Notice A statement on cheating in Elite Dangerous.

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"[ May 30, 2019

ryan_m said:


Recently, hacking has become more prevalent in Elite Dangerous, with multiple players running into invincible ships each week. This had been a problem in the past but kind of vanished for a bit but has seen a resurgence lately that can't be ignored anymore.

What do the hacks do?
There are multiple ones out there that are public that are easily detectable by FDev and regularly result in bans for the users. These are not the ones we are concerned with.

In late August 2018, one of my guys gained access to a private Discord for an Elite Dangerous trainer that was above and beyond every public one available to date. The level of customization present in this one allowed users to tweak nearly any aspect of their ship beyond what is possible in game. Max power plant output with perfect heat management, significantly more powerful drives, more weapon damage, stronger shields, etc. Any module could be tweaked within this cheat.

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."

What does this mean for Elite?
Since I am a PvP player, I'll go over the PvP impacts first and cover PvE after.

The majority of encountered hackers use them in dumb ways that are brutally obvious. When you line up a volley of 5 PAs on an FDL, no matter how good the build is, you're going to be doing a ton of damage. When those shots land and the shields sit at 100% for the next 3 minutes after you're dumping volley after volley into them, that's pretty easy to catch, right? Those guys get reported and their names are spread far and wide pretty quickly.

The more insidious kind of hacker is one that knows about the game and can use this to their advantage. With a bit of knowledge about PvP builds, you could set up the hack so that it was basically undetectable by the opponents you were fighting. 5% more agility. 10% more damage. 20% more power output to let you run more power-hungry builds. Better heat management. Higher weapon breach chance/damage to snipe modules. Modify them just enough to give you a significant edge, while your opponent will just think you have a good build and can pip manage really well.

Situations like the ones above cast a shadow of doubt over every interaction with another unknown player.

In PvE, the effect is arguably more extreme because of the BGS implications. Infinite shields/ammo to farm CZs or tank wings of cops/ATR while grinding. Dropping off a T9 full of passengers at a station 100k ls from the star by literally just jumping into the system and dropping to normal space. Don't even have to make the journey. This would also allow AFK credit/mat farming.

What have you tried to do about it?
In early December, we took an export of the Discord along with screenshots and submitted it to FDev through their ticketing process. We got the standard canned reply, which is honestly what we expected. We understand that they cannot explain what they're going to do about it, so we just kinda moved on for a bit. It has been over 6 months since we submitted it to them and there has been no interruption in service or any additional facets of the hack becoming detectable. We have reached out directly to both Will and Paige, providing the same information. The same canned response was sent ("we'll pass it on").

The Discord is still active with scores of people posting every single day about how to use it and requesting new features be added.

What do you want done?
We want FDev to start being more heavy-handed and proactive with punishing hacks. The mere existence undermines the entire game. If you were to be caught hacking in Elite, here's what punishment currently awaits you:

What other online game allows you to cheat and get caught 3 ing times before you eat a perma, especially an online MMO? If Elite were a single player game, this is a very different conversation, but it isn't and this has implications for every single play style.

EDIT: Exigeous did a great video on this as well.
]"


My reply to the above Quote
As I believed it to be on the right track
"Just an nod of agreement It should be stopped, And not banned to solo they should just be Banned EoS.
These occurrences happened to such and extent in EveOnline that they started publishing how many accounts were warned and banned, as their player base was getting well P****d off with the level of cheating, hacks, farming exploits etc. They were man enough at least, and made the attempt and were courteous enough let us players know.
I had hoped that FD would be as good and publish how many are caught, and then how many were warned and perm-a banned;
We really don't need names as new accounts can be created with new names easily."
 
We really don't need names as new accounts can be created with new names easily."

Easily, and more important, cheaply. Ban's won't do anything against the dedicated cheaters. They will be back with a new account within minutes. It might work against the less dedicated cheaters, but then, maybe they deserve a shot at redemption and the short shadowbans will be enough for them to mend their ways.

The only thing that will work against the dedicated cheaters is FD figuring out how to stop the cheats working, and every time they do, the hackers find a new way to work around it and are back in business hours, days, or weeks later.
 
