So... is this cheater thing somewhat overblown?

Lumi · 2015-08-11 23:19:13 UTC

No, it’s saying that the tire makers are of the hook for faulty seat belts. The devs and splash damage for that matter are only responsible for the code regarding the game itself. AC is another company. If you want to blame the car manufacturer equivalent, then blame Nexon.

Amerika · 2015-08-12 00:31:15 UTC

Nexon bans people like crazy in this game. I’ll never understand why people claim that people aren’t being banned.

Also, it’s been said multiple times that the new AC is in place but it’s currently being tested right now and can’t be turned on yet. So people talking about how SD doesn’t know how much money cheaters are costing them have apparently missed that news. They are working on the problem and they care about their game. But you can’t simply snap your fingers and POOF perfect AC.

No game has perfect AC and never will. All you can do is do your best to fight it which includes the community helping or at least listening to efforts being made and not trying to claim “omg nothing is being done”.

refit · 2015-08-12 01:47:55 UTC

SO… IS THIS CHEATER THING SOMEWHAT OVERBLOWN?

The problem is that if a cheater kills three of your teammates, your team is now under maned. You end up being constantly outnumbered. So even if the cheater doesn’t get you, the rest of his team is going to hit you two at a time. Eventually, the experienced players can spot a cheater, so they just leave. This means your team is even more out gunned. You end up getting spawn fragged. Or, if the cheater is on my team, I end up defending the objective while the rest of my team spawn fraggs the other side.

Lumi · 2015-08-12 08:59:07 UTC

[quote=“Amerika;64420”]Nexon bans people like crazy in this game. I’ll never understand why people claim that people aren’t being banned.

Also, it’s been said multiple times that the new AC is in place but it’s currently being tested right now and can’t be turned on yet. So people talking about how SD doesn’t know how much money cheaters are costing them have apparently missed that news. They are working on the problem and they care about their game. But you can’t simply snap your fingers and POOF perfect AC.

No game has perfect AC and never will. All you can do is do your best to fight it which includes the community helping or at least listening to efforts being made and not trying to claim “omg nothing is being done”.[/quote]

finally! I was feeling lonely defending the devs here…

_retired · 2015-08-12 09:20:22 UTC

[quote=“Lumi;64130”]Maybe you haven’t followed this discussion from where we both started, but I initiated this as bwort was shaming the devs for not doing their job and being lazy. [/QUOTE]Yeah, I haven’t.
Well, Splash Damage’s name is in the game and people might feel frustrated so they fume.

[quote=“Lumi;64130”]But then going as far as to say that devs are lazy when AC is not anything they would have their hands on is plainly wrong.[/QUOTE]You mean developers aren’t responsible about the product they are developing? Even if they aren’t doing that specific thing, it’s rather counterintuitive to say so for ordinary customer/ casual player.

[quote=“Lumi;64130”]Maybe in my last post my choice of words was wrong, but you can complain that AC is not working and requiring a new one, but to then wrongly accuse the devs is another one.[/quote]For ordinary person and customer it doesn’t matter who does the AC, they are all one and the same. Nexus, Splash Damage, their mothers, whoever.

[quote=“Lumi;64130”]finally saying that one doesn’t care and just wants to complain is plain pathetic. I’m just asking for the devs to be treated fairly and for recognizing their work. I agree even that the current AC system is not good and definitely not enough. But the devs have little to do with it. And that’s where the line should be drawn.
[/quote]I don’t think there’s such thing as “crossing the line” for customer complaints or criticism towards products. Especially since this is official forum provided by the publisher. It’s not like anyone is really harassing individual developers here. They are just writing how they FEEL. I’m not certainly take that away from of them and at least it shows some passion towards the game. It’s the eerie silence when nobody cares about problems in the game that would bother me more.

I don’t know have you worked in customer service or received customer complaints ever but usually they are less than rationally put together even when they would be based into actual problem. Meaning that people usually complain about all kinds of things and quite often they are emotional about it. Quite often things cannot be taken caren by the person who receives the complaints and sometimes not even those directly having to do with product. It can be some outside factor contributing or third party indirectly responsible but you have to work as “middleman” when you are in customer service.

