[orkan]

I've been a PC gamer since 1992.  I started with wolfenstein 3d, and haven't stopped playing FPS games since.  There have been lots of fun games over the years.  The games that run smoothly, and have a good easy to use interface and fluid controls are always, ALWAYS ruined by the exact same thing.

Hackers, Cheaters, and Exploiters.

Nothing makes playing FPS less pleasureable than playing against someone cheating or exploiting.  My entire clan feels the exact same way.

We see this game and we see potential of a game that fits our clan better than any game has since the Desert Combat modification for BF1942.   Yet it will all be for not, if we encounter a hacker in every round as currently happens with call of duty games.

The second thing, is that while many games start out with developers claiming they will leave the game open for people to do what they wish in the environment.  Then, when the money starts rolling, they patch it into oblivion and cater to the lowest common denominator.  Battlefield 2 is a primary example of this happening.

Children get their parents to buy the game, then they get killed, then they cry to the devs... and the devs cripple good players so the bad players don't feel so bad.  There is actual documented code that has been revealed in COD:MW3 which increases latency on players if they have a high KDR or do too well.

What does Blackfoot have to say on these two issues:
1) Hackers
2) Catering to the lowest, least skillful players.

[NmVision]

I'm fairly certain that everyone here can guarantee you that BFS will not stand for number 2, based on NORG and many other following principles.

As for cheating, they obviously won't stand for it, but I dont know what they have planned to stop it.

[Jsonedecker]

1) They suck and we will do everything possible to keep them out of GB. We ill investigate and use the best tools available to us. But at the end of the day you can't solve every situation.

2) We have no plans to do so.We treat all players the same.

One thing to remember about us compared to Activision and EA is that we are a small self funded Indie studio making games because we like to. We are not an "investment institution" wrapped up in a game developer/publisher exterior. What I mean by that is we only answer to ourselves and to our customers. We don't have shareholders that only care about the return on their investment. Those games cater to the lowest common denominator and are constantly changing because they are constantly trying to lure more people to play. That increases revenue and therefore ROI.

Of course we want to make money to survive. All businesses do. But we will only do so by making a solid product that people enjoy. If we ruin GB then there goes everything. We don't have 50 other games that generate revenue.

[Tinker]

1) Hackers

WebFines, will automagically deduct income from anyone caught hacking, or using hacks. In many years to come. The top of the chain publishers cannot deal with this at present. We have punkbuster and VAC right now, FADE for Arma also works to some extent.

orkan, do you know of any better anti cheat solution, just out of curiosity.

Does anyone know why a program cannot detect memory hacks? Maybe better, why no one has built a better anti cheat program than the 2 mentioned?

[ApexMods]

Code injection in memory is hard to detect, as memory is volatile / constantly changing and you cannot simply run a checksum on it like you do on executables and game files.  All this also depends on the operating system and whether it has protected memory partitions for each executable like in e.g. Mac OS X, Unix, Linux.

[orkan]

That being said, do you intend to cater to the competitive/clan gaming ladders/leagues such as CAL or TWL?

The original counter strike has more players on steam than call of duty... consistently.  If you include counter strike source, it has over twice as many... always.  Reason being is that they let the players live or die on their own.  Secondly, many features in regard to spectating and "broadcaster" type free-cam spectating mods which allow a football game-type announcer to call the play-by-play.  A modern, highly adaptive, and immersive game like Ground Branch could really take off in competition if those things were built into the game instead of after-thoughts.

My clanmates and I have often talked about blizzard's business model, and how it should be implimented in a FPS game.  None of us play warcraft, but the model seems to work.  Sell the game, then charge players monthly to play.  In return, you run all the servers that the game runs on... and remove players that glitch, cheat, exploit.  The monthly fee, ties that person's screen name to their real life identity.  (CC number) As such, that person would be much more invested in behaving as opposed to simply creating another steam id.  Cheaters/exploiters/griefers in warcraft are virtually non-existant, I'm told.

Perhaps you could control the cheater aspect in that way?

