Enough is enough: What's being done about speed hackers?

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by STsource, Aug 10, 2022.

  1. BumblingB I got better.

    I agree with you. I've been banned from Warframe for my computer having a fault blue screen crash that flagged their anti cheat software. It took me over two weeks to get unbanned, because they put ban appeals on low priority with their CS. When I finally got my appeal reviewed, they only gave me an apology and gave me 2 12 hour boosters. Needless to say I took a self imposed break from the game for several years. (After they updated their game engine and streamlined their graphics compression, I can't play it anymore anyways, it triggers migraines for me. Ce la vie.)

    Getting back to the topic, the problem is there doesn't seem to be any repercussions for players that take advantage of a speed hacker and I think Mepps was commenting about that. Which is why I brought it up and asked how that would be handled.
    • Like x 4
  2. BumblingB I got better.

    Yeah, players would leave. lol

    I know I would. I think enrage ANYTHING shouldn't exist.

    Also, it wouldn't fix the speed hacking element, they could just set a timer to the macro used to slow the burn but still give consistent damage.
    • Like x 2
  3. Tiffany6223 Loyal Player

    Is speed hacking a by product of players trying to get around the clamp? How old is this problem? And lastly, implementing a timer to the macro to slow the burn sounds like making our characters feel even more weaker.
  4. BumblingB I got better.

    This is an odd question to me.

    Speed hacking has been in the game as long as there are players who like to cheat. I don't know why you go directly to the clamp here. *confused*

    As for the timer to the macro would slow the burn, but it would be consistent, but the idea that you are making your characters weaker is not true. You would still have your full damage, it's the content that makes you hit slower otherwise you force a wipe.
    • Like x 2
  5. Tiffany6223 Loyal Player

    I didn’t know. I have only experienced a speed hacker once during the Summer alert of all things, where once Aquaman had finished his tirade with Ocean Master, the mission was done and the person had left the group. We all got our rewards & were just standing there puzzled by what had just happened. Since this was new to me, I wondered if it was a by product of people trying to circumvent the clamp. As I stated earlier in another post, I mainly run everything with people I know, and this one instance where I blind queued into the Summer Event was a rarity for me.

    If the burn is slowed, then isn’t that the same as being made weaker? I.E. it will now take me longer to kill the NPC than before - that to me is being made weaker.
  6. xxHELLSTROKExx Loyal Player

    I mean yeah they could do that but what’s the point then? It’s not hacking, it’s speed hacking. So kill the speed. The only way a non speed hacking group could possibly trigger it is to have all the cheese going at once and that’s the other issue people seem to have. Like if promas 32sec feat was done in 10secs, she enrages. If a boss goes from full health to half too quick, enrage that fool. I don’t know why any normal player would quit if implemented correctly. If 3 good dps can’t trigger it in a regular alert for instance then it’s “right”. Just seems like an easier anti speed hack method to me
  7. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    A speed hacker is someone running a third party program (cheat software) that breaks the physics of the game. This has nothing to do with the clamp and developers can't make changes to the cheat software because it's not their software. The developers can't place specific in-game limitations on the cheaters other than preventing them from logging in.
    • Like x 2
  8. Serene Level 30

    Agreed, they should punish people that use that thing and also benefits from it. Sadly there are a lot of ppl who use it, probably they wont do anything to them because they are so many and at the end they pay the membership, etc. But they should be punished, maybe a ban, if they insist delete the character, then perma ban? who knows... but so far nothing is done
  9. BumblingB I got better.

    I've had my fair share of speed hackers unbeknownst to me. Often don't know until a boss dies. The one that got me the most was the R2E3 event... Honestly, there was no reason and I close my game after, but still got loot. I felt dirty.

    The thing is, this is not related to the clamp, it's more related to how brazen the community that does this has become. A lot of it falls into the lack of any severe repercussions. They get caught, they make a new account, rinse and repeat.

    And no, it does not make you weaker, your stats are left unchanged. You are throttled, but you still do the same damage.

    Nope, because you think time is all that matters. Yes, it's a factor, but they could inch the hack up to just shy of the trigger point and call it a done deal. Also, how are you going to set the metrics on "3 good dps"? 3 DPS that tac swap? 3 DPS that just does DW flurry rotation? I feel that would be a lot harder than you think, because I remember "good dps" that got banned because they knew a rotation that allowed them to do more damage than the GM knew they could. (This was during the time of jump cancelling and phantom attacks were king.)
    • Like x 4
  10. Tiffany6223 Loyal Player

    Thank you for taking the time to explain all of this to me. I still trying to understand what motivates the cheaters to cheat.
  11. BumblingB I got better.

    Don't bother trying. It's like I tell my wife when she says she can't understand why X person did a bad thing. If you can't understand it, you are good and you don't want to start thinking like that.
    • Like x 4
  12. RTX Well-Known Player

    "Rewrite the entire combat code, which might impact latency" i believe you mean (sync signals, client-server)? Or an entire rework of how weapons work?

    However as you said it would be alot of frustration, and it might would lead to more issues, its probably not even enough to really avoid all types of hacking.

    I´ve to be honest and explain why, i/had been hacking...mostly doing things like teleporting players, or moved robots back in the day in Watchtower, but all that been with the intention of making people see something cool. I´ve also used my experience to get specific things solved, in the House of Legends update for example, ask TLantern.

    But i realize that there has to be done something against those "NoDelay/Speedhackers" and also hacking in general.

    Now knowing all that helps in seeing what Hack-Users do, some going to block outgoing crash data by reversing it to 127.0.0.1 therefore the recap servers are pretty much only useful for Bug/Glitch game crashes.

