unofficial web cheats... will the internet follow Planeshift devel's

[larrydag]

Here is a blurb from the NPC interaction guide:

\"Don\'t spoil the fun of others

By publishing on the web the quests\' solutions you are lowering the realism of the game and you are spoiling the fun of other people. We are not against players teaming up and giving hints each other, but we think that this should be done in game, roleplaying. Having a web page that simply list what to do to achieve more money in less time, is made for people playing arcades and FPS and should be considered something against the roleplaying aspect of the game.

What you can do is to form a guild and provide this useful information to the other members that will join, maybe depending on their rank. You may also accept in your guild people that have at least completed a certain number of quest to prove their wit and dedication to the game. Or you can use quests to promote them.

Please avoid to publish this info outside the game and stop people that behaves in this way.\"


me again...  Will the internet stay in control?  I personally would like to see it keep to form as the devel\'s wish but I am not sure if that will able to happen.  I will try my best to stay away from these rogue websites that will try to publish as much quest info as possible.

What is the limit that can be published on the internet and still keep the gameplay inline with the devel\'s wishes?

[Zedane]

well the thing is for the most part (i havnt logged on and stayed for more than a week since MAY O4) we the \"planeshifters\" are a tightly knit community.. and most of us wont allow something like that to happen even when crystal blue comes out. ... but if we get allot more crowd JUST because planeshift has a fighting system then i guess that what you have described up there probably will happen ( * would hate to log on one day and see someone say \"\"SELLING (INSERT) FOR 1785 TRIA TYPE 12345 AND SEND A TELL TO ME FOR IT\"*
or something like that.

[Example]

First off, i would like to state that i dont think that releasing information about quests is bad. That doesn\'t mean i want you to tell me exactly what to do . But in MB i couldnt get anyone to help me at all with any information. Some people are going to need help no matter what. It can only get so \"real\" people. if you want real, get a hammer and some steel and craft you some freakin armor. A game is a game. you play a game so that you can advance in level or whatever. For EXAMPLE GOLMIR, you can sit there all day and list sites for newbs and posts or whatever but if someone asks you for help with a quest , you give the answer <\" we cant give information out because it takes away from the realism.\"> Well let me tell you all something. If people cant figure out anything in the game such as quest npc\'s or what to ask an npc, they are not going to want to play the game. If a majority of people dont want to play this game, The developers are doing all this work for nothing. The more people you have playing this game, the better the publicity. The better the publicity, the better donations will be and the more people will be willing to help develop this game. So by holding information back your really making it harder on everyone. Dont get me wrong i dont have a problem with you golmir and i dont want a site like they have for eq where you can get a whole print out of a step by step plan for quests, but when someone asks a question about a quest or npc or something, dont tell them that by giving the answer away it takes away from the realism. because if i cant figure the quest out, i am gonna move on to a game that i can play through. the more people that do that , the less fun this MMORPG game will be. and thats the key, you all want to play a MMORPG, and without people it becomes a ORPG.

[larrydag]

That does bring up an interesting question?  How is trading of items/wares going to be handled in Planeshift?

[Keyaz]

i doubt that the dev\'s will allow people to get to such a level in cb that people will auction items for rediculous prices in shout, there may be auctions in organised areas etc. but not freelancing auctions... i hope anyway
Trading will be taken care of accordingly, can\'t say how, i dont exactly know but they havent forgotten it

[larrydag]

Per Example:

\"The more people you have playing this game, the better the publicity. The better the publicity, the better donations will be and the more people will be willing to help develop this game.\"


I\'m not sure this is what the developers had in mind.  Since it is open source and the majority of the hardware is donated I don\'t think the developers care if there is publicity with the game.   I think what you said is a narrowed generalization for Planeshift.  The thing that draws me to Planeshift so much is the \"anti-establishment\" model the developers are using.  It goes against everything the multi-billion dollar gaming industry is spewing out now.  For a game like EQ your generalization makes sense but for Planeshift I think it is too narrowed.   If Planeshift draws people that\'s great but if it doesn\'t no harm done.  What will be interesting to see is if the online community will embrace the developer\'s wishes for the game and really enhance the gaming experience.  That was my original thought in this thread.

[Jaedru]

I\'ve been lurking in the forums for a few months now... I finally registered on the forums, and suppose I could speak up at some point. Now, for instance.  

Just want to point out that, as far as I could tell, one thing that was never discouraged was for two or more people to get together and work on a quest at the same time. As obtuse as the NPCs were in MB (and this is supposed to be tons better in CB!) it\'s little wonder that people could get stuck trying to find just the right thing to ask them. But applying two heads to a problem probably increases your chances of figuring it out.

Just an idea.

[ramlambmoo]

Yeah, its not that kind of thing thats the problem, i think, more somebody posting the complete solution to a quest on an internet site, or something like that, that ruins the atmosphere and purpose of the game.  If its happening in-game then IMO i dont see much of a problem with it.

[larrydag]

Yes, in game there is no problem at all.  I believe what the devel\'s are talking about is \"www.FindAnswersHereForPlaneshift.com\" (<---not a real site).

In game assistance IMO should be encouraged.  Also, I don\'t have a problem with guild websites offering quest solutions to their own guild members ONLY.

[Kwip]

I would have a major problem if this kind of thing is done even the guilds giving solutions of quests to their members.  Quests are extra things you do not need them to play a good game here.  You could probably go all your PS life and still have plenty of fun without doing any quests.  If you want to finish a quest you should have to work for it, else what is the fun in it.  I would rather there be no quests than for people to be giving out the answers to them.

