Elite: Cheat galore

Quineloe · Feb 22, 2015

My thread on community goal cheating (without links or naming cheaters) was locked earlier by a moderator, which I found rather surprising given two different moderators had previously posted in that very thread without locking it.

I hope come Monday the cheaters are purged from the game. I don't mind if they're not taking out the trash on a Sunday, I like taking that day slow myself.

mateusfloyd · Feb 22, 2015

kaaldesh said:
Agreed on all points! And, IF the game were offline, I would also have the tremendous feeling that what I bought will last me forever and not just until they shut down the servers. Then, I probably would play online even with the cheaters whilst the game was living and then play the heck out of the offline mode for the a decade or two like I did the first Elite

But I shouldn't derail your thread too much. Anyhoo, the cheating really is bad and from what some smart-sounding posters have said in this forum, it might be a technical nightmare for devs to try to stop due to the P2P nature of the system. Apparently, most of the cheats or at least a great deal of them come from changing client-side values that FD can't control. So I'm not to encouraged that it even could be stopped.

Sad but true, and I'm quoting Metallica and that's out of the question

RAD · Feb 22, 2015

kaaldesh said:
But I shouldn't derail your thread too much. Anyhoo, the cheating really is bad and from what some smart-sounding posters have said in this forum, it might be a technical nightmare for devs to try to stop due to the P2P nature of the system. Apparently, most of the cheats or at least a great deal of them come from changing client-side values that FD can't control. So I'm not to encouraged that it even could be stopped.

Im not a programmer, but I imagine some sort of check to make sure those client side values are within a specified range at login (and periodically during play) wouldn't be the end of the world to implement.

beelbeebub · Feb 22, 2015

As every transaction is logged with the central transaction servers (that bit of ED is not p2p) how long do you think a cheat would go unnoticed? It took a couple of hours for form members to spot that something might be up. It might be a cheat/hack or it might be a glitch in the server side accounting or calculation.
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Either way, relax, raise a ticket pointing out your observations and wait for FD to look in to it. If it's a cheat/hack it will be obvious from the server logs that we don't have access to that someone's been up to no good and it will get dealt with.
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I'm sure, over time, FD will (if they haven't already) implement some suspicious activity filters to flag up people with excessive kill rates, CR rates or mining profits.

Darth Ender · Feb 22, 2015

I hope against hope that there is a purge of cheaters and a change to what is locally stored vs what is server stored (absolutely nothing regarding your character should be locally stored in an always online game). That being said, I hope against hope that FD permanently bans everyone they find guilty of cheating from playing the game at all. I hope that they not only call out the actual player CMDR names but also retroactively delete anything they have done in the game regarding discovering or elsewise.

I sincerely doubt they will do that though.

Montanejos · Feb 22, 2015

RAD said:
Im not a programmer, but I imagine some sort of check to make sure those client side values are within a specified range at login (and periodically during play) wouldn't be the end of the world to implement.

What checks the code that does the checking? If it's sitting on Frontier's servers you can send it bogus values. If it's sitting on another player's machine THEY can falsely report you as a cheater. If it's sitting on your own machine you can obviously circumvent it. This is a pretty fundamental problem that may not actually have any good solutions.

Hyperlethal · Feb 22, 2015

Saddly this is just the nature of P2P multiplayer. There is a reason games are moving away from this system (on PC) any game worth its salt uses dedicated servers. honestly i didnt even suspect this game runs such an unsecured and obsolete multiplayer system especially given the kind of time it players can invest into it.

I urge frontier to put this game on a secure mega server or even super servers (pve/pvp) No PC game has seen success with P2P since MW3 and anyone who played those games will know why

SlackR · Feb 22, 2015

I'm sure that if there is a way to stop / discover cheaters Frontier will sort it. As a kindergarten teacher I employ a very effective strategy in my classroom...

