Once again we are in a situation where event content has been released critically broken. Players are unable to complete events due to the game locking up, which only really becomes apparent after having committed deep to event shop purchases.
I’m curious, would IP2 consider it okay in situations like this one if the community hacks the game files to fix the issue? In this specific case, modifying the troop data by replacing the broken traits with some others that allow the event to be played without the game locking up?
I know, this is technically against the Terms of Service. However, players have paid for event participation, IP2 won’t compensate wasted participation fees and won’t even react in any way until the event is well over. If IP2 cares so little about running the game properly, maybe the community could be allowed to assist in keeping the game in a playable state? It might also help to ease the frustration that has been building up in the community for well over a year now.
Nice idea, but, if they’re sensible, there would be some sort of protocol in place (eg a checksum) to make sure that files aren’t tampered with, otherwise unscruplous players could start modifying any traits they wanted…
Personally I’d just like to be able to hack the sound files to stop some of the more irritating ones (eg Egg Thief’s “Yew didn’t neeed it anyway!” every time I cast her spell in my Cedric team) without having to mute the rest of the game sounds
If they were even more sensible there would be something in place on server side to make sure that the game in general hasn’t been tampered with. Funny thing is, thinking this through a little it looks entirely possible to deactivate traits without modifying game files, and possibly without violating the ToS…
You are right though, it’s a Pandora’s Box that should better remain closed. Still, it’s just so aggravating, like an open manhole cover in a busy street. It would take just a few minutes to prevent disaster, except that the only people allowed to close it have left for the weekend. And it’s usually the same people that just opened it a few minutes earlier.
On the bright side, there still was someone around this time, and they really made a temporary fix available. Out of about 10 players on our Discord, not a single one believed that could possibly happen, which probably speaks volumes about the level of service we’ve come to expect. Hopefully this will not be a one-time thing, this game desperately needs a bit of love.
Impossible to deliver the fix to all players.
How would you distribute the client files after hacking?
Somebody makes a script and says here execute this and you will be good.
As a software dev, this is the “are you crazy” category. Executing a script from untrusted sources is just stupid.
Providing step by step instructions how to fix it? Less tech savvy people can’t do it or won’t dare to attempt it?
How would you distribute the information? Maybe 10% of the player base are active on the forum and this is an official channel.
Also you would need the hack for all platforms. On android you most can’t even run a script. For windows a power shell script might would do, but what about linux? I play GoW on linux on steam.
Those who would apply the “hack-fix” early would get inappropriate advantage, and that would lead to very bad things.
Which sums it up pretty well, it just wouldn’t work out, on several levels. I guess a far easier and better approach to deal with most of the disasters we frequently get subjected to would be to grant beta testers veto rights, all gameplay related content needs to get reviewed and receive a thumbs up prior to delivery. Of course that’s also totally unrealistic, even though it would finally get IP2 that QA department they’ve been skimping on for years now.