Now anything that is done ingame, like joining a band to go after a certain quest and then split the profits is ok.  Now it goes a bit to far to ask people ingame for the answers without you expected that they ask you for some of the reward, plus they should not have all the answers but maybe part of a map that leads to an object.  It would be fun if when you asked people how to do a quest in-game if all you got was a cryptic answer

Ideally quests should only be able to completed once, but since in this day and age that is impossible with a computer game.  Hopefully one day we will have AIs good enough to be able to make up decent quests all the time. Ahh... that will be the day

[clint8565]

I agree that answers shouldn\'t be on the internet (clues are okay) but I also don\'t really see the problem in it because I don\'t want the answers so I won\'t go looking for them and therefore have an extremely slim chance of just happening upon them. If somebody posts the answer on the net and someone else goes and reads it, that\'s their loss.

edit: typo

[Monketh]

Originally posted by clint8565
If somebody posts the answer on the net and someone else goes and reads it, that\'s their loss.

\"Ha! I finished theh Quest before yu, NOOB!!!\"
Et cetera...

[Kiva]

Well, as all PS quests are under the PlaneShift License, they can legally press charges against anyone who uploads quest solutions to the internet, and a simple written warning should be all it takes to get InsertFreeHostHere.com to remove the site from their servers. Although, that\'s the more drastic thing... But if it\'s necessary, it can be done. Remember that, and think twice before deciding to make an uber site about PS.

Of course, the small, closed communities can\'t be stopped, as the golden rule is \"What mamma don\'t know, wont hurt her\"... That kinda applies to PS as well. If the devs don\'t know you and your friends help eachother through quests, they can\'t really stop it. But they can still stronly discourage it, and I\'m pretty sure they will.

[ramlambmoo]

\"Well, as all PS quests are under the PlaneShift License, they can legally press charges against anyone who uploads quest solutions to the internet, and a simple written warning should be all it takes to get InsertFreeHostHere.com to remove the site from their servers. Although, that\'s the more drastic thing... But if it\'s necessary, it can be done. Remember that, and think twice before deciding to make an uber site about PS. \"

Well thats debatable... the planeshift licensce covers the artistic content of the quest.  So i cant make another game, or a website that retells the quest or uses parts of it.  However if i post on a website a list of words and phrases that you need to say to NPC\'s to advance in the quest, unless these words or phrases are trademarked phrases (such as \"By the temple of laanx\" or something similar) then i have not infringed upon the planshift licensce.  The licensce is for the intellectual and artistic content of the project, not for the ways of interacting with this content.  

After looking at the PS license i found the following:

\"2. You may not copy, modify, publish, transmit, sell, participate in the transfer or sale or reproduce, create Derivative Works from, distribute, perform, display or in any way exploit any of the Material released under this License unless expressly permitted by the PlaneShift Team.\"

The material includes \"Texts (including, but not limited to, web pages, character descriptions, setting/background texts, in-game dialogues, documents, names of places, names of races, etc...)\"

This means you cannot publish in game dialogs.  So you cannot say \"well and then the NPC will say to you... blah blah blah\".  However you can say \"you need to say this\" because that is not dialog that is part of the game and its licensce but rather it is your material.  Because you have entered this text into the game, if it were argued that the licensce be extended to this information then under point 1) of the additional Joint-Copyright PlaneShift License, you would then hold the rights to equal copyright, enabling you to legally publish it on your site:
\"1) In addition to the copyright holders stated in the PlaneShift License, the author of the material has the copyright also.\"

In conclusion, i do not think that the planshift copyright extends to those things which you type in yourself.  However if it did it could be argued then that you must hold co-copyright as contributor to the project.

Obviously there are alot of contentious issues here, but if push came to shove, i dont think PS could legeally require someone to remove their site, unfortunatly.  They could of course ban them and their IP, and thus avoid them finding out any more quest solutions, and i really dont think it would ever come to this.

EDIT***
From the GPL web site:

\"Is there some way that I can GPL the output people get from use of my program? For example, if my program is used to develop hardware designs, can I require that these designs must be free?
    In general this is legally impossible; copyright law does not give you any say in the use of the output people make from their data using your program. If the user uses your program to enter or convert his own data, the copyright on the output belongs to him, not you\"
If the user uses your program to enter data, the copyright belongs to him--- meaning any words entered into the program to activate the quest are the users copyright, not the PS develpoment team\'s.

[swift]

Strangely I would have to agree that none of the licences that cover Planeshift seem to prohibit the posting of quest solutions etc as long as they don\'t contain material from the game.  

I also happened to notice this in the gpl page while reading the liscence.  This is very important, it seems to imply fairly strongly that the liscencing of planeshift violates the GPL.  

In \"Terms And Conditions for Copying, Distribution and Modification\" section 2 :

b)  You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

(This would imply that the art, rpg rules, web texts etc must be covered by the GPL).  

Seeing as I was not entirely sure that that applied to the elements of the project described on the liscence page, I checked the FAQ page on the GNU GPL site .  

This is what it said :


If I add a module to a GPL-covered program, do I have to use the GPL as the license for my module?

    The GPL says that the whole combined program has to be released under the GPL. So your module has to be available for use under the GPL.

    But you can give additional permission for the use of your code. You can, if you wish, release your program under a license which is more lax than the GPL but compatible with the GPL. The license list page gives a partial list of GPL-compatible licenses

This seems to confirm that the use of the \"Planeshift License\" Violates the GPL.  

Does anyone agree with me?

Edit: Have started new thread about this - Off - topic here