Changes SOE is making in response to the hacker thread - 8,000 Banned since release.

[Roy Awesome]

Yet another cross post from reddit. The other thread fell into a mire of PS1 talk. http://redd.it/199qiu

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Here's a short list. I'll add more later.

1) Our GMs are going to be doing a lot more broadcasting when they are on servers to make sure people know they are there and dealing with the hackers.

2) We will be implementing and TESTING a "batphone" system for larger outfits to call and report large scale issues. Who's going to have that #? Not a ton of people. It will be people we trust and have gotten it right in the past. We'll expand it if this works.

3) In the very near future (the second I get the final report) we will be announcing banned numbers.

4) We are going to be working on increasing the quality of our reporting system in game and specifically to make sure the right reports float to the top. This is going to take a bit of time but it's being moved up the list immediately (we already had a task for this but we're moving it near the top).

Smed

[ChipMHazard]

Already been posted in the thread about said hackers, but I guess it does warrant its own thread for discussing:D

I'm not surprised about the first one, well actually I am as I wasn't aware that they had stopped with those.

Good to see them adding in something that has been requested and suggested, hopefully we won't be seeing outfits abusing this.

About time, not sure what meaning those numbers will have other than showing everyone that they have banned a lot of players. The reason I don't know if it will matter is because of how easy it is to make a new account and start playing again. In other words they aren't really banned from playing, just one of their accounts.

Now that is good news. I got tired of the report they had in place when I was playing, not sure if it's changed since. But it was cumbersome and easy to mess up if you're a hacker by just making the name hard to type. Glad to see that they are taking the feedback that they've been getting and actually doing something, or at least appear to be doing something.

[Wahooo]

My thoughts in TR red.

1) Our GMs are going to be doing a lot more broadcasting when they are on servers to make sure people know they are there and dealing with the hackers. -I guess this is a good thing. It at the very least lets people know for certain they are around.

2) We will be implementing and TESTING a "batphone" system for larger outfits to call and report large scale issues. Who's going to have that #? Not a ton of people. It will be people we trust and have gotten it right in the past. We'll expand it if this works. -On one side I think this is pretty amazing and unprecedented. Abuse? It is just a report system, if you abuse it you are only hurting yourself, i'm sure those who cry wolf will become known quickly and their rights to the bat phone taken away.

3) In the very near future (the second I get the final report) we will be announcing banned numbers. -I would like to see the hard numbers. As I've said I haven't seen that many blatant hackers personally, but I do peruse some of the hacker forums to get a feel for what they are saying, and two things come of that. A LOT of hackers are being caught at early BR's while some keep going on subtly (according to them) without getting banned. I also believe this is as close to name and shame they will/should get as that just becomes a wall of fame rather than shame for those that are cheating.

4) We are going to be working on increasing the quality of our reporting system in game and specifically to make sure the right reports float to the top. This is going to take a bit of time but it's being moved up the list immediately (we already had a task for this but we're moving it near the top). -This makes me happy. The report functionality at release was to say the least limited. The last update has great improvements, any improvements to reporting the cheaters making it easier and more efficient is a HUGE bonus.

[ChipMHazard]

Well, you're right. It's not like they would actually ban someone solely because an outfit reports them, well hopefully not. And you're right said outfit would quickly lose said privilege.

[Crator]

Sucks they have to manually monitor people to figure out if they are using code hax though. Sounds like a lot of work tbh. There was a pretty good thread from a long time ago talking about the League of Legends Tribunal system (Here it is --> Trial by your peers? (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=38363&highlight=Tribunal)). Something in that direction might work, don't you think?

[Maidere]

^ This. Even when I know that some of the anticheats work exactly like maleware and scan your RAM, I will probably prefer something like this. Anyway, if they will add some software anticheat they will probably not tell us.

[Hamma]

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/306556345409224704

The other thread is worthless now - transferring discussion to this one.

[bpostal]

Ah excellent. It's all about that there 'perception'.
That said, I think the amount of blatant hackers I've seen could be counted on one hand. With a finger left to pick my nose. They were really, really annoying but it hasn't been overwhelming.

[Ghoest9]

The 'bat phone" thing reminds me of an old EVE controversy.

Im sure it seems like a good idea - but they are looking for trouble.