I can tell you with 100% certainty, that the old guard of PC gaming is COMPLETELY fed up with developers allowing cheaters to run amok in games.  To the point where we refuse to play pub games.  If we dare play pub COD:MW3, we will report 20+ cheaters in a 4hr session.  Sometimes more.  We play co-op, or in private matches against each other.   Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as frustrating as a FPS gamer that's been playing for years than to encounter a wallhacker, aimbotter, or other cheater.

If Ground Branch doesn't take the cheater problem seriously, and ensure they are controlled... this game will be pointless to play, regardless of how fun it "would be" without the cheaters.   Your response of "we'll do everything we can, but you can't solve every situation" doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Tinker... I'm not a coder.  I don't act like I am, nor do I play one on TV.   As a result, I have no idea what hacker prevention mechanism to use.

I'm a gamer.  A good one.  ... and cheaters have been ruining my gaming experience for the last decade.  It is a HUGE problem.

To the point -  I'd pay $50 a month, GLADLY, if I had a quality game that allowed my clanmates and I to play competitively without the hassle of cheaters.

[ApexMods]

You make an excellent point here.  I wonder if Ground Branch will support full match recording like Ghost Recon did.  Maybe you recall the Replay Committee that judged GR glitchers/cheaters based on submitted game replays?

[Jsonedecker]

orkan, on 26 June 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

I can tell you with 100% certainty, that the old guard of PC gaming is COMPLETELY fed up with developers allowing cheaters to run amok in games.  To the point where we refuse to play pub games.  If we dare play pub COD:MW3, we will report 20+ cheaters in a 4hr session.  Sometimes more.  We play co-op, or in private matches against each other.   Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as frustrating as a FPS gamer that's been playing for years than to encounter a wallhacker, aimbotter, or other cheater.

If Ground Branch doesn't take the cheater problem seriously, and ensure they are controlled... this game will be pointless to play, regardless of how fun it "would be" without the cheaters.   Your response of "we'll do everything we can, but you can't solve every situation" doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

Sometimes it's not that developers "allow" cheaters to run amok. It's that by its very nature, PC gaming is VERY difficult to control and cover all the "bases" so to speak. The only way to be almost sure is the Blizzard method... as you mentioned. But that has other issues like the enormous cost of maintaining servers and isn't universally accepted by people.

Quote

... and cheaters have been ruining my gaming experience for the last decade.  It is a HUGE problem.

I agree 100%

ApexMods, on 26 June 2012 - 04:48 PM, said:

You make an excellent point here.  I wonder if Ground Branch will support full match recording like Ghost Recon did.  Maybe you recall the Replay Committee that judged GR glitchers/cheaters based on submitted game replays?

Yes. We have full "demo recording that works like that.

[V2_Bloodline]

Welcome to the forums, orkan!

[Cpl Ledanek]

Good questions and needs addressing orkan, glad you came aboard.

Since GB will be available Offline LAN, wouldn't that eliminate possibility of hackers? Unless your friend/clanmate are hacking you there on the spot...which would be weird.

I got a feeling once GB becomes available, most of the online gaming will be with friends since, couldn't the players be controlled with a password to the server?

Then from there, it would be Team vs Team?

[NmVision]

I haven't played MW3, however I heard that it does have a lot of cheating. That said, I play BO all the time, and very often I think "that was suspicious". On the rare time I get frusterated too much, I go and look at the game replay, and I see they dont cheat. Usually they get lucky, they're fast, are jumpy and looking all over the place, or are smart and saw a small clue to where I was. It's my opinion that there are FAR less cheaters than people think... that or the cheats aren't very efficient. While I believe there aren't many cheaters, by no means am I advocating for no cheat protection. I just feel that with the millions of gamers out there, and the years they play games for, it's no surprise that people actually get good at games. You really have to put aside ALL assumptions and look at every single case with an objective lens and get proof. I couldn't imagine reporting cheater after cheater over a 4 hour period. Again, I also don't play MW3.

Also, in many scenarios it is up to the server admins to deal with cheaters alongside the built in cheat protection. The players record videos of cheaters, or spectate cheaters to catch them, and the admins ban them. I think that this can often be more effective than anti-cheat software. Again, my opinion.

[MurDoc]

Best thing would be submitting demo recordings for steam/VAC bans.
You think someone is cheating, you send your demo recording to BFS. BFS reviews it and bans whoever is cheating on VAC.
Or adds them to a server ban list which server admins could download to their servers.

