Was releasing ET for free a wise idea?

(colic) #1

I dont play ET any more simply because I dont like it as much as RTCW.

The thing that is annoying is that the amount of wallhacks now aimbots that are coming across to RTCW that are originaly designed for ET!

There was never that much of a problem on RTCW until ET came out, now it is getting ridicoulos the amount of wallhacks that keep cropping up.

I realy thought it was a bad call releasing the game for free download in the beginning, now it is just getting the way of counter strike with new wallhacks cropping up what seems every week.

I realy wish that there was a registration process of the game. As a ban means nothng when you can get a new GUID very easily indeed and with dynamic IP’s it makes it a bit poor banning by IP :confused:

Free games attract alot of people and of course some wil be bad :confused:

Just thought I would moan a bit :slight_smile:

(skinner) #2

but if someone goes to the trouble of making a wallhack they have probably downloaded most games anyway and IMHO (dont be offended) you are speaking out of your uh opposite end so to speak

(Belisarius) #3

Most likely. It’s not like it’s harder to get a ‘free’ RtCW than it is getting ET if you set your mind to it… 's just the way it is.

([=O=]SMYLER) #4

I’ve heard of people who will download games and find they can play the single player no problem at all but the serial number provided by the pirates to actually let them install the game is no good for on line play. Well jesus, do you know what they do…if they live in the UK they go to a shop, buy the game, write down it’s serial number and take the game back for a “no spanish inquisition returns” refund. They now have a fully functional multiplay enabled game.

I would never do this but I know some bigger boys that do. :smiley:

(Englander) #5

Iam glad it was free saved me money,and the fact is if people are coming from ET and going to RTCW with hacks ,that means at some point they have bought RTCW so IMO if they have been prepared to buy RTCW they would have been prepared to buy ET.

I think if people are determined to play with hacks they will eventually get them no matter what,so IMO ET being free as little affect on hacks being around ,just because they seem more frequent just means there are more losers who want them and who suck at playing the game properly.

My opinion is well done SD ,thanks for such a great game whats cost me nothing apart from a bad back from playing too much.

(skinner) #6

wooo, i’ll drink to that :drink:

(Belisarius) #7

Yeah, what sucks even more is that when I go down to said store and sees: “hey, a priced down game! sweet” only to realize in the next second that it’s a return with most likely a kidnapped number. :angry: I’ve seen plenty o’ BF1942 in this condition…

(WiGgLeRiCe) #8

Even if ET wasn’t a free download there will still be the same amount of people out there with all kinds of hacks and cheats . there will always be the sore losers that can’t stand losing and are such a tightass about losing they they can never have fun playing the game. If losing bothers you that much to cheat why did you get the game in the first place. Thank god for punkbuster :banana:

(colic) #9

Yeah Punk Buster is so perfecet :bash:

(Lanz) #10

The problem is that many seems to think Punkbuster is designed to stop every cheat as soon as they show up. That’s not how it works. It will always take some time between the release of a new cheat and PB blocking it. The point is that it will block it sooner or later (often sooner), without PB it would work forever.

(blushing_bride) #11

sorry if this is going off topic abit but everyone on this forum seems to be able to spot cheaters from twenty paces. I play ET alot and i have no idea if i’ve ever played agianst a cheater (im a noob to online gaming in general) so if any of you grizzerly old vets can tell me how to spot them then it would be appreciated.

(SCDS_reyalP) #12

Just because they think they spot cheaters at 20 paces doesn’t mean that they actually spotted a cheater. I would say that without spectating the person, or being the server op and getting a pb_screenshot of them, it is imposible to say in most cases.

If you spectate the person, then there may be telltale signs. For example, someone with a wall hack will track people through walls (hard to tell for sure, unless you are also running a wallhack, but if you record a demo, you can then re-play it an use one of the cheat protected commands which lets you see through walls, like r_showtris 2) , and sometimes try to shoot through walls too. Note that someone shooting just before they come around a corner is not necessarily a sign of a wall hack. Experienced players anticipate where their opponents will be. If someone has an aimbot, you may notice their crosshair suddenly jumping to people heads, and appearing to lock on. However, unless their movement obviously unnatural, they might just be a good player.

You also need to be aware that neither spectating nor demos show you exactly what the player or the server saw.

It is also important to remember that just because some cheats are obvious, doesn’t mean that they all are. A skilled wallhack user would avoid tracking or trying to shoot people through walls, and a non-wallhack user can still detect people behind walls using lean, sound, or guesswork. A properly written aimbot would be very hard to tell from a skilled player.

I have never spectated someone I thought was cheating in ET or RTCW. I have seen demos which did show the things I mentioned, I have seen people use them in other games. I have seen quite a few people accused of cheating in game, but in most cases, the accused was simply a skilled player, or one or more of the players involved was lagging.

Oh and FWIW, when I say ‘cheat’ above, I’m talking about people who modify the game or use external programs (e.g. aimbots, wallhacks, cvar unlockers) not map exploits, game bugs or lame stuff like door blocking.

More on topic:
While it is certainly true that not being able to really ban people in ET helps cheaters, I have not seen seen it have a big impact on there servers I play on.

(linkin90) #13

exactly what I think. I have not yet seen someone i think is a cheater, everyone just sees someone who is good and is like OH LOOK A CHEATER BAN HIM! its pathetic really

(blushing_bride) #14

Thanks SCDS_reyalP. whenever i play agianst someone who is much better than me i always have a quick spectate just in case. So far no cheaters just good players (nearly always medics) and i play this game a lot, hopfully a good sign and i hope it stays that way

(colic) #15

I have access as an admin over 7 servers! I dont go around saying he must cheat etc. I just look at the logs. The increase since ET was released is astronomical put this in to context and tell me if this is coincidence!

