Proven cheaters still in open.

[Aewarin Jameson]

but maybe we should wait for some video evidence of people becoming wanted after a collision while not speeding and then give them a chance to react based on that before casting any judgement.

The clowns in question did and when watching it you see:

- Clown 1 deliberately damages their ship to the point of destruction & rams player A
- If clown 1 dies then player A is now wanted, has a bounty, and is a criminal for 7 days in that system (murder)
- Player A, if they survive the impact, is now fired upon by the stations
- Clown 2 helps the station to ensure destruction

- - - Updated - - -

Given that causing ships to be destroyed is part of the game, the main distinction in this case would seem to be that players are being "attacked" where they do not expect to be - and are being destroyed by the ramming or the station.

You forget my good sir ... by the actions of said clowns they also force a "wanted" status on the victim.

Good isn't it .. exploiting the game to ensure someone else pays for your crime

 

[AnnuverScotinExile]

To change the discussion from "there are known cheaters in Open (again)" to "there are griefers" is quite a shift. Especially as there is no single un-contested definitive definition of what griefing is, much less what constitutes griefing in this game....

FD seem to have made it clear that anything goes, and that there is no such thing as griefing. That way they don't have to put the promised anti-griefing mechanisms in place.

Griefing, like pornography, is hard to define, but most of us know it when we see it. There there are obviously large shades of grey, though, where there could be disagreements. But I suspect very few would seriously argue that deliberately ramming another ship to cause it to get blown up by a spaceport is not griefing.

 

[Jukelo]

You forget my good sir ... by the actions of said clowns they also force a "wanted" status on the victim.

Good isn't it .. exploiting the game to ensure someone else pays for your crime

Their victims knew what they were getting into and had one simple solution to avoid it, respect the speed limit. The crime was shared by both parties, there was no forcing, merely enforcing.

 

[Arubeto]

The clowns in question did and when watching it you see:

- Clown 1 deliberately damages their ship to the point of destruction & rams player A
- If clown 1 dies then player A is now wanted, has a bounty, and is a criminal for 7 days in that system (murder)
- Player A, if they survive the impact, is now fired upon by the stations
- Clown 2 helps the station to ensure destruction

I think Jukelos point was that such a video from the perspective of player A is needed to proof he wasn't speeding himself when being rammed by Clown 1, hence the "wanted" tag being applied for a reason.

I haven't seen such a video from the perspective of the "griefed" player, so I can't tell if there is indeed a bug or not.

If players don't keep to the speed limit themselves when being rammed by said clowns, getting wanted is their own fault, IMHO. Hence the "griefers" exploit other players not adhering to the speed limit, not the speeding system itself.

 

[Aewarin Jameson]

..

Yes - point taken.

 

[Muss]

Many wont like my solution... 3 Strikes and your out.. Meaning If you are found cheating (by the devs) 3 times, then you are banned for life. No refund, no nothing. Your account is closed. Your IP recorded and blocked.

I came across a cheater the other day. hull went down to 3% and just sat there... But I did manage to disable their Powerplant then engines, until he logged off..

Wont work with dynamic IP addresses Ban the account from open play HELL YEAH

Cheaters should be taken outside and shown the error of their ways.

 

[Robert Maynard]

You forget my good sir ... by the actions of said clowns they also force a "wanted" status on the victim.

Good isn't it .. exploiting the game to ensure someone else pays for your crime

You make an excellent point - I had indeed forgotten about that bit.

Maybe the docking time limits, both for entering and egress, should relate to the ship's access to the station's controlled zone. (there'd probably need to be a delay between leaving and requesting permission to dock again in that case - although that could be annoying if one forgot to do something while docked in the station).

 

[vindicator jones]

I totally agree with you except for the IP thing, which seemingly might make sense when you live in a country where static IPs are normal, but it actually is outright stupid when looking at places like Germany, where, if only 300 days per year, you will have 300 different IPs, of which all have been used by others before.

