How much hacking is there?

[Dr Roly]

I'm no expert on these matters, so forgive me if this question is a bit noob-ish.
I've read a lot of posts querying hacks/exploits/bugs. I've read posts about the vulnerability of P2P gaming and how there are already plenty of hacks for ED. In open play, I would only say I have encountered two commanders that made me suspicious (one firing a massive barrage of plasmas and one not taking any hull damage), and even then it could have been down to lag. Is there really that much hacking? Enough to kill open play?
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Also, wouldn't the prevalence of hacking make the Race to Elite competition wide open to fraudulent claims?

 

[Pekka]

I don't know how much hacking there is, but hacks seems to be easily available. I'm sure quite a few people must be using them. I haven't encountered anything suspicious myself though.

 

[Midian27]

Never encountered anything suspicious either. People always blow stuff like this way out of proportion because so many cry hacks when they get killed fair and square.

 

[kreuzbichler]

A Sidewinder attacked my Cobra- shot back and he stayed at 100% all the time. Happened two times already. Only way is to escape or go offline. Hackers everywhere

 

[DaveB]

I'm no expert on these matters, so forgive me if this question is a bit noob-ish.
I've read a lot of posts querying hacks/exploits/bugs. I've read posts about the vulnerability of P2P gaming and how there are already plenty of hacks for ED. In open play, I would only say I have encountered two commanders that made me suspicious (one firing a massive barrage of plasmas and one not taking any hull damage), and even then it could have been down to lag. Is there really that much hacking? Enough to kill open play?
-
Also, wouldn't the prevalence of hacking make the Race to Elite competition wide open to fraudulent claims?

Not going to reprise what I and others have said on other threads in detail but here's the tl;dr version...

Hacks exist, they are currently mostly being used to farm combat bonds in solo by parking an unreasonably-buffed ship with turrets in conflict zones and going afk for a few hours. Using hacks in this way is largely impossible for FD to address securely but has minimal impact on the game.
FD have the capabilities to deal with these if they should start appearing in open, because then they open themselves up to detection by unhacked clients. To the best of my knowledge this mechanism is not yet in place but if FD are working on it I do not expect them to give any such indication until it is deployed and working.

 

[Skuli]

A Sidewinder attacked my Cobra- shot back and he stayed at 100% all the time. Happened two times already. Only way is to escape or go offline. Hackers everywhere

Part of the problem identifying hackers is trying to determine if this was just a client glitch from packetloss/lag/bug or genuine HAX.

 

[Logios]

I play in open around the most populated areas (Lave, Diso, Leesti, etc) several hours a day and haven't encountered a hacker yet. I'm not saying they don't exist, just that they're at least rare enough for me not to run into them.

 

[EddyRockSteady]

I'm no expert on these matters, so forgive me if this question is a bit noob-ish.
I've read a lot of posts querying hacks/exploits/bugs. I've read posts about the vulnerability of P2P gaming and how there are already plenty of hacks for ED. In open play, I would only say I have encountered two commanders that made me suspicious (one firing a massive barrage of plasmas and one not taking any hull damage), and even then it could have been down to lag. Is there really that much hacking? Enough to kill open play?
-
Also, wouldn't the prevalence of hacking make the Race to Elite competition wide open to fraudulent claims?

Have you tried Google?

 

[bamber]

I thought that there was little relevance between the game and your forum rank
.
However it appear the chances of meeting hackers is inversely proportional to your forum rank

 

[OamodSias]

Let's not forget that forum communities generally represent only a small fraction of the actual player-base. It's entirely plausible to assume that hacking is rare occurrence that only seems prevalent because of the forums.

Edit: This is not to say the problem is any less serious.

 

[Marikc0]

Part of the problem identifying hackers is trying to determine if this was just a client glitch from packetloss/lag/bug or genuine HAX.

People who claim "Oh, it was just lag" don't know what they are talking about. It's more likely to be a bug or just not having the firepower to cause damage than this amateur excuse from people who are simply repeating something they've heard people say time and time again rather than actually have a clue how things really work these days.