Looking back through the logs for the 2 months prior to the release of ET there were a total of 7 people who were logged as cheating not many realy! This was done over 3 servers!

Now in the past 2 months since ET was released there have been a total of 42! Gets annoying realy.

All of these were “real” cheats that PB picked up and not ones where it was a PB glitch!

Coincidence or not ?

BTW 98 percent of them were all wallhack violations

(SCDS_reyalP) #16

Yeah, I didn’t mean to accuse you of running around crying cheat. All a wanted to say is that from a players point of view, I don’t think that cheating is that widespread. Certainly more so than it was for RTCW, but cheaters are not yet ruining the game.

Looking back through the logs for the 2 months prior to the release of ET there were a total of 7 people who were logged as cheating not many realy! This was done over 3 servers!

Now in the past 2 months since ET was released there have been a total of 42! Gets annoying realy.

All of these were “real” cheats that PB picked up and not ones where it was a PB glitch!

Coincidence or not ?

BTW 98 percent of them were all wallhack violations

I’ a bit confused which of these stats refer to ET and RTCW. In any case, people who get caught cheating in RTCW can be banned effectively. So while there may be some crossover cheats, I’d guess that most of the cheaters will stick to ET.
Anyway, complaining about ET being free isn’t going to get you anything. It has it’s pros and cons, but IMHO, it’s a great game and activision did a very nice thing by giving it away instead of dropping it completely. It certainly would be nice to have an effective way to ban people.

(Kamel) #17

well, that’s also because it’s fresh blood. you see, RTCW has been out for a long time. people are now smart enough on RTCW to not use a wallhack or anything else of this matter. punk buster has drained out all of the energy of the hackers in RTCW, however, the hackers see this new game and say “hey, something new to do” – don’t worry, you will see the decrease in cheaters on enemy territory once it’s past its “hype stage” so to speak. also, there will be games like doom3 and halflife2 comming out soon, which will keep hackers occupied for years. you’re hearing this from someone who knew hackers. i’ve never cheated on the game myself without letting others know (occasionally i would download cheats just to see how they worked). yea, this situation is much more ideal than it could be i’ll say that. don’t know if anyone here has played rogue spear, but there was this one guy who hacked it, then came out for a patch called ice to keep them from cheating. this went around in circles for a long time, what he would do is release a patch that stopped all the old cheats, then he would charge people for a cheat that he made that gets around his patches. he was a pretty smart marketing guy, because he got litterally hundreds of dollars from each of his clients. this also explained why the MIN clan always dominated the laddering charts at www.cwn.com – he was in this clan under the name of MiN_SeAL.

ok, on to the money issue… i don’t think that ET should have been free… maybe $10-20 instead. i think that would be really cool. not so much for no cheaters or whatever, i just feel guilty that i’ve had this much fun in a game and haven’t had to pay for it. you see, as we all know, you can download games… and even get them to work online. i have plenty of examples of this, but i wont get into it. i admit, i am guilty of doing this, however, i do it for more of a trial than anything. nothing pisses me off more than buying a game and i hate it. i downloaded grand theft auto 3, i played it – i HATED it. i never bought it, and i never played it again after that. it would be a shame to pay $60 for something you hate. also, with operation flashpoint, i downloaded it. it was the best game i’d ever played – and even though i had already beaten it, i bought the game out of respect for the owners. i also downloaded the resistance mod for it, and i hated it. i swore i wouldn’t play resistance again, and i haven’t. i’m sure you can see a trend here… it’s pretty obvious that downloading games simply has its benifit. and also, i played the demo of ofp and hated that… to show you that demo’s don’t do the trick for trying a game out. anyway, i have bought hitman2, operation flashpoint, and rogue spear gold edition (i hated urban operations, and REALLY wish i would have downloaded that first so that i would know to only get the basic package :|) – and believe me, this is a game that i definitely would have bought.

i hope splashdamage isn’t upset that i do this, but hey… i’m only being honest. the other people here do it, they just don’t admit to it. also, anyone can tell you, a bought game is 10x better than any game that you haven’t bought. you don’t have to get the cracked updates that are hard to find, you don’t have to do anything to make it work again when a new version comes out… you just simply play the game, and the box is really cool to have too.

as a suggestion, you should have a login system that makes them register for an account, verifying the e-mail address, to make the system much more fail-safe. of course this wont be perfect, but it’s better than free reign IMO.

(ziege) #18

As a mapper, yes it being free was definitely a great idea. I want to show off my work to friends and generally as many people as possible, without telling people they need to go and buy a game first.

(WiGgLeRiCe) #19

Another reason why Splash Damage released this game for free is for marketing purposes. Shows what the company can do and is capable of and also works as an advertising technique cuz if players really love ET , they’re gonna look for products that Splash Damage has worked or assisted on and buy them. It also helps Splash Damage’s research and development division by seeing what players like in a game , what players fuss about and to test new stuff to include in games. So what I’ve found is that this game is pretty much the only one of it’s own kind in teamwork style first person shooting games. I would also like to thank Splash damage for not making their multiplayer games pay for play like so many companies have been doing with their games. Hard to find a multiplayer game anymore that doesn’t require you to pay $10 to $20 a month to play.

(Kamel) #20

if that’s truely the case, then it worked :stuck_out_tongue: – i’m planning on buying RTCW when i get the chance now. and, in the future, if there is another mod for RTCW or enemy territory, i will most likely get it as well… assuming that the current problems i’m having with the game dont presist that is ;/.