Yeah, sorry didnt think of that.. I was just trying to think of a way where they just cant start up another account and do the whole same thing over again... Obviously I am not a networking wiz.. lol

 

[mugendo]

I have been attacked twice in this community goal, a great 1vs1 fight with a commander that Interdicted me, and a quick death from a wing that destroyed my ship very quickly. I have not been griefed/ganked/harassed at all, and not come across a cheat in all my game time.
In summary, I feel fortunate to have avoided the situation many forum posters face.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

I have been attacked twice in this community goal, a great 1vs1 fight with a commander that Interdicted me, and a quick death from a wing that destroyed my ship very quickly. I have not been griefed/ganked/harassed at all, and not come across a cheat in all my game time.

You may think so while they were in fact cheating. E.g. when they use cheat which does not make them "god mode", but just increases their damage, but reduces yours - you can still see fight going on, but they have significant edge in winning you not ever aware of - and its uber hard to prove even if you record (unless they multiply damage by stupid number). Well, esp. considering FD appear to take no action even against most blatant ones who boast about them openly...

Every game have some cheats. What I am annoyed about, is how exploitable ED *in comparison*. Apparently (I have no ways to verify it), but hackers claimed that ED client is almost completely unprotected and easy to hack in multitude ways.
I'd really like Frontier to be more proactive with taking action on this front. Yes, you can never "win" against cheaters completely, but this does not mean you must not even fight. If cheaters feel like they can do it with impunity, they become more and more brazen.

 

[GaryII]

but just increases their damage, but reduces yours -

Yes, and to detect this is very hard by watching videos I guess...
I read a lot about those damage multipliers in cheaters forums...they are using this for RES/CZ farming and PvP..

I wonder how this working technically, so there is one hacked client that sends to other client increased/decreased damage values ?!
..so technically other NOT hacked client, that is running on PvP opponent PC, could check in background is this damage data legit and if not - rise alarm to FD servers..

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Read the cheat forums at some point. People do get banned, and sometimes not just for a few days either. There have been resports of people having their accounts suspended. The cheaters still tend to laught it off, some of them just buy new accounts and start over. Obviously some people have money to burn.

However, i'm in favour of a 2 or three strikes policy.

The only thing that is of concern was related to a post that appeared on reddit a while back, where someone said they got a message from FD stating they had been found cheating. The person protested their innocence on reddit and appeared sincere... but of course, we cannot know the truth of it.

So, imagine if you were incorrectly idenfitied by players and FD as a cheat. Instead of a few days ban you were given a lifetime ban. How would you feel? A few days or a week ban and you might be angry, but relieved when you could get back to playing. A lifetime ban... that would leave you raging hard.

Therefore a three strikes system allows for mistakes to be made and still gets the hardcore cheaters in the end.

What we found on our server was often a quiet word with a cheater was enough in at least 50% of cases. In second offenses we would penalize them (remove items, reduce experience, wipe gold, etc). This usually stopped most of the remainder. A third offense would be a permaban, which naturally puts an end to everything.

The aim isn't to drive away players who cheat, but to reform them if possible. Only get rid of them completely if they cannot be reformed.

 

[Hurricane Moon]

Yes, and to detect this is very hard by watching videos I guess...
I read a lot about those damage multipliers in cheaters forums...they are using this for RES/CZ farming and PvP..

I wonder how this working technically, so there is one hacked client that sends to other client increased/decreased damage values ?!
..so technically other NOT hacked client, that is running on PvP opponent PC, could check in background is this damage data legit and if not - rise alarm to FD servers..

technicly speaking I believe there are ways that the person whos not hacking can actually be made to look the hacker in regards to p2p architecture...
computers eh!...

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Yes, and to detect this is very hard by watching videos I guess...
I read a lot about those damage multipliers in cheaters forums...they are using this for RES/CZ farming and PvP..

I wonder how this working technically, so there is one hacked client that sends to other client increased/decreased damage values ?!
..so technically other NOT hacked client, that is running on PvP opponent PC, could check in background is this damage data legit and if not - rise alarm to FD servers..

