Is there going to be PunkBuster in ET:QW?

(Latrosicarius) #1

PB was a pain in Q3A, has it gotten any easier to use? Can’t you just get rid of PB and make all servers secure unless the server has sv_cheats turned on?

(Ragnar_40k) #2

Nobody forces you to play on PB-enabled servers or to enable PB on your own server.

And I hope that PB will be part of ET:QW too.

(Latrosicarius) #3

That’s not the point. It was hard to use in Q3A. Very unintuitive interface and pretty buggy–always asking for my CD key whenever I modified the config or added a Mod, sometimes not finding servers, and doing a crappy job of stopping hacks.

I was wondering if it had gotten better since the days of Q3A, or if not, if they intend to improve or bypass PB with something better in ET:QW.

(carnage) #4

although pb does have a lot of things that make it anoying at the end of the day imagine how many more cheats there would be without pb

and it wuould surprise me if they havent been working on stoping more cheats etc

Very unintuitive interface

good lets keep it hard to work with, otherwise some smart hacker will find someway to bypass it or something

(Latrosicarius) #5

Oh, I’m not saying that we get rid of hack and cheat identification software. I just though PB was a huge discrase and they could easially accomplish the same goals by integrating the anti-cheat checkpoints into the game itself, rather than basically having a “mod” called PunkBuster that checks them and screws up the rest of the IDE.

Take a note from Valve’s book and integrate the anti-cheat. Servers can still cheat (if they want to) by setting the SVAR “sv_cheats” to “1”. Somple as that, no messy PB to deal with.

(kamikazee) #6

First of all, PB is still under development so it should be improved a little.

About the cdkey: PB does no authorizing of keys, this is simply Q3-behaviour. Servers may not be found as it searches for (non-)punkbuster servers, but this again might be some issue with the server browser.

Next: It stops most hacks. Some get trough, some don’t. However, the list gets updated, and SD or iD hasn’t got to worry about it, PB works on its own.

Side notice: cheats can be enabled while PB is on, cheats are built-in so PB won’t check them once enabled.

And last: I hope they include it again. If you want it off, disable it on the server. It’s the admin’s choice.

(ouroboro) #7

hard to use? unless you went and fiddled with it, PB never needs to be touched. the only interaction you should be having with PB is enabling it and not cheating. on the chance you have a problem with it, there are a few cvars which can help, like pb_sleep.

anyway, like somebody else said, just play non-pb servers and good luck. i for one won’t even be purchasing ETQW until the “PB patch” is released. and if that patch never comes…

whether game devs like it or not, anticheat is now a REQUIRED cost of development. it’s price should be factored in from the first days of brainstorming a new title. also like it or not, PB is the only choice. unless you want to develop your own in-house solution like Valve did, and we all know how swimingly that’s been going…

(SockDog) #8

Having come over from CoD franchise (hush ya booing :slight_smile: ) I’m interested in seeing if ET:QW will have anti-cheat and also whether that will be with PB. Seems that PB is being criticised for various loop holes which allow detection and bans to be circumvented.

The level of truth behind this I don’t know but there seems to be several competing programs in developement which address these supposed flaws in PB.

If ET:QW is as successful as we hope it will be it will bring its fair share of idiot cheaters. Be nice if SD is looking to the long term on this by weilding cricket bats :bash: at evenbalance to fix flaws or hook up the game to accept future anticheats.

Either way I can’t wait to get hold of this game. :banana:

(fattakin) #9

Welcome SockDog! Nice to see someone who is positive!

PB isnt perfect but at least its there and works, its stops most people thinking about casually using cheats, leaving only the diehard fuckheads to cheat. Good enough for me.

(Sauron|EFG) #10

There’s been various problems with PB for ET, but right now it seems to be doing ok.

(Constantine) #11

Its my profound hope that Splash Damage is incorporating some type anti cheat measures within the core of the platform itself.

I have been running servers since RTCW in 2001 and the level of cheating in ET is absolutely the WORST I have ever seen in online gaming.

Just this past week my servers have been getting bombarded with cheaters. We literally mopped up over 129 bans in one week.

We have run PunkBuster in the past, but to remain populated, to keep overhead low and give the easiest enviroment to our community we shut it off.

The bottom line is simple, you release that SDK (as much as I love the fact that Id is the only one’s who ever do it) you are inviting the world of cheaters access to the core of the game.

Punk Buster flat out does not work, plain and simple. Not to discredit the fine work that they do, they are not 100% reliable, moreover they simply cannot keep up with the endless websites pouring out these hacks. To add to their insurmountable task there are literally hundreds of custom made hacks that will never get caught by PB because they will never be distributed. Those particular slime of the gaming world will always get through the net and ruin this title chances to be really great.