 

[Ben Ryder]

Play the game. Have fun. Don't waste a thought on hackers.

You can choose who you play with so you wont ever have to play directly with a hacker if you dont want to.

If you dont have fun got do something else.

More positive posts that are creative, interesting and constructive please.

 

[ape808]

People should take a look at this video posted on reddit today.

At around 4:20 :it shows an AI PILOT becoming immune to damage.

[video=youtube_share;jZSMhEefdeQ]http://youtu.be/jZSMhEefdeQ?t=4m20s[/video]

Maybe he's hacking too?
It's very easy to overreact and accuse innocent players for the effects of such bugs.

Edit: If you do think someone has been hacking, report them and let Frontier check it out. Of course there will be some idiots who'll try, all we can hope is that they are caught and banned, and more steps are taken to prevent it in future. Every online game out there has it's share of cheaters and bots, Elite will be no different.

 

[salad]

Hackers everywhere

Not true.

The vast majority of us never encountered anything suspicious.

 

[Montanejos]

People who claim "Oh, it was just lag" don't know what they are talking about. It's more likely to be a bug or just not having the firepower to cause damage than this amateur excuse from people who are simply repeating something they've heard people say time and time again rather than actually have a clue how things really work these days.

I was waiting for a post like yours in this thread, thanks for not disappointing.

 

[Derath]

I've had anacondas last ages at 1% before it depends what subsystems your hitting when you are trying to do damage, as subsystem hits don't damage hull.

If you don't pvp you will probably never encounter a hacker or cheater OP, if you attempt pvp for any reason you will find plenty - especially of the Alt/F4 variety

 

[salad]

I've had anacondas last ages at 1% before it depends what subsystems your hitting when you are trying to do damage, as subsystem hits don't damage hull.

If you don't pvp you will probably never encounter a hacker or cheater OP, if you attempt pvp for any reason you will find plenty - especially of the Alt/F4 variety

Alt+F4 is a move but it is not hacking, don't mix things up.

 

[-Jumper-]

I've had anacondas last ages at 1% before it depends what subsystems your hitting when you are trying to do damage, as subsystem hits don't damage hull. If you don't pvp you will probably never encounter a hacker or cheater OP, if you attempt pvp for any reason you will find plenty - especially of the Alt/F4 variety

That is wierd. I target subsystems yet half the time the ship blows due to hull at 0% and the subsystem is still at 30 or 40%. As far as hacking goes. Never ran into a hacker yet here. Plenty of other games, even with hack preventing software, still had hackers and I saw them often (at least once a month). Not exploiters but actual hackers using aimbots, invulnerability, infinite ammo...depended on the game.

 

[Spiridon]

Surfed the Net on my work and found them all right. Mostly cheaters fix perma shields, 100x more damage etc. But it looks like most of them are doing it in Solo. Some venture into Open, but are warned by the rest "you'll be permanently banished to Solo if they find you out".

Looks like the solution is very simple: most of you record your playing. Whenever you meet a CMMDR with unusually resistant ship or what-not, just send that recording to the Devs. The cheater will be banished from Open.

 

[Ian Skippy]

That is wierd. I target subsystems yet half the time the ship blows due to hull at 0% and the subsystem is still at 30 or 40%. As far as hacking goes. Never ran into a hacker yet here. Plenty of other games, even with hack preventing software, still had hackers and I saw them often (at least once a month). Not exploiters but actual hackers using aimbots, invulnerability, infinite ammo...depended on the game.

Depends on whether you actually hit the sub-system or not. If you target a system that is on the other side of the ship, so blocked by its own hull, you'll do hull damage.

As for 'hackers', nobody is actually hacking FD. I'm sure there is some truth to the stories of cheaters, but never met any of them. But this made me think of how Blizzard handles maphack in Diablo2: they made an announcement that it was not allowed, then did nothing for six months or so, and only then banned a huge ammount of players. So far my experience in ED is unaffected by cheaters and we'll see how it evolves.