89 replies to this topic

[Shoklar]

Hi all,

I'm fairly new here still, and there is one thing I've been dreading. That is extremely low head armor (if the actual game holds true to Battletech) and the use of aimbots and/or hitbox skins.

Hitbox skins were a major issue in World of Tanks, and I'd hope there wasn't a repeat of that here. In WoT, it was being constantly set on fire or ammo racked (which you could combat in a limited fashion), but if you take a head hit from an AC/20 or Gauss...you're pretty much done.

In WoT, they dealt with aimbots by having a randomizer circle where the shot would land anywhere in that circle at a predefined range...so the longer the distance of the shot, the more chance that it would miss. It would generally stay toward the middle of the circle, but it was a bunch of statistics stuff that I'm not going to pretend to understand.

I ran a search, but didn't see any specific discussion of these topics. These are pretty important, so I hope they're being discussed in the Beta forum if not here. Could a dev (or someone who knows of a dev post I missed) address this in a general fashion to aleviate some potential community fears? Thanks.

[Bombast]

Unlike previous MechWarrior games, this one will be entirely hosted on a company controlled server. This should allow them to track and ban cheaters pretty easy.

This type of grouping also allows people to report each other for such offenses.

I think we'll be ok.

[AntharPrime]

Aimbots are a big concern, some of the rent-a-hack sites are already advertising MWO hacks and considering how game peformance will affect c-bill earnings this has the potential to destroy MWO.

Bombast, on 02 July 2012 - 06:23 AM, said:

Unlike previous MechWarrior games, this one will be entirely hosted on a company controlled server. This should allow them to track and ban cheaters pretty easy.

This type of grouping also allows people to report each other for such offenses.

I think we'll be ok.

Company servers will help a lot, BF3 has client-side hit detection and the rent-a-hack have a field day exploiting this.

[skamage]

Devs won't discuss their security measures. I'm sure they have something in store for cheaters and hackers.

[Fl3tcher]

Interesting how we have people advertising hack for MW:O eventhough it's not even been seen yet. Can anyone say "Phishing Scam?"

[Joseph Calvert]

I don't know Shoklar, I still play WoT and I have played BT(and still have the books). We both know that a head shot is hard to get eccept with the favor of the dice gods. Hopefully the Dev's have thought of this or have already addressed it.

[Intruder]

World of Tanks is server based too so cheating was incredibly rare (I only heard of 2 reasonably convincining cases in my near 10,000 games). People did get banned for botting (not Aimbots).

However skinning etc is of course client-side and lots of players, especially in the competative Clan Wars side, used hitbox skins to highlight weakspots and the like.
I don't think this is as relevant in MWO as we all know the head and rear torsos are weak and the game seems to have an element of damage / shot distribution.
I hope so anyway!!!

Edited by Intruder, 02 July 2012 - 06:29 AM.

[Patu]

1:
Well I play ALOT of WoT and I dont think that Hitbox skins have ever been an issue. If you are a good player you know those spots anyways and dont need any skins for that. Its really not hard. And you can always look into the blueprint of the real tanks and look where those spots are if you cant manage to find out ingame. I think its an important part of WoT to know weakspots and locations of ammoracks etc.

I doubt that Hitbox skins will really help in MWO since the head LOOKS like a head (I know its weird isnt it?)

2:
I have never seen any prove of existing aimbots in WoT (other than the already implemented autoaim) and it should be pretty difficult to code one. And even if you manage to code one and it doesnt get detected in WoT it doesnt really help as you already said.

In MWO Aimbots might become a problem since lasers do not scatter. But I trust in the devs to get some good protection against that.

[Valkeminator]

in my opinion, wouldn't hitbox skins become obsolete anyway as any experienced veterans would be able to know which part to shoot for maximum damage anyway or where is the cockpit eventually as they keep on playing.

Aimbotting however, is not acceptable.