Avago Earo · Feb 22, 2015

Comparing Elte to something else, I know, sounds stupid but bear with me; I'm not famous for saying the right thing. If yo were playing football (soccar) and you punched someone in the face whilst the ref looked the other way, would you feel satisfied with your game. You removed the challenge. Ah I'll go back under my rock. 'Night.

AluminumAlloy · Feb 22, 2015

Cheating is for players that can't play the game. Do not do it.

Avago Earo · Feb 22, 2015

What I mean is, I like to imagine I'm in a space ship. In real life I'm surrounded by fascists and there are a few left to fight back. But fight we do. Anyway, the satisfaction of achieving a personal goal outweighs anyone that can't be bothered to have a go. If people cheat then they're missing out on the challenge. I hope I make sense this time. I make some alright music too.

RAD · Feb 22, 2015

I'm thinking that the launcher would create a hash of select game file values, challenge value from the server and timestamp. I think that would be non-trivial to circumvent.

Montanejos · Feb 22, 2015

RAD said:
I'm thinking that the launcher would create a hash of select game file values, challenge value from the server and timestamp. I think that would be non-trivial to circumvent.

Already does exactly that. (or maybe your humor escapes me)

Mikey2305 · Feb 22, 2015

Fascinating to read some of the 'cheat' threads. I get the impression that to some of these folks, the fun of a new game is the challenge of how to hack it. The desire to actually play the game seems secondary to whether we can create a 'god' mode or not and how. Looks like some of them also lurk here presumably to see the effect of what they are doing and where they need to focus their efforts. I presume its the same for all games and pretty much a fact of life. What sad lives these guys must lead...

Acarin · Feb 22, 2015

Meh. I hope that cheaters are identified and banned from the game. That'll be their money down the drain (and I'm fairly sure, even without checking, that there will be something in the TOS allowing FD to do that). For a game where there isn't even a "win" criterion, it seems a bit ultimately pointless to cheat.

salad · Feb 22, 2015

I posted this on the last cheating thread and I think I should post here too...

Some of you have no clue about how anti-cheating works.

Even with the best detection people will still make their own private hacks and update them frequently, sure FD could add some sort of anti-cheat... but there is no better anti-cheat than a good community.

Everyone who played any FPS game online knows that the best way to avoid them is to play on a server owned by the community, with people actively reporting and keeping it clean.

So for now(and even after they add some sort of anti-cheat) I think we should just keep reporting them, and ask FD for feedback on the bans after some time.

The game is ours, the legit players are the majority and Open play is our community server.

Love you all,
Salad

Skip Intro · Feb 22, 2015

RAD said:
Im not a programmer, but I imagine some sort of check to make sure those client side values are within a specified range at login (and periodically during play) wouldn't be the end of the world to implement.

It isn't that simple, anything more explicit will result in termination, so we'll just leave it at that.

Eagle Eye · Feb 22, 2015

I actually like seeing how they tinker with stuff and solve problems, though I have 0 coding skills so what they do is pretty much technobabbles to me hahaha. We will never be rid of cheaters, that is fact of life, and the more subtle of them will probably never be detected reliably as they will only do this solo. Those on open should be reported by us and community goal topping cheaters pretty much invites the banhammer to themselves.

Mack · Feb 22, 2015

Best cheat I've found is when asked "Load Commander Y/N" answer Yes and then choose Save Commander then Exit, Insta Elite with Loads of credits and a start onto the Fuel Leak Mission.#

BlackReign · Feb 22, 2015

Liqua said:
The group in question would be "Mobius" - PvE group that's full of players who are unlikely (though possible) to cheat.

Sent a PM to Michael / Sandro with the link.

How could you possibly know who's "more likely to cheat"?

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mateusfloyd said:
Just read this forum and you will see the truth behind the community goals cheats. Doesn't even took Google too much effort to show me the way, just google "elite cheats" and you will be astonished.

Read all the pages and you will see how they mock this community and evolved the hacks since early development.

Thx for the vague, subjective post full of unsubstantiated assertions. The community better off as a result of this post. smh....