These hackers arn't doing it for personal gain, they're doing it to be as obnoxious as possible. That being said you can't take any monetary incentive to cheat away from them. The best answer is an SOE cheat blocker that patches these issues as they arise. The first Planetside was heavily hacked and abused, I'd like to think they're taking it seriously this time around.
I had this discussion before. The only and ONLY way to stop ALL, if not all but 99% of the hackers, is to make the account creation require to pay a one-time fee of $5 or $10. If the account is banned the hacker would have to pay the fee to create another account. It would rid all hackers since they would not be stupid to waste money just to troll/hack around a game.
yea cheking for the "dna" signature to make sure a banned player stay banned will be better like a previous user posted, cheek for OS installed programs , reg keys an so on, and to avoid being hacked in the first place, some ram scrambling aka the variables change of place in memory every time you start the game, add variables that have the exact same value as the original but don't get used (probably discarded on compilation) so at least when they start their cheat they have to spend time configuring it, or find a way that no process could be attached to the program in the first place i know it could be possible because of antivirus they have a way of keeping their program secured
I think it does cost to send texts even if its automated...and how would they make a system that works for players that are not in the U.S or Europe? International texts are not common...
Yep. No matter what anyone else thinks, this game is not going to go subscription only - ever. Therefore, it needs a business decision from SOE; do they: 1. Dedicate a team EXCLUSIVELY to anti-cheat? This isn't just coding and rolling out patches, but also active administration of servers. Merging servers to regions would help in this fact, as well as stop many areas / continents being effectively ghost towns 2. Hope that hackers get bored before everyone (who was paying anything via subscriptions / station cash) leaves. Unless SOE are planning to roll out some stealth anti-cheat systems in the Jan 30th patch, and are therefore not wanting to alert any of the hackers to the potential for change, then the lack of response regarding this topic is alarming. Alarming to the point of me not wanting to spend any further money, and questioning just how much time I want to invest in something that could be fully dead inside of a month. I honestly couldn't care less if my game client patches 3 times a day. 5 times a day. Whatever. If it means that exploits are being fixed so that honest, paying customers like me AND the F2P community are getting a better gaming experience then I'm all for it. As there is seemingly NO deterant to these cheaters right now, no wonder it is as prevalent as the threads would have you believe. I just read a different thread about an AA cannon that has been spawned in the main room at a warp gate, and its been there for over 12 hours. If something as fundamental as game assets - which should be controlled and validated by the server - can be abused, and players are effectively left on their own, what kind of message is that sending out to the community? What are new F2P people, the masses who SOE are looking to attract, going to think when they end up at that warp gate for the first time? I'll tell you - that someone shipped a game that has been coded in a half-***** manner; a game where the game makers clearly have no interest in policing. Are these new F2P people likely to drop real money on this game based on this first impression? Absolutely not. Don't get me wrong - I love this game. I've not played much online PC gaming in recent years (in fact, not much since UT) but anti-cheat surely should have got more sophisticated in that time, not worse or non-existent. Come on SOE, throw us a bone.
Guys you're all throwing around crazy and dumb ideas. SOE isn't going to force people to attach some sort of asset to this game upon account creation - That would deter new player. Can't ban IP addresses because most people run on dynamic IP addresses which just mean they refresh every time you connect your router/computer to the ISP network you're with. Can ban MAC addresses though.
Nice but USELESS. There are plenty of "Random/Free sms/mobile number"-Inet sites so your genius idea would bring us NOTHING it is the same problem with random email adress. Easiest way: 1. Let the game cost 10$. (If you are not willing to pay that fee, maybe you can get it back in station cash [needs discussion]) 2. Ban HWID (what they are actually doing, so great work SOE) 3. Ban IP too
Most of these hackers use an external program (trainer, etc.) to hack the game. My suggestion is that PS2 should close/fail to start whenever it detects a program that modifies it, and will not start until the offending program is closed.
Or better yet not open at all, popping a message saying that it encountered ERROR XXX and to please contact customer service. Then they can tell them how to fix it and their account name goes onto the immediate watch file for when they log in next, recording what they do and checking for hacks.
I think in the case of aimbots and teleports, you actually can't fix that client side. The programs look for variables in certain memory addresses and change them on the fly, and if you implement code to check if those numbers have changed, well that code can be hacked as well. Even if you have the exe scan for third party hacking tools running in memory, a hacker can just get rid of that scanning code from the exe. I'm more inclined towards the credit card/phone verification solution. There can't be that many people who don't have access to a credit card of some type, even if it belongs to a friend or relative, or have a phone with text capability. You can get a phone that'll do texts cheaper than the internet you're playing PS2 on, not to mention the PC. Or they can do what Microsoft does with Windows, generate a identifier for your PC based on hardware/software. I don't know exactly how they do it, but they do, so it's possible - motherboard serial number or something. Of course this all assumes they are actually banning people.
Maybe not in a 100% foolproof manner, no. Whatever is developed, someone somewhere will find a way to beat it - that is the way of software. The client should be able to detect running processes and prevent launch if one or more of the known tools / hacks / whatever you want to call them are found to be running. This would immediately stop many of the casual cheaters who just use and not create, because most people haven't got a clue WHY stuff works / doesn't work. You'll still get a crop of the 'hardcore' cheaters who will find a way around stuff. For those, surely the server can be brought into play to validate the mechanics. Stuff like detecting a repeated pattern of events that are, given the game physics and rules, IMPOSSIBLE for human players to do. Things like: 1. Running 10 / 20 / 30 times (or whatever it may be) faster than they should be. 2. Teleporting between zones that aren't dedicated spawn / sunderer 3. Repeatedly performing inhuman (open to interpretation) switches of direction and getting immediate / near immediate kills from the switch If any of the above is detected, lock the guns for ever increasing periods of time if detected, up to the point where the account is suspended for repeated infringement. But lets get one thing straight - the players guns should be locked at server level; it is then irrelevant if they attempt to override it clientside, and irrelevant if the guy is running around like Speedy Gonzales, warping all over the place. His gun is firing blanks, and all he is doing is then wasting his own time and not harming anyone else.
Or, you know, HWID bans. HWID bans need to become the standard for anticheating tactics. There is no invasion of privacy with this, unique hardware identifying numbers are already available. Punkbuster CAN use HWID bans and merely by having it installed on your PC, it knows HWID numbers. It's just a matter if a game utilizing PB has set it up to use HWID bans and what this punishment threshold is. IMO zero tolerance HWID bans should become the standard for all games. I'd even go so far as to say all PB games should have their bans be global, so if you get banned in, say, BF3, you're banned from Punkbuster on that computer, period. Any game with PB will be unavailable to you unless you play on servers that have it disabled, which legit players will avoid anyway. I know no company will consider this because it would probably get a lot of games to stop using PB, since I'm sure EA doesn't want people removed from BF3 just because they cheated in a CoD game, for example. This is just how I'd want it if I was ruler of the gaming world. Likewise I wish Valve would just ban entire accounts for cheating infractions on Steam games. Right now if you get caught by VAC, you're only banned from secure servers for that one single game you cheated in.
