The only thing that will destroy planetside 2.

[Rumblepit]

Originally Posted by FastAndFree

Not immediately. Ban them after a randomly selected timespan, like a few days, to make it harder to experiment with what they can get away with

steam uses vac, and what it dose is when it detects a hack it compares the data to other flagged/reported accounts and compiles a list. so lets say your joe smo,,,, and you just downloaded some hacks from a well know hack site. you try them out ,do some testing by yourself but you get flagged by the anti hack, or caught by another player.. well what you did was just get everyone who downloaded hacks from that site banned... they all get banned at the same time. all the hackers even the ones who havnt been reported or caught,or even used the hacks get banned at the same time. but they can all just make new accounts after they have been banned. this is the downfall with f2p games....
verification and or identification of all players must be required!!!! this is a must.
f2p is very popular gaming model atm and its doing well for most games out there, but when it comes to skill based f2p games they are almost always flooded with hackers. i say almost because the f2p model came from china, where it is illegal to hack. you get caught hacking you or your parents will face charges....... f2p skill base games in china are huge..... and if you are not a resident of that country you dont play on their servers...... just to get on one of their servers you have to steal a identity of a resident of china. DOB,SS number,place of birth, mother and father, and credit card number. this is why the 9 want nothing to do with us, they will have their servers and no hackers. thats all they care about........

we need to adopt some of these laws for this model to work as intended.....
i have faith in the soe team but the our laws wont back them up.

[Vanu Techpriest]

I've never really found hacking to be a problem when it comes to MMO's even if it is an FPS. Many of the files will be server-side and I'm sure any hackers will be quickly noticed by the players and dev-team and taken care of.

It should be easy to spot hackers simply by looking at their profile data (like BF3 combat log). I'm sure SoE will have some type of failsafes that parse combat data and ban people with 500:1 K/D ratios and 100% accuracy.

[KTNApollo]

Hacking did have a significant impact on APB, but APB's true flaw was being a pay-to-win game. Many of the players quit the game due to pay-to-win long before hacking destroyed the remaining playerbase. As long as SOE keeps the game free-to-play instead of pay-to-win they'll have to resources to take down the hackers.

[Noivad]

Originally Posted by Pella

Hackers.

Being a FTP Game, And the amount of players that will be playing, Planetside will be a prime target by hacking programmers trying to sell there undetected hacks on a monthly subscription which its going to happen.

You only have to look at what happened to APB which was a a brilliant concept full of fun and packed with players, until hackers completely destroyed it.

I would like to hear what SOE have up there sleeves as if they dont get on top of this before launch the game will hit a wall.

From my understanding PS2 will be using the latest Punk buster. Along with CSM online at all times. My question is to SOE, how is a CSM suppose to spot hackers. And if they do what will happen?

SOE Need put there foot down from the start with Perma Bans.

Im justs curious on how things will work in PS2. As with anyone here, Soon as there's an influx with hackers il be on my bike.

-Pella

Not worried about hackers. SOE is addressing it with several different ways. I play other FTP games, and do not see hacking as an issue.

Even when there were hackers on PS1 - my group still played and we killed the hackers. Higby stated that there will be online devs all the time to take care of hackers on the spot, so nothing to worry about

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by KTNApollo

Hacking did have a significant impact on APB, but APB's true flaw was being a pay-to-win game. Many of the players quit the game due to pay-to-win long before hacking destroyed the remaining playerbase. As long as SOE keeps the game free-to-play instead of pay-to-win they'll have to resources to take down the hackers.

Nonsense. APB at release wasn't f2p and didn't sell weapons yet it was flooded with hackers and lost player base really, really quick. In it's current incarnation it's doing just as well as the initial APB but as a f2p game it's more economically viable. And the 'p2w' weapons really aren't much better than what you can get in-game. Fact is people lose and blame something other than their lack of skill. It's either hacks, p2w, lag, shitty mission design or something else that isn't "they were better than me".

