Cheating in Elite Dangerous

[epicbubble]

Very good writeup Ryan! It is good to finally have some traction on this issue.
I am really curious what FDev are going to say in regards to all of this. It is honestly a little scary that they have not said anything yet.

 

[znôrt]

this is a feature that like a bazillion people have asked for, and they instead do stuff like change how the canopy integrity displays?

those seem to be their priorities, yes!

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Surely in this case FDEV are the worse party? They develop the game, but they can do less with the code than a third party?

Ah, I see we've reached the "but surely it's Frontier who are the bad guys here?" part of the thread...

 

[[VR] M4st0d0n]

It's scandalous and I want to let everyone know here that I think a cheater and his/her motherboard should be permabanned for life on the concept of a shadow server FDev had when stuff was actually developped a few years ago.

But in the meanwhile, may I suggest all of yousses to use the block feature. A wonderful tool we've been told many times to use when confronted with any stuff FDev didnt care to regulate.

May I also suggest people to also consider asking FDev to lessen the powergap and the grind as a prophylactic so people who got bored of that or found this unfair were not tempted to use trainers in the sandbox.

As for the true hackers that got the tools released, you infamous scum... I hope you're still around when Elite is dumped to reverse engineer whatever code the holy Braben would care to spill and make us some servers after the peremption date.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

I thought someone was saying that being able to change the UI colours was somehow a bad thing, because Frontier couldn't do it. Feel free to blame me for whatever you want.

The colour changing aspect was a teeny, tiny aspect of the tool and probably the least important aspect of it.

 

[graeme.firth]

Not read the entire post, watched the videos by Obsidianant and company, and read the Reddit post.

Well done (all involved) for bringing this to the fore, I have been occasionally suspicious that this behavior may be going on, but really was not certain until today.

It will be a shame if it turns out that FD have not been paying the attention this subject rightly deserves, and I hope that the considerable community pressure (that I expect this to bare) will prompt FD into decisive action and not the usual "canned" response.

 

[Judder Man©]

Ah, I see we've reached the "but surely it's Frontier who are the bad guys here?" part of the thread...

I think Relspi's talking about this bit...

...
As a final insult to injury, this hack is also apparently able to change HUD color better than any other utility, allowing separate color settings for the UI and radar icons. FDev have been asked about adding options for colorblind players and mentioned that it "wasn't possible."

...

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Yeah, I know. The rest of the tool is garbage.
But why can't Frontier just do it themselves? I'm probably being off-topic, but I'm for real epic super unbelievably angry about this video game.

I sincerely wish that my life were so trivial...

 

[znôrt]

Ah, I see we've reached the "but surely it's Frontier who are the bad guys here?" part of the thread...

so you didn't even bother reading the op? that's my boi!

 

[znôrt]

Just be younger. You get a lot of free time to unironically be epic super mad about this literal video game.

as a matter of fact, i think he knows!

 

[Jankules]

Great work as always Ryan.

The most shocking thing about this is how many people are using the same name on the MPGH forum as they do here.

LOL

 

[GreyAreaUK]

so you didn't even bother reading the op? that's my boi!

I'd be rather more worried about people being able to make virtually indestructible ships, or ones that are just better enough, than being able to tweak HUD colours beyond what Frontier currently allow.

 

[TheSisko]

FD have been far too soft, and that's only encouraged the hackers to, well, hack away.

Engineer UI Hacking? Playful pat on the bum.
Bot Hacking? Ban the account for just 30 days, problem solved!
Outright cheating? "We're looking into it"

Other games would have used the permanent ban hammer for this sort of nonsense.

I'm on Xbox but I can see this effecting the galaxy I and others play in. With the majority of the development team working on the 2020 update and everyone else working on smaller updates, I doubt if this will be fixed any-time soon.

This is what happens when you're too soft, FD.

 

[znôrt]

I'd be rather more worried about people being able to make virtually indestructible ships, or ones that are just better enough, than being able to tweak HUD colours beyond what Frontier currently allow.

i know. we just disagree on who/what to blame. the mere existence of this tool (and several others) paints frontier as the bad guys, and that much was clear just in the op which actually does so explicitly. so you didn't have to look that far, into a tangential side comment about the hud colors.

 

[babelfisch]

the latter is not going to happen, at least not in this regard.

regarding the former ... i knew of the p2p thing roughly a month after release, and i took cheating for granted since. and i've seen evidence all these years, it never was a secret. it's a pity but that's how it is, i've gotten over this long ago, i'm just curious to see how frontier handles this fallout now. it has come late indeed, didn't expect it anymore, i actually stopped a while ago debating p2p around here, it seemed pointless.

popcorn tanks full.

First, it's not like client/server games would make it impossible to cheat. Good luck identifying an aimbot just using a server for example... P2P just makes it easier to cheat.

I read the entire thread and some people said you can't detect cheats in a P2P architecture and that FDEV isn't doing anything against it (the same thing gets said about other developers of client / server games by the way, usually until the banhammer hits). That's not entirely true since FDEV detected cheats in the past using telemetry and banned people accordingly.
There are several ways how to detect cheats in a (mostly) P2P architecture, such as occasionally sending data to frontiers servers (which already happens anyway), running an anticheat tool that monitors your computer, compare expected results between peers and automatically report anomalies, etc.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

i know. we just disagree on who/what to blame. the mere existence of this tool (and several others) paints frontier as the bad guys, and that much was clear just in the op which actually does so explicitly. so you didn't have to look that far, into a tangential side comment about the hud colors.

I wouldn't call Frontier 'bad guys', but they're certainly not covering themselves in glory here.

 

[znôrt]

FD have been far too soft, and that's only encouraged the hackers to, well, hack away.

Engineer UI Hacking? Playful pat on the bum.
Bot Hacking? Ban the account for just 30 days, problem solved!
Outright cheating? "We're looking into it"

Other games would have used the permanent ban hammer for this sort of nonsense.

I'm on Xbox but I can see this effecting the galaxy I and others play in. With the majority of the development team working on the 2020 update and everyone else working on smaller updates, I doubt if this will be fixed any-time soon.

This is what happens when you're too soft, FD.

yessss!! cut their heads of!!!
frontier, use your flamboyant sword of justice!
just ...
do it ...
somehow!

so might you all please direct the sword's attention to the next cheater, and vengeance will be served.

(we will be playing the same game though)

 

[znôrt]

I wouldn't call Frontier 'bad guys', but they're certainly not covering themselves in glory here.

i know i must be irritating at this point, forgive me, but it was you who came up with the "bad guys" analogy. i just played along, took it with the recommended pinch of salt. (no, not that salt!)

 

[The Replicated Man]

Surely in this case FDEV are the worse party? They develop the game, but they can do less with the code than a third party?

You would think right?

 

[dylman]

Thanks Ryan and everyone else for fighting the good fight. This doesn't just affect PvPers, it's affecting everyone and it needs to be fixed. The silence from FDev is getting deafening now.