I would say that if cheating/hacking is number one problem in the game, developers are at least partially responsible since they are negotiating with Nexon about these things anyway. I have no idea how their partnership works though. I don’t want to belittle anyone complaining or criticizing because it might drive them away from game since community isn’t taking them seriously either.

[quote=“Lumi;64555”]finally! I was feeling lonely defending the devs here…[/quote]Hey, I didn’t say I’m not standing behind devs. I said that each of the people here complaining are individuals who have right to complain even it wouldn’t be exactly well placed. Considering their position is important as it is to show with reason that how things are and things are most likely getting better.
Most often people just want reassurance that things are being done about the problem and that they are heard.

Lumi · 2015-08-12 10:24:56 UTC

@crabbyDimension

Of course everyone is entitled to complain. And of course developers are responsible for their game. I never said anything going against that. I agree with people when they say that AC is currently insufficient. But I disagree when people complain about devs being lazy or doing shit. It doesn’t matter that people are entitled to an irrational complain. If they do so (which is their right) they will inevitably face rational people who will tell them they’re wrong.

I support the fact that people need to vent and should be able to vent their frustrations but I’ve been playing cheater riddled games for over a decade and the developers are human beings, with ups and down, pride, confidence, motivation, etc. Everything that defines us as well and makes us frustrated. If we keep wrongly accusing them of all the ills in this game and never show an ounce of support we’re not motivating them the proper way to fix this.

I presume not many devs actually spend time reading this, but if there are some. What image of ingratitude are we providing if we just bash on them without ever saying thanks for one of the best free to play FPS games to have been released in recent years. Seriously, remove the cheater/AC issue, polish some bugs here and there and which other f2p FPS is as good as this one?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, but I just think we should start giving respect where respect is due and divert criticism to where it belongs.

I know also that SD is helping all the frustrated players into directing frustrations at them since the no name no shame policy doesn’t even allow to vent it at the cheaters themselves.

Still, let’s try and retain an ounce of common sense. Breathe deep for 5 seconds and then write about what really bugs us without insulting the dev team in the process. It’s not like they purposefully created loopholes for hackers to use. Nor are they looking at the cheater plague unleash without doing anything. They’re in the process of solving it, but it takes time. People should start realizing that and cut them some slack.

That’s all I hope for in the end. If I offended anyone with my previous post I apologize for having done so. I guess I’m just one of those older guys trying to hold on to some sense of order and justice. Sometimes crossing the lines myself.

sQuds · 2015-08-12 18:26:39 UTC

[quote=“gothicGlow;63959”]I hate this attitude… you enable the cheating pieces of crap when you make a list of vital info and insist random players have to report them or respond with what you think is or is not humanly possible. I am tired of the stupid nonsense.

You want cheaters not to be in your damn game??? ---->

Go to YouTube look up dirty bomb hacks and easily find the main companies making the damn things… After signing up for them all, update your hack definition file with the fingerprint they leave in system memory. Do that continuously even if it is 100 times a freaking day until all their customers are identified …

In fact, why don’t the lot of you game developers get together and finally take a stand this way? Why is this not a thing…? They advertise on the same damn Internet you are on. Don’t give me the crap about these crap companies making sure they are not detected… Put the stupid definition file on delay so it does not search player memory until a couple of weeks down the road…

Please, stop attempting to fix this issue from the wrong end first. Ban at the account and retrievable mac addresses so the scum has to at least be able to spoof or get new hardware![/quote]
This is spot on.
I feel it is never ok to let hacks roam in the wild while they can be easily downloaded by AC devs and hotfixed within a day, it is literally their entire job and I sadly have no idea what they are getting paid for(or what I’m paying for).

And who designs an anti-cheat without an ingame report system in place as a key feature?

