cheaters
- Thread starter aMinDAmoK
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Sometimes I'm tempted to think that way too, but then ED almost certainly wouldn't have sold as many copies if it had been single player only. And if we want those expansions to be funded, FD need as many sales as they can get.
For what it's worth Cap, players like you KEEP me playing this game. In spite of all the buttheads who cheat/hack/grief/etc./etc. I still keep coming back because most of the players I do meet (Albeit when I can play open without the universe stuttering. But that's a separate topic) are just trying to play the game their way and (hopefully) find others to interact with.
And stories like this:
Convince me that I have picked a great way to experience what space might be like in the year 3300....
Fly well Cmdrs..........
Sure, some games sell millions. Space sims, however, aren't something that the mass community has ever even played before, mostly. It's essentially a new, and largely untested in the modern gaming environment until now, type of thing. It's about as close to its own market segment as you can get, really. It's not a niche. It's aimed at a very specific market and it's captured a fairly large number of sales, considering its relative youth. But, hey, what do I know? I've only played games for 33 years and worked in the space for over a decade. Yeah, I actually worked in the games world while at Microsoft, before moving to a more enterprise type of role.
Yeah, they chose this path. I can't say why, as I wasn't really around then. But they did, and such is life. They eschewed the larger server costs for this type of thing and, while that might limit the game's appeal, that's how it goes sometimes. Haven't ever taken a calculated risk yourself, huh?
And that means you have any clue how games and the associated network code really work? Yeah, not so much. You may know code but let's see you whip up, say a Microsoft Office clone. Wanna bet you wouldn't be able to without making massive mistakes along the way? I would.I know it is not much, just a simple server client application that lets you turn any image into a working touchscreen control panel with unlimited scripting and works on Windows, Android and the old WinCE.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19z-rNx7R_Q
But that is ancient past. After this, I moved on to work on the software that makes your passport, and now I work on the software that makes your credit cards. No biggie, just the same old.
So walk the heck away then! Or, oh I dunno, play solo! Heck, a massive part of why I don't generally play multiplayer games is because a lot of gamers are ats. That doesn't mean the entire game's ruined! Even in Elite where Open still affects SOlo to a degree, and vice versa, you can still do just fine playing by yourself. If that isn't for you, well maybe you should toddle off and find a game that is.
Seriously, everything you're saying here amounts to hubris on your part because "well, I could have done better". Hindsight's 20/20, as they say, so that's pretty easy now.
Whatever, though. I'm not going to keep arguing with brick wall. We've both said our piece so ...
Well I'm glad I play Mobius, most people in there are decent enough, even if any of them are cheating they are doing it against the NPCs so it doesn't bother me because I've never been attacked yet in Mobius.
I guess people would cheat on offline mode anyways , farm NPCs in combat zones till they have hundreds of millions of credits.
Then they can go to open play and try all the ships, fly anywhere and do whatever they want. I bet a lot of them don't even grief, just use the money to buy the best stuff and visit all the systems.
I've never come across a hacker that I know of? Maybe 80% are hacking but just doing it passively and not being mental and killing everyone they see?
Who knows, since its clear the software to do it is out there, free to download, how can you tell how many are and are not using it!
I'll continue in Mobius group and I'll keep my fingers crossed for you open play people. Hopefully FD will find a way!
I guess people would cheat on offline mode anyways , farm NPCs in combat zones till they have hundreds of millions of credits.
Then they can go to open play and try all the ships, fly anywhere and do whatever they want. I bet a lot of them don't even grief, just use the money to buy the best stuff and visit all the systems.
I've never come across a hacker that I know of? Maybe 80% are hacking but just doing it passively and not being mental and killing everyone they see?
Who knows, since its clear the software to do it is out there, free to download, how can you tell how many are and are not using it!
I'll continue in Mobius group and I'll keep my fingers crossed for you open play people. Hopefully FD will find a way!
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More like, with the large number of games being offered, at far smaller prices than a couple decades ago, a player doesn't need to stay with a single game nearly as much.
Kinda my case. I have, literally, hundreds of games I've purchased but not played yet. That being the case, I will typically skip the parts I don't enjoy — be it by simply not playing those parts, or by using cheats to skip the grind — in order to sample just the parts I enjoy the best among what each game has to offer.
Side note: I started gaming with Pong.
Several members of the community have worked (and continue to do so) at various levels in the games industry, for example, myself personally for about 15 years working from QA Tester up through the ranks to (currently) Project Manager in the case credentials are needed to contribute to this discussion.
