty of skill and practice to get. It is sitting at 0.2% here, which is already too high anyways since there are still many people that cheated the platinum, but it's low enough. Now tomorrow an invincibility exploit is discovered. Suddenly every second person has the SMB platinum. Would that be right? Would that be fair to the ~300 people that did it legit?

 

The reason it's that low is because Super Meat Boy was a PS Plus for a while. 95 - 98 percent of everybody who are game owners probably just picked up the game for a few minutes, earned a trophy or two, then moved on to something else, never touching it again.

 

You can earn 3 - 5 trophies and you already have an A rank from Super Meat Boy on your profile.

 

Someone by the name of The_Hunter_Fr got the platinum in just over two days. I thought, "Wow, very impressive" considering that the first guy who earned the platinum in Meat Boy did it all legit. Turns out he used CFW software on his Vita to basically put custom timestamps on his trophies, trying to make it look legit until someone finally found the error in those timestamps.

 

There are other tough games that people cheated. If you can't do the game yourself, then just leave it and move on. I see no pride in cheating a game that you can't finish because you don't have the skill or dedication.

 

2 hours ago, Arcesius said:

And in addition, while there are many players that admit when they used an exploit or glitch, there are many more that don't, and instad put themselves in the same boat as the ones that did the same thing legit.

 

Yes. At least I can admit which exploits and glitches I used.

Edited by Spaz
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7 hours ago, Arcesius said:

 

 

There are huge differences between something like "speedrunning" and "trophy hunting". First of all, even glitched speedruns take a lot of practice and skill to pull off. Try for example doing the "Sen Fortress"-skip in Dark Souls... It ain't that easy, and that's not the hardest glitch/skip in the game. Or take Mirrors Edge.. That's still one of the most difficult games to speedrun, even with all the glitches that have been found. 

 

But most importantly, there are different leaderboards for glitched and glitchless speedruns. We don't have that here. We don't have separate trophy lists for glitched / cheated games and legit games. Consequently, if someone cheats a trophy that I myself earned legit, it affects my own stats as well: it affects my average rarity. And before anyone comes around telling me that the average rarity stat doesn't mean anything, others care about their number of platinums, about their number of trophies, etc... I care about my completion percentage and average rarity. 

Yeah, that was almost precisely my point. I'm just trying to play devils advocate here, so I hope I'm not offending anyone. I'm personally more on the side of skill/legit/no glitches, but trying to see it from both sides here...

 

In speedrunning there is a concise, objective standard to reach that separates skilled players from unskilled players: time to complete a game, usually recorded so people can analyze/verify your runs. What about trophy hunting? What's our objective standard here? What might be important to me, might not be important to you (as you said). What's important to you, might not even reach the tip of my mind for me. There's no standard in trophy hunting. Is it completion %? Is it amount of hard games played? Rarity? Total platinums earned? Trophies earned, regardless of plats? Ezpz games? What makes a trophy hunter a "legit" or "skilled" trophy hunter? There's so many different standards thrown around but no one's every come to a set of "rules" everyone else must follow or else you're "out". So whats to say someone can't glitch/shareplay/etc? 

 

However I totally agree with you that things like glitched trophies/exploits demerit the value of trophies as a whole (rarity, completion, plats earned)... for yourself and what you care about. Which sucks, I wholeheartedly agree. The point I was thinking with the gatekeeping though, is who is right? Is it you, who cares about rarity? Or the person who only gives a damn about platinum's, to hell with morals and "legitness" to get everything and anything because that's what's important to them? It's like a circle that never ends because no one can figure out the objective standard we're all supposed to be reaching for and hold each other accountable to. Whereas in speed running there's a standard you have to reach: time to completion. How you do that and what glitches you use is up to you, but if you don't practice and practice, you're not gonna get anywhere. If you do something outside the rules, you're eliminated. There is DEFINITELY a skill gap between the "has beens" and the "never gonna be" in that category.

 

So far it looks like the only objective standard we have with trophy hunting is not to use cheating software to pop trophies in an unobtainable way. Beyond that, it's like the wild west.

