State of the Game 11/25/2012 - 4:45pm PST

theres a door...dont trip on the way out

This has been a problem for over two months (in beta) ;_;

State of the Game: Hacks are starting to run rampant.

Why can't I ever have this "problem" then.

It's likely related to the old bug where dying with a repairtool or medical applicator active would bug it, preventing use.

Yeah, it was pretty broken in beta too. I really have no idea what causes it, since it happens with the medic repair gun as well although not as often.

The most important issue bar none is SOE doing everything it can to prevent hacking which at this point is increasing daily. Think not? I'm not going to name the sites but I know how many people are subscribed to a few of them and each day it's growing and fast at that.

I said all along the best Planetside 1 was beta and the first 3 months and the same will hold true for Planetside 2. The fact that SOE did not include a Empire spec option leaves the door wide open for cheats. The single best tool to catch cheats is a spec option with demo recording. Anti cheat software like Punkbuster is almost useless.

I had hoped SOE would have learned their lesson but maybe in Planetside 3, 10 years from now when server/cloud/client gaming infrastructure is available putting the squeeze on client side hacking.

Right now PS2 is about as secure as PS1 which is about as secure as a Twinkie.

You guys are dead wrong. The most important issue right now is that Smed needs to post a picture of the American flag-shaped NC Super Carrier Supreme.

Let's see that puppy!!!

In all seriousness though, while the game does have some issues, it's fun once you get the hang of it and there aren't any other MMOFPS games like it. I've been playing frequently since the tech test before closed beta, and it's amazing how far it's come in such a short amount of time. Yeah, there are bugs, sometimes hackers, and other un-fun elements, but they're sorting them out fairly rapidly. If you haven't yet, get your butts in an outfit that has a decent headcount and you'll have a blast if you play the game the way it's meant to be played.

I give them credit for sorting out bugs, lots of them and it takes massive work and effort to do so. They are not however sorting out the cheaters. They are growing daily. SOE has really no tools at all to stop them. Don't tell me about some hidden program to catch them or there "own" methods. That is for the sheeple, the ignorant, the people who just don't know any better. The real truth like John Carmack said is there is no way at the current time to effectively stop cheating via software. He is right.

At least in Quakelive, also filled with cheats, is a spec option. Wolfcam lets you see the action through other players eyes in demos.

Demo recording in spectate is the #1 anti cheat method in conjunction with a policing community. Planetside 2 has neither of those options.

I'm telling you right now this is going to be the rotten egg that spoils the party. Every day damn cheaters and others get more and more subscribers. In darkfall when the active subscription base was just over 10k players just one hacksite had over 4000 paying monthly cheat subscription dues. The problem is far beyond the scope that people even realize. Common place cheating is PS2's next stop, the numbers do not lie. As the legit playerbase realizes this is the case they will leave and will only make the ratio worse for legit to cheat.

I'm gonna throw this out there for SOE. Why do you think the TR went heavy in population towards the end of PS1? Why did they dominate? The answer is simple actually, the MCG was by far the best weapon when factoring in hacks like rof, cof, ab etc. I noticed a trend of TR shooting single holes into the wall 30 at a time. It became so obvious that if you wanted to really get the most out of said cheats, TR was your faction.

I know I left PS1 cause of the obvious cheating, Captain Obvious style.

I agree with you, we need a spectate/record mode with an easy way to report cheaters.

In addition, I think they should be analyzing player stats, if someone has 500 kills with 480 headshots and they're all in rapid succession (clustered in terms of time), then there is a fairly high probability they aren't playing completely legitimately. Combine that with an ability to observe, and they could filter out the worst offenders fairly easily.

There are also ways to protect the game client data better against hacks, similar to what some antimalware code does. The problem there is you'd need to keep on it, and be really aggressive with your development of the anti-cheat for it to be worth anything at all. Even then, with a F2P, you really need to establish some kind of consequence for having your account banned for hacking or they'll just get caught, create a new account, and go at it again.

But on to more pressing matters.. where's that NC Carrier concept art???

keep it up! love the game!

State of the Game: Everyone fly ESFs!

Love 2 hellfire ~ ~

Dual burster maxes and skyguards are very, very fun to drive

So was the plan to make Tanks 2, where infantry is virtually an afterthought and there are BR40s in two weeks due to people buying good vehicle weapons and farming infantry who literally cannot hurt them, or is "horrifying lack of game balance" on the ultimate agenda?

We all knew this was coming. SoE needed the money grab. It's basically a corporate sign they don't think anything will change much over time and they should grab what they could. Same model of Tabula Rasa.

Unless they retooled with an engine that could support more then 200 feet of distance, there's not really much they could change. Sadly, people keep trying to think they can build a better engine, and perpetually fail.

I'd like to know what exactly are the issues with respect to despawning wrecks and memory management? If it's an architectural issue maybe I could help with it.

Sony doesn't need money man.