Re: Announcing: Fyleet, Crobe, Sangraal

["Vincent Lynch" <vincent.lynch@lineone.net>]

L. Ross Raszewski wrote in message ...

[Spoiler for Ultima V snipped.]

>Perfectly fair.  By using 'restore' the player has stepped outside the
>confines of the game. The author has no responsibility (And, IMHO, no
>right) to fudge the game so as to prevent the player from cheating.
>
>Once the player has stepped outside the game, he is no longer under the
>author's jurisdiction.  If this ruins the fun for the player, it's THE
>PLAYER'S FAULT, and just punishment for his cheating (I consider the whole
>idea that the player should be penalized for cheating and that by
>cheating the player lessens his fun to be somewhat facetious, but that's
>neither here nor there.)

Except... (and this perhaps doesn't quite apply to the instance given,
but...) this assumes that the player will _know_ that they're cheating.
There are games where it is necessary to restore, having gained information
from an action they weren't meant to have taken.  If a player is given the
impression that using brute force may be the only way to solve certain
problems (from having solved problems like this in the past), they might
assume that they're _meant_ to try all 3425445 possible routes through the
maze, or whatever.  And having made that assumption, they might decide not
to bother after all.

-Vincent