Hackers were a problem in APB, but a huge problem during APB:R's popular period as F2p. Now that the game has lost popularity you see a lot less hackers. And just the veteran players who enjoy the game for what it is and don't feel the need to hack.

But PS2 will be highly popular as well as F2P. So I expect huge hacking problems 2-3 months after release. All those people who thought they were going to own face will feel bummed out that they're crap at the game and get hacks. And with the TTK of PS2 they will be able to completely destroy your game experience.

Hacking is the one thing that can completely destroy Planetside 2 within a month.

Remember, when you play a game like Battlefield or CoD and you encounter a hacker on a server with obvious hacks, instant headshots etc. you can leave and go to another server. When it happens in PS2 you gotta wait till an admin bans the person. In the mean time, they can completely ruin the game experience for literally hundreds of players. PS2 has headshots and a much faster TTK now, that means hacking has way more impact.

[Malorn]

I know we all want to know what they're going to do to stop hackers to reassure us, but they shouldn't tell us anything. Operational security is important. The more they tell us about what they're doing the more they tell the hackers too. You don't broadcast your attack plans to the enemy to make the folks back home feel better about the plan. Its better that we not know, because if we don't know neither do the hackers and it becomes that much harder for them to subvert the defenses if they don't know what those defenses are.

I think the PS2 staff has done a good job of trying to reassure us but not giving out too many details. That's good enough for me. They know hacking is a big problem. They know it can ruin their game.

We don't need to know the measures they are taking to stop it and it is better that way.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by I SandRock

That argument is flawed. That's like saying, even though we have laws and a police force enforcing them, people still get murdered. So we might as well get rid of the laws and police all together.

Terrible analogy. A better analogy would be that crime still happens in gated communities. We can't have PS2 being a gated community, because we need it to have high populations, so just take the appropriate safety measures for living in a slightly higher crime area.

Knowing that F2P puts PS2 at a greater risk, SOE just needs to stay that much more on top of it.

Hacking isn't just a small problem in box price and subscription games. It's a big problem. I think part of the problem is that the B2P developers don't seem to worry about it as much for those games, because there isn't that inherent stigma like F2P games have.

Certainly F2P has it worse, and a large part of that is that there is no monetary barrier to making a new account, but another big problem is that so many F2P games have been programmed like shit, with code that is even more exploitable than the shitty B2P game code tends to be.

So yes, hacking is a bigger concern for F2P, but as long as the PS2 devs write the code with as few exploitable mechanics as possible and include a lot of built in cheat detection software, and as long as they keep updating the game to deal with new hacks and have an attentive CSR staff to deal with the hackers, I believe they can keep it under control quite well. At least as well as the best B2P games, which still will always have a few subtle hackers running around.

[LegioX]

I came from BF 3, which i believe was the worst game i played concerning hackers running amok in the game.

[Mepper]

Hacking can be made more or less impossible.

-Do not allow players to play online if they changed anything in their client.
-Determine balance and physics etc. all serverside, so players can't just change a few numbers in config files and have instant kills with one bullet for example.
-Autokick players that aim instantly. An aimbot can always be made, but is easily detected. If players aim there is always a curve in aiming speed. You start at zero, gain speed, and when you're almost at your target it slows down. Aimbots never have this, and can be detected this way.
-Only send clients the information of players who they can see, this will prevent wallhacks. Even if players succed to make themselves look through glass, they can't see any enemies because their client doesn't know where they are.
-Disable every console command that could possibly give a player an unfair advantage.

If you would do this hacking would be almost impossible. Some hackers may find a way to get around, but this will only be very few.
If they decide to sell their hacks, just do the same as VAC and kick everyone who downloaded it.

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by Mepper

Hacking can be made more or less impossible.

-Do not allow players to play online if they changed anything in their client.
-Determine balance and physics etc. all serverside, so players can't just change a few numbers in config files and have instant kills with one bullet for example.

