Punkbuster? ohh no

[Otleaz]

I wouldn't really call it paranoia.

[fishirboy]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Do we really need another cheating/hacker paranoia thread?

Who knows, maybe this one is magical! (All I was asking is if you realy think that hackers are going to get away with that because of the low amount of servers vs COD, BF3, and MW2)

[noxious]

30 servers with 6000 players each requires the same manpower to police as 6000 servers with 30 players each.

[Trafalgar]

The main reason you'll see MMOs having exploits is a lack of understanding of how to secure MMOs against tampering (particularly, trusting the client tends to be unwise). This was more of a problem in Ultima Online early on, because it was the first. The developers literally had to realize that they couldn't trust the client, and had to validate everything the client told the server, and what it was trying to do, in order to secure the game against cheating. (e.g. the client says it is going to walk here, can that client's player character actually walk there? Hmm, nope, there's a wall there! Reject the move command and leave them where they are (the client experiences rubberbanding at this, but normally it is moving the PC/view/world locally as you move, and only reverting it if the server thinks it was wrong about whether a move was valid))

PunkBuster seems superfluous unless the server is actually trusting the client and trusting PunkBuster to police it, which does not to me seem the most prudent course.

[Purple]

Us discussing this and asking for details is only going to help potential hackers. PS2 spent millions and years on this game, just have faith in the security and stop making these pointless threads.

[fishirboy]

Originally Posted by Purple

Us discussing this and asking for details is only going to help potential hackers. PS2 spent millions and years on this game, just have faith in the security and stop making these pointless threads.

Ya to look at it that way, yes we should not discuses what will stop them but look at what other did wrong before PS2 does the same. We, the community, need to stop PS2 from walking the same path that every other free FPS goes down or at least nullify it.

[Otleaz]

That is probably the best thing you could do.

Regardless, just like in any shooter, I will assume that anyone better than me is hacking

[Sifer2]

Originally Posted by noxious

30 servers with 6000 players each requires the same manpower to police as 6000 servers with 30 players each.

It would except they claim to have stuff built into the game to help point out cheaters to the Admins. So with the assistance of the right tools they may be able to find, observe, and ban cheaters very quickly.

However it still seems like a moot point to me unless have your account banned means anything. With it being F2P there is no real money loss to discourage them. Which is why I advocate them requiring a Credit card to make an account. So that the hassle of obtaining a new card to cheat overwhelms the urge to.

[TAA]

Originally Posted by Purple

Us discussing this and asking for details is only going to help potential hackers. PS2 spent millions and years on this game, just have faith in the security and stop making these pointless threads.

When PS2 devs say they are taking strong measures against hacking/cheating - that is called marketing talk. I think every game I have followed leading up to release at some point in interviews had developers who were asked that question, and they all give the same answer.

In the end they just outsource it and wash their hands clean of the problem. In the end they always fail.

[SixShooter]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Do we really need another cheating/hacker paranoia thread?

Ummm.... No!

[Trafalgar]

Most of you seem to assume that PS2 has the same security model as a generic FPS, but those generally work completely differently from MMOs owing to the fact that the servers for most FPSes are not backed by large budgets, extremely powerful, with huge amounts of bandwidth, in ideal locations to keep ping times low, etc, and thus you cannot expect them to be using the same security methods as modern security-conscious MMOs (as those depend both on low latency and advanced techniques to disguise the fact that the server(s) have to validate actions).

Some FPSes simply trust a client when they say that they shot someone. Some require the server to validate some things, but trust clients on others. Few do full server validation of everything, and it's possible to screw it up (Hardwar did, by trying to process every button press at a computer terminal on the server and send back the results, which was S-L-O-W (player-run-servers probably didn't help)).

For an MMO, trusting clients (rather than not trusting them) tends to result in the staff having to wage an endless war against cheating / exploiting, unless they rewrite their (client-server communication) system to not trust clients, as Origin/EA did for UO. For non-MMOs, the war tends to only last for a little while, as developers tend to only support games for a time before moving on.

[noxious]

Originally Posted by Trafalgar

Most of you seem to assume that PS2 has the same security model as a generic FPS, but those generally work completely differently from MMOs owing to the fact that the servers for most FPSes are not backed by large budgets, extremely powerful, with huge amounts of bandwidth, in ideal locations to keep ping times low, etc, and thus you cannot expect them to be using the same security methods as modern security-conscious MMOs (as those depend both on low latency and advanced techniques to disguise the fact that the server(s) have to validate actions).

Some FPSes simply trust a client when they say that they shot someone. Some require the server to validate some things, but trust clients on others. Few do full server validation of everything, and it's possible to screw it up (Hardwar did, by trying to process every button press at a computer terminal on the server and send back the results, which was S-L-O-W (player-run-servers probably didn't help)).

For an MMO, trusting clients (rather than not trusting them) tends to result in the staff having to wage an endless war against cheating / exploiting, unless they rewrite their (client-server communication) system to not trust clients, as Origin/EA did for UO. For non-MMOs, the war tends to only last for a little while, as developers tend to only support games for a time before moving on.

Unfortunately, the two most common cheats in FPS games, aimbots and wall hacks, don't send any signals from the client to the server that a legitimate client would not also send. Yes, validation will prevent things like speed hacks or killing every player in the server instantly, but it can do nothing to stop a guy from head-shotting every enemy player the second they get into his line of sight.

SOE will have no better luck than the guys at Valve or at Punkbuster in combating these cheats through preventative measures. It's an arms race, and like virus protection, the bad guys are, necessarily, always one step ahead. This leaves us with reactive measures-- but if banned cheaters can just create another free account and start cheating all over again, then it'll be an unending game of whack-a-mole.

[GODMOLLY]

This game will be hacked 2 days in beta. Fact.

[Kran De Loy]

Originally Posted by Trafalgar

About phone text messaging.

This actually works really well. Someone I know (purposefully not naming who) tried to make a ton of fake FaceBook accounts for the PS2 advertising. I think he ended up only getting away with between 4 and 8 before FB started forcing him to enter phone numbers.

Also Google Talk or whatever it is called wouldn't validate for FB at that point either.

Pretty sure it was because they noticed he was using multiple different email accounts all registerd from the same IP, but the general idea that using Phone Numbers to authenticate stuff is pretty handy. However not everyone has a cell phone :/ and the point of F2P is to get as many people as conceivably possible to play the game.

However I seriously hope that SOE does not somehow think to link authenticating spam accounts to FB accounts is a good idea. That would be a massive turn off for me and I'm sure for a very large portion of people, too. Almost worse than requesting CC info upfront.

[WorldOfForms]

Originally Posted by GODMOLLY

This game will be hacked 2 days in beta. Fact.

Is that what GODJOEY is planning on doing? Or is he planning on owning himself on the forums again, creating a fake account to agree with himself, and then posting under that account forgetting that he didn't log back into his original account and thanking said fake account for sticking up for him?