[Carlaz]

Sad moment time for i wasted months on wow and sc1/2. Blizzard games have many many hackers. Starcraft hacks are very common and are now ahead of the curve in terms of  detection. Same for PVP hacks in WoW.

[zoog]

orkan, on 26 June 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

Your response of "we'll do everything we can, but you can't solve every situation" doesn't exactly inspire confidence.

I think what they mean is that they will try everything within their power to eliminate cheating, but that some things never can be guaranteed for full 100%. You cannot say "there won't be any cheaters". Just as with (web)software, there will always be people who find new security issues by hacking into systems. Even the best security companies are unable to make software that is 100% secure and unhackable. It just doesn't and will not exist. So you can do your absolute best to eliminate the issues, but you can never guarantee full 100%.

[Colin]

HAVING FULL SERVER CONTROL WILL HELP.

THE game will be balanced the individual teams will decide between themselves what is best to take into battle and how to support each other.

I would imagine with the way this game will play and the way the pre match settings are dealt with a cheater will stand out like a sore thumb.

[Jsonedecker]

Colin, on 27 June 2012 - 06:58 AM, said:

HAVING FULL SERVER CONTROL WILL HELP.

THE game will be balanced the individual teams will decide between themselves what is best to take into battle and how to support each other.

I would imagine with the way this game will play and the way the pre match settings are dealt with a cheater will stand out like a sore thumb.

Yes, that is true to an extent. Just the type of game and the way games are setup/played will provide a lot of shielding from cheaters. Modern games don't allow for players to control their own servers very well, if at all. GB allows full server control and management and will have a lobby system similar to the original RSE games.

But otherwise, you can never guarantee anything and I would never try to say GB will be free of cheaters. But I can promise that we will do everything we are capable of to keep them out of the game and to deal with them swiftly once detected. That's all I can give and if any other developer says they can do more than they are lying to you.

[Nemesis]

Tinker, on 26 June 2012 - 04:30 PM, said:

Does anyone know why a program cannot detect memory hacks? Maybe better, why no one has built a better anti cheat program than the 2 mentioned?

...probably as it's memory extensive to poll every bit of data written to memeory

[orkan]

Like I say... I don't have all the answers.  I just know that cheaters are probably the #1 problem as viewed by those of us old school gamer types that want a fun competitive environment.

Imagine, playing baseball and both teams are having a blast.  Then a guy shows up and instead of hitting with a bat, he's using a pneumatic ball launching machine.  The fun disappears for everyone involved except the scumbag cheater.

Right now, my clan plays MW3 in private matches ONLY.  While fun, nothing will ever compare to the fun that we've had in the past playing as a team against another team.  Since we'll have full control, I imagine that we'll just purchase our own server... but yet that opens the door where we'll constantly be getting banned by unskilled players because they dislike getting killed.

I simply hope against hope... that Ground Branch is void of cheaters.

[SerenityDivide]

Steam has its own set of anti-cheat measures. They use it to regulate CS:S matches, etc. Not sure how much it would cost for a developer to implement that into their game, but it might be a choice. There's also Punkbuster too.

I'm not sure how effective either anti-cheat programs are in absolving cheaters. If dedicated servers are an option, server admins and a server's community can regulate for cheaters on their own stead.

I remember back when our clan used to play matches in CS 1.6 and BF1942 Desert Combat mod. We were required to download and run a special program in-game that took screenshots every once in a while during our match. That was back when we competed in a gaming league--I honestly forget which one.

Might be something to consider if if Ground Branch has plans to go competitive like CS did.

Edited by SerenityDivide, 27 June 2012 - 05:10 PM.

[Caliber]

I can't recall one game ever that was completely "hacker-free". There are some that are more infested than others, of course, but it all depends on how proactive the community of the game is in standing up to hackers.

I remember in the days of AA (America's Army), we had a community that was very active in catching hackers in pubs. Also, competitively speaking, we had a very small percentage of players that were able to successfully hack while using a cheat detection program (called CDC) on TWL (teamwarfare league). The program was created by a member of the community who was extremely good at coding and was sick of hackers. He created and maintained that program for about 5 years for free.

Really, it falls on both the community and devs to keep a game as clean as possible.