The Hacker Project - a free online game

Well, I personally don't see the point of a system designed solely to limit gameplay either, but that's just me. Obviously it's worked, since people have closed the gap on SGP, right? Before this change, we limited ourselves to a portion of servers and we regulated ourselves in how many virii we installed... now that everyone is "even" and the game restricts our actions for us, we'll play to the full extent the game allows. When the AP system was implemented, my score was roughly 50% higher than the top non-SGP player. It's now ~700% of the top non-SGP.

The AP system is obviously designed to limit gameplay/enjoyment, but why make it limit aesthetics? If you want, make the HPD cost of renaming it correlate to the version, but making it cost AP doesn't make sense.

I totally agree with Arthur. Every mission should be so simple that a monkey could do it. That way, I can hire a monkey to do them for me!
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Yeah... riiiiiight.

No offense intended, but those who have paid/are paying for this game didn't do so to be told that we should "collect less" (read as "play less"). I realize that bandwidth isn't free, but then again some of as are paying for it. Yeah, if someone is collecting a dozen times an hour, I see how that could create some excess server load - but penalizing people based on how many virii they have is absurd. I don't collect nearly as often as some people - probably only every 3 hours or so, often more. Still, on principle it's bizarre to ask people (esp paying people) to change the way they play because of bandwidth. Can you imagine if WoW or Eve asked people to only play for 2 hours a day so their servers didn't get loaded, and penalized people who played more? How many people do you think would keep paying for that game, honestly?

Cool - any idea when this will be imped?

Alright, before I really fly off the handle, can we get some more clarification emi? What do you mean by collection time?

Example:

Say I have 100 virii. I collect all. Is a or b true?
a) I now have to wait a minimum of 6 minutes before collecting again. The next time I collect, I'll have to wait 12 minutes.
b) My virii now generate 6 minutes less of income per hour/day/whatevertime.

I have a decent amount of virii installed. I can now collect ONCE per day without getting my income demolished by this new patch. I don't abuse scripts and I don't use macros. Macros/scripts could also be stopped by making collect all count as one instead of however many virii you have. As it is, I now have even less reason to log into this game. I understand that you're trying to avoid abuse of the game (if people set up a script to automatically download every 6 minutes or something), but people who play the game honestly are being hurt by it as well... I hate to be paranoid, but looking at the recent changelog, I'm almost tempted to think that's the reason it's been set the way it is.

If you want SGP members (and anyone else who actually is calculating and knows how to play) to quit, you should just say so. If people are abusing scripts, ban them (or give them a warning, then ban) - please don't give me one more reason to leave, unless that's your underlying goal.

Thank you for the wonderful analogy. Unfortunately, I'm not looking to spend my life playing this game and, while it's good to have a solid foundation, who really wants to play a game with so few options that pong becomes attractive again? (No, we're not there. Yet.)

::still wants a "mark all as read" function::

Less spam, moar upgrayedz!

Meh. Less game to play. Again.

Moar game!

But seriously - I look forward to when updates to the game give us more options and more game to play, instead of always just limiting what we can do.

It'd be nice to have a "mark all as read" option for the mailbox. When you're higher in the rankings, people tend to send you a lot of spam: "Hai! Ur must no what ur doing cuz ur score is relly hi! Can u help me?" Also, when buying IPs, the messages can add up quickly. Input?

See similar suggestion (and subsequent shoot-down) at http://www.hacker-project.com/forum/index.php?topic=506.0

Sounds cool Jake - I do wish you guys the best of luck. Morality can be a slippery slope, especially when it's based on a specific point of view. Hope our paths never cross!

BUMP - because it's happening even more, and hasn't been addressed yet.

Miharu, I understand that it can be frustrating to feel like you're moving slowly... but you do realize that every other player started exactly where you did, right? The fact that some players have over 5000 bandwidth at the current price should be a good indicator that it's not only possible, but an inevitability if you play long enough. The game's numbers are somewhat arbitrary - don't think of them in terms of real life. How many 20GHz systems do you see in real life? I don't see too many machines with 16 gigs of ram (although it's possible), but that type of setup is going to happen here too.

*WHITE NOISE* Woah, I guess MS must have posted again. Stop trolling. If your post says "if siremi wants to fix it" then there was no purpose for your post. If your post says "SGP is evil" then we get it, and it's still off topic. Unless you have something on topic to say that isn't obvious, stop trolling. Also, I never said you were abusing exploits - I actually gave 3 options... the fact that you chose the only one with exploits in it to quote speaks volumes about you, and says nothing about me.

Lock down the entire game if you want. Does this help the new players? Who's going to get hurt more? The people with enough virii installed that their income is comfortable (to say the least) or those who need to finish every possible 5 hpd mission, and now can't because you've reset the password... Think about what you're trying to do here.

Trolls aside, I am really interested in what siremi has to say about this. If he says it's legit, then we'll start doing it too. Heck, there's enough people in SGP that we could make sure no one ever plays this game again (that was sarcastic, btw).

ADD: Today's bonus - a few definitions of exploit: "To make use of selfishly or unethically" or "To employ to the greatest possible advantage" or "use or manipulate to one's advantage." Ironically enough, none of those mention a developer, and all are subjective.