I want my, I want my, I want my stealth hack-free

[mr_luc]

Well, a driver hack would be pretty darn hard to detect, but it would be possible. However, a properly written packet hack would be impossible to detect; the only way to prevent THAT would be to make the packets difficult to crack. Packet encryption is fairly commonplace -- Torque uses it. In fact, packet compression often has the same effect, since in both cases you need to know the method used to restore the information to its original form (Wolfram discusses the similarities between compression and encryption a bit in A New Kind of Science).

Knowing that I can stand perfectly still and NOT BE SEEN, no matter what, as long as I'm not uncovered by fire et al (I would even accept a 5 second wait period after stealthing before total invisibility) would be the only thing that would make playing a Stealth class enjoyable -- without that knowledge, it would suck. You would never know if the MAX that walked half way across the compound to the place where you were stealthed and methodically blasted the shit out of you actually SAW you before, noted your position, let you lower your guard and then made you his woman -- or if he just had hacked drivers. Hell, even aside from serious hacks, there are just weird vid card settings that screw with the appearance of transparent objects -- someone might use the way certain video cards have trouble with antialiasing transparency to spot a Stealth.

The reason this is so important is, you have no idea how quickly this stuff gets around. I mean, within 5 hours of a game being pirated, it gets uploaded to all the best hubs and I can download it. Cheats, although often carefully guarded by clan/teams to protect their advantage, are available to any warez monkey out there. You just have to know where to go -- or, more likely, connect to a hub where you know people that know where to go, or know someone that knows someone that knows someone who knows where to get the cheats. This stuff makes its rounds to the knowledgable in very short order, and you will have hardcore players using them within the next couple of hours. One Max using cheats could deny stealthers any access to a base.

Just another 'please address it' post; I don't even think of myself as a predominantly stealth-oriented player, and I would definitely still buy the game even if cloaking was entirely removed ('stealth' is, after all, just a measure of how 'seen' you are -- if you're good enough you could be stealthy in a MAX). But it would be nice, you know?