[No Surrender]

I don't think hitbox skins are that gamebreaking. They just give you information that you have access to anyway in a more easy to use fashion. It's even less of an issue in MWO since the main weak spots (head, rear) on most mechs are blindingly obvious and the skill comes in actually consistently hitting those weakpoints. The customization of mechs also prevents hit skins from being accurate since non-head/back weak spots like ammo can be stored in different parts of the mech.

[Ruby Pinch]

Anyone with skill would be able to dismantle an opponent regardless of any skins they might have. That, and the head is already an incredibly obvious target to shoot at.

As far as tanks goes, the hitbox skins were just as liable to mess you up as they were to help you, as they didn't calculate armor slope, and you already only had a 35% chance to actually break a module to begin with.

I never seem to hear these kinds of complaints about other games though, where headshots can quickly kill a target from a skilled player. I wonder what the difference here is. A desire to do silly close in circling?

[The Monk2]

I'm sure the devs have this covered. I just hope it's NOT Punkbuster!

[Taiji]

Fl3tcher, on 02 July 2012 - 06:28 AM, said:

Interesting how we have people advertising hack for MW:O eventhough it's not even been seen yet. Can anyone say "Phishing Scam?"

Maybe there are special 'Founders hacks'? lol

Edited by Taiji, 02 July 2012 - 06:42 AM.

[Outrider01]

Must of beena terrible player then, if you cannot prevent your weak spots from being exploited. You don't need a visible target to know that every german has their engine/transmission in the front of nearly every higher tier tank FFS, high pen guns were just going to punch through anyway, and if you were low tier who the frack cares cause you were dead anyway. Also, its not game breaking because 1) WoT is coded by a bunch of capitalists who couldn't program a VCR (zero damage pen, always moving german transmissions, shrinking soviet armor requiring a microscope to hit their weakpoints...you think these dudes know what the hell they are doing or just pulling random changes out of a hat to act on every patch?) 2) It gives no advantage at all...trust me I tried for a few weeks and don't see a difference unless you are in brawling range cause even bullet drop of shells can miss the R2D2 of the KV-5 by a pixel to ping off the lower frontal armor that is super thick. You were most likely getting owned by guys who knew what they were doing and WG inability to program a game that is balanced to the point the players don't kvetch about anything.

[BigMo5]

MW3 had net code written by Howler Monkeys.

MW4 was server side, and IRC was pretty cheat free..The DEV spent a considerable amount of time making this work the best they code...The biggest problem was you had Dial-up and DSL...Dial up in less prevalent today so its not nearly as bad.

The WoT luck based aiming system SUCKs. Ok now that you understand where I am coming from...

From previous iterations of MW there have been many ways to deal with the Head Armor and Head shot. First defense, was the first shot you took would take the Armor irregardless of how much damage the weapon did. Right or wrong this was just how it was.


Lets look at a few..

To score a Head Hit on an Atlas, you have to hit the Left EYE of the head to actually score a hit. yeah try hitting an EYE at 400 meters in something that bouncing...Good luck...

MW4 Mad-cat was the two middle front windows and the bottom side windows.

The Lasers look very interesting as they discharge over a certain amount of time. This will make putting all that damage into a single spot really tough....

The LRMS are what they were in MW2/3 and are going to be all over the mech...Kind of like a LOOOOONG Range shotgun...

The Gauss Rifle will be a tough shot from anything past 300 due to being able to see the target

I have not seen any video of the AC/20 so i don't know what it i Will do...


All this is speculation on my part, but using MW1/2/3/4(Veng and Mercs) there have been many problems and accomplishments, head shots were never easy to pull off except one way...


DFA: Death From Above Nothing more fun then jumping into an Atlas and Killing the pilot...Might loose a leg but we will see...

[Easily]

The Monk2, on 02 July 2012 - 06:39 AM, said:

I'm sure the devs have this covered. I just hope it's NOT Punkbuster!

As if punkbuster protects against cheating.

The only thing punkbuster is effective at is ******* off gamers who don't cheat.