[quote=“gothicGlow;63959”]Furthermore, it is just the same old crap with people talking about skill and nonsense… Here is the real deal …

The cheats can be so subtle that with a little acting there is no way end users will or even can know… Again… go search YouTube for the damn things and see how easy you would not know these twerps are cheating as well as realize many are doing so! Only the worst ones are easily identified!
[/quote]
This is the side effect of them not banning easily obtainable hacks, you have no idea who is using them to a non-obvious degree to avoid a ban, it is frustrating because you have no faith in the security measures they put in place.

Amerika · 2015-08-12 18:45:31 UTC

[quote=“nefariousCherry;64762”][quote=“gothicGlow;63959”]I hate this attitude… you enable the cheating pieces of crap when you make a list of vital info and insist random players have to report them or respond with what you think is or is not humanly possible. I am tired of the stupid nonsense.

You want cheaters not to be in your damn game??? ---->

Go to YouTube look up dirty bomb hacks and easily find the main companies making the damn things… After signing up for them all, update your hack definition file with the fingerprint they leave in system memory. Do that continuously even if it is 100 times a freaking day until all their customers are identified …

In fact, why don’t the lot of you game developers get together and finally take a stand this way? Why is this not a thing…? They advertise on the same damn Internet you are on. Don’t give me the crap about these crap companies making sure they are not detected… Put the stupid definition file on delay so it does not search player memory until a couple of weeks down the road…

Please, stop attempting to fix this issue from the wrong end first. Ban at the account and retrievable mac addresses so the scum has to at least be able to spoof or get new hardware![/quote]
This is spot on.
I feel it is never ok to let hacks roam in the wild while they can be easily downloaded by AC devs and hotfixed within a day, it is literally their entire job and I sadly have no idea what they are getting paid for(or what I’m paying for).

And who designs an anti-cheat without an ingame report system in place as a key feature?

[quote=“gothicGlow;63959”]Furthermore, it is just the same old crap with people talking about skill and nonsense… Here is the real deal …

The cheats can be so subtle that with a little acting there is no way end users will or even can know… Again… go search YouTube for the damn things and see how easy you would not know these twerps are cheating as well as realize many are doing so! Only the worst ones are easily identified!
[/quote]
This is the side effect of them not banning easily obtainable hacks, you have no idea who is using them to a non-obvious degree to avoid a ban, it is frustrating because you have no faith in the security measures they put in place.[/quote]

I see you disagreeing with posts and making this new post without considering how the tech behind hiding cheats works and how it’s always an uphill battle…even for people who make AC software. To do a proper AC you’d have to make it HIGHLY invasive. Which means you’d be waiving your rights to not only your privacy but also giving elevated system rights to a program that could then do anything with your system (see bitcoin miner being attached to the ESEA anti-cheat).

I won’t go into details about how you hide a cheat from a software development standpoint but it’s pretty easy. So you could update a hundred times a day and still not catch more than a handful…and they would be back pretty quickly. And that’s assuming you’re doing illegal (in some countries) system scans to get the exact ID of the files used for the cheat.

Anti-cheat requires many layers to be effective. I’ll list out a few layers that are in use today.

Baseline anti-cheat that can identify and ban/stop common cheats.
Aggressive anti-cheat that has elevated system privs and can do pretty much anything it wants on your system (which includes looking at all of your files an downloading data).
Middleware stats software that automatically produces a list of statistical anomalies and bans automatically at high thresholds and flags for human intervention at lower thresholds and outliers.
Private server binaries that allow for people to setup their own servers and police them. New cheat group targeting Dirty Bomb? No problem. A server admin can ban them as they show up.
Community effort. This tends to take place at the competitive level. There is a long and winding history of people using cheats to improve their play which are hard to detect. I will include demo recording here as this is a huge part of the community effort. Other AC tools would also be used here or in #4.
Easy reporting system for the player base to use that allows support to quickly identify and remove cheaters.
Create a monetary/time barrier that makes it expensive/time consuming for cheaters. Require $5-10 to be spent on Steam before you can enter a ranked match. Make sure the account is at least 30 days old. However, this creates a boom in the account stealing market which is also quite profitable. So you resolve one issue while creating a market that starts another.

