About anti-cheat?

[Dialtone]

I was going to put this in one of the "about cheating" threads. But I couldn't pull this post off effectively without it sounding argumentative. And that wasn't my goal. So I dropped some of the arguments and put it here.



Cheating in Grim Dawn is so easy and often leaves no trace, MP with anybody who you can't watch their every action sets you up to easily be fooled. People often say things like "play with people you can trust", which is the point of having some kind of anti-cheat, it makes trusting the people you're playing with easier. Not caring about cheating is a choice, this does not mean that everybody else does or should agree with you. Without any kind of anti-cheat whatsoever even when playing with players that say they're not cheating and who are people you think you can trust, you can easily be misinformed.

I've already experienced this, one of my MP partners was apparently getting luckier than me and rolling good items at the blacksmith. Started off slow, then I noticed the trend of better and better items with less effort than I had to put into getting good rolls. I physically traveled in real life to that persons location, sat down and watched him play for a bit in a friendly manner, he couldn't seem to get so lucky. Then when I was out of the room he exited to the main screen tabbed out and restored one single file reverting his char to a previous state so he could re-role at the blacksmith. I noticed the inconsistency. Asking my friend if he could tab out for a moment revealed the file explorer still open and evidence of his betrayal. But until that moment, I was fed lies, I had my suspicions but no proof.

Once you've received items from cheaters, then you've ruined your own game play experience if you're a purist like me. You don't have the luxury of proving this like I did in all situations.

Even an anti-cheat solution that only works on games that are not modded could help the majority of players. Some solutions could still work with mods. For example if a mod only adds a slower rate of experience gain, characters started and only ever played with that mod could be flagged as unedited but modded by X mod. Any solution even an imperfect one, that only stops simple cheats, is better than none. Optional solutions are best, as it is clearly known some people are against anti-cheat methods due to the fact they can be obstructive.

Having a lite anti-cheat solution would allow people in situations like mine to have more MP friend options, with a little extra piece of mind. The dude I'm talking about is not that intelligent, he knows it, nothing wrong with that. He's simply somebody with low self control. Any solution that stops cheaters like him that only know how to use file copying and simple cheats would be welcomed. Even if all it does is flag characters, in game or even outside the game, that have not been copied then restored or are otherwise know to be not be cheated.


@Developers - All I'd like to know is the answer to a couple questions, if you don't mind, sorry if you've already done so.

Is anti-cheat possible with Grim Dawns coding, without harming the game itself?
Do you have any intent to add any kind of anti-cheat system?

[Mutant1988]

So don't play with that friend when he's cheating? The issue here is your obsession with controlling how others play the game. Not that your experience is in any way compromised - Unless you let it be.

Play with people you know and tell them not to cheat. Learn how to not care about what others do, with their games and on their servers.

[smh]

GD is not about "online competitive". There is no ladder system or something like that, multiplayer its just a option to play with your mates.
Right now Crate is small studio and cant waste resources and time in all directions.

[Zantai]

The game is played offline with locally stored characters, what sort of anti-cheat systems are you proposing that cannot be trivially circumvented by editing said local files?

And let's establish that online-only features are off the table (not that online-only can completely deter cheating anyway).

Modded worlds are meant to be played via Custom Game, where the saves are stored separately. Anything being used right now is hacks, and trying to stop those is a big lesson in futility.

We may, at some point, implement something trivial that would, as you say, deter the low-key cheaters in MP, but there is nothing that can be done about copying local files that would not get in the way of legitimate intents or modding. Anything we implement will be circumvented shortly after release anyway.

Torchlight 2 had a flag that would mark players as cheaters if they edited files or ran mods. That check was cracked within a week of the game's release.

I'm sorry your friend was lying to you, but there is not going to be a patch for weak wills.

[Dialtone]

引用自 Mutant1988：

So don't play with that friend when he's cheating? The issue here is your obsession with controlling how others play the game. Not that your experience is in any way compromised - Unless you let it be.

Play with people you know and tell them not to cheat. Learn how to not care about what others do, with their games and on their servers.

So your response to my "obsession" of trying to control how others play, is to tell me how to play... Really.

[Mutant1988]

引用自 Dialtone：

引用自 Mutant1988：

So don't play with that friend when he's cheating? The issue here is your obsession with controlling how others play the game. Not that your experience is in any way compromised - Unless you let it be.

Play with people you know and tell them not to cheat. Learn how to not care about what others do, with their games and on their servers.

So your response to my "obsession" of trying to control how others play, is to tell me how to play... Really.

At least I'm not demanding ridiculous things from the developers, that ultimately accomplishes nothing whatsoever.

And yes, I do think the issue is how you play the game. Or rather, that you keep playing with someone you can't trust and for some reason believe that you will suddenly be able to trust them if the developers implement anti-cheat.