Already the case

-Autokick players that aim instantly. An aimbot can always be made, but is easily detected. If players aim there is always a curve in aiming speed. You start at zero, gain speed, and when you're almost at your target it slows down. Aimbots never have this, and can be detected this way.

Eh, this isn't how player aim works. I can rotate 180 degree and stop right on your head and fire without any slight deceleration, it's pure reflex. There is no way to auto-detect an aimbot like this in an accurate way. Also aimbots, when configured properly, can be almost impossible to visually detect. It's the obvious aimbotters with badly configured hacks that stand out. The problem is with those who configure them properly. So the 'snap' degree is minimum and preferably no auto-fire.

-Only send clients the information of players who they can see, this will prevent wallhacks. Even if players succed to make themselves look through glass, they can't see any enemies because their client doesn't know where they are.

Impossible. This means that if a player stands behind a tree my client doesn't know he is there, then when he throws a grenade or a manually controlled missle all of a sudden the server has to send me this information. Or if he pops out from behind his tree. This is just one player. Now imagine a battleground with hundreds of players all moving behind and away from objects. You would get massive lag spikes as the server keeps sending new client updates in instants. Not to mention other aspects, like players also make noise, you cant hear them if your client doesnt know theyre there, etc.

If you would do this hacking would be almost impossible. Some hackers may find a way to get around, but this will only be very few.
If they decide to sell their hacks, just do the same as VAC and kick everyone who downloaded it.

Hacking will never be almost impossible in FPS games, it's a cat and mouse game. If it was that easy it would've already been done. The -best- way is to make custombuild anti-hack software. Simply because its custom it means hackers aren't familiar with it, like with PB etc. But more importantly, active CSR, active in-game admins monitoring and a proper report system (videos and screenshots) and public naming and shaming by SOE. Why the latter? Because if a player is publically named and shamed as a hacker all their outfit members will know and all their friends will know and they'll likely know his steam name, the sound of his voice etc. So it will be a lot harder for such a person to come back to PS and enjoy the game.

APB promised everything SOE promises. So i'm skeptical. Customer Support has always been the major failure of big companies like Blizzard, EA and SOE. And that's whats needed to keep hacking under control.

[shadar]

One thing that may help with hacking (though has the potential to make it a lot worse) is that friendly fire will be on. The abilty to team kill should make it so that the hacker can more or less be spawn camped and SOE may but a feture in there that will prevent spawning if so many poeple report you till they can check it out. The main downside to that is that the hacker can kill team mates and it will be a hastle to keep the hastle dead if there isnt some anti spawn system in place if a player is reported by say 5-10 poeple

[LegioX]

only way to stop hackers is for someone to create a program, where if you get caught a virus is sent to your computer. Where it will eventually blow up in your face and destroying everything inside your case. No computer, no more hacking. Problem solved.

[MedicDude]

Higgs stated in tenton hammer video that they will have a stat analyzation system flagging players with anomalous activity, which GMs will then investigate. They will probably also be incorporating process list monitoring and logging, like what is done by steam's VAC service, allowing simple retroactive bans.

[Sabot]

Player police is never a good idea... especially if it's based on votes or reports. Butthurt players will report without hesitation or justification. I mean obviously admins can check out a player if a lot of poeple scream cheater in the general chat... just no reports so the same admin have to go through hundreds of useless and completely false cheating reports.

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by Sabot

Player police is never a good idea... especially if it's based on votes or reports. Butthurt players will report without hesitation or justification. I mean obviously admins can check out a player if a lot of poeple scream cheater in the general chat... just no reports so the same admin have to go through hundreds of useless and completely false cheating reports.

It works very well. If a absurd amount of players report one player for hacking then it's good for an admin to investigate. But i'm talking about reports which include fraps video evidence. APB bans players based on PB + admin + player reported videos and that works well.
No reason to skip over good evidence.