total.pardo

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i have been struggling during my playing time with the beta of Treyarch’s watered down shooter Call of Duty 5: World at War - retro edition. (i enjoy the infantilism of the tag line of their website: Defining the Next Level - level of what, frustration over ineptness?) retro because the ground breaking earlier version, submitted by Infinity Ward, Call of Duty 4: MODERN Warfare was just that - a modern game, set in modern times, for modern expectations. it seems to me that activision developers almost always get it right.

not so much that you’d know it, but old Treyarch went backwards - maybe its all they know - but if you played COD3 (published by - you got it - Treyarch) you’d think World War 2 was all there was out there to set a title up to…

now, lets delve a bit into what playing a beta means.

beta means just that - an unfinished game, chock full of errors, short coding, glitches (to the uninitiated, a “glitch” is defined as an unintended programatic aspect of a game that, once discovered, affords an advantage to players who exploit it - could be a place where your avatar falls under the game world and is unreachable by other players), and other issues. some players have the opinion that finding glitches is a vital part of the beta experience, and i agree. there is a chasm of difference between discover/report/fix and exploit.

my struggle is with the glitching conundrum.

the conundrum is fairly complex as well. the developers need the crowd-sourced testing to prove the final code for the gold release of a game. so, in the mean time, while players blithely give the developer free testing man-hours (with the benefit of getting to play a “free” <sarcasm intended> game), player frustration over glitching and developer non responsiveness mounts.

exploit is fairly evident in this context. rolling up a 28 kill, ZERO death round is an exploit. falling into an area of the map that no one can touch you while you can wreak havoc is an exploit.

on the xbox 360 live forums, there are those players that believe this behavior is critical to proving out a title. there are others who view this behavior as immoral. and rightly so.

and, here is the kicker: the statistics (this is the cumulative amounts of virtual things a player does in the game - number of kills and deaths, wins and losses, etc.) accumulated in the beta are WIPED out when the full retail title is issued. so, i ask, what other purpose than being a complete asshole does it serve for someone to play and glitch in this context, continuously, to wit:

Amnizu wrote:
I agree with the OP. It’s fair to assume that anyone who would take advantage of the glitch in a beta, would also take advantage of the glitch in a released game. It’s not a moral or held accountable thing for me, it’s simply these people have shown themselves to be willing to cheat given the opportunity, for my own enjoyment I would rather not game with them.

totalpardo wrote:

I could not agree more.

Don’t give me this crap that its about finding glitches in a beta when I see the average d-bag rolling around on that map with a 28-0 kdr. That’s the immoral part. Come out of the damn ground and fight you pu$$ie cheater…

Playing the role of apologist for people who glitch only fuels the flames. Yes, report whoever you want. Get reported enough and you will be banned - beta or not. Try it - flame me for saying it. But it will happen. Do you own research - PM a mod before you fire off your vitriolic response to my post.

The problem is LIVE doesn’t ban ENOUGH players. On a paid to play service, there should be a lot more banning for this crap - beta or not.

Its not the average player’s job to be owned continuously by a glitcher to help a developer. This glitch was reported WEEKS ago to the developer and NOTHING was done. And the same smacked a$$e$$ go on glitching - what - because its a beta and its required so the developer knows about the error? Great way to justify bad gaming behaviors… It make me wonder what other glitches and errors are going to be foisted on to the paying crowds for this title upon release.

[From Xbox.com | Xbox 360 Games - Re: Thank you glitch users! Your keeping me busy!!]

maybe this is just one old boy’s complaint. maybe i am all wet. but this behavior carries over to the release edition of the title and beyond. its so bad in some rounds that games become unplayable. in a world where there is a thousand things to do, i don’t have time to be cheated. i just want players to play straight up - leveled - beat me on the same terms and conditions i play under - not with the latest off map exploit you and your cheating buddies discovered doing something you were probably not supposed or intended to do anyway.

don’t count on m$ LIVE conducting any investigations or responding to the numerous complaints filed over the LIVE network. all the honest player can do is “avoid” being matched (this is done through the service, automatically and supposedly according to their patented TrueSkill matchmaking system - your degree in advanced calculus will explain the fairness of this m$ “benefit”) with the consummate d-bag that thinks its fun times to glitch.

perhaps, one day in a more fair future, the rocket scientists at m$ will add a component accounting for the uncertainty of the gamer’s d-bag-ness. if you are going to call it TrueSkill, be true about it.