Solution to Hacking?

[SufferingLimit]

Okay, now understand that this post is not to bash Funcom about their responses to would-be hacking in the game. It is only to bring more awareness to the problem and have a nice discussion on what we would like to see be done to stop it in the future and how to handle it if problems persists.

Maybe like a form where we can post bugs, crashes, exploits, and hacks that are used by immoral players. Hopefully Funcom can set this up on launch day for us, it will defintely do them a whole lot of good from my perspective.

Now remember the days of Reign of Kings (for those who followed them), I used to play that game daily and was excited about the gameplay, weekly updates (for the most part), and its interesting uses of player interaction (like kidnapping, playing instruments, and the different siege options). What destroyed the game for me was when I would be playing with friends and outta nowhere, this asian hacker (honestly no racism but it was mainly asian players I met doing this) would just mess up everything, destroy everything, kill everyone, block off the throne, and then type in chat words I couldnt understand or just broken english saying "haha noob, get gud" or something. It was infuriating to say the least but I still stuck through it and played on different servers to see if the problem persisted. And yet, that was an understatement....there were hackers on almost every server and it was such a sad sight because once a hacker got on, everyone cursed and got depressed and usually left the server. (Or went on those wild maniac hacker hunts where they accused anyone of hacking if you so much as showed a simple lag spike to only reported you back to the stone age) That's what utimately destroyed the game though, was the influx of hackers and the inability of the developer to deal with it.

However, on the other hand, Ark was different. I think awhile ago way in the early days of playing the game, I was reading on the forums about their response to hacking and they say said something along the lines of "we don't trust any players connection or something so we have you go through some type of channel to play our servers and if you don't check out you wont be able to play it" (lol don't quote me but it was something similar). This was a good way to deter hackers and catch more of it and the exploits in the act so they can create fixes to the situation.

So what I am getting at is that Funcom, if they aren't already doing so, should make a active topic on making sure that their game doesnt get ruined by the hackers and crazy exploits. Because I know that many games have had their growth stunted by that only to fix it months later but then have no real way of getting their initial player base back because they lost their trust to fix these things in a timely manner. Please try and look up existing games and their hacking problems and their responses to them to get a good general idea on how to handle it better. I know you guys have been in the business for awhile but im telling you, from a gamer's perspective it is a bit scary when you say their isnt going to be any anti-cheat programs on EA launch.( I mean just imaging popping into a server and finally getting that village with your own castle up and running, only to meet some hacker noob that summons a god in the first five minutes and totally rekting your hard earned work in a matter of seconds, and get this......just for the lolz.)

So this is just constructive critism and a well-known caution on how hacking can utterly deviate a player base from the game. But other things considered, I hope to play the game soon, still exicited!

[Revelation]

That's quite the wall of text, general rule for paragraphs is every 7-10 lines. I'm just saying because it's legitimately hard to read otherwise.

As for hacking, I hope it doesn't happen at all.. but if proven they should be perma-banned. Although it doesn't work as we've seen on similar games recently, they just get new accounts. It's a challenge really, not sure if they will go VAC route or server admins etc..

[Cosmic Cat]

Cheating, not hacking. Will you guys ever learn?

The one who got into Clintons Podesta-emails is a hacker. People who cheat in games are cheaters. You are giving cheaters way too much credit calling them a "hacker".

There won't be many cheats if most stuff is run on the server-side. Client-side architecture in games is what cheaters exploit.

[Authun]

Originally posted by Jîń:

That's quite the wall of text, general rule for paragraphs is every 7-10 lines. I'm just saying because it's legitimately hard to read otherwise.

Follow Jin's advice and you'll get more reads.

Edit: Also Ark still has more hackers than you can shake a stick at.

[Sunrock]

The less Funcom say about how they will protect the game from hackers the better. You're just helping the hackers if you start to go into details.

[Authun]

Originally posted by Sunrock:

The less Funcom say about how they will protect the game from hackers the better. You're just helping the hackers if you start to go into details.

This is also true. When people figure out the details of how an anti-cheat works it makes it exponentially easier to bypass with every detail given.

[Thorim]

Originally posted by Sunrock:

The less Funcom say about how they will protect the game from hackers the better. You're just helping the hackers if you start to go into details.

Good point.

[Bruiser]

The best anti cheat is an active admin

[AwesomeHero]

I don't blame Funcom for not saying what they intend to put in place to prevent cheating. I will however blame them big time if they come up with " easy anti cheat".

And don't compare anything to RoK. Those idiots made an entirely client side based game and didn't even think about any sort of anti cheat. And weekly updates? just for the first few weeks. And I don't call a few flute tunes or a flower dress an update. Took them also 6months+ to address game breaking glitches (like bag on head wall exploit). Not even saying it is worth to mention that poor excuse of a game. Just giving a short explanation to why I don't want to see this compared to Rok EVER.

[Noxcuse]

Originally posted by LordSuperman:

The best anti cheat is an active admin

lol best cheater on server are the admin with tools...like ark,,7dtd ...best way to stop it is an good anti cheat software...behind the game on each server

[Jackalope]

FC does have an anti-cheat solution in place. There will still be cheats and hackers--it's unavoidable. All you can do is react to new issues as they crop up. An active server admin can limit the damage they can do if alerted quickly.

[TheMind]

Originally posted by Woob:

Cheating, not hacking. Will you guys ever learn?

The one who got into Clintons Podesta-emails is a hacker. People who cheat in games are cheaters. You are giving cheaters way too much credit calling them a "hacker".

There won't be many cheats if most stuff is run on the server-side. Client-side architecture in games is what cheaters exploit.

I believe this is the right perspective on the problem. Ive seen things changed in the environment, as in player constructions removed, and called it hacking because is seems that someone found a way to use admin functions on an official server. That's cheating because you're stepping out of the normal rules of the game.

[TheMind]

Originally posted by medicalmarijuana:

The best anti cheat is an active admin

I disagree. admins can cheat too. and they can do things that players cant. being an admin is an unfair advantage.

[cattibria]

Please leave necromancy to necromancers. Locking the thread.