Investigations Questions

Question for the Investigations Team? Please remember to keep posts civil, abusive posts can result in loss of posting privileges. Posts in this forum can be read by anyone on the site. Please do not attempt to hijack a thread by posting information not relevant to the original post, start a new thread instead.

Grey areas & contradiction?

  • XunkarXunkar105,466
    Posted on 01 December 17 at 12:54
    After playing through Divinity Original Sin 2 I stumbled upon an ethical question regarding achievements, and I'm afraid the policy of TSA isn't clear enough on whether or not what I have in mind is allowed.

    Simply put, DOS2 comes with a tool (the divinity engine) that allows the creation of mods and whatsnot. Using this tool I've been able to look into the game code to confirm that two specific quest-related achievements were simply impossible to unlock due to a bug. I contacted the developers not once, but twice regarding the subject, going as far as to explain in length why it doesn't work and how to fix it, but their support wouldn't even respond.

    As you probably understand, it is particularly frustrating that the completion of a game eludes you simply because the developers are too lazy to fix their broken games. So, I figured it could be possible to unlock those achievements by creating a mod that does so—or maybe even, a mod that actually fixes the unlock condition so it works as intended. Now, on a personal level I do not see any problem in abusing what a game has to offer while hunting achievements, especially when you actually did everything that the achievement requires you to do.

    So, my first question is: what is TSA stance on this? On one hand, "Using profile editors or other software to unlock achievements without playing" is considered cheating but on the other "Taking advantage of any developer tool" is not, nor is "Using modded weapons". In that case we are using a mod, created through official game tool, but to unlock an achievement without truly playing (even if you, like me, actually did).

    Now, this particular point in the policy is quite unclear. There are many games where using a powerful mod breaks the game so much that it pretty much is the same thing than using a mod that unlocks everything. A modded weapon could allow you to easily speedrun a game on the hardest difficulty, thus unlocking the related achievement without it being considered cheating, but using a mod that would unlock a story-related, and much less challenging, achievement would be considered cheating?

    But that's not all. What about the point that states that "Gamesaving, which is the practice of using a save from a different gamer" is not allowed but "Allowing others to play for you on your tag" is? How can you justify allowing someone else to play using your profile and unlock achievements that you can't unlock yourself when a) you disallow the very same player from using their own savefile and b) you disallow editing game files to do the same, except alone.

    I'm terribly sorry for the lenghty post. For the record, I'm not looking to spark a debate or anything: your site your rules, but I'm trying to make sense of it and to make sure what exactly are the limitations in terms of... circumventing problematic achievements. Thank you.
  • Posted on 05 December 17 at 00:41
    All very valid questions. Give me a day or two to look into the specific title mentioned before
    I reply in full as I am not familiar with the tools you are referring to.
  • XunkarXunkar105,466
    Posted on 05 December 17 at 19:37
    It seems the developers have been very recently working on fixing those achievements, at least one of them has been fixed with today's patch. This particular issue may no longer be one in the near future, but the core of the issue still remains (I felt I had to post that, since I managed to unlock one of those impossible achievements thanks to today's patch, better to clear the air smile).
Want to join in the discussion? Please log in or Register For Free to comment.
Hide ads