Elite is a niche game by your own description, while it is striving to reintroduce and target a specific subset of the larger gaming market, that audience is still a very small portion of the gaming market. Just like EVE or Star Citizen are also niche games, all are trying to exist by targeting a specific portion of this market subset. This not a bad thing or a dirty word, it is a simple market truth. This game is not a general gaming audience draw, and I doubt many of the players really want it to be.
On every project I manage, and several of those are in excess of multi-million dollar applications, but to the point here, if they performed a cost/risk analysis and this came out as the best option to follow, can you imagine what their other choices were?
Keeping to the network aspect of the coding, the network framework/technology is the same under the hood, it is just how you choose to build on that base that matters. For the application overall, be it in Elite or your Office clone example, there is likely to be a team of people working on it. No one person on the team has to be the master of everything, but it would be nice to see a more modern methodology/approach to network security and game design. They appear to have lacked access to knowledge in some areas, or failed to take certain risks into consideration (or assessed the Impact/Likelihood inaccurately) during their design/development planning. This could be due to a lot of factors that unless we were in those meetings, will never know for sure, but it remains that the final product reflects a lack of understanding in terms of the modern PC/Mac MMO/Online landscape and the players who occupy it.
It might be that they thought/expected more of their client base/target audience, or that they felt the level of technical know-how would limit the impact, or any other of a slew of reasons, but more than a few of them point to not being up to date on the realities of the modern consumer within the demographic.
Root-cause analysis = What was the outcome, why did it occur, what can be changed to ensure it doesn't occur again. Exploits and "cheats" have been known since Alpha/Beta, they may be making strides to combat them (and I hope they are), but as consumers, we need to be shown that they are, even if it is just a lip service statement of "Yeah, we know, we're trying to fix it". Until recently, a decent portion of the community were adamant that this very thing wasn't happening at all.
Either way, there is a problem, it is a known problem (and has been known for quite some time), and there is now even more proof that this is an issue which should be looked into further. Look at this thread alone as to the potential impact of not taking at least a token action at this point.
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Without knowing too much about the coding aspect of the game and the client - server communication, I would have presumed that there was set parameters in place, and that damage equations during combat were sent to the main server for authenticity or checking?
As in, you fire a weapon, it has a RNG factor of 10-15 damage, it does 4000 damage instead, a warning goes off and the account is investigated / kicked from server. Or if you are in this star system, you jump 100Ly to a new one and you're kicked from server.
I only came across this thread as me and 2 wing mates in Vultures could not for the life of us take down an Imperial Clippers shields. After 6 gimballed beam lasers and 5 minutes of continuous fire we had to run away. That was my first and last time playing open in a RES for a community goal.
I am sure that FD are working on a fix, most game developers are quiet when it comes to this thing, so that hackers don't go quiet or stop hacking don't they?
As in, you fire a weapon, it has a RNG factor of 10-15 damage, it does 4000 damage instead, a warning goes off and the account is investigated / kicked from server. Or if you are in this star system, you jump 100Ly to a new one and you're kicked from server.
I only came across this thread as me and 2 wing mates in Vultures could not for the life of us take down an Imperial Clippers shields. After 6 gimballed beam lasers and 5 minutes of continuous fire we had to run away. That was my first and last time playing open in a RES for a community goal.
I am sure that FD are working on a fix, most game developers are quiet when it comes to this thing, so that hackers don't go quiet or stop hacking don't they?
I would hazard a guess that there are more old school (Elite, Frontier, Privateer, Freelancer etc) players here than "new" ones. Also the X series was/is still available and it has a massively better background economy simulation.
I really can't afford that lately. When I take a calculated risk and fail, a bank may lose some tens of millions of Euros.
I would for sure if I was doing it next to my daily job as a garage project. However, if I had a developer team, with 10+ years experience in the industry and you threw 3 million USD toward me as well, you would get a very decent office clone. Frontier is not a garage start up with 10k loan from a friend. From pros, you expect, you know, professionalism.
I would, if the AI posed some challenge, the background simulation was working, the economy was not a bad joke or it had a soul in general. The PVP pirating is the only thing that is borderline interesting.
My first PC game ever was X-Wing. Since then, I played or completed every half decent space flight game. I have fond memories of I-War and Freespace. The Frontier/Encounter games showed tremendous promise, but the control was such a massive letdown, I just could't force myself to play it much. I built a freakin trade empire in X3 with my own capships without using any cheat or exploit. If this game is not for me, then there is a problem.
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Short answer:
Depends on how their data back-end is set up.
Longer answer (but grossly oversimplified)
Normally they'd have long term (historic) transaction records so even in the case the "cheaters" or hacks stop what they're doing, there will still be a legacy record, which is likely based on some of the previous ban threats/game-play tracking events, bug reimbursements, etc... Basically, if you've done it even once, there is likely a record of it, the question is how much of an issue justifies FD to go looking for the data, and once they do, what is their filter tolerance for the cutoff for being identified.
