275 replies to this topic

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 June 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

Funny, I've seen people I suspect of using hacks a hell of a lot more than that, but it was part of my job duties for years, so I guess I just pay a lot more attention than most do. I'm also quick to dismiss the average player who screams hack, they have no idea what to look for.

The particular hack being used in MWO is very sophisticated, the guy did some great work, I'll give him that, so it's very difficult to detect even if you know what to look for. The PLAYER gives it away usually, because, typical of most hack users, they aren't smart and are lazy. I know they are being used often enough that I see them in more drops than people would imagine, ratio is 33% currently, up from what it was before the bans were handed out actually, and I don't see the same people repeatedly in my drops, so it's not the same players over and over.

And you are right McKenna, the guy could have lied to me, but since I don't feel like getting his customer list, I'll just take his word on how many he's sold of the MWO hack alone, I didn't ask about the Master pack, since that number is going to be huge due to it covering most of the top games on the market today.

Fenris, leagues typically have a zero tolerance policy on hacks, you get busted using one, you are out of the league and you don't get to come back. If that person was on a team, that team won't get punished usually, since it's very easy to hide the usage of a hack from your teammates, a lot easier than people realize. I had one of my own do that to me in MW2, used a hack on his teammates in practice, a very subtle one that escaped our notice, I just happened to look at his mek file, I was copying his build because it was very nice and discovered the hack, turned his ass in to the league myself. SOB tried to turn ME in for hacking after that, idiot sent the league a copy of what he said was MY mek file, only he'd forgotten to rename the actual name he'd given it, which was his own name...hack users, not very smart usually, and usually lazy.

Hacks wouldn't be worth paying for if they were easily detectable. AA's are usualy the top end as they cover most games.

What's harder to detect though are the texture file modifications I mentioned. Because PGI are lazy and don't protect their core files. And you can do some very damaging or helpful depending on which side of the fence you sit in those files.

Edited by DV McKenna, 12 June 2015 - 01:36 PM.

[Kristov Kerensky]

DV McKenna, on 12 June 2015 - 01:35 PM, said:

Hacks wouldn't be worth paying for if they were easily detectable.

What's harder to detect though are the texture file modifications I mentioned. Because PGI are lazy and don't protect their core files. And you can do some very damaging or helpful depending on which side of the fence you sit in those files.

Me being able to tell someone's using a hack due to the PLAYER being an idiot isn't the same as the hack being easy to detect. Our BF server, we'd catch 20 a week using hacks, PB itself would actually detect maybe 5 of those 20, the rest we caught by detecting them ourselves via observation and confirmed by using the PB screencap feature. There would be another 40 we KNEW were using hacks, but they didn't get detected and the screencap showed nothing or a black screen, so we couldn't PROVE they were using a hack and they'd get a pass. We only banned people we had proof were using a hack, not because we suspected it. So while I see someone using the hack every 3rd drop right now, I have no proof they are using them and they are obviously getting past the detection PGI is using.

The file manipulation you are talking about sounds a lot like the hack that was used in Tribes years ago, changing skins on models, which was more insidious than it sounds. You could put a skin on a turret that made what SHOULD be in the game a small 1' tall turret appear to be 30' tall and 10' wide and bright pulsating pink. And you could put skins on every single asset in the game, including player models, so....yeah, that's something PGI should be on top of already. That might actually explain some of the things I've seen that I was thinking were the result of wallhack now that I think on it. Same effect, different methods to obtain it.

PGI could easily fix that issue, that they haven't yet....yeah, that's not filling me with confidence that they are really going to do much about hacking.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 June 2015 - 02:06 PM, said:

Me being able to tell someone's using a hack due to the PLAYER being an idiot isn't the same as the hack being easy to detect. Our BF server, we'd catch 20 a week using hacks, PB itself would actually detect maybe 5 of those 20, the rest we caught by detecting them ourselves via observation and confirmed by using the PB screencap feature. There would be another 40 we KNEW were using hacks, but they didn't get detected and the screencap showed nothing or a black screen, so we couldn't PROVE they were using a hack and they'd get a pass. We only banned people we had proof were using a hack, not because we suspected it. So while I see someone using the hack every 3rd drop right now, I have no proof they are using them and they are obviously getting past the detection PGI is using.