[Hamma]

Which EVE controversy? there are so many :lol:

[SgtMAD]

I had a "Bat Phone" in PS1,if shit was going crazy I could get a hold of a CSR almost immediately and get things/person dealt with quickly.

this was on Markov and i wasn't the only guy that could call for help,there were a bunch of ppl that could do it on different empires,I know PcP had a couple of CSR's playing in the damn outfit

it can't hurt in PS2,maybe it will show ppl that shit is being dealt with

[WNxThentar]

I only report people I know are either hacking, which amounts to speed hacks. Or people that are grieffing in the warp gate. Or are either hacking or abusing an obvious exploit like the repairing while in a vehicle glitch or they are invulnerable and should know after 10 minutes of being in combat that they are taking no damage and should relog to fix the glitch. Consequently when I've used this site's character look up and seen that none of the toons I've reported have logged in since the date I reported them. Normally I follow up a /report with a ticket too providing as much info as I can.

Personally I hope they start using some mechanism to identify actual computers the hackers/exploiters use and ban those from ever playing again.

[Wahooo]

Personally I hope they start using some mechanism to identify actual computers the hackers/exploiters use and ban those from ever playing again.

They do, but as with most everything there are ways around it, or ways to spoof it.
One of the reasons automated cheat prevention is hard. There are ways around it and can't be relied on, which means actual live humans have to do the work, so really why not just start with the people?

[Baneblade]

What ever happened to Punkbuster? :lol:

[ChipMHazard]

They do, but as with most everything there are ways around it, or ways to spoof it.
One of the reasons automated cheat prevention is hard. There are ways around it and can't be relied on, which means actual live humans have to do the work, so really why not just start with the people?

Aye, I always say that nothing beats a good admin or in this case GM.

What ever happened to Punkbuster? :lol:

Good question. What did happen to it? Did they give it a one way trip out to the remote desert with a shovel in the back?

I do wonder about those banned numbers. How many be actual individuals and how many just be repeat offenders... Yeah I know, doesn't really matter... Just when my mind is set on something....

[Crator]

https://twitter.com/j_smedley/status/306556345409224704

The other thread is worthless now - transferring discussion to this one.

Curious if that 8000 people or if that just 8000 accounts. Since it's F2P, there could be many of the same people with several different accounts...

[bpostal]

Either way, it's 8k less 'people' hacking than they could be. A win/win in my book.

[ChipMHazard]

Curious if that 8000 people or if that just 8000 accounts. Since it's F2P, there could be many of the same people with several different accounts...

Aye, my thoughts exactly.

[Phaden]

I do not have a source and understand that there are a myriad of ways to get around it, but SOE has stated that when they ban a player/account, it prevents them from simply creating another account. They have not gone into detail how, for pretty obvious reasons. How that holds up in the wild west of the internet, who knows for certain.

[Sturmhardt]

Let's see if that brings any improvement. In my eyes the safest thing would just be to hire a few GMs more who are able to look at reported players since that would obviously decrease the responsetime the most. Plus a very good reporting system (especially on the backend for the GMs that highlights the most important players to look at based on reports by other players and ingame statistics) will help, that's a good thing.

They should also tie accounts to phone numbers, shouldn't be hard to do and people would think about cheating twice.

.sent via phone.

[Sledgecrushr]

Its a good start. These kinds of stats should be like a trophy. At ten thousand hackers banned soe gets a silver star.

[Figment]

So the question on everyone's lips, what COLOUR will be the batphone?

I mean if it's red, as per the original, it's obviously biased towards TR.

http://www.experian.com/blogs/marketing-forward/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/deliverability-experts-bid-adieu-to-the-bat-phone.jpg

And will it have Bat shapes?

https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSG7lMKpnea6ANfGF-kxRSPSndTcMu8R1SM3UtoGn9ERUeKuoEQiA

And will we get a handsfree set in tanks while using it?

http://puregibberish.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/batphone2.jpg

Clearly the old car set does not fit modern day safety regulation standards.

Also... will it have no weaknesses? :o

302 Found

[Blynd]

Just spat coffee over my wife watching that :)

[Roy Awesome]

it can't hurt in PS2,maybe it will show ppl that shit is being dealt with

My thoughts exactly. If you have a 50-80 person op and they get destroyed by a hacker, then that entire outfit will talk and rage about the hacker, leaving a bad taste in the entire outfit.

If that outfit leader says instead 'I'm on the batphone with the GMs', the entire outfit knows that the problem is being solved and the op can continue with only a minor interruption.

It's a win-win. The hackers get banned and the outfit has a better perception of SOE getting work done.

The only problem is that solo players don't get access to this, but a hacker destroying an outfit op has a bit more effect than a non-outfit player getting wrecked, simply because Outfit members talk to eachother and people who didn't experience it will know about the incident and rage about it, post on forums, etc.

[Rumblepit]

i wonder how many of those 8400 were ban via rumblepit.... i wish i had stats for that.....

if they were not banning players and just passing out suspensions that would been a deal breaker for me. as much as i love this game , that would have been it ,id quit playing. im very happy to see those numbers up there.