 

To be fair though to the conversation (for myself), there are games out there that I couldn't touch with a 50 foot pole because their difficulty is insane. I always will tip my hat off to those players who can play those games, not just for the trophies, but the act of playing the game itself is a monumental feat I couldn't obtain in a million years. I agree with @Spaz that there are games that should be TOUGH, without "easy modes" or devs caving into complaints and toning down the difficulty of the game itself. Again though, when it comes to the trophy hunting aspect of it, would it be fair to glitch your way through a platinum whereas others did it legit? Maybe, maybe not. That depends on your version of what your "standard" is for other gamers in this hobby. Since there's no official set of rules... you may be right and you may be wrong. It's all about perspective. (Again I'm just playing devils advocate here, imo I don't think it's very fair to those players that spent the time and effort to do something so insanely hard). 

 

Me, personally, I'd love for people to be honest about what glitches/exploits they used or hell even stop doing them all together. I'd love for "legit" gamers to be recognized for their feats and difficult games. Unfortunately, like you said, we don't have more leaderboards here. Which I don't get. TrueTrophies/TrueAchievements, as well as other sites, have more leaderboards. Why can't we? Maybe if we had more leaderboards and more standards, we would have a more clear expectation of what to hold each other accountable to for those different categories of trophy hunting. I've used glitches in Sekiro and Bloodborne to complete those games myself, so I'm a dirty little no-goody two shoes myself. Guilty as charged... but only cause I cared about my % completion, not necessarily doing everything "the right way". So I didn't see anything wrong with it or consider how it might affect others. 

 

Someone above mentioned that they don't really see this issue out in the open/it being imaginary issue. To me, I think it exists, but more so mentally than actually coming out and telling someone about it. People will judge other profiles/dismiss them/other players effectively gatekeeping others, even if they don't say anything about it. Which is fine, we all probably do that to some degree. Keeping it to yourself is probably the best solution: if you see something you don't like just move on. 

 

That's why my conclusion was not giving a damn about other players: it's beyond your control, it might affect you but there's nothing you can do about it. 

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7 hours ago, SanctifiedSword said:

In speedrunning there is a concise, objective standard to reach that separates skilled players from unskilled players: time to complete a game, usually recorded so people can analyze/verify your runs. What about trophy hunting? What's our objective standard here? What might be important to me, might not be important to you (as you said). What's important to you, might not even reach the tip of my mind for me. There's no standard in trophy hunting. Is it completion %? Is it amount of hard games played? Rarity? Total platinums earned? Trophies earned, regardless of plats? Ezpz games? What makes a trophy hunter a "legit" or "skilled" trophy hunter? There's so many different standards thrown around but no one's every come to a set of "rules" everyone else must follow or else you're "out". So whats to say someone can't glitch/shareplay/etc?

 

To put this short and in simple terms, we all have different goals and agendas.

 

I agree with a lot of @Arcesius's points, but even I will admit that his goals and what he considers important differs greatly from how I look at trophy hunting. The formula that I've come to appreciate here on PSNProfiles is separating the obvious cheaters from the more legit players on the leaderboards. There are plenty of cheaters ranked on the leaderboards, that's pretty much to be expected, but at least there is a little bit of a formula to where the guy who hacked hundreds of platinum trophies is outright removed from the rankings. So therefore, a lot of players are for the most part, hard working and earned their platinums through time and dedication. But I'm not trying to paint this with a brush. There's always going to be cheaters who will probably NEVER get caught, and there are plenty who haven't outright cheated.

 

However, people are on the fence with glitching and share playing. I personally think share play is outright cheating. I know plenty of people who needed help with Brutality 101 in Batman Arkham Knight, or the ...Becomes the Master trophy in Titanfall 2. Both are heavily skill based, meaning you need the skill and the time to earn those trophies by yourself. I earned them legit on my own through practice, but there are many people who had someone else get those trophies through share play. They're not going to admit it obviously, but the option is there and at this point in time, countless many have done it.

 

Again I will mention the Debug Menu from the Jak and Daxter games. Should that be called cheating? PSNProfiles is perfectly fine with this and has been for quite some time. But who's to say this person had past experience playing the games, as opposed to just outright using the Debug Menu to get quick and easy trophies who never played the games at all?

 

At least with the Orb Glitch you still had to play through the story. Now people can just pop up easy trophies as if they were autopopping stacks of games. Much like how myself and others autopopped the Sound Shapes stacks before the servers got shutdown.