There are more but you get the gist. Dirty Bomb currently has 1, somewhat has 2 depending on who you ask, does not have 3 but they collect the data that would make 3 possible, will supposedly never have 4, 5 can’t be done since demo recording isn’t supported yet (mostly due to the game dev state still in flux and demos would break every 2 weeks) and 6 is coming.

I’ve worked with a lot of AC software and the makers of it quite a bit over the years so I am fairly well versed in how it all works. And sadly, due to this knowledge, I know just how hard it is to reduce the amount of cheating in an FPS game.

sQuds · 2015-08-12 19:11:18 UTC

I am actually taking a break from the game due to the rampant botting recently, 1 in 4 servers I jump into has someone using the name change hack and instantly killing our whole team, if they aren’t using server stat logs (hits, speed, accuracy, etc) to pick out obvious hackers and automatically ban(which the server should be able to do in a matter of seconds for obvious cheating) them I really don’t know what else to do.

If as you say its basically impossible for them to stop anything but a tiny handful even if they straight up decompile/RE these hacks, what is the point in having it at all?

Perhaps this is the biggest issue with f2p games now, just make a new account if you get banned and keep hacking(it would seem they are not banning MAC addresses). At least with purchased games people had something to lose. it makes me sad because I really enjoy DB and want to to dedicate time to it the way I did on Enemy Territory or BF1942 back in the day. The hacking here has been worse(just blatant) than any game I’ve ever played. So if its truly hopeless to expect them to block even a minute number of hacks what is the point in trying to stick with this game(not trying to be dramatic, this is a legitimate inquiry based on your response)?

Amerika · 2015-08-12 20:01:22 UTC

I am actually taking a break from the game due to the rampant botting recently, 1 in 4 servers I jump into has someone using the name change hack and instantly killing our whole team, if they aren’t using server stat logs (hits, speed, accuracy, etc) to pick out obvious hackers and automatically ban(which the server should be able to do in a matter of seconds for obvious cheating) them I really don’t know what else to do.

If as you say its basically impossible for them to stop anything but a tiny handful even if they straight up decompile/RE these hacks, what is the point in having it at all?

Perhaps this is the biggest issue with f2p games now, just make a new account if you get banned and keep hacking(it would seem they are not banning MAC addresses). At least with purchased games people had something to lose. it makes me sad because I really enjoy DB and want to to dedicate time to it the way I did on Enemy Territory or BF1942 back in the day. The hacking here has been worse(just blatant) than any game I’ve ever played. So if its truly hopeless to expect them to block even a minute number of hacks what is the point in trying to stick with this game(not trying to be dramatic, this is a legitimate inquiry based on your response)?
[/quote]

Banning hardware ID’s is a superficial fix. Not an awful one to employ but any cheat maker who sells cheats for a game that does hardware ID bans will also sell a tool that easily changes your hardware ID. IP banning only works until the cheater changes their IP which is pretty easy on some ISP’s (and maybe requires a phone call for others).

And this isn’t a F2P only issue. $60 games with $80 addons have tons and tons of cheating. It’s a common problem that has no good and easy to grasp resolution. All you can do is layer your game with a ton of security and prevent as much as you can and hope that people are understanding. Or you give them the ESEA solution that gives them full access to your system and pray that ESEA doesn’t do anything nefarious or doesn’t also include an exploit that people can use to take over systems.

It’s kind of a downer when you know all the details. But you might also start to understand the problem better and be more understanding and responsive as a member of the community.

impassionedNotion · 2015-08-12 20:24:04 UTC

Here’s the fix:

Payed hacks cost a small price. Developers could spend $15 for access to those hacks, download them and detect them.

It is not difficult to create new hack detection on a daily basis. The developers can do this to detect hacks faster than hack coders can make them, and that’s a bonafide fact.

Yet, this is not done at all, otherwise we would have zero hacks.

This is not unrealistic, nor even costly. Hackers would still exist, but only for a few hours, then the hack coder will be required to update that hack, and they don’t typically do that in the same day or even the same week.