The file manipulation you are talking about sounds a lot like the hack that was used in Tribes years ago, changing skins on models, which was more insidious than it sounds. You could put a skin on a turret that made what SHOULD be in the game a small 1' tall turret appear to be 30' tall and 10' wide and bright pulsating pink. And you could put skins on every single asset in the game, including player models, so....yeah, that's something PGI should be on top of already. That might actually explain some of the things I've seen that I was thinking were the result of wallhack now that I think on it. Same effect, different methods to obtain it.

PGI could easily fix that issue, that they haven't yet....yeah, that's not filling me with confidence that they are really going to do much about hacking.

A couple of the things we sent them were the obvious initial things players would look to do like removal of trees rendering; removal or at least partial removal of buildings rendering.

Through to changing the night and heat vision colour gradients to make it so mechs would be easily visable at long distances; or in case of heat vision that they would stand out even on maps like caustic and through the thermal vents.

And I'm sure you could go much further the more you poke around.
The rendering stuff was unstable ( probably cause we didn't really know what we were doing enough inside cryengine)

A number of people in our unit in CB were programmer's and such like working for other games development companies; we went so far as to offer our services for free to find and help them fix/secure such stuff in our free time.

Edited by DV McKenna, 12 June 2015 - 02:16 PM.

[Mechwarrior Buddah]

Kristov Kerensky, on 11 June 2015 - 11:24 AM, said:

Already covered that Hardware IDs that aren't gained by asking the OS, as that can be and is easily spoofed. There are other methods software can use to obtain the hardware IDs that can't be spoofed. THOSE require the banned person to replace specific hardware to get around the ban. PB does this and has done this for over a decade for anyone attempting to access their db system. It's perfectly legal around the globe, even China and the EU don't have problems with it.

so because: PGI is lazy/greedy lol far be it they cut off someone who MIGHT give them a dollar

[Kristov Kerensky]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 12 June 2015 - 02:24 PM, said:

so because: PGI is lazy/greedy lol far be it they cut off someone who MIGHT give them a dollar

It's not just PGI, Valve, EA, Activision, iD, the list goes on and on, devs/publishers are never eager to STOP people from giving them money and this IS a business after all, people have to always keep that in mind. Video games are entertainment for us, but they are business for the people who make them, not a passion or a life's goal, a business. Even Chris Roberts is out to make a buck at the end of the day, don't let the PR fool ya.

People who spent money on a hack AND spent $100 or more on the game itself, well, you let them come back and they'll drop more money on the game, every time, so...


McKenna, lots of us have offered to help PGI pro bono, they turn us all down, guess it's not legal in Canada to let people work for you for free or something, or Russ doesn't want people to see how he runs a business, don't know. Seriously, not allowing reskining of assets is like anti-hack 99, that's such a basic that I don't know how they didn't cover that. It's almost like they've never created an online game before.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 June 2015 - 02:35 PM, said:

McKenna, lots of us have offered to help PGI pro bono, they turn us all down, guess it's not legal in Canada to let people work for you for free or something, or Russ doesn't want people to see how he runs a business, don't know. Seriously, not allowing reskining of assets is like anti-hack 99, that's such a basic that I don't know how they didn't cover that. It's almost like they've never created an online game before.

Or because they don't care; it's about the financials and the amount of mech packages they can shift.

[Mystere]

Mudhutwarrior, on 12 June 2015 - 01:19 PM, said:

They were from your faction too. Maybe 66ah is back too? Oh, yeah they are.

Don't care who they are.

But you saying "right now in solo all you see is teams instead of solos" ...

[AEgg]

DV McKenna, on 12 June 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

A couple of the things we sent them were the obvious initial things players would look to do like removal of trees rendering; removal or at least partial removal of buildings rendering.

Through to changing the night and heat vision colour gradients to make it so mechs would be easily visable at long distances; or in case of heat vision that they would stand out even on maps like caustic and through the thermal vents.

And I'm sure you could go much further the more you poke around.
The rendering stuff was unstable ( probably cause we didn't really know what we were doing enough inside cryengine)

A number of people in our unit in CB were programmer's and such like working for other games development companies; we went so far as to offer our services for free to find and help them fix/secure such stuff in our free time.

Mechs showing up in thermal vision at infinite range on terra therma and caustic was normal behavior until last week. Mechs were black while everything else was nearly solid white, and thermal ignored the vents on caustic. PGI changed something in the last week or two so it doesn't do that anymore on caustic, but I think terra therma is still the same.