    Also as i wrote before already when i for example go to change the xyz axes float value (player location) then it happens client-sided, there won´t be any code switch whatsoever, therefore pretty hard to detect, if not seen/reported (Obviously the human eye is the best Anti-Cheat).

    That however will still be possible even after a rewritten combat code and that would allow teleporting back into Boss-Rooms etc.
    I´ve also had a chat with some mates from Blackspot Company, which used BattleEye back in the day, then i checked and saw that Daybreak is also a Partner of it (In H1Z1? idk).

    BattleEye seem to be a good solution Anti-Cheat, since it can also encrypt the memory region of the active game process. And its dynamic realtime protection is also pretty strong. And most importantly there are not many which could bypass that (there you would have to be an active hacker yourself) instead of those "possibly 90% Hack-Users".

    To the extended account actions for players in group, it wouldn´t be easy to figure out whos activly willing and supporting it, that could hit the wrong people. Even in some leagues people dont know every league member.

    I´ve seen many Speedhackers getting banned permanent and i also see that there been changes made to prevend specific hacks, i want people to know/remember that before judging and also even if someone isn´t that much into PC´s/Programming etc. it really isnt easy to prevent hacks, when you dont wanna harm legit players in any way.
    • Like x 1
  13. Hraesvelg Always Right


    There are a lot of reasons. Some make the programs because they find it an interesting engineering/coding challenge. "How can I find ways to do what I'm not supposed to do...". Some of us have that mindset. We think outside the box, try to find new and novel ways to do things, and generally don't share things like that outside of to the people whose job it is to fix those holes. Some call those types "white hats".

    Some people do it so they can sell the program and make some cash, or do it because they don't like a particular company and want to see it lose players or prestige.

    Most users of the programs do it for the material rewards. They want X (title, reward, prestige, shiny object), they find the path of least resistance. I mean, this REALLY encompasses most of humanity, when it comes down to it. It's a matter of degrees. Do you go without a healer or tank in an instance that usually requires one just for the challenge? There are some outliers that do this, of course, but we generally take the path of least resistance. If I gave you the choice of a tank that knows the mechanics and will get you through an instance without wiping, vs a tank that has no idea what's going on and will EVENTUALLY get you through the instance in double the amount of time? I'm willing to bet you'd take the former every time.

    Those of us who don't use the hacking programs generally see the value in keeping within the bounds of the rules set forth by the game makers. We'll push up against the boundaries (artifact swapping, jump canceling) but won't cross the line into the expressly forbidden. Those that use the programs don't. They just want the shiny.
    • Like x 3
  14. Proxystar #Perception

    No
    • Like x 4
  15. Swamarian Committed Player

    There are two general approaches to defeating hackers.
    The first is to do everything on the server. The client tells the server that the character moved, attacked, whatever, and the server responds with the new location, damage, whatever. The server can also throttle incoming commands, limiting how fast you can move or attack. The downside is that this puts a bigger strain on the server, and if there is a network hiccup, you can get rubber banding. I think that DCUO does most of this on the client.
    The second is to harden the client. That can mean doing stuff like having code load in random locations, and randomly allocating game data on the fly. Both of these have performance issues. The game can also look for malware, or install anticheat software as a service. None of this is bulletproof, and anticheat software can bite you in the butt. (CF cracked versions of games that perform much better than the legal versions. Also, Sony's rootkit fiasco.)
    In any case, doing either would require major changes in the game's code, and possibly the complete architecture.

    Something easier could be having the server look for anomalous incoming values (moving too quickly, too many attacks/second) and have someone take a look later.
    • Like x 2
  16. RTX Well-Known Player

    That´s all been said in this thread, but do you got any idea for "something easier" for teleport? Instead of server sync/whole rework?
    Blocking people to go into a specific xyz position after dying in boss room without revive?

    Idk but you have to think of and include so many hacks that Mepps is right, the only "real" way is a whole rework. Or testing out with a good Anti-Cheat and seeing if that might be enough. I believe second method should be less work, maybe costly on the long term.
  17. Proxystar #Perception

    I think what the game struggles with at times is the 'optics' of it. It can quite easily feel like nothing is done about it because the long term players of this game know who the player are that run with hackers, they're frequently the same players and we know no action is taken because they're added to friends lists for no reason other than to see if they continue logging in, which of course they do.

    This simply reiterates the optics that nothing is ever done about it.

    Take for example too when you lock rewards behind elite+ and none of the hardcore groups in the game are beating it, yet on the first day they're all popping up on the broker, there's only one place those come from and given it's only one instance it could surely be much more easily monitored yet for days, weeks, while no one is realistically beating the content more and more are popping up, signalling again that same very perspective, that nothing is being done about it.

    I'm wondering can I ask what happened to in game GM's? It used to be that you could get action taken on things in real time by messaging a GM, see a speed hacker, PM the GM and they sort it through observation and immediate action. People would do it less if they felt there was actually a genuine risk they might get caught.
    • Like x 4
  18. Hollow Gohan Well-Known Player


    For a certain community, it's been a matter of being at the top of Wavedox in skill points. The same usual suspects have been getting away with it for years (and still are) while there are people who got to max SP or near that legitimately.

    Source mark grind in Happiness Home recently was another reason. LPVE feat counters are another huge one where I would think it would be clear that something is up if a group is beating Paradox Wave LPVE in 2 minutes consistently. :rolleyes:
    • Like x 2
  19. zNot Loyal Player

    I see a guy on LFG selling SM run for 500million,lol. Will the people joining hes group and completing upper rounds be banned?
    • Like x 1
  20. BumblingB I got better.

    Layoffs during the SOE > Daybreak change. Most of the CS team was stripped down and they updated their automated system.
    • Like x 3