Amerika · 2015-08-12 20:29:59 UTC

[quote=“impassionedNotion;64843”]Here’s the fix:

Payed hacks cost a small price. Developers could spend $15 for access to those hacks, download them and detect them.

It is not difficult to create new hack detection on a daily basis. The developers can do this to detect hacks faster than hack coders can make them, and that’s a bonafide fact.

Yet, this is not done at all, otherwise we would have zero hacks.

This is not unrealistic, nor even costly. Hackers would still exist, but only for a few hours, then the hack coder will be required to update that hack, and they don’t typically do that in the same day or even the same week.

[/quote]

I already explained above why this isn’t very realistic. It’s incredibly easy for individuals to personalize cheats that makes them unique from the original download. If the answer was this simple cheating would have been eliminated decades ago.

Deathi · 2015-08-13 09:06:30 UTC

Mission: Play 2 competetive games
Result: In both games at least one obvious cheater (one blatantly pistol-killing anyone on… sight?, one only… a “high-skilled” noob, advertising for his hack-page on his steamprofile), and many people asking how to report.
Don’t hope to many people get his missions, at least if they don’t want to kill this game really fast, it is.

Ffs, at least they should and some ingame-report, even if it only was a placebo not connected to anything. Still would be more helpful fot the game than this kind of advertising for the game.

But I guess the cheaters rly like it when their enemies “have” to play competetive for a mission, and then have to stay or getting a penalty, must be heaven if you get off on it.

Dirmagnos · 2015-08-13 09:35:43 UTC

Something like that could be posted only by some1 who absolute 0 understanding of game design, development and programming in general. How system works on even basic level, its limitations and options.
Its more like janga or sudoku. You cant just randomly rip out or add code. Everything has its place and if devs take something out, then they have to replace it with something, otherwise it will cause domino effect.

Whole purpose of hacks is to be as hard to be detected as possible. Getting their hands on any hack is maybe just 1% of job that needs to be done. Its not a basic firewall ,where you can simply block process.
Approach like “download the hack, detect it and block it” are as primitive and unrealistic as “go to Iraq, win the war, bring world peace”.

Sussepus · 2015-08-13 11:21:53 UTC

a game will never be cheat free, thats a fact. however devs can certainly limit the amount of cheating going on better than what SD are doing now. in my 1000 hours + in bf4 i encountered obvious cheaters only 2 times. in 50 hours in dirty bomb i have seen obvious cheaters around 10 times. im not saying bf4 is perfect example and cheating is a problem also in that game but in all the mess dice did with that game i think they was smart implementing more than one cheat tool and making it possible for community created solutions as well. i believe they managed to limit the problem a lot more than many other games by simply relying on more than one AC and inviting the community as well.
with SD being on steam they could easily use VAC + fairfight + whatever mess they use now.

joemusashi12 · 2015-08-14 14:30:46 UTC

i rarely see any hackers and i play on competitive

refit · 2015-08-14 20:21:39 UTC

It’s not rocket science. Every build Splash Damage can run a script to rename all the DLL entry points. Sure, the cheat companies will eventually find and map the function references, but now we have steam. Splash Damage can release a new build every week if they want.

Ghosthree3 · 2015-08-14 20:28:17 UTC

Yeah, because what I really want is more 2gb patches that stop hacks for 1 hour.

Deathi · 2015-08-14 21:13:26 UTC

Yep, incremental updates would be nice, but there sure will be a good reason they don’t do it

Lumi · 2015-08-16 09:15:06 UTC

[quote=“refit;65682”]It’s not rocket science. Every build Splash Damage can run a script to rename all the DLL entry points. Sure, the cheat companies will eventually find and map the function references, but now we have steam. Splash Damage can release a new build every week if they want.

[/quote]

Depending on the deal that Nexon/SD has with Valve additional updates may bring additional costs. Hence I don’t think that they’d do it. Especially since this is only a temporary fix. Better to do what they’re doing now: investing in a proper AC solution, testing it and shipping it.