I don't know if they ever fixed forcing AA on an ATI card making everything (mechs included) transparent, either.

Bugs are bugs.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

AEgg, on 12 June 2015 - 02:47 PM, said:

Mechs showing up in thermal vision at infinite range on terra therma and caustic was normal behavior until last week. Mechs were black while everything else was nearly solid white, and thermal ignored the vents on caustic. PGI changed something in the last week or two so it doesn't do that anymore on caustic, but I think terra therma is still the same.

I don't know if they ever fixed forcing AA on an ATI card making everything (mechs included) transparent, either.

Bugs are bugs.

Im talking a complete colour gradient scale change for things like Thermal version. No longer white and black; but a full colour spectrum with very bright multi coloured mechs that defiantly stand out more than a dark splodge at range.

[Eboli]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 June 2015 - 02:06 PM, said:

So while I see someone using the hack every 3rd drop right now, I have no proof they are using them and they are obviously getting past the detection PGI is using.

Wow, that is depressing if what you suspect is true...

[xXBagheeraXx]

64 hackers?

Wall hacks?

Videos?

Whut? news to me. Links please?

[Alardus]

Mechwarrior Buddah, on 12 June 2015 - 02:24 PM, said:

so because: PGI is lazy/greedy lol far be it they cut off someone who MIGHT give them a dollar

I feel the same way, but it does no good to keep telling them this. It won't improve anything. Also, I think letting hackers come back and buy more mechs is a good thing. Someone previously said that as far as they were concerned, a banned account that hacked is like washing the slate clean to come back. I agree with that in any games, but especially here where they can keep buying MC and pumping money into the game. What I'd really like to see is those funds being used to develop this game to its full potential. I think there's been some missteps along the road, and those need to be immediately jettisoned/fixed before the game should be built further. There's no shame in acknowledging a mistake and undoing it.

[TwentyOne]

Wildstreak, on 09 June 2015 - 09:05 AM, said:

I would not be surprised if they are coming back. I had matches where I was getting shot with LRMs when
- I was behind cover from all enemies.
- I was not NARCed.
- they had no hidden spotters, I checked.

Yessssssss. but say anything about it and your called a whiner. This happens to me rarely too.

[Alardus]

TwentyOne, on 12 June 2015 - 06:26 PM, said:

Yessssssss. but say anything about it and your called a whiner. This happens to me rarely too.

This was actually happening to me a few matches ago. I made absolutely sure there were no spotters, and I thought it was probably an enemy UAV I couldn't see on my minimap. I just stayed behind cover and soaked up a lot of LRMS on rocks and they eventually started firing at someone else.

Finally ground out enough C-bill to buy my atlas, though, so gonna have loads of fun with that bad boy

Edited by Alardus, 13 June 2015 - 02:10 AM.

[Mudhutwarrior]

Ran into a dire all alone in the middle of an open space on tourmaline. Put tag on him and instantly his box goes flashing like ecm cover. The ecm on their team left was a good 1000 mtrs away on my hud. I drop the tag and his box comes back put it on him and it flashes.

Bug? One I have never seen before.

[pyrocomp]

Kristov Kerensky, on 12 June 2015 - 12:32 PM, said:

Permbans are the only effective deterrent to hacking I've ever seen. Risk vs reward, pure and simple. F2P games makes it more likely that people will take the risk, it's FREE after all, but when they realize that the permban means they can NOT get back into the game again, well, more people start to think that the risk is too high, even for a free game. The people who'll run the risk at that point are 1 of two types generally :

Not sure that death penalty really keeps crime rates low (and many studies over this matter). Alike to this if it is a permaban then there is no sence in limiting yourself in amount and frequency of cheats used. If the overall decision is based not only on the fact but on the situation (event or something alike) as well (and account ban should be there anyway) then overall ammount on cheating actions would be generally lower even with larger from-time-to-time-cheater population. And I my opinion this is a healthier in-game situation.

[Kristov Kerensky]

pyrocomp, on 13 June 2015 - 02:52 AM, said:

Not sure that death penalty really keeps crime rates low (and many studies over this matter). Alike to this if it is a permaban then there is no sence in limiting yourself in amount and frequency of cheats used. If the overall decision is based not only on the fact but on the situation (event or something alike) as well (and account ban should be there anyway) then overall ammount on cheating actions would be generally lower even with larger from-time-to-time-cheater population. And I my opinion this is a healthier in-game situation.