What needs to happen in multiplayer gaming more than graphic and sound enviroment improvements is for once someone creates a game that 100% cheat proof. Yes I know I can hear the masses getting ready to shoot me dead at that declared shout from my virtual soap box, but its true.

John Carmack hinted at a way that can achieve this once the technology becomes available to support it at his address at Quake Con this past year.

I know its a shot in the dark having anyone at Splash read this and be able to do anything about it. I’m sure they feel exactly as I do to how the mp community in almost every title has fallen into.

But that should not stop us. There must be a way to do this, we only need that one spark from one person who out of turn just blurts out an idea. This can and will eventually be done…so why not now.

Anything that can help make our jobs as Server Admins and the experience as players better knowing that EVERYONE is on a level playing field is worth more than 1000 Mega Texture features.

For the love of God find a way.

(Dazzamac) #12

Think of punkbuster as a net, a net that allows unhacked games through, and blocks the hacked ones. As hackers are always one step ahead, there will always be newer hacks slipping through the net. But as pb updates itself, the net tightens. There will ALWAYS be hackers making it through some loophole in the system with the lateast cheats. But if you remove pb, not only are the latest hacks getting in, but all of the older ones as well. PB will never be able to stop all hackers but it makes the job of a server admin a hell of a lot easier for spotting them.

(RosOne) #13

…and as you mentioned, John Carmack said that there will always be cheating. The only real solution would be to stream the video from your PC to the server and it’d ge validated in real time. Guess we won’t see such anti-cheating solution for a couple years though :wink:

(DarkangelUK) #14

Q4 had PB built in, im guessing ETQW will to

(SockDog) #15

There are alternatives which aim to stop the cheaters in a different way to PB. IIRC they work more at the OS level and run in parallel with the game, effectively locking down the OS components required to run an exploit. I’m pretty fuzzy on the finer details.

Anyway, I agree, PB is always a good deterent, and much like the law, thats usually all you need to keep things clean for the average joe. The hardend criminal/cheater will always find a way to screw things up, just a shame that we can’t increase the penalties of hardware bans to be more global.

I’ve used PB in Q3, RTCW and CoD and never really had many problems with it. I’ve wrestled with it a few times and they really could do with making it easier to setup and administer but other than that I never really saw the difference between a PB and NonPB server as far as performance was concerned.

Well, if SD could drop a line or two about AC in a forthcoming preview that’d be cool. :drink:

(Black_Forky) #16

There are alternatives which aim to stop the cheaters in a different way to PB. IIRC they work more at the OS level and run in parallel with the game, effectively locking down the OS components required to run an exploit. I’m pretty fuzzy on the finer details.

I would never buy the game if it had anything like that. Things like steam are bad enough, but that is along the lines of a rootkit à la Sony BMG. Plus, that would leave the linux platform out of the question because root or superuser access is needed (when will windows get this? :/). Applications should NEVER be allowed that much access.

(SockDog) #17

I think thats a bit unfair. Of course the program is going to be intrusive, it has to be to catch cheaters. As long as its only reporting located cheats/exploits between you and an offical authorisation server I don’t see the privacy concern. The Sony Rookit provided a backdoor into your system and is a whole different kettle of fish.

I see no reason why such programs couldn’t be ported to Linux and Mac the same way the main game executable is. The access level for the program to run is really, as you state, an OS and developer issue. Not much we can do about it but I’ll happily run a SD/id game’s official AC over a third party unsupported one. I hope whatever comes with SD is futureproof and tough as nails, the game looks like it deserves a good long streak without cheating butt crankers causing problems.

:notworthy:

(Black_Forky) #18

As long as the country keeps us safe we should let them spy on us 24/7 then?

(kamikazee) #19

Still, programs shouldn’t be run with root or administrator acces if they can acess the Internet. That’s a security nightmare, imho.

(SCDS_reyalP) #20

There isn’t really much of a correlation. Some cheats take advantage of the SDK, but plenty of ET cheats were created before the SDK was release, or without reference to it. OTOH, RTCW was relatively cheat free long after the SDK was released. Plenty of cheats have been made for games for which there was no public SDK at all.

What needs to happen in multiplayer gaming more than graphic and sound enviroment improvements is for once someone creates a game that 100% cheat proof.

It is also completely impossible with current technology. With current games, anticheat can only be cycle of detection and the creation of new cheats. Although PBs record isn’t that great, they are in a much better position to do this than a game developer.