I just logged off of Mallory in disgust after getting killed twice by an aim bot from the same player (incidentally losing MAX unit and having to wait 7+ minutes to get another, and yes I did report the cheater), seeing other players also killed by enemies firing from nowhere, and then watching a control point being repeatedly taken over by a cheater hiding in a wall next to it. Whenever this happens, I urge everyone playing to spread the word and then simply log off the server. Refuse to play with the cheaters. That's what they hate the most. I have a main character and two alternates (one of each faction, as you'd expect) on three different servers. So I could just go play on another server. But this kind of experience leaves such a bad taste in my mouth that I usually lose the urge to play any more for a day or two. I hope that Sony does something about this sooner rather than later. I used to play EQII and the spam and farming really irritated me. It took a year or two and innumerable complaints until the spam was made bearable (but not eliminated) by reducing it to only one line in the chat channel, where you had to click on a + to expand it. They didn't do a whole lot about the farmers and gold sellers, but players could live with that, at least if they weren't actually trying to be an in-game craftsman and merchant. At least when one still had to pay to create an account, Sony presumably made some money off of the farmers. This is different. The cheaters simply completely ruin the game. They may or may not pay, but let's assume that they do, and Sony is in a quandary, because they want every dollar they can get. The cheaters are probably paying more in monthly fees for the professional cheating software than they're paying to Sony. Here's my message to you Sony, and PS2 developers: unlike EQII, you cannot collect both the cheater's money and mine. So decide whose money you really want. I spent about $240 on this game so far (Alpha squad, plus year subscription, plus some SC during the 3-for-1 sale). I won't be investing any more money if the cheating isn't stamped out. I know that it will be an arms race with the hack developers to try to stamp it out. But you know what? Although there is no solution which cannot be hacked around (at least with the current hardware and OS platform), the same principle applies as with cryptography. Sony just has to make the hacking expensive and time intensive so that it becomes unprofitable. They have to, for example, change the executables every single day, so that you have a short download every time you log in, but the hackers have to debug the dang thing every day, and install a new hack every day. Sony needs to work with Microsoft to create a new, secure Direct X implementation that cannot be so easily hooked. They need to work with lawmakers to try to get a law passed that makes it illegal to sell or provide hacks which allow players to cheat in violation of ToS. The hackers are costing the on-line game makers money, and threatening their very existence. If Sony, and the entire industry, doesn't do something, it won't be worth playing on-line MMPxxx games at some point and the whole industry will die out as players go back to consoles or just playing regular computer games. Periodically banning players is not going to cut it.
I can't agree more. Please do something to get rid of the hackers. If SOE doesnt read the last paragraph of this post and take it to heart this game is just going to be a bunch of ESP hacking aimbotters fighting eachother with no paying customers left.
Seconded. Don't leave exploitable issues unresolved like Ultima Online did. 15+ years down the line, the Game Code is a cluster-frak of expansions, patches and bodge-job fixes that it's basically impossible to solve them any more since the entire Game will break after modifying just one game mechanic. Not to mention your workforce will also be a tenth of what it is today, akin to UO. Europa's Moonglow FTW, btw. EDIT: I believe people still complain about speedhackers, and definitely about Scripted Bots farming away 24/7, after ALL this time. Depressing. And they are so obvious to spot. They probably account for the remaining Subs that keep the Servers running though...
I'm sorry, I can't help it. I read the title, and can't think of anything other than "...and then they rolled over and went to sleep, leaving me unsatisfied."
Did you confront the person. Yes, this will result in the same tired: "Oh I'm not cheating, I'm just good" thing, but frankly they deserve to have a chunk of their play time devoted to fighting off angry players. If you are angry enough to stop paying, you are angry enough to ruin someone's day for taking away your time you set aside to enjoy yourself. Post their name, the server, the time of the exploit. If they wont openly punish these people, the players have to ostracize them themselves. Frankly if the community is upset enough, we shouldn't wait on SOE, and just get to it ourselves. This is a social game, get your outfit or platoon you usually run with, to openly refuse to allow that person to join, if they are on an Alt. If they against you at the time, then immediately come onto the forums and post everything about their account. The post will likely be swiftly closed, but people Will see it, and people Will remember. If you see someone who you know has been cheating on your side, openly criticize them for it.
Enough of the suspensions and little slaps on the wrists. Zero tolerance permanent HWID bans for cheaters, end of.
In this particular case, the cheating was the blatant in-your-face kind by low level players (who get banned and come back and start again) who are doing it for the laughs, not to actually win. Accusing them of cheating in a chat message is the equivalent of feeding a troll on a forum. That's what they want. Then they know they got your goat. Best thing in my opinion is to just report them and move on. For the serious cheaters, who actually want to have high level characters and who aspire to bragging rights about reaching level X first or having a 10-to-1 kill ratio, and who don't want to get caught, your suggestion would be applicable, -if- they were careless enough to get caught. The problem is, if such players only cheat a tiny bit, just by knowing where opponents are on the map, and maybe improving their aim only slightly and only in some situations, and never shoot or go through walls, then it is not a clear cut case of cheating if you get killed by them. I really don't want to accuse someone of cheating just because they are better than me, or just happened to get the drop on me. The only way for those people to get caught is if Sony builds hack-detection routines into the game software, and if and when Sony does that, the hackers can eventually detect the hack detection and disable or subvert it. But since I don't care so much about bragging rights, I'd be happy if Sony at least got rid of the blatant cheaters.
If they wont name and shame, they should at least post figures of what they are doing. Something like a ticker on the forum that shows how many bans theyve dished out for that week per faction and possibly most banned outfit tag. Kind of like a stats page for SOE, so we can see how high their K/D is
SOE hasn't had many reservations about naming (especially the high-profile ones). It's just against the TOS for US to do it.
^THIS x1000 In the past I worked closely with another online FPS to fight cheating. It is very common for cheat programs to require an update when a game updates. A daily update would be the best first step SOE could take to effectively address the cheating issue.
I just think that if people are unhappy, they should annoy these people themselves. You right about some people though. As social as this game is, I don't think it should be hard to start rooting out people who are hacking and ruin them for it. There is one thing I do not understand about this, SOE hasn't really made an overarching statement to address this, that I have seen, outside of "/report it if you see it". Can they keep up with the hacking programs?
