[T:V] The answer to cheats

So when you install the game, and you agree to some clause which states that you won't modify the game in a certain way (say 3rd party cheat loaders for example). Irrational finds a method of detecting these third party loaders via a patch or what have you, and people using popular cheat software A send a notice to dev server B that they are indeed using software A. You're saying that they still have a right to play online even though that right becomes forfeit when they run the cheat program/loader/whatever?


x66 said:
I
When you pay money for something, you shouldn't have to worry about some dipshit company banning you from playing, based on something they cannot prove in the least.
Click to expand...
 
My name isn't "big" or "respected" but here's my thoughts anyway.

RedSpiders got the right idea, just like andrew did with T1. Having the flags underground and moving is a great way to make cheating in T1 very difficult, or annoying. And it seems to be low bandwidth (Im assuming). If this kid of system was brought into TV, I think it would dupe most of the cheaters out there. But if course, Im always for a more sophisticated approach on cheat prevention. But it is very effective in T1, where cheats can be pretty bad.

I don't know a whole lot about Punkbuster, but I always tend to see alot of workarounds and backdoors to it's cheat prevention. It catches alot of cheats, at first it seems. But then people get around it and they have to update again.

I think the key is to have what True put forth, have an autoupdater built in to the interface that can check and update files as does T2. But have the same effectiveness of the T1 zadmin and fstat servers mods.

I may or may not have a fucking clue what Im talking about, Im just a fellow Triber sharing my opinions. Cause at least this time around, the Devs are listening; which is a relief :)
 
This is a horrible idea.

I'm not going to bother trying to argue that it is. It should be obvious.
 
Rosco-SS said:
My name isn't "big" or "respected" but here's my thoughts anyway.

RedSpiders got the right idea, just like andrew did with T1. Having the flags underground and moving is a great way to make cheating in T1 very difficult, or annoying. And it seems to be low bandwidth (Im assuming). If this kid of system was brought into TV, I think it would dupe most of the cheaters out there. But if course, Im always for a more sophisticated approach on cheat prevention. But it is very effective in T1, where cheats can be pretty bad.

I don't know a whole lot about Punkbuster, but I always tend to see alot of workarounds and backdoors to it's cheat prevention. It catches alot of cheats, at first it seems. But then people get around it and they have to update again.

I think the key is to have what True put forth, have an autoupdater built in to the interface that can check and update files as does T2. But have the same effectiveness of the T1 zadmin and fstat servers mods.

I may or may not have a fucking clue what Im talking about, Im just a fellow Triber sharing my opinions. Cause at least this time around, the Devs are listening; which is a relief :)
Click to expand...

:heart:
Hello mister Rosco.
 
TreW_SoulJa said:
No matter what crafty loaders there are a screenshot won't lie.

As far as the 'you cant trust the client' thing goes, it doesn't matter. We can still have the screenshots stored on their computer assuming that it will take them better than 24-48 hours to perfeclty photoshop all of the images. Accusations usually occur within 3 hrs of the match anyway.
Click to expand...
Every game that uses PunkBuster has cheats that hook the screenshot function in pbcl.dll and disable the cheats when the function is called. Nothing to Photoshop later if the cheats aren't on when the snapshot is taken.
:roller:
 
ot- speaking of demos, multi-pov demos would be awesome. (being able to view every pov in the game with just 1 demo)
 
ZProtoss said:
So when you install the game, and you agree to some clause which states that you won't modify the game in a certain way (say 3rd party cheat loaders for example). Irrational finds a method of detecting these third party loaders via a patch or what have you, and people using popular cheat software A send a notice to dev server B that they are indeed using software A. You're saying that they still have a right to play online even though that right becomes forfeit when they run the cheat program/loader/whatever?
Click to expand...

There's quite a bit more to it than you seem to be aware of.

Banning is lame, specially when there's no way to validate anything on a client, 100%.

You fuckers can keep wasting your time worrying about this shit, when you finally gain a clue, you'll realize cheating will never subside.
 
x66 said:
There's quite a bit more to it than you seem to be aware of.

Banning is lame, specially when there's no way to validate anything on a client, 100%.

You fuckers can keep wasting your time worrying about this shit, when you finally gain a clue, you'll realize cheating will never subside.
Click to expand...
I think you're getting a little worked up over nothing. Sierra will tell us what we want to hear to sell more copies. I have no reason to suspect their support of the game after the initial sales boom will be any more signifigant than that given to either previous title. I'm also not worried about getting "banned" from T:V either, even though according to Marweas I'm #1 on the list.
 
enough of the screenshot idea, thats the easiest thing to circumvent in a cheat loader

hacked code:
if take screenshot
<disable cheats>
take_screenshot()
<enable cheats>
endif
 
LouCypher said:
Every game that uses PunkBuster has cheats that hook the screenshot function in pbcl.dll and disable the cheats when the function is called. Nothing to Photoshop later if the cheats aren't on when the snapshot is taken.
:roller:
Click to expand...


Yeah i already accounted for it. I said we'd autoupdate very frequently, re-encrypting the lines of code that call for the screenshots and/or encrypt the inaccessable file in which they're stored on the client's PC (if we decide it's even necessary to store it in an inaccessable file).

