Just a heads up. Discussions over on AA have been popping up recently.

[GhundiPI]

Originally Posted by Gandhi

But most hackers don't do it to play the game, they do it to piss people off. The ones who do it to be better at the game are the ones that are really hard to spot, because they hack just enough to be indistinguishable from a skilled player. The former don't worry me, they're easily dealt with. It's the people who only cheat a little bit that have the potential to ruin the game.

Personally I worry more about the former type of hackers, especially at the start. Too many times have I seen a game being overrun by hackers, destroying the game and the community within a few months, then moving on to the next one, leaving behind a ruined wreck (gameplay and economy). The comparison to locust is very apt and unfortunately their favorite food are F2P games. Add to that the appeal PS2 has to another certain type of crowd... Yeah, I hope the devs have planned accordingly, otherwise it will be a mess.

But you're right, in the long run those who manage to keep their hacks well hidden are going to be a huge issue as well. Take for example something like a radar hack (not saying that will happen in PS2). The best way to use it is not acting on it in an obvious way, but rather take that extra information and use it for better positioning, faster reaction, etc. Hard to prove and not something that will show up as obvious in the metrics.

Personally I hate hackers with a passion and if there is a ingame way for the players to be able to deal with them, it is something I have keen interest in. Maybe I'll even see if it is viable to create an outfit dedicated to identifying and hunting down hackers...

[Hmr85]

Unfortunately I'm sure will see our fair share of hackers come PS2. We can only hope that SOE has prepared accordingly for whats to come and not put all their cards on the table with PB. I'm not to worried about the above mentioned mass murder hacks. They would be identified and kicked immediately. What I am worried about is the aim bot hackers who will do it subtly so as not to be found. Or the the radar hackers as mentioned above. Those are going to be the biggest problem we will run into.

Since this is a F2P game I hope SOE adopts some sort of Check and balance system that requires players to log their Phone# or card regardless of whether they are going to use it or not. That way when the player is caught the account can be banned permanently thus removing the hacker for good.

[IronMole]

It's bound to happen...

[Vancha]

I don't understand the mentality of the havoc-wreaking cheaters.

I can understand people trying to use an aimbot/wallhack on the sly, to appear better than they are, but to want to purposely try and kill games' population until it becomes a ghost town? Surely that's counter-productive in the long run?

[CutterJohn]

Pretty sure there will be GMs on constantly so at least obvious/extreme hacks can be banned quickfast.

Non obvious hacks are more difficult, but also to be perfectly honest, somewhat less dangerous to the game community. People who feel they died to a really good player are far less pissed off than people who died to an obvious hacker. Doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken care of, or that it has zero effect on the game, just that the effect is a bit more manageable.

[Skitrel]

Ok. To address a few suggestions here, given that I chill in these communities, have used hacks back in competitive cs days to help observe organised scrims for hacking and have a fair bit of experience with what goes on in the software.

Phone numbers aren't a solution, there's no way to secure against that and anyone can get a new phone number any time they want, it's really not going to change anything other than hurt legitimate users that want to change accounts. It's a draconian DRM measure that hurts legit customers and doesn't do anything to hackers, someone will write a 5 step guide on what to do and then it's just an extra few minutes on them getting a new account, no effect at all.

GMs are a solution to ludicrous hacking, they're not a solution to legitimate appearance hacking, and neither is any community solution. Players can not be trusted with any power against hackers at all, votekicks falsely boot legit players all the time, I play competitively, I've racked up at least 100 bans from BF servers on hackusations as a result. People don't self admit to failings, they blame hacks. As a result any community system will be inundated with false flags. GM moderation of said system solves that but it's not really a solution, the GMs can deal with it based on automated flagging of the obvious anyway.

GMs don't solve the more important problem though as I've mentioned repeatedly, appearing legitimate, there's no way to distinguish a legitimate looking hacker from simply a very good player. These people HAVE to be caught automatically before they get into the game, if they get into the game everybody loses.

As for bans and F2P remaking accounts, I see no way to prevent this at all, any method only hurts legitimate customers and would be circumnavigated by the hackers. Again, this is no different to the pointless war on piracy that can never be won, DRM isn't a solution to anything at all.

Firstly, to stop massmurder, provided they can't just do things clientside there need to be RANDOM checksums, if they're predictable in any way hackers will build the hack around the predictable checks and they'll switch off automatically, this in combination with screenshots and the GMs would go a ways towards stopping most hacking that's not picked up before they get in game. Provided the system isn't predictable the hacks can't switch off unnoticably for the instant the checksum/screenshot occurs. A checksum would catch any change to game data while screens can be reviewed by GMs to catch wallhacks.

