In an early question in our site's history, we determined that questions about cheating in multiplayer games should be closed.
But what exactly is a cheat? Third party tools? In-game exploits? Where is the line?
In an early question in our site's history, we determined that questions about cheating in multiplayer games should be closed.
But what exactly is a cheat? Third party tools? In-game exploits? Where is the line?
A cheat in a multiplayer game, for the purposes of determining whether a question violates our cheating guideline, is a tool that uses out-of-game resources to give you an advantage that the other players in the game don't have.
This does not include exploits in the game engine. If the process involves manipulating objects in-game in such a way that you perform a maneuver your opponent didn't know about or expect, that is not a cheat. "Cheap" tactics are perfectly acceptable in competitive/multiplayer games.
Remember that questions that break the terms of service of the game in question are also off topic. Some questions may be off topic for one or both of these reasons; just because something is "merely" an exploit doesn't mean it's automatically allowed if it's also against the terms of the game.
In both cases, a workable rule of thumb is, if it will get you banned, it's probably off topic here.
Example questions about cheats that are off topic:
Example questions that are on topic:
I am going to throw another suggestion out there which is likely to be unpopular, but regardless, I will try to give a good reason for it.
A question regarding cheats, multiplayer or not, should be on topic as long as:
With the above, the following should be off-topic:
The following would be on-topic
In regards to StrixVaria's answer, this suggestion would match the examples of on-topic/off-topic questions.
In general, pretty much all in-game exploits should be on-topic whilst third party tools are mostly off-topic. Whether the question leads to the ruining of people's experience in game (such as you using an answer to get an unfair advantage over other players) or just some useful insight into how some 8 year old kid won't let you out of spawn is irrelevant. What I am saying is that sometimes the education of cheats help people decide if they are going to continue playing, or even use the exploit themselves to level the playing field.
Additionally, if a question asks "How do engineers get on top of the map in TF2?" and then proceeds to explain that they cannot use a spy to take out the turrets, its probably a good question. If someone simply asks "How do I get on-top of the map so I can spawn kill?" then its probably a bad question and will get down-marked. Regardless, both questions should be valid and may have the same answer (or set of answers).
Possible grey areas:
When it comes to cheating, anything that can be seen as breaking or changing the game's rules/mechanics to give you (or somebody else) an advantage is a cheat and should not be allowed. This is not the same as "playing the game correctly", but more along the lines of "I don't like this rule, I'm going to change it" (example, key item duplicating), or in your own answer "I want to make my turrets invinicble"(this shouldn't even need an explanation on why it's a bad thing).
How do we determine what is an exploit and what is just clever/tactical gameplay, though? Well, most of the time we probably can't without developer response (can of worms), but that doesn't mean its now a green light to allow such cheating.