Its probably somewhat unreliable in PVP, but as far as I know one client still considered "master" where all combat run. Also, I heard that *some* checks were implemented by Frontier - but they were very little and unreliable (e.g. they detect only crazy stuffs like 100x damage or complete invincibility).
In PvE there is no "other" PC - all game runs on player's computer, so he can just mess with it like he wants. Surely, server could object " you've just earned 100mils in 30 minutes in one run - alarm, alarm!", but if they just like increase damage x3 it makes it hard to prove they were actually cheating or just were really good.

Its fundamental fault of ED P2P architecture that was pointed out numerous times since Kickstarter - there is no *trusted* PC, so no way to check for cheats anywhere.

The only solution I see is for FD implement some pool of servers which *sometimes host player game checks* (and do this randomly for random people over time, so no bother with server overload). This way they will catch habitual cheaters surely over time.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

Most games these days don't ban by IP.
In the BF series, each player has a 32 digit code associated to every account so it's more than likely ED players will have something similar but such information will never be made publicly available. The less information the hackers have regarding how the anti-cheat systems work, the harder it is for them to circumvent them.
There are other ways to remove players who persist in cheating of numerous accounts as well.

Generally and compared to other games, ED has very little current support from most, if not all of the major subscription hack sites which is a good thing. The main reason for this because there is no real value to it as the free hacks pretty can pretty much do everything a subscription hack could do so who's gonna pay for it?

Also, most games companies don't ban on the first offence. EA used to have a 3 strike rule but I think they nerfed it to 2 a while back and automatically ban repeat cheaters on sight these days...but the BF series suffers really badly for cheaters.

If the cheater being alluded to wasn't seen for months, it's quite plausible they may have been temp banned, learned nothing so gather the evidence again and keep on reporting them.
It's the only way to be sure.

 

[almostpilot]

We do investigate cheating reports as they come in. If a player is found to be cheating/hacking/exploiting, we will take actions against the player doing whatever it may be. The severity of the punishment greatly depends on if they're repeat offenders and what they were doing.

For the record, cheating in open isn't as widespread as what some have said in the past. In fact, it's a rather small subset of players feeling the need to take advantage of exploits, hacking the game client, and performing malicious actions in the game world. We do punish players who decide to go that route be it if our automated anti cheat tags them or if people report the player.

And if the guy using cheat on the SOLO MODE? This will not be reported by any player, but the consequences for the "universe" and objectives of the game are going to happen, as the FD do to prevent this?

 

[Tarman]

Good job that I didn't mention the DDF, then, and merely relied on a kickstarter promise. I never mention stuff from the DDF as a broken promise, because the DDA were never promises: they were FDs intent at the time, but with caveats. Whilst it was (and is) reasonable to expect much of it, eventually, none of it was ever a promise, so no promises have been broken. I do mention the DDA, especially with respect to the exploration DDA, when I complain about the simplistic placeholder mechanics they implemented, and that those mechanics will probably prevent us from ever getting anything other than a very dumbed down simplistic set of mechanics.

Stuff in the kickstarter (especially stuff in something like and FAQ) WAS a promise, however.

So you've posted everywhere lately to no purpose but making yourself a bittervet. DDA, DDF, kickstarter; at this point indev it's obvious that this early design stuff is as irrelevant to their future plans as the dreaded deaded O-mode. I'm just trying to save you from your own self, because the game is gonna be whatever it becomes, not whatever was laid down in the past. You don't have to like it to see that. Your best bet is to hope they aren't cribbing notes from Piranha.

Also, to lighten the mood, your current posting trend in 1980s music form:

[video=youtube;H8Q83DPZy6E]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Q83DPZy6E[/video]

 

[Lucifer Hate]

So in other words it sounds like they are not exploiting game mechanics as much as they are exploiting the weakness of other players to control their speed? I would almost have to agree if that was your point.

The thing is FD was told this would not work as this exact scenario was predicted in the thread they revealed this fix.

 

[Space Dandy]

A wall of shame would be nice, either in game or just a sticky thread right here in the forums with the names of each CMD that has been punished by FD for cheating.

 

[Whiterose]

Personally I would look at birching as an option.