[Effective]

If SOE is making a genuine effort to take care of hackers. Good for them, I'm slightly skeptical due to past performance, but I've seen crazier things happen.

[VGCS]

Once again, I feel like everyone is just spinning their wheels here, including SOE themselves.

The last thread that was locked (for good reason) is all the example I need that everyone is looking in the wrong direction while the cheaters ransack the game in plain sight. (Or in this case, within Culling Sight which is obscured for everyone else but them). Let's review: The last thread became more about responses, PR, and who said what and who told who to F-off, than it was actually about solutions and punishment.

This new response seems more about Bureaucracy and blame-shfiting than they are about quick effective solutions. Things like 'Requiring credit cards' is a perfect example of something that's suggested a million times a year, but is completely ineffective. Programs like "Punkbuster" is another fine example of "looks good on paper" to the average person, but anyone who understands how "Injecting" works can tell you it's a joke as well for any game with more unsecured addresses than full time WhiteHats.

What they're doing right now with small teams of GM's patrolling, IS effective because 'hacks' evolve so rapidly that you can only keep up with them consistently by having an elite and well educated squad of people reviewing them. The only problem is what an extremely limited Manpower limitation that puts on a game with hundreds of 1000's of accounts and new ones being rolled every hour.

This should be all about resources and which ones they're currently ignoring. Every day dozens of people report cheaters and fight the nay-sayers across all forms of media focusing on this game but SOE continues to ignore the potential contributions of these upstanding principled players who would otherwise be an outstanding source of additional manpower. Yes they do accept reports from them which might help the process along a bit, but they're not giving them any real TOOLS or privileges to make a real difference in response times. Failing to do so, is the #1 source of positive reinforcement for the Cheaters. They know that they can continue to troll and taunt these upstanding players with impunity because nothing will ever be done to give vigilance the time-frame edge it needs to keep its own moral up. Therein SOE itself is fighting a losing battle just like they did in DCOU as more and more good players give up or give in.

[BIGGByran]

How do you get in contact with a GM, aside from /report? I remember seeing a GM post something globally about contacting them directly but they never explained how.

[Lonehunter]

With broadcasting about watching hackers...

Announcing when you're on to fight the cheating also shows when you're NOT on. Sure they may just not broadcast when they're on, but they basically just said they aren't monitoring 24/7 so after a while people will figure out patterns.

Second, I thought we where passed random spam in the middle of my screen. It's ruined a couple really great video clips of mine, please xfer them to the chat window.

[Koadster]

Well we certainly need GMs 24/7.. Just watching a twitch stream, He was spawn hacked for 4+ hours straight, Had hundreds of reports once the hacker started killing others.. Many tweets to SOE, nothing.. Montage video coming soon to show how bad it was.

The thing with hackers.. It turns people off when they know its heavily hacked. We had people in the chat saying they wont touch the game now because of the heavy hacking... No wonder we have so little player pop..

[p0intman]

Well we certainly need GMs 24/7.. Just watching a twitch stream, He was spawn hacked for 4+ hours straight, Had hundreds of reports once the hacker started killing others.. Many tweets to SOE, nothing.. Montage video coming soon to show how bad it was.

The thing with hackers.. It turns people off when they know its heavily hacked. We had people in the chat saying they wont touch the game now because of the heavy hacking... No wonder we have so little player pop..
the population is bad because of shit gameplay, hackers don't do nearly as much as bad design does to harm the game.

[Koadster]

Gameplay is much better then other modern shooters out there.

Ohh your PG.. lol

[ColdCheese]

Well we certainly need GMs 24/7.. Just watching a twitch stream, He was spawn hacked for 4+ hours straight, Had hundreds of reports once the hacker started killing others.. Many tweets to SOE, nothing.. Montage video coming soon to show how bad it was.

The thing with hackers.. It turns people off when they know its heavily hacked. We had people in the chat saying they wont touch the game now because of the heavy hacking... No wonder we have so little player pop..

Yeah I saw that on Kudochop's channel this morning, epic cast! the only way he was able to kill him was to spawn a scatmax lol can't wait for the montage tomorrow and really hope SOE see's it, because it's truly embarrassing for them that it went on for that long. It's so mind boggling SOE doesn't have some kind of coding or programming that auto detects big red flags like an enemy killing you in a spawn room continuously for hours, even once or twice should be enough to get a mods attention. Major kudo's, pun intended, to Kudochop for not losing his cool and sacrificing himself for that many hours in order to spotlight just how bad SOE currently is at detecting these losers. I seriosuly hope they get their act together, because I love this game with a passion and would hate to see it die due to rampant hacking.

[Ikeda]

Problem is unless they're doing something like hardware ID bans then it doesn't really matter. They'll just keep coming back. It's F2P after all.