BUT (and it is only a small "but" really) but at least if accounts are banned, the cheaters have to spend some money - even if only a small amount - to get back into the game

depending on the cheat the cheater would have to have had either the base game (so say £7 for each time caught) or Horizons (so £14 each time caught)

or if it happens in "next update unique content" then presumably £30ish at 1st at least for each time caught.

maybe not a huge amount of cash but possibly enough to make it worth while a developer spending some extra work time working out how to convincingly catch these <redacteds>
 
BUT (and it is only a small "but" really) but at least if accounts are banned, the cheaters have to spend some money - even if only a small amount - to get back into the game

depending on the cheat the cheater would have to have had either the base game (so say £7 for each time caught) or Horizons (so £14 each time caught)

or if it happens in "next update unique content" then presumably £30ish at 1st at least for each time caught.

maybe not a huge amount of cash but possibly enough to make it worth while a developer spending some extra work time working out how to convincingly catch these <redacteds>

I don't think the hardcore cheaters care about paying money. Especially when its on sale.

The best thing you can say about it is at least they are funding FD. To the tune of 15 minutes of developer time....

As i noted earlier in the thread, one hardcore cheater, upon getting 10 accounts banned, said he might have to slow down on the cheating a bit...
 
Hackers; shamed killed and banned, its the only way


"Just an nod of agreement It should be stopped, And not banned to solo they should just be Banned EoS.
These occurrences happened to such and extent in EveOnline that they started publishing how many accounts were warned and banned, as their player base was getting well P****d off with the level of cheating, hacks, farming exploits etc. They were man enough at least, and made the attempt and were courteous enough let us players know.
I had hoped that FD would be as good and publish how many are caught, and then how many were warned and perm-a banned;
We really don't need names as new accounts can be created with new names easily."


Agreed; exploding ships ( near their 'friends' ) is a good place to start , ED
 
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The best thing you can say about it is at least they are funding FD. To the tune of 15 minutes of developer time....

As i noted earlier in the thread, one hardcore cheater, upon getting 10 accounts banned, said he might have to slow down on the cheating a bit...
yep, that was my point :)

10 accounts is somewhere between £70 and £140 assuming bought in a sale. At least that is money in the FD coffers and is probably about a days work for 1 FTE

not much but something at least.
 
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Except that griefers aren't cheating.
true... but in the early development video there was going to be a special mode for people who liked to play that way (hell mode)
it was where "griefers" and those on a yellow card were meant to go (I am not talking out and out cheaters. if they are caught there should be no modes for them, just account cancelled imo... but those caught using certain exploits which would be on a "list" - which would be accessible in game for those who want to see.

Now as is usual in these type of threads someone usually claims this is not legal, people have paid for the game and can cheat or exploit as much as they like... (not checked to see if that is in this thread) but to which i say.... nonsence.

Plenty of games are ruled with an iron fist, hell just look at MS zero tolerence with the xbox 360.

not only did MS perm ban consoles from ever going on line if caught having unsigned code on them / being modded..... but they dialed it up to 11 and made the console corrupt ANY even legit game save which was accessed on it, thus making people with such consoles a bit of a pariah.... (if i used my roaming profile on such a machine without knowing about it, my memory stick would have its game save corrupted. (I actually wondered if MS would have got in trouble for that due to chances of catching innocents.... but it turned out to be fine).
 
griefers griefing cheaters and cheaters cheating on griefers doesn't sound bad to me.

i have to concede it sounds almost as funny as whiners whining on gankers, but it definitely pales in comparison with random chaps defending frontier's anticheat policy. it's akin to worker's class voting far right without the dire consequences cause, you know, it's just a game. epic.
 
When it comes to taking actions against accounts we have identified as using cheats, we review every report on a case by case basis.
That's very commendable.

While there has been a level of discussion regarding these cheats within the community recently, we can assure people that the number of people using these are a very tiny number of players. We are still working on new and improved ways of stopping these cheats and tracking and measuring activity now and in the past.

We strongly advise that no player runs Elite Dangerous using a cheat client, hack, software mod etc as this will put your account at risk now, and in the future.
Even though we are only a small (not supported) group, please remember us Linux users and Proton. Now that Elite is running so well on Linux, it would be a shame if we were kicked out again because of anti-cheat measures.

Nevertheless, I very much welcome the fact that action is being taken against fraudsters. They spoil the game for others and can do a lot of harm to a multiplayer game.
 
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