As long as punkbuster or whatever the cheat thing is, is NOT a seperate program, we should be safe. Since punkbuster is a seperate program, people can just sit there and hack that. If it's included in the game, then they have to hack the entire game to find it. Hacking an entire game is much more complicated :)


As far as their "right" to ban people, they have a right to do any fucking thing they want. They can put "you will pay is 1000 dollars upon completing the single player mission" in the user agreement, and hold you to it because you clicked 'yes' so you could install the game. Of course a judge will throw it out if they try to get it from you, but you see the point.

And eventually the people at Sierra will realize that customer support is good business, and as a business student i can tell you i've come into the knowledge that good business is the BEST business. They can increase profits by not spending on support, but they will lose customers, and that stunts company growth in the long run. Good business dictates that you have increased customer satisfaction at the cost of immediate profit in favor of long-term relationships with the customers, such that your market share is increased. The more you increase your market share the less you have to spend on marketing and the more customers you get = more profit = higher company value = $$$$$.

It's what i call the fireworks vs the fire. You can go for the big/quick profit, or you can go for the smaller, long-term gains, which in the end = way way bigger profit because a fire can grow, whereas fireworks have limited growth, and burn out by nature.
 
ChaoStar said:
Oh shit. We should all be ashamed. We were just contributing our thoughts to the forum titled "Tribes Talk". WTF were we thinking?!?
Click to expand...

its sort of like a bunch of high school physics students proposing their physics theories to steven hawking
 
TreW_SoulJa said:
Yeah i already accounted for it. I said we'd autoupdate very frequently, re-encrypting the lines of code that call for the screenshots and/or encrypt the inaccessable file in which they're stored on the client's PC (if we decide it's even necessary to store it in an inaccessable file).

As long as punkbuster or whatever the cheat thing is, is NOT a seperate program, we should be safe. Since punkbuster is a seperate program, people can just sit there and hack that. If it's included in the game, then they have to hack the entire game to find it. Hacking an entire game is much more complicated :)


As far as their "right" to ban people, they have a right to do any fucking thing they want. They can put "you will pay is 1000 dollars upon completing the single player mission" in the user agreement, and hold you to it because you clicked 'yes' so you could install the game. Of course a judge will throw it out if they try to get it from you, but you see the point.

And eventually the people at Sierra will realize that customer support is good business, and as a business student i can tell you i've come into the knowledge that good business is the BEST business. They can increase profits by not spending on support, but they will lose customers, and that stunts company growth in the long run. Good business dictates that you have increased customer satisfaction at the cost of immediate profit in favor of long-term relationships with the customers, such that your market share is increased. The more you increase your market share the less you have to spend on marketing and the more customers you get = more profit = higher company value = $$$$$.

It's what i call the fireworks vs the fire. You can go for the big/quick profit, or you can go for the smaller, long-term gains, which in the end = way way bigger profit because a fire can grow, whereas fireworks have limited growth, and burn out by nature.
Click to expand...


except that the code used to actually take a screenshot is out of the dev's control
 
TreW_SoulJa said:
they can rename the function any number of ways and completely embed/encrypt it.
Click to expand...
Once again, anything that relies on the client cannot be trusted. Encryption will not make any difference.
 
I understand it can be hacked, but can it be hacked before an accusation is made and before the required time to upload images that the ladder imposes?

Doubtful.

And regardless i said they could have a toggleable server-side option for the files to be uploaded to the server before there's even a chance to hack/photoshop. Thusly all bases are covered.

Sure it's still remotely possible, but in tandem with the demo rule, i think the end result would make cheating hard enough to not make it worth it.
 
TreW_SoulJa said:
I understand it can be hacked, but can it be hacked before an accusation is made and before the required time to upload images that the ladder imposes?

Doubtful.

And regardless i said they could have a toggleable server-side option for the files to be uploaded to the server before there's even a chance to hack/photoshop. Thusly all bases are covered.

Sure it's still remotely possible, but in tandem with the demo rule, i think the end result would make cheating hard enough to not make it worth it.
Click to expand...
If you're gonna try to argue this, argue a better point. Screenshots do not prove jack shit, and as has already been stated, the code can be modified to turn all cheats off when the screenshot gets taken.
 
Ixiterra said:
If you're gonna try to argue this, argue a better point. Screenshots do not prove jack shit, and as has already been stated, the code can be modified to turn all cheats off when the screenshot gets taken.
Click to expand...


Uh screenshots show if you have cheats running ?

Yes i already said the code can be hacked to turn off cheats when SS's are taken, in the first post of the thread i said they would autoupdate the code frequently to make the cheaters have to re-hack it every single time.

Look to prevent any more repitition let me get this out of the way

We know cheating is still possible, the goal is to make them have to re-hack it all the fucking time, and since nobody wants to hack that much just so they can cheat and still have a high possibilty of getting caught, they wont bother.

so please, enough with the 'omg they can still hack it you idiot'. We know this, it's inherent, and that's why we autoupdate and make them rehack it.

-end
 
Well, even with a consistantly auto updating system it'll always be a battle. If you have frequent updates, there will be someone with no life waiting out there with a website that'll be frequently updated with the latest hack/etc. A constantly auto updating system is definitely better than waiting between major patches for more cheat prevention though.
 
Back
Top