Punkbuster? ohh no - Page 10

Timey · 2012-03-25, 07:17 AM

I've got 180 or so hours in bf3 and I have had less than 10 experiences of hackers ruining the game. Most of the time pb just kicks them out of the server.

I don't see how that's a major hacker issue. 1 hacker every 20h or so isn't bad.

Baneblade · 2012-03-25, 07:34 AM

I will not play PS2 if it has PunkBuster. Period.

Gandhi · 2012-03-25, 08:46 AM

They hate hackers as much as we do so I'm going to assume they know what they're doing. At the end of the day if their anti-cheating measures cause problems for me outside of the game or create false positives that don't get handled through a petition system, then I just won't play the game. Likewise if hackers aren't kept under control or at least dealt with in a timely fashion. Those are the conditions I set down for spending money on the game, and I think they're pretty fair. If the devs feel Punkbuster is part of that solution then that's fine, either it works out and I enjoy playing the game or it doesn't and I walk away dejected and disappointed. It's that simple really.

Hamma · 2012-03-25, 10:58 AM

Originally Posted by Knocky

My one and only concern is being falsely flagged as a hacker.

Hacker!

I'm not much of a fan of PB myself and it doesn't seem to be that effective from what I've seen.. but we shall see.

Knocky · 2012-03-25, 02:03 PM

Originally Posted by Hamma

Hacker!

I'm not much of a fan of PB myself and it doesn't seem to be that effective from what I've seen.. but we shall see.

Ha! Prove it.

I used to play Combat Arms till I was banned for hacking. I jumped through their hoops and was reinstated. Then I told em to take my account, turn it sideways and shove....well I am sure you can fill in the rest.

The point is that a company accused me of hacking. I proved I was not and they lost a customer simply because their automatic hacking tool was defective.

Haurus · 2012-03-25, 02:25 PM

I gave up trying to play APB:Reloaded because punk buster would kick me 5 seconds after the game started. It's reason... an error in punk buster.

Graywolves · 2012-03-25, 02:40 PM

Maybe PB works on behind the scenes bribes and SOE is using most of their budget to get PB to actually work?

SealedSun · 2012-03-28, 12:39 PM

I often have trouble getting PunkBuster to work again after not having played game X for a while. The geniuses at Even Balance thought it would be the greatest idea to update PB while you are connected to a multiplayer game. Yeah, great in theory, except it kicks you from said multiplayer game when your PB client is not up to date

See the problem?

This has happened to me with every PB game so far. Want to have a quick refreshing round of Battlefield: BC2? No sir, you'll have to get yourself kicked from game after game to give PB a chance at an update, hoping your account won't get flagged for the kicks.
Oh and the manual update tool is flaky at best or just flat out refuses to acknowledge that you have game X installed.

So you need help getting your game to work? Sure, just head over to the developer of PunkBuster: Even Balance (http://www.evenbalance.com) ...
If I didn't know better, I'd say this looks like a site that distributes crackz and serialz (not that I'd know anything about that, of course). That site just doesn't inspire the necessary confidence in the developers; confidence that would be much needed considering the questionable performance of PB.

So dealing with PunkBuster is definitely not an aspect of PlanetSide 2 I'm looking forward to

Infektion · 2012-03-28, 12:51 PM

wow.... F2P + PB = HackerFest201X

ItsTheSheppy · 2012-05-10, 11:33 AM

Bit of a necro, and I'm sorry if this is too old, but I didn't want to make a new thread talking about a similar topic.

This article was posted in the general gaming forum and I think it has a place in this conversation.

Clearly, punkbuster flat-out does not work. Planetside 2 is going to have some major, APB:Reloaded-level problems if they don't take this seriously.

Rampant hacking can and will kill your game, like termites can kill your house.

