Open source data invites to cheat?

[PeterX]

Hi all,
i'm currently planning to write a open source MMORPG. I want to publish the engine code under AGPL. Somehow I would like to publish the game data under an open source or Creative Commons license.

But the problem is:
Players can then read the source code and solve quests with kind of cheating. And that is bad for other players who don't cheat. So to publish open source some data (like quests) seem like a bad idea.
Any thoughts on that?

Greetings
Peter

[Julius]

Depends on the implementation, but usually the game logic runs on the server and thus an open-source client doesn't make a big difference.
The server can also be open-source, but since you are controlling the server this is not really a concern either.

[dulsi]

Most people are not going to read the data. Even if it is not open source, people will figure out your guests and put them on a website or forum. It's why Gamerzilla doesn't have hidden trophies/achievements. If I want to know what trophies any game has, a web search can find the details.

If you want to prevent the first group of players from cheating, release the data on a delayed schedule. Add the quests in September but don't release the data until October or November. (This only truely works if the data is never sent to the client program. Otherwise a hacked client could extract the quest information.)

[ffaf]

Indeed the problem happens even to not open source stuff. Think about Project Euler, a site of match challenges from simple to difficult: they had similar problems, people using guides to solve the problems.
So now they release a task and «awards» are given just to the first (say) 100 solvers.

I wouldn’t worry to much in any case, for 90% of the players gaming is about having fun, not amassing cockades.