As for aimbots, spectating is part of a solution here, aimbots don't actually help a huge amount when they're being used to appear legitimate, they only work on a small area surrounding the cross hair to avoid being noticable and really anyone with a bit of practice gets to that kind of precision, anyone not doing it this way is OBVIOUS when spectating them and as such easily caught. Legitimate looking aimbots are negligible unless they're only aiming at the head, that kind of discrepancy will show up statistically though, automated measures banning them for impossible stats are simple. Situational awareness is FAR superior to aimbots, wallhacking is a bigger deal than aimbotting.

There should also be a public reviewable banned list, informing players of the number of banned accounts discourages it's occurrence, people won't take the risk if they're heavily discouraged.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Owalpo

Make it so a account is tied to a copy of Planetside 2 product code. So hackers just can't make hundreds of new accounts. If it is found that they hacked(Which if on high alert would be so easy to spot, the benefit of having a hack like this for BF3 is they can just move on to a new server after being banned) they get banned and would be forced to buy a new copy. Which I am sure they would not do.

Planetside 2 is a free to play game. What product code do you tie an account to?

[Hmr85]

Coreldan :Planetside 2 is a free to play game. What product code do you tie an account to?

I think what he is referring to is that every time you create a new account they send you a CD key in your mail. He stating to block the CD key. This however is not going to stop hackers from hacking.

I also agree with what Skitrel posted above. I think a wall of shame would be a good way to go to help discourage people from hacking. List their name then put the total number players banned so far are ???

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Planetside 2 is a free to play game. What product code do you tie an account to?

I'm guessing you read as far as the bottom of page 1.

Originally Posted by Owalpo

The game is free too? Holy shit. I just thought the sub was free.

Well there goes that idea.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Vancha

I'm guessing you read as far as the bottom of page 1.

Well wtf, I've been reading the thread all along and posting too, I guess I somehow accidently went to page 1 instead of last page and thought that was a recent message

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by Hmr85

I think what he is referring to is that every time you create a new account they send you a CD key in your mail. He stating to block the CD key. This however is not going to stop hackers from hacking.

I also agree with what Skitrel posted above. I think a wall of shame would be a good way to go to help discourage people from hacking. List their name then put the total number players banned so far are ???

Wall of shame doesn't work for the real rage hackers though, they are just happy to get their names in there.

As for the others, oh well. APB does this and can't say it really does anything.

[GuyShep]

Originally Posted by Hmr85

I think what he is referring to is that every time you create a new account they send you a CD key in your mail. He stating to block the CD key. This however is not going to stop hackers from hacking.

I also agree with what Skitrel posted above. I think a wall of shame would be a good way to go to help discourage people from hacking. List their name then put the total number players banned so far are ???

The only thing discouraging a person from using hacks are two things: If the game is so bad that nobody has fun playing it, and if paying for both hacks and the game become too expensive for the person. It's like piracy, people do it for any reason they have.

The best thing SOE can do to prevent this issue from being a great one is to simply prevent the more blatant things like massmurder or nospread, while keeping an eye out for any subtler hackers. As long as the game exists, unfortunately, people will want to play it illegitimately.

[Bonius]

I don't understand why this thing is getting discussed over and over again. Comparing to games such as COD/BF3 and using fancy bell curves to explain newb-to-pro ratios just doesn't add anything new.


PS2 is server-side, BF3/CoD hacks won't work
BF3 / CoD has one layer of protection, PS2 has three
PS2 will have an active GM-structure, BF3/CoD does not
PS2 is dependant on continous usage, it's in the developers best interest to keep the game running. This is not the issue with BF3/CoD

The bell curve will always look like a bell curve, no matter how much the numbers change in one direction. The problem of newbs getting stomped by the top 5% will always exist, hacking or not hacking.

We can speculate all we want, but we will never get any confirmation from the developers on how it's supposed to work other than a confirmation that anti-hack software exists within the game. Random checksums doesn't exist and doesn't work.

A hacker appearing legitimate won't cause issues, he will just appear in the top 5%. A hacker killing everyone on the continent will cause issues, but will instantly get banned (if such a hack is even remotely possible).



TL;DR :

Statistics never lie. Anti-hack is in the client. Game is server side.

STOP WORRYING AND STOP COMPARING TO NON-TRIPLE A-MMO GAMES

[NewSith]

Originally Posted by Bonius

I don't understand why this thing is getting discussed over and over again. Comparing to games such as COD/BF3 and using fancy bell curves to explain newb-to-pro ratios just doesn't add anything new.