That's not how that works. He lied to you once - What makes you think he won't do it again, the second he finds a way (Which he will) to circumvent the futile anti-cheat?

Best way to avoid cheaters? Play with people you know. If they cheat anyway and that's an issue for you - Get new friends.

[Dialtone]

引用自 Zantai：

We may, at some point, implement something trivial that would, as you say, deter the low-key cheaters in MP, but there is nothing that can be done about copying local files that would not get in the way of legitimate intents or modding. Anything we implement will be circumvented shortly after release anyway.

No doubt, I understand most people will be able to cheat, anti-cheat or not. But if something was done to even let people know when somebody modified their saves, it would deter people like I was talking about.

Plus somewhere on here in another thread I made a suggestion that a CRC(that's probably not the right term) of the players saves could be uploaded to say something remote like the steam cloud when exiting to the main screen. When the player loaded their character it would check to see if the character was modified. Players couldn't hack an anti-cheat flag like in torchlight II on their characters, if it wasn't stored locally.

Edit: Preferably anything done should be optional.

[Dialtone]

Mutant1988, Nothing makes be believe he won't lie or cheat again, I never said that. In my post I said why he wouldn't find a way to beat a simple anti-cheat, he's lucky he found the save files in the first place. Plus I made no ridiculous demands.

[Mutant1988]

引用自 Dialtone：

Mutant1988, Nothing makes be believe he won't lie or cheat again, I never said that. In my post I said why he wouldn't find a way to beat a simple anti-cheat, he's lucky he found the save files in the first place. Plus I made no ridiculous demands.

Server side file checking is ridiculously futile. Especially if it's optional.

As for your suggestion that your "friend" would stop cheating if it became too complicated... He knows how to google, right? All it takes is google and one guy making a trainer and every effort the developers have made has been for naught and you would be playing with a cheater again and be none the wiser.

There's only one way to "stop" cheating and that's server side data storage and that is a bad thing for longevity. That is, it costs money to keep going, is more prone to failure than local storage (Manual backups are far more reliable and don't require online access to use) and the game might stop functioning entirely once the servers are shut down or if the developer goes out of business.

I'd rather risk cheaters and police my own games than waste the time of developers and end up with completely broken games a few years down the line.

[King Hadu]

so how come GGG can afford economy and closed servers for Path of Exile?

And they were more or less the same size of Crate?

[Dialtone]

Mutant1988, You're not going to convince me that some kind of simple unobtrusive anti-cheat wouldn't be a good idea. Posts about anti-cheat wouldn't keep appearing on these forums if it was a non-issue. I don't want to have to police my games like you suggest you're willing to do. Anyway, I've already received the answers I had hoped for from Zantai.

[Mutant1988]

引用自 KING HADU：

so how come GGG can afford economy and closed servers for Path of Exile?

And they were more or less the same size of Crate?

I'm pretty sure I specified that sever side storage was an issue years down the line? Longevity is quite an important aspect for me.

I wouldn't be playing the original Diablo to this day otherwise. Had it handled it's data exclusively server side, then it would have been hopelessly broken and in need of extensive reprogramming to get functional. I don't like that.

Besides, the question is not whether they can afford it. It's why they should even bother in the first place.

[Dialtone]

I agree that having to play online only like POE is horrible. But being as intelligent and talented as Crate is, they may be able to come up with a way to "secure" a flag for which character saves are considered "safe".

Something optional, that if servers were down you could choose to continue anyway at the expense of losing that flag when servers come up. Nothing is perfect.

[Mutant1988]

引用自 Dialtone：

I agree that having to play online only like POE is horrible. But being as intelligent and talented as Crate is, they may be able to come up with a way to "secure" a flag for which characters saves a considered "safe".

Something optional, that if servers were down you could choose to continue anyway at the expense of losing that flag when servers come up. Nothing is perfect.

I think you grossly underestimate how easily things like that are broken. Especially if they're optional.

Case in point:

引用自 Zantai：

Torchlight 2 had a flag that would mark players as cheaters if they edited files or ran mods. That check was cracked within a week of the game's release.

That's how much use you have of those. 1 week without cheaters - If even that.

[Dialtone]

Mutant1988, Zantai never said if that "flag" was saved on the player side or a remote server, there is a difference.

[Mutant1988]

引用自 Dialtone：

Mutant1988, Zantai never said if that "flag" was saved on the player side or a remote server, there is a difference.

Even if it's remotely stored, they would just have a program that stores the "safe" flag separately and match it with the remotely stored one when requested. No system like this is fool proof. The only way it can stop cheating is to check other programs interacting with the game and even that can be circumvented and needs to be updated to remain effective.

It's more effort than it's worth for a game that's not competitive in the slightest.