Death penalty? WTBF does that have to do with banning people from a video game? What, did you get busted using hacks in some other game and felt getting banned forever was too much? Or do you just always reach for stupidly over the top comparisons? VIDEO GAME, not life and death here, HUGE effing difference. Permbans don't deprive the idiot who uses hacks from anything but the ability to grief your community, and that's NOT something anyone should be allowed to do in the first damn place.

People who use hacks are NOT good for the community, fact. People who'll use hacks regardless of the consequences are poison for the community, fact.

I personally want it so that if you get busted, you get permbanned on the spot, end of discussion, F off, but I've also been dealing with this type of player for over 20 years and KNOW how they are from experience, lots of experience.

You want to go all PC and be nice to the poor hack user who's mommy abused them by not buying them a pony, fine, tier system :

1st time you get busted, account banned and a 1 month vacation before you can create another account

2nd time you get busted, permbanned, don't come back ever, you've shown you can't be trusted

That's it, you do NOT keep letting them back in because they will continue to use hacks if the ONLY penalty is they lose their account. It's a FREE TO PLAY GAME, they'll just keep coming back and they'll become a griefer, it's what happens, just look at other games that do it, F2P or not, it IS what happens. I mean, we've only had over 20 years of online gaming history to show us this, it's not like it's changed at any point during that time.

WTBF, comparing a ban in a video game to the death penalty...are you effing serious?

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Kristov Kerensky, on 13 June 2015 - 05:19 AM, said:

Death penalty? WTBF does that have to do with banning people from a video game? What, did you get busted using hacks in some other game and felt getting banned forever was too much? Or do you just always reach for stupidly over the top comparisons? VIDEO GAME, not life and death here, HUGE effing difference. Permbans don't deprive the idiot who uses hacks from anything but the ability to grief your community, and that's NOT something anyone should be allowed to do in the first damn place.

People who use hacks are NOT good for the community, fact. People who'll use hacks regardless of the consequences are poison for the community, fact.

I personally want it so that if you get busted, you get permbanned on the spot, end of discussion, F off, but I've also been dealing with this type of player for over 20 years and KNOW how they are from experience, lots of experience.

You want to go all PC and be nice to the poor hack user who's mommy abused them by not buying them a pony, fine, tier system :

1st time you get busted, account banned and a 1 month vacation before you can create another account

2nd time you get busted, permbanned, don't come back ever, you've shown you can't be trusted

That's it, you do NOT keep letting them back in because they will continue to use hacks if the ONLY penalty is they lose their account. It's a FREE TO PLAY GAME, they'll just keep coming back and they'll become a griefer, it's what happens, just look at other games that do it, F2P or not, it IS what happens. I mean, we've only had over 20 years of online gaming history to show us this, it's not like it's changed at any point during that time.

WTBF, comparing a ban in a video game to the death penalty...are you effing serious?

I think he was; and I think you missed his point.

People know that for certain crimes you can face the death penalty.
Judging by history past and present it doesn't stop people comitting said crime.

The penalty your discussing for hacking us a permanent ban (which for the record I agree with) ie: death of your account.

It still isn't going to stop people hacking. And PGI is daft enough to think such people will reform and respend money on the toys they lost the first time.

[pyrocomp]

Kristov Kerensky, on 13 June 2015 - 05:19 AM, said:

WTBF, comparing a ban in a video game to the death penalty...are you effing serious?

You misunderstood something. I'm not comparing permaban with death penalty. Death penalty as en extreme measure is not as effective historically at keeping crime rates low as milder systems. The point was that extreme measures should not be used before some other measures were used. E.g. tier system you described will most probably more effective at keeping unwanted behavior low.

PS: Have some faith in the sanity of others, the world is not that weird.

[Kristov Kerensky]

Oh I know we can't keep people from USING hacks in the first place, that will happen no matter what the penalty for being caught is.

But when the penalty is such that getting caught means you can't play the game ever again, it means the people who DO use the hacks are going to be the ones there's no redemption chances with anyway, and it means the average John Q Gamer who might be TEMPTED to try a hack will decide not to, the penalty is not worth it. Griefers will grief, tryhards will always have to be the best regardless of skill, can't stop them from using hacks, ever.

I have no faith in the sanity of others, I've had to deal with people for years directly and indirectly as tech and support, I KNOW better. As for gamers, even worse, I am one and I know how nuts I am.