PS2 is server-side, BF3/CoD hacks won't work
BF3 / CoD has one layer of protection, PS2 has three
PS2 will have an active GM-structure, BF3/CoD does not
PS2 is dependant on continous usage, it's in the developers best interest to keep the game running. This is not the issue with BF3/CoD

The bell curve will always look like a bell curve, no matter how much the numbers change in one direction. The problem of newbs getting stomped by the top 5% will always exist, hacking or not hacking.

We can speculate all we want, but we will never get any confirmation from the developers on how it's supposed to work other than a confirmation that anti-hack software exists within the game. Random checksums doesn't exist and doesn't work.

A hacker appearing legitimate won't cause issues, he will just appear in the top 5%. A hacker killing everyone on the continent will cause issues, but will instantly get banned (if such a hack is even remotely possible).

We may be worrying too much idd, but what you're saying is irrelevant also. Saying that the "GAME ANTIHACKING SYSTEM WILL BE IMPENETRABLE, ONLY FEW OCCASIONS WILL OCCUR" is closing eyes on a problem.

Right now we're caring, not whining and posting "goodbye" messages on these boards. However if the problem is not looked into properly, then the amount of crying and rageabandoning will reach a critical mass. With the result being a dead most promising game in the genre.


EDIT: if you're angry with comparisons to BF3, replace any BF3 mention with APB, for example.

[Skitrel]

Originally Posted by Bonius

I don't understand why this thing is getting discussed over and over again. Comparing to games such as COD/BF3 and using fancy bell curves to explain newb-to-pro ratios just doesn't add anything new.


PS2 is server-side, BF3/CoD hacks won't work
BF3 / CoD has one layer of protection, PS2 has three
PS2 will have an active GM-structure, BF3/CoD does not
PS2 is dependant on continous usage, it's in the developers best interest to keep the game running. This is not the issue with BF3/CoD

The bell curve will always look like a bell curve, no matter how much the numbers change in one direction. The problem of newbs getting stomped by the top 5% will always exist, hacking or not hacking.

We can speculate all we want, but we will never get any confirmation from the developers on how it's supposed to work other than a confirmation that anti-hack software exists within the game. Random checksums doesn't exist and doesn't work.

A hacker appearing legitimate won't cause issues, he will just appear in the top 5%. A hacker killing everyone on the continent will cause issues, but will instantly get banned (if such a hack is even remotely possible).



TL;DR :

Statistics never lie. Anti-hack is in the client. Game is server side.

STOP WORRYING AND STOP COMPARING TO NON-TRIPLE A-MMO GAMES

Sigh. This is incorrect I'm afraid, and impossible. Making an entirely server side game is utterly retarded and is calling out for horrible lag where you're shooting at a target, hitting it perfectly and not doing any damage at all because to the server the target isn't where you're aiming, this means you have to aim ahead of them, missing, in order to actually hit them on the server's computer. Much older games used to do this and things moved to a hybrid of client and server a long time ago so that if players are hitting something on their screen they're actually hitting the enemy. If this isn't the case the game will be shit, simple as.

SOE have stated, repeatedly, that the game is a mix of client and server side checks. This is STANDARD. There is nothing new or different here. This is how it's been done for years now.

MW3 has multiple layers of protection; VAC, client side check, host machine checks(in place of server checks), stat checks and auto stat bans and a dedicated team that does things unknown with tools unknown.

BF3 has multiple layers of protection; punkbuster, client side check, server side checks(that have proven to be ineffective compared with other games), and periodic auto stat bans, as well as community stat mods.

PS2, as far as we're aware has; punkbuster, client side check, server side checks, HOPEFULLY their own in client anti cheat system and a GM team that will work in game and out of game - probably much like MW3s teams.

Get your facts straight before suggesting that SOE are doing something magical and drastically different with their mechanics that's going to make everything hunky dorey perfect land, they're not.

The bell curve will always look like a bell curve, no matter how much the numbers change in one direction. The problem of newbs getting stomped by the top 5% will always exist, hacking or not hacking.

We can speculate all we want, but we will never get any confirmation from the developers on how it's supposed to work other than a confirmation that anti-hack software exists within the game. Random checksums doesn't exist and doesn't work.

A hacker appearing legitimate won't cause issues, he will just appear in the top 5%.

The bell curve is everything when it comes to player enjoyment. When you shift the bell curve right you make players who are otherwise average players feel like they're unskilled and you make the unskilled ludicrously bad. If people do not feel accomplished in a game they will not play it, simple, you have to enjoy a game to want to play it. Hackers that look legitimate are MUCH worse than obvious hackers that are easily instantly bannable. They're just a little bit annoying for a very brief period whereas hackers that appear legitimate do damage as a whole to the game by pushing the curve right and making people that shouldn't be bad, bad. This causes people's enjoyment to diminish as a result of the disproportionate skill distribution in the community. The bell curve is important.