Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Well, TNT must have heard us. I went back to Resistance HQ and found this:

Please note that using any kind of external helper program or cheat program to solve this puzzle is against the rules and will likely get you FROZEN! So do the right thing and solve the puzzle yourself! (Discussions with friends and the use of reference charts is perfectly okay.)

-- The Neopets Team

Alriiiighty then...

At least there's that. I still would like to see an Editorial response about the whole issue.

O.o

wow, it's a good thing they put this somewhere where everyone would see it.

/sarcasm

I fail to see how this is different than the starmappers for the Altador plot.

I'm curious to how TNT viewed the starfinder/mappers used for that plot, and how those are 'ok' and this is different.

That's even more clear that they've EVER been on an issue before. Wow.

That's why it never occured to me that the calculator might not be OK to use. There's always been tons of "cheat" info available for plots -- many on people's petpages, in fact -- and TNT has never seemed to object to this in the past. In fact, I assume that's one of the reasons they have moved towards making plot puzzles that are unique for each person -- so that they don't have the problems they had back in the Mystery Island plot with the puzzle being totally solvable with no work on the part of the player.

It's true that the calculator made it vastly easier to find the answer, but that was true of the star mapper as well. TNT could hardly have been taken by surprise by the creation of the calculator: when I went to bed last night *I* certainly expected there to be a solver program online by morning. If it was forseeable to me, it should certainly have been forseeable to them.

In fact, I'd actually suspected last night that TNT had designed the puzzle with the intent that we'd use a solver program, as it was so difficult and time-consuming to do otherwise.

I have no idea why TNT seems so admanat about the issue when they've been so lax on things that were much clearer-cut cheats in the past (like I said, Ice Caves poison rounds, anyone?) but it would totally unreasonable of them to freeze anyone for using the calculator before the point when they posted that message on the page with the puzzle.

I find the whole thing patently ridiculous. Of course there are multiple ways to solve problems. You can use brute force, you can work out the key for yourself and visually search for possible solutions, or you can use the key you deduced and use a computer to deduce the possibilities for you. It's like in the LC when there's a linear algebra equation; those who don't know matrices have to do it by brute force, I did it by hand, and there were others who coded it and let a computer solve it for them in ten seconds. TNT should not dictate how you solve something. Helping others with plots has ALWAYS been allowed (even encouraged -- why else dedicate neoboards to it), so if you came up with a "smart" way to solve a step, you should be allowed to share it. That's all that calculator did -- apply someone's hard work to the puzzles and use logic to solve it (at least, that's what I assumed it did -- if it did hack the system, he should have told us so we would know)! I considered writing a program myself, but it'd been done.

I worked out three of the puzzles on my own last night. I'd have worked out the rest on my own today, but the calculator was posted and I didn't want to fall behind in the plot -- it happened to me during TOW at the potions step (midterm week), and I stupidly didn't ask for help here since I was behind. I *think* there was some kind of calculator that helped with the math for that, but I didn't realize it until the plot was closed. If I get frozen for using the calculator, I'll leave Neopets for good. It's been going to crap anyway, and I only really care about the plots, LC, and a handful of fun games.

Can TNT tell if we used the calculator? They could determine who accessed the page with the code for your puzzles and freeze all of them, assuming they only went there to use the calculator. Also, they could freeze anyone who solved any of the 3-puzzles first try. But that could unfairly freeze people who used the key and logic rather than brute force.