 

7 hours ago, SanctifiedSword said:

However I totally agree with you that things like glitched trophies/exploits demerit the value of trophies as a whole (rarity, completion, plats earned)... for yourself and what you care about. Which sucks, I wholeheartedly agree. The point I was thinking with the gatekeeping though, is who is right? Is it you, who cares about rarity? Or the person who only gives a damn about platinum's, to hell with morals and "legitness" to get everything and anything because that's what's important to them? It's like a circle that never ends because no one can figure out the objective standard we're all supposed to be reaching for and hold each other accountable to. Whereas in speed running there's a standard you have to reach: time to completion. How you do that and what glitches you use is up to you, but if you don't practice and practice, you're not gonna get anywhere. If you do something outside the rules, you're eliminated. There is DEFINITELY a skill gap between the "has beens" and the "never gonna be" in that category.

 

This is basically why my arguments on the leaderboards have ended up in disaster.

 

I've made it a point several times in the past that I think leaderboards for the most part are completely worthless and a waste of time and effort. Yet despite my efforts to try to make a good argument on this, I was attacked by those who cared about the numbers and the rankings. So I basically said "Fuck It", because the whole conversation was a big waste.

 

I don't value glitched speed runs. I value legit speed runs. It always impresses me when people finish games like the old Super Mario Bros lightning fast on ACDQ, something that I'll never be able to pull off as long as I live. I played this old game countless times, and I'm familiar with practically every segment of every level. But I still don't have the skill to come anywhere close to the times that these speed runners have pulled off. I greatly respect these players.

 

Honestly the speed running community and the fanbase that ACDQ has developed is a whole nother category altogether. The trophy hunting community is composed of many different formulas and sub communities. I don't consider myself a speed runner by any means, even though I'm in the Top 10 in fastest times in a few games I've done.

 

One of the best players of Super Meat Boy can easily beat the #1 fastest time on PSNProfiles. So in that sense, there are a number of people who can easily blaze through a game in record time for quite a number of games here. But most speed runners aren't trophy hunters, in fact a lot of them play the same games for upwards of 500 - 1000 hours or more just so they can beat their own times by a thousandth of a second. That is skill and dedication, and that is something I will never do because I frankly don't think that is fun in any sense of the word.

 

7 hours ago, SanctifiedSword said:

Me, personally, I'd love for people to be honest about what glitches/exploits they used or hell even stop doing them all together. I'd love for "legit" gamers to be recognized for their feats and difficult games. Unfortunately, like you said, we don't have more leaderboards here. Which I don't get. TrueTrophies/TrueAchievements, as well as other sites, have more leaderboards. Why can't we? Maybe if we had more leaderboards and more standards, we would have a more clear expectation of what to hold each other accountable to for those different categories of trophy hunting. I've used glitches in Sekiro and Bloodborne to complete those games myself, so I'm a dirty little no-goody two shoes myself. Guilty as charged... but only cause I cared about my % completion, not necessarily doing everything "the right way". So I didn't see anything wrong with it or consider how it might affect others.

 

I've used plenty of glitches and exploits myself in my time. Boosting in a sense shouldn't be called legit either. There are very few people with as many trophies as me or more who earned everything legit in terms of getting the trophies naturally and on their own.

 

But I do agree with having more leaderboards. I don't value the rankings as having any credibility because plenty of people have cheated through share play and obviously some of the top ranking trophy hunters have multiple people playing on the same accounts to earn trophies. I don't value any of that, but I value those who played mostly legit who have maybe used a glitch or two in a game.

 

I have autopopped trophies and used the Ratchet & Clank bolt glitch to get one million bolts instead of doing five - six playthroughs to get those bolts legit. So I'm just as guilty as you or anyone else who has used glitches in the past.

 

But where do we draw the line? That is a question that nobody can answer, because like you said, there is no real standard in trophy hunting.

 

7 hours ago, SanctifiedSword said:

 That's why my conclusion was not giving a damn about other players: it's beyond your control, it might affect you but there's nothing you can do about it. 

 

People bitch about politics and religion all the time, but there's nothing they can do about it.

 

We decided to make an account on the forums and make forum posts. That's already more than most people will ever do.

 

The best you can do is keep a level ahead, agree to disagree and move on from there. I don't give a crap about other players in general, but it doesn't mean I can't make an opinion. I've been on forum websites long enough to know that 99.9 percent of everyone can only make opinions.

 

Other players can do what they want, we do what we want and leave them alone. That's pretty much what it comes down to.

Edited by Spaz
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