VAC secured gaming.

[Inverness]

Yes, I do support the VAC model since it relies on detecting known cheats and doesn't fuck your system up like PB.

[Malorn]

They aren't doing a single line of defense.

And they aren't stupid enough to tell us everything they're doing.

Quit freak'n out, they know how important it is to stop the hax.

[Kran De Loy]

What Malorn just said.

However I do agree that PB is a completely terrible and insane choice to implement.
If they use VAC or not is up to them, but please dear god no PB.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

There willbe no anti cheat system...? You got a quote on that?

But yea vac >>>>>>> pb.

VAC isnt much better than PB. Both are bypassable, games using either still have cheaters in them, even games that use both at the same time The only thing that VAC really has over PB is that VAC is a little more user friendly, as PB every now and then likes to kick people out for no reason, but usualyl fixed with a manual update.

I don't mind VAC, but I personally think it's bullshit saying it's actually any better.

[Rabb]

Cheats/Hacks get blown out of proportion in my opinion. Unprotected servers will have lots of hackers. But put any sort of anticheat in and that drops hackers down to a minimum.

I've played allot of games over the years and never found the hacker problem to be anywhere near as bad as the doomsayers make it out to be. At worst it is a minor annoyance that is easily dealt with by an admin or moving to a different server.

Correct me if I'm wrong but VAC I believe is reactive banning someone after the fact. I've never liked this as the damage is already done by this point. The hacker has ruined you game and possibly you server. PB on the over hand kicks them out as soon as it finds something so has always been my preference.

[I SandRock]

VAC requires steam right? I don't think they want to exclusively publish on Steam.

Originally Posted by Coreldan

VAC isnt much better than PB. Both are bypassable, games using either still have cheaters in them, even games that use both at the same time The only thing that VAC really has over PB is that VAC is a little more user friendly, as PB every now and then likes to kick people out for no reason, but usualyl fixed with a manual update.

I don't mind VAC, but I personally think it's bullshit saying it's actually any better.

It's not about whether it has cheaters but how many

I thinK VAC is better simply because it doesn't cause as much lag and issues and AFAIK if you get banned from one VAC game you are banned from all VAC secured games?

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

VAC isnt much better than PB. Both are bypassable, games using either still have cheaters in them, even games that use both at the same time The only thing that VAC really has over PB is that VAC is a little more user friendly, as PB every now and then likes to kick people out for no reason, but usualyl fixed with a manual update.

I don't mind VAC, but I personally think it's bullshit saying it's actually any better.

i care a little about the protection is provides, i just care about how much it fucks me. iv been fucked by punkbuster, alot.

[SKYeXile]

they should ninja tie SOE accounts to steam so anybody dumb enough to run hacks on their SOE account get their steam account banned....they should not advertise this though, just ninja ban their steam accounts all in a large batch like 6 months after release. hilarity would be insured.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by I SandRock

It's not about whether it has cheaters but how many

I thinK VAC is better simply because it doesn't cause as much lag and issues and AFAIK if you get banned from one VAC game you are banned from all VAC secured games?

It's not only down to anticheat there. A lot of it has to do with the game engine. Take any Unreal Engine using game and compare it to a game that uses almost anything else.. there are more cheaters. And it isn't so much about what anticheat it uses.

PB can also ban you from all PB protected games, but somewhy not that many games seem to utilize that for whatever reason. Back when I played America's Army 2, our server would stream some PB ban lists. Basically all kinds of PB protected servers would "upload" the PB GUIDs they have banned online and other servers would download these and run checks based on them. So if you were banned on a server of another game that streamed their bans and we used the same ban stream, you would get booted out of our server as well.

Other thing is when we compare most VAC secured games to APB for example. Most of these games are small servers owned by an individual or a small group, and they have some admins/mods around nearly always. APB then again does not have an admin/GM/mod/whatever for each of it's districts. These small servers will easily seem more cheaterfree, cos theres often the server owner who can take care of shit. I admit APB has it's own special problem with cheaters (something PS2 will face too), but when I compare similar games (say, 64 player servers in "normal shooters), the experience is pretty much identical on both PB and VAC secured servers.

Brink used both VAC and PB and it still had plenty of cheaters

[SKYeXile]

yea, gotta love the amount of admins on private servers, zone in kill the admin and some other guys, get banned. way more of a compliment than any hacker tell.

[I SandRock]

Originally Posted by Coreldan

Brink used both VAC and PB and it still had plenty of cheaters

I don't see the relevance in this argument you keep bringing up. Just because a game has cheaters while using anti-cheat protection doesn't mean anything? What is your point with that? We should stop using anti-cheat all together?


I think both VAC and PB probably protect against hackers equally. But in the end of the day what matters is that:
Every single game I've seen use PB has had problems the first one or two months, problems that lead to unplayability of the game. And most servers would turn PB off during this period. I've never seen these problems with VAC.

But I don't see PS2 going to steam exclusively. And there is no good alternative to PB. So were stuck with it.

[Rabb]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

yea, gotta love the amount of admins on private servers, zone in kill the admin and some other guys, get banned. way more of a compliment than any hacker tell.

My admins would end up banned if they did that on my servers when I had them. Banning without a good reason is just as ban as cheating in my book.

[Coreldan]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

yea, gotta love the amount of admins on private servers, zone in kill the admin and some other guys, get banned. way more of a compliment than any hacker tell.

Yeah, this is the downside of it, too, but it does keep the blatant hackers at a minimum though

Then for those who say that the 247 admin presence is better than any anti cheat.. Not really. It only catches those blatant cases. An observing admin won't catch someone who has set his aimbot so that he makes no visible snaps. With a loooooooooooooooooooong period of observing you might get a good hunch that this player is either super smart and lucky or is using a wallhack, but who will take the risk of banning a legit paying customer on that hunch?

GMs are very expensive and very inefficient and will only catch the blatant cases, which tbh shouldnt be a problem for the anticheat (even if they still sometimes are though).

I still hope for smart netcode that basically doesnt allow for anything else than aimbot and wallhack. BF3 is a good example of how to fuck up in that department, when you have a guy without LOS killing the entire server from his own spawn.

Sandrock, the BRINK thing was mainly a lighthearted joke, not so much of an argument. I miss Brink, sucks it died

As for the rest, well, I realize I'm probably amongst the luckiest to never have had any real issues with PB. I've had to manually update it twice in the course of 6-7 years. Took me a few minutes tops.

[ChipMHazard]

Originally Posted by WNxThentar

Actually they said they have their own systems in place and it will be backed up by a 24/7 team with additional tools to track down and proactively deal with cheaters.

Indeed. I don't particularly like VAC or Punkbuster, both of them have irritated me a great deal in the past.
Also since PS2 won't be running through Steam it [VAC] won't be an option.

[Trafalgar]

VAC only protects well if it's implemented well in the game its being used in. It's not a magic bullet. If they don't bother (Brink), it won't work well.

Also, as for the bans, it doesn't ban immediately because it does delayed VAC bans to ban from playing the game multiplayer at all, and the point of the delay is so that the cheaters might not be able to figure out what it was specifically that tipped off VAC.