VAC secured gaming.

[Nasher]

The thing about VAC is valve control it directly, so they are always on top of it. Also they have the power to ban you from playing ANY VAC games so it's a good deterant.

Punkbuster never really seemed to work that well and it relies on a system service which crashes sometimes. I can't think of a single PB game where cheating wasn't a problem either, because if it detects a cheat it merely disconnects you and no ban (probably because it likes to randomly kick people for no reason) :/

[Novacane]

Since this thread just seemed to turn into a huge PB bashing pit, I just wanted to throw in, I haven't had a problem with Punkbuster since the late-2000s. Other than it always running in the background as a service causing who knows what compatibility issues and actively scanning all memory (Lookup PB IRC exploit) for any form of a cheat if it's running against the game it's trying to protect or not, its pit falls seldom show themselves and it is the best all-around solution out there, short of developing their own. In my opinion VAC is a superior product but I don't think it's ever been tried in an MMO environment, I could be wrong though.

[Danelo]

I have friends who can't play any punkbuster games. They get kicked out every time. When they learn about this they will ultimately know that they can never play planetside 2.

[Kran De Loy]

I'm curious why no one has mentioned that SOE has other MMO's on the market (not FPS's of course), and cheating does not seem to be the second holocaust in those games. So what do they use?

While VAC may or may not be more effective than PB, it certainly is less invasive and more stable.
IMO VAC>Nothing>PB. Inhouse programing is also said to be somewhere in the mix and if that is greater or less than VAC is of no matter to me as long as there is no PB. I do not want to have to a program on my computer continuously sucking a golfball through a waterhose in order for me to play.

Side note: With many of SOE's games already accessible through Steam, I don't see why VAC couldn't be used for PS2 unless some other SOE internal reasoning that we don't get to see.

[Darthkorr]

Vac Please.

/signed

[Nasher]

Originally Posted by Kran De Loy

I'm curious why no one has mentioned that SOE has other MMO's on the market (not FPS's of course), and cheating does not seem to be the second holocaust in those games. So what do they use?

There was some when the games were new and popular. But the retards moved on to the next big thing and cheated there instead.

[CuddlyChud]

In order to be secured by Vac, don't you need to be a steamworks game? (i.e. Require steam to play?) I think that's one reason why you'll never see Planetside 2 use Vac. Or any big budget MMO for that matter.

[NewSith]

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=39499

[Trafalgar]

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

PunkBuster usually searches for known cheat program signatures as opposed to relying on a heuristic approach.[6] On March 23, 2008, hackers published and implemented a proof of concept exploit of PunkBuster's indiscriminate memory scanning. Because PunkBuster scans all of a machine's virtual memory, malicious users were able to cause mass false positives by transmitting text fragments from known cheat programs onto a high population IRC channel. When PunkBuster detected the text within user's IRC client text buffers, the users were banned.[7] On March 25, 2008, Even Balance confirmed the existence of this exploit, and advised users not to run any other programs at the same time as PunkBuster protected games.[7]

Really? Obviously, the chat program is the problem here, not PunkBuster itself... You shouldn't try to coordinate with anyone outside the game, and for good measure you had better disable the in-game chat in case anyone pastes those same text strings into the game's own chat!


If they do go ahead with PunkBuster, I will be disappointed, but if Firefall will have its own solution, that means I won't have to be completely disappointed if I swear off PS2 over its use of PunkBuster.

[Ant001]

Having been a server admin in many different games over the years I have to say PB does work. Vac is pretty much usless because it allows very little interaction to update it or allow you to screen shot dodgy gits.
Punkbuster works and it works well. It may take a little tweeking sometimes but that is more than worth it.

The internet is full of cheats and hack sites and downloading them is easy. Punkbuster catches these idiots and bans them. If you are caught bypassing PB you are hardware baned so go buy a new pc.
Any anti cheat is great and PB is probably the best around at the moment.
Please do not listen to the xbox kiddies, please put as much anti cheat as you can into PS2.

PB and 24/7 admin will catch 90% of cheats, you can't ask for more.