Cheating in Elite Dangerous

[Marcus Tullius]

Let me guess the possible answers of FD:

1. Burrow the head in sand and wait this thread to fade. A help from moderator is highly likely possible to lock this thread;
2. We will investigate and will take actions. No ETA, no guaranties

There is no 3. This is FD after all

 

[Bigmaec]

Let me guess the possible answers of FD:

1. Burrow the head in sand and wait this thread to fade. A help from moderator is highly likely possible to lock this thread;
2. We will investigate and will take actions. No ETA, no guaranties

There is no 3. This is FD after all

3. Look at all these new shiny paintjobs. Black Friday suddenly today

 

[Northpin]

3. sound actually nice

 

[FatFreddysCoat]

Not being a programmer, but I would have thought that a server side check that the stats of a ship the last time the Cmdr logged off match the stats of the ship the next time the Cmdr logs in wouldn’t be that hard to do.

 

[Marcus Tullius]

Not being a programmer, but I would have thought that a server side check that the stats of a ship the last time the Cmdr logged off match the stats of the ship the next time the Cmdr logs in wouldn’t be that hard to do.

It’s not hard at all. The sad truth is that FD simply do not care if you play the game or not, and if you play it, how. The only things they do care are sales. Exploits staying for ages, long standing bugs, no reaction about combatlogging. Boys, don’t bother us with nonsenses, buy paintjobs on regular basis and be around when the next expansion is ready, you can play others games meanwhile is everything they are saying last 4 years.

 

[Tikanderoga]

It’s not hard at all. The sad truth is that FD simply do not care if you play the game or not, and if you play it, how. The only things they do care are sales. Exploits staying for ages, long standing bugs, no reaction about combatlogging. Boys, don’t bother us with nonsenses, buy paintjobs on regular basis and be around when the next expansion is ready, you can play others games meanwhile is everything they are saying last 4 years.

They do fix money making bugs pretty quickly. Everything else does stay as it is. But yes: Buy paint jobs!
Too bad the last 5 months of paint jobs are uglier than elephant butt leaher.

 

[babelfisch]

understandable but naive little realistic. but i guess yes, that would be the standard course of action.

what is plan b?

This has happened before though. So not unrealistic at all.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

Security really isn't my forte, but would sandboxing the client and encrypting the net traffic (SSL, etc) help here?

I agree though, Frontier need to be a hell of a lot more responsive on this. This isn't just going to go away.

Frontier, please: There's a time when staying silent on an issue is the right move. This is not that time.

 

[FatFreddysCoat]

It’s not hard at all. The sad truth is that FD simply do not care if you play the game or not, and if you play it, how. The only things they do care are sales. Exploits staying for ages, long standing bugs, no reaction about combatlogging. Boys, don’t bother us with nonsenses, buy paintjobs on regular basis and be around when the next expansion is ready, you can play others games meanwhile is everything they are saying last 4 years.

So if the cheaters had (very unlikely I know) found a way to get free skins or ship kits, am I cynical in thinking this would suddenly become a priority to fix?

 

[GreyAreaUK]

So if the cheaters had (very unlikely I know) found a way to get free skins or ship kits, am I cynical in thinking this would suddenly become a priority to fix?

Since it would be costing them money (and might constitute actual theft, but IANAL) then yes, my guess is it would be prioritised immediately.

 

[znôrt]

This may be a supposition, but it sounds like you are saying that state management is supervised in a more protected matter with a central server.

yep. if only the server can update state you 'only' have to worry about protecting the server. this isn't bulletproof either, you must still ensure that the 'messages' coming from the clients are correct and authorized (say, not specifically forged to result in non-desired state changes as a side effect), but at least you have precise control of who can access and how, and you can trust your state at any moment.

in a p2p environment, each client maintains its own state and they somehow synch it together, but you have no control over any client nor what they do with their respective routers, (e.g. are they blocking each other?). from a security perspective this is a nightmare.

 

[Factabulous]

Frontier, please: There's a time when staying silent on an issue is the right move. This is not that time.

While I agree something more would be nice I would settle for hearing that the exploit discord was seeing bans. Deeds, not words.

(And banning to solo, where they can still break the BGS )

 

[Bigmaec]

Bans to solo is no option.
Shadow or Perma ban is the way to go.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

While I agree something more would be nice I would settle for hearing that the exploit discord was seeing bans. Deeds, not words.

(And banning to solo, where they can still break the BGS )

I'd prefer a total ban with account deletion, providing they can prove beyond reasonable doubt that they've got the right people. And I'd guess that's the tricky bit.

 

[wolfekrab]

perma ban is the way to go ,i dont care if people exploit to get in a big ship quick or if they have 20billion credits it does not affect my game experience, however this hacking does affect not just my experience but all commanders, and should in no way be tolerated , war thunder recently took a hard line on cheats instant ban no appeal ,cheating has in the most part stopped ,only with a hard line on these players will frontier redeem themselves in many peoples eyes, and many know frontier will do nothing but sit on their hands .. i hope for more .but expect nothing from frontier

 

[Dirtbird]

I'm a lot less interested in playing the game now.

 

[Midian Cabal]

yep. if only the server can update state you 'only' have to worry about protecting the server. this isn't bulletproof either, you must still ensure that the 'messages' coming from the clients are correct and authorized (say, not specifically forged to result in non-desired state changes as a side effect), but at least you have precise control of who can access and how, and you can trust your state at any moment.

in a p2p environment, each client maintains its own state and they somehow synch it together, but you have no control over any client nor what they do with their respective routers, (e.g. are they blocking each other?). from a security perspective this is a nightmare.

Just a small digression: Even in p2p environments one takes the server role and the others are clients.

 

[Deareim]

I'm a lot less interested in playing the game now.

Can i have your stuff ?

 

[Morbad]

in a p2p environment, each client maintains its own state and they somehow synch it together, but you have no control over any client nor what they do with their respective routers, (e.g. are they blocking each other?). from a security perspective this is a nightmare.

Exactly the sort of nightmare that distributed consensus mechanisms were developed to overcome, though I suspect this would be even more work to implement in the case of something like ED than a client-server architecture.

Anyway, with regard to clients blocking each other, there used to be a setting called "RelayViaServer" in the AppConfig.xml. I'll have to test if it still works and what exactly it's doing.

Just a small digression: Even in p2p environments one takes the server role and the others are clients.

That's an over simplification. In the case of ED there appears to be a matchmaking server that pairs clients, then one of those clients becomes the main instance host, but each client is still the 'server' for it's own stuff, and certain entities (NPCs) with in the instances can shift hosts based on a number of factors.

perma ban is the way to go ,i dont care if people exploit to get in a big ship quick or if they have 20billion credits it does not affect my game experience, however this hacking does affect not just my experience but all commanders

Any sort of cheat, in any mode, has the potential to alter the scope to which the BGS can be manipulated and thus has the potential to affect all players on some level.

Treating them as different from hacking seems arbitrary.

 

[RJMcReady]

I'm not want to talk about this much; I have a neurological aberration that effects my vision - so much so that I'm gradually going blind.

...this hack fixes the HUD for guys like me, and colorblind players. FD says they can't do it.

Just ****es me off, even though I'm an Xbone player, and I'm half tempted to buy a PC version and test the hax for other players.

A haxor seems to be more concerned with accessibility than FD. I love this game, but I can't defend much of it - I certainly can't defend ignoring accessibility needs.

This.

I am profoudly colour blind FDEVs complete indifference to the issues the HUD colours cause is infuriating.