• Random server kicks because their software fails.
  
• Random bans because their software fails.
  
• Random game crashes because their software fails.
  
• Older versions used to have memory leak issues turning it into a memory hog.
  
• The inability to join some servers just because punkbuster doesn't like your face.
  
• Customer support.. wait, what customer support? You can contact them with an issue and they'll tell you stop crying and stop cheating. Even if you contacted them for something completely different.
  
• Punkbuster used to think the Steam ingame overlay was a hack and banned / kicked you for it.
  
• No automatic updating.
  
• Tendency to install ever-running processes on your PC that continue running even if no game is running and you just booted.

I could go on for ages about this piece of cow #####.


And you know what's ironic? Every game 'protected' by punkbuster has tons of cheaters on their server.
I'd almost start to think they're permitting it so they don't run out of business.




So yeah.. Have I mentioned I hate punkbuster?

Edited by Easily, 02 July 2012 - 07:03 AM.

[Grimarch]

Hopefully this all wont happen, but its good people check and find out, Dev guys dont know everything and no harm in keeping them informed in a constructive way......

[Divine Retribution]

Punkbuster brings back memories. Warning 1. Warning 2. What am I doing to get warnings in Team Fortress Classic? Oh I can't have my sensitivity higher than 12 or PB thinks the rapid movement might be an aimbot.... nice. Leave it to PB to make normal game settings bannable offenses. Never was kicked/banned though, so that's something.

PB aside, cheating or exploiting game mechanics (remember people sitting inside destroyed buildings with arm tips sticking out in MW4?) is kind of sad.... People that do such things should find other ways to boost their egos, self esteem, etc.

[Shoklar]

Outrider01, on 02 July 2012 - 06:42 AM, said:

Must of beena terrible player then, if you cannot prevent your weak spots from being exploited. You don't need a visible target to know that every german has their engine/transmission in the front of nearly every higher tier tank FFS, high pen guns were just going to punch through anyway, and if you were low tier who the frack cares cause you were dead anyway. Also, its not game breaking because 1) WoT is coded by a bunch of capitalists who couldn't program a VCR (zero damage pen, always moving german transmissions, shrinking soviet armor requiring a microscope to hit their weakpoints...you think these dudes know what the hell they are doing or just pulling random changes out of a hat to act on every patch?) 2) It gives no advantage at all...trust me I tried for a few weeks and don't see a difference unless you are in brawling range cause even bullet drop of shells can miss the R2D2 of the KV-5 by a pixel to ping off the lower frontal armor that is super thick. You were most likely getting owned by guys who knew what they were doing and WG inability to program a game that is balanced to the point the players don't kvetch about anything.

Incorrect, look up the stats for NotSure. You can't see my pre-wipe stats, but % was about the same (a little better for some stuff that got nerfed). I gave up on the game just after they introduced the E-100 and refused to fix the rangefinder / police light bar, and announced that they were moving the IS-4 from T9 to T10 and buffing its already T10 armor. Hitbox skins allow people of little skill to cripple tanks easier than they should. It's not hard to find a spot that will penetrate...just look for something flat. Hiding your weakpoints is what I was talking about when I said you could combat it in a limited way. If you let someone get to your side or back, you deserve to go up in flames anyhow.

Now back to the topic at hand...the cockpit is located somewhere in the head...but not always in the center. For example: the Atlas has a HUGE head, and the cockpit takes up a tiny spot (slightly to the right and above centerline of the head as you look at it from the front, if I remember correctly). That is my concern for both aimbots and hitbox skins...I doubt the head of an Atlas is that hard to hit, but the cockpit should require some skill to hit and not just have a big target painted on top of it.

[S n a k e]

The amount of scrutiny this game is going to be under will be intense and I have absolute faith in the system presented to deal with cheaters and hacks. Controlled servers make it easy to pinpoint cheaters and ban them.

I have faith that the developers had the foresight to prepare for the likelyhood of hacks.