P2P combat modifications would be harder to follow since, from what we've been told, most of the encounter happens as P2P, so damage hacks would require a probe of the local client or to have the handshake (match-making) server sit in "over-watch" of the clients where it normally only says "user 1 and user 2 are now in the same instance, let me know who wins". In either case, the report files would need to include a full digest of the turn-by-turn action in some way, such as: "user 1 fired <weapon details> cause XX damage | user 2 <shield details> absorbed XY damage". The server would then offload that information, parse against the expected values, and set a flag such as "!value discrepancy!" in the case it found something wonky.
P2P combat modifications would be harder to follow since, from what we've been told, most of the encounter happens as P2P, so damage hacks would require a probe of the local client or to have the handshake (match-making) server sit in "over-watch" of the clients where it normally only says "user 1 and user 2 are now in the same instance, let me know who wins". In either case, the report files would need to include a full digest of the turn-by-turn action in some way, such as: "user 1 fired <weapon details> cause XX damage | user 2 <shield details> absorbed XY damage". The server would then offload that information, parse against the expected values, and set a flag such as "!value discrepancy!" in the case it found something wonky.
And your game would almost certainly require a large infrastructure of servers around the world, carry a hefty subscription, and still ultimately be instanced and have some of the same issues with marrying user content to instancing without it resulting in an inconsistent mess.
X3 economy simulation run pretty well on my 100 USD Core2Duo. Granted, this thing had some 1k stations. I think a 100k USD worth of servers would be able to calculate 100k stations no problem.
You know what? I would gladly pay the sub for that. Luckily the current MMO trends show that microtransactions alone can keep a game afloat.
This game is ultimately instanced right now. I learned to deal with it and it is not the problem at all.
The missions right now consist of instances and minimal scripting. People here are quite capable to learn the code, write some content, send it in for approval and if everything is cool, FD would simply add it to the mission pool.
You know what? I would gladly pay the sub for that. Luckily the current MMO trends show that microtransactions alone can keep a game afloat.
This game is ultimately instanced right now. I learned to deal with it and it is not the problem at all.
The missions right now consist of instances and minimal scripting. People here are quite capable to learn the code, write some content, send it in for approval and if everything is cool, FD would simply add it to the mission pool.
Setting up another layer of in-house moderation bureaucracy sounds like a great way to burn money.
So it's you that's responsible for the mess the entire world is in! BURN HIM! BURRRRRRN HIMMMMM!!!! *waves a pitchfork about menacingly*
I suspect there is a testing team already in place. Testing something still requires less manpower than Creating something then Testing it. You know, paid content creators cost more money than free community created content. Except, if the content is actually created by interns during their lunch breaks.
World mess? No. Personal mess, hell yeah. Imagine that you filled up your car, had a nice dinner or stand at a toll booth with a huge line behind you and then your card doesn't work properly. Or better yet someone cracks your card and robs your account. So, a calculated risk on my part may work out, or it may leave you without money at the worst possible moment. Fun, fun, fun
World mess? No. Personal mess, hell yeah. Imagine that you filled up your car, had a nice dinner or stand at a toll booth with a huge line behind you and then your card doesn't work properly. Or better yet someone cracks your card and robs your account. So, a calculated risk on my part may work out, or it may leave you without money at the worst possible moment. Fun, fun, fun
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Many of those same cheats have been available since gamma - in December. It's been five months - if fdev was going to do something, if they were able to do something - they would have done it by now. Instead, you have people memory editing to get near unlimited shields, hull, fuel, and weapon damage.
Disappointing.
Disappointing.
tbh they need to initiate a check for the anti cheat when the game is started the way it works at the moment is when the launcher starts the anti cheat i wont explain how its done because we don't need anymore cheaters but basically there bypassing the launcher in order to bypass the cheat engine they can not do anything with the game until the put in a check for the anti cheatwhen the game exe is started not the launcher and if it does not detect the cheat engine it crashes the exe it wont fix it but it will make it more difficult for script kiddies to cheat easily
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I read about this Twitch stream with the Cheat Engine open in another thread.
I am sadden to find it was easy to locate the thing along with a wiki a luddite such as myself could understand.
I hope there is a solution to this
Same group was working on extracting the UA sound files.
Removes all the point of the game doesnt it if everything is served up on a platter
I am sadden to find it was easy to locate the thing along with a wiki a luddite such as myself could understand.
I hope there is a solution to this
Same group was working on extracting the UA sound files.
Removes all the point of the game doesnt it if everything is served up on a platter
Nope. No checks. Nothing, Purely P2P.