Coreldan · 2012-05-10, 11:39 AM

Most hackusations in APBR have no basis whatsoever. I still play the game on a daily basis and I don't even meet a blatant cheater more than once or twice a week. I still get hackusated nearly every session. Apparently my whole clan is a hacker clan, yet 99% of us still play our original mains since the start, while there has been several really big ban waves that almost literally got every single cheater by now at least once. The bigger problem with APB is how there are nothing to stop the cheaters from just making a new account. Not sure what's the problem with not implementing HWID bans of some sort. They are bypassable too, but might at least help something.

That said, the link is also quite wrong. PunkBuster does detect injects sooner or later. It's just how the business works, the cheats and cheat developers are always one step ahead. The latest cheat build is always designed so that it bypasses the current anti cheat build. Occasionally the anti cheat devs catch up and the cheat devs have to bypass it again. It's a never ending race and you will never stop cheating, no matter what you do. So no, no anti cheat will stop cheating, but it will keep the cheat devs at their toes and working so that you won't have free public hacks working for long periods cos it ends up as a full time job to create the cheats, thus they also cost which at least keeps some of the people away.

At the end of the day, it has nothing to do with Punkbuster. There is no better alternative, they are all bypassable. The only thing I can blame PB for is how its sometimes unfriendly to the user with the updates and few other things as mentioned above, I've been blessed to never really have those problems though.

Now, the biggest problem with BF3 is the bad coding. The fact that you can simply instakill everyone with a sniper regardless of LoS is a good sign of that. In APB, pretty much all you can do is aimbot and wallhack. Sure, enough to piss off legit players, but in a game like PS2, one individuals aiming isnt enough to turn the tides as long as he cant hack fe. damage or rate of fire. This is all up to the coding/netcode.

APB is also a third person shooter, which alone probably makes up for most of the hackusations. Most of the people crying that there are hackers everywhere just dont understand what these three points can do: 1) third person camera that allows corner peeking 2) non-fixed camera allowing to look behind your back with instant snap that way as you start shooting where you are pointing 3) the first point combined with VoiP. Planetside 2 will be fixed to first person view for the most parts, so even the idiots wont have so much of a hard time to understand how they got seen or why did that guy just do a 180 snap

GMs also do not work. They are very expensive and very ineffective. You will only catch the ridicilously blatant cheater who should be very easy for the automated anti cheat to catch as well. Any smart cheater will not be caught by GM, cos they have zero ways to tell whether the player is just really skilled or cheating with a toned-down hack.

Attackmack · 2012-05-10, 12:53 PM

Monthly fee would get rid of most ppl who would enjoy hacking, cheatiing or simply ruining the game.

Coreldan · 2012-05-10, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by Attackmack

Monthly fee would get rid of most ppl who would enjoy hacking, cheatiing or simply ruining the game.

Yes, but would also get rid most of the playerbase.

Exaggerated, yes. But a game like Planetside 2 really needs big pops. If we're not talking about WoW, f2p game will just about always have more people playing than monthly sub games.

Xyntech · 2012-05-10, 01:39 PM

Originally Posted by Attackmack

Monthly fee would get rid of most ppl who would enjoy hacking, cheatiing or simply ruining the game.

This is very wrong.

It would just help reduce the number of overt hackers.

Hopefully being F2P will force the devs to actually stay vigilant against hackers, because constant vigilance is the only way to deal with the subtle ones.

The obvious ones will get quickly taken care of anyways, especially if there is a large active in game staff monitoring the servers.

There will always be hackers, in Buy 2 Play, subscription, or Free 2 Play games. The only danger with F2P is that more people will overtly hack, which hurts the game more than subtle hacks do, but the more overt it is, the easier it is do eliminate them.

The bigger problem is griefing and dickish playing in general. This along with hacking could be mitigated by giving all new accounts a probation period where they will be banned much more quickly for suspicious behavior. Players who have spent more time playing would then be looked at a little more closely before they were outright banned. Weapons lock could come a lot quicker for probation period players as well.

Stew · 2012-05-10, 04:36 PM

punk buster ON ! (N)