Why do you hack?

If it hasn't circulated, we've done a recent wave of bans which should make cheating quite a bit harder on folks doing it.

The "thing" is this: The game must have something like Punkbuster to keep the idiots from cheating. You will never be able to prevent sophisticated cheaters, but you need to stop the average antisocial guy who doesn't have any technical knowledge from doing it. Punkbuster raises the cheater-level to expert and I can live with that. Right now every beginner can cheat. All he needs is Google and he must be able to read cyrillic and that's it.

All a cheater needed with punk buster or VAC and such is Google also. It is a never ending arms race really and as long as anyone will pay money or collect decent ad revenue (or deploy malware to suckers) there will be those who make cheats and will find ways around those systems and all it takes once they are out is another Google away, until actual developer resources go into blocking that new wave.

https://www.planetside2.com/players/#!/8269120180172522993/

Flying MAX guy. Was reported repeatedly. Ruined a whole evening on Miller.

I hope DBG can make cheating "even harder" than it is now.

Make sure you're doing something a bit more thorough than simply an account, IP, MAC, or Computer ID ban. New accounts can be created, IPs, MACs, and even computer IDs can easily be spoofed. Any script kiddies cheating in PS2 likely has access to the means to get back in.

Yeah we saw.... the flying MAX that ruined both prime time alerts on Miller today, and resulted in populations being so low during prime time a third continent never unlocked, got banned a minute after the last alert ended.

We all found it hilarious, in the bitter-cynical-laughter kind of way.

Yep the flying MAX killing everything last night was definately either hacking or the most pro player in the history of proness, and he got away with it for several hours.

RadarX do you think it will be possible to create a player hell for bad player. Like what capcom did with sf4?

Hacking has a multiplicative effect on games, in a negative manner.

First, the hackers themselves negatively impact the game, but what's even worse is that inaction by the game developers, perceived or not, tends to breed a sense of paranoia and can really submarine a game even if the amount of "real" hackers is actually comparatively small.

You guys have to be fast, brutal and CONSTANTLY on top of this. Once that trust is lost, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible to ever get back.

Trust me on this in that it's a lot easier to actively manage this then trying to fix the damage after the fact so decide for yourself.

A few months ago, there were red alert fights in PS1. People were having fun as more and more people logged on and stuck around.
Then a hacker logged on and cleared out the server in like 20mins, and nobody logged on for the rest of the day.
Its sad to see that PS1 may actually be populated and playable if the hacker problem was sorted.

Daybreak and other MMOs that are hit by hackers need to get around to understanding that. While they also need to continue the arms race with anti hacking software. They also needs "user mods", ala twitch moderators, to aid them or else they will fall behind like we some times see on Miller during none Daybreak office hours.

Of course, like I have mentioned several times now, there need to be some level of over watch to prevent abuse from these voluntaries, but overall I think having a handful of server based players with ability to use session bans (24 hours) on "obvious" and multi reported users should be possible and would be overall useful rather than other.

When some seemingly win Alerts because a hacker has been playing for fing hours before banned and only banned AFTER the prime time event. Then there is not enough DayBreak employees in server overwatch and other options need to be taken into consideration. I really hope that the "hacker backup" doesnt become the "meta" of winning Alerts!

The way the flying MAXs are going at the moment I can see PS2 going that way.

One of the issues with writing anti cheat for a game like this is that so much of the processing is done clientside, all the player data is exposed in memory for free reading / alteration, and there's only so much anti-cheat can do without running into local system security walls, or compromising the local security rules such that it raises flags in the detection system. (If you block PS2 Crash analysis from phoning home, the ban hammer drops, if I recall correctly)

Since blocking access to memory, there's only so much obfuscation that can be done on things such as... movement rate, position in the world, where your cursor is, health, etc - the challenge then becomes figuring out how to analyze incoming data for potentially altered / cheaty player data. Is this max moving at 50x the standard rate? Is this max flying? Is player X hitting with headshots at ranges where they shouldn't at an obscene rate? When there are players willing to pay for cheats that get around the current anti-cheat system, there will be programmers willing to provide. Anti-cheat may be able to block the flying max if it's position is directly being set via altering player position variables and teleporting around... but what if that same affect can be accomplished by reversing the gravity value applied to the player? Suddenly, the block for the first cheat no longer works, and we're right back where we started.

In a nutshell, blocking cheats is time, cost, personnel, and expertise intensive, and every cheat blocked is another hole plugged in the submarine screen-door that is MMO anti-cheat detection. PS2 is uniquely challenging due to so much processing being done clientside, it's an open book for people that want to manipulate it, and the dev team has to figure out how to analyze incoming data for discrepancies. If they set the window of 'allowable' values too tightly, then we see the wave of bans that kicked a ton of players that were simply skilled, and if they set it to broadly... then huge blobs of cheaters get through.

I'd argue they aren't biologically isolated, family and social bonds are strong. Many means of "overcoming that isolation" result in corrupted self interested power being exerted. Good things often come from disobedience.

The majority of hackers are not what you imply. Snowden might be.

Did you really just compare mass murderers with video game cheaters? You can't be serious.... As much as I disagree with cheating, I would much rather have EVERYONE in the game hack and cheat all the time, than ONE more person go on a killing spree... The fact that you equated the two to each other is honestly scary.... In no world are they equivalent or deserving of the same punishments...

Quite.

Hackers are kidults with ego problems.

Murder does not equal bravery.

You know what could be good? The ability to report people from their stats page. I see so many posts from us about hackers, why don't we act? DBG needs to accept hackers are a big problem, bigger than any nerf/op problem. Make the next big update anti-hacker based, and we will call you saviors.

Personally I understand why they haven't gone with the direct methods (even if I don't like it) - they just cannot afford it.

What I don't understand is why they haven't expanded the statistical methods they are currently using to pick up blatent hackers.

The very same methods used over a longer time period WILL pick up a lot of subtle hackers, not every single one, but much more than the seeming 0% currently.

I mean someone that suddenly goes from a 5% headshot kill ratio for 5000 kills to a 90-100% headshot kill ratio for 4 solid weeks (with a massive K/D ratio rise) should probably be flagged up for a closer look by someone somewhere.

Its amazing what recursion stat tracker can show you about someone. Think someone is hacking, monitor them for 5-10min, see 90%+acc 90%+ headshot and think wow (knowing they are not just fighting in close). Dam they are good. Track your recruits, track your platoon to see who is and isn't performing?? So obviously DBG could to if they really wanted and maybe they are now.

He was just above average really.

We all just ned to git gewd.