Free-To-Play

[roguy]

Originally Posted by RadarX

The last one I see all the time is "There are more cheaters! There is no consequence!" Statistically with more players, you will get more cheaters. This allows us to improve our detection process and honestly we've found in our other products that the folks who go this route are usually very very minor. We catch them quickly and nuke their account. Can they start over? At times yes they can. How long does that stay fun though?

Hey RadarX,

I totally see why F2P is the way to go for Planetside 2 and I completely agree with the reasoning but from most FPS gamers' experience you can't possibly underestimate them.

Cheaters may be a minority, but what worries us is how we consider them to be already far too common in other mainstream games where most of them are willing to pay 50 bucks for a new box copy when they get caught and about 20 buck subscriptions a months from cheat selling websites.

So my question is, can you at least reassure us and concede that your anticheat measures need to be better than for other mainstream "pay2play" games?

[RadarX]

Originally Posted by roguy

Hey RadarX,

I totally see why F2P is the way to go for Planetside 2 and I completely agree with the reasoning but from most FPS gamers' experience you can't possibly underestimate them.

Cheaters may be a minority, but what worries us is how we consider them to be already far too common in other mainstream games where most of them are willing to pay 50 bucks for a new box copy when they get caught and about 20 buck subscriptions a months from cheat selling websites.

So my question is, can you at least reassure us and concede that your anticheat measures need to be better than for other mainstream "pay2play" games?

All I can concede is that we dislike cheaters just as much as you do and will do everything in our power to ruin their day.

No anti-cheat system is perfect. We'll continue to tweak things to get it as close as we can.

[Shanesan]

Originally Posted by RadarX

All I can concede is that we dislike cheaters just as much as you do and will do everything in our power to ruin their day.

No anti-cheat system is perfect. We'll continue to tweak things to get it as close as we can.

RadarX, can you explain your banning policy? Hardware hashes, username, both? I have not seen enough games have hardware hash bans and I would very much like to see that instituted in all games ever created.

[Patek]

id like to know as well cause i was just in a bf3 match and some fool started hacking because another person was lol @_@

[Malorn]

I was on the fence about F2P about a year ago, but it really is the way of the future and will keep the game healthy for many years to come.

The way the cert system is real-time based, and the fact that we can buy things with station cash and real-in-game-resources, getting banned in PS2 could potentially be a lot worse than a normal Pay-2-play model. You can't get that time back, nor will you get whatever money or in-game resources you invested for stuff back.

But on the other hand, since it's free to play, nothing stops any of us from having multiple characters just chillin and gaining certs. Or nothing stops us from having those characters on other empires and using them as spies for what the empire is doing or for scouting out potential targets. There's no barrier at all for this sort of thing, while a typical Pay2play game would have a $50-60 barrier just for the account.

Are there any mechanisms to discourage this?

[XPquant]

Do you get infinite characters per SOE account? I sure hope not.

[Fenrys]

One of the times I stopped playing Planetside, it was because every time I logged on there would be multiple invulnerable flying maxes that could instagib entire continents. The weren't banned. They weren't booted. They'd just go on cheating for hours on end, and from the perspective of the players, nothing was done to get rid of them.

Was SoE doing "everything in our power" then too? Was Planetside still considered an SoE game during the time you would "catch them quickly and nuke their account"?

I'm sorry if it seems like I keep giving one of the community managers a hard time, but to me it seems like the things they post sometimes just don't add up.

[Coreldan]

Well, at least this time around they probably wont use a netcode that even allows ridicilous shit like that.

[Sifer2]

I'm not sold on the F2P concept at all either really. Maybe its because I have very little interest in cosmetics that don't do anything. I've never bought a TF2 hat. Could never even conceive of that. It has no value so I could care less. Buying the game, and getting the full experience. That's something I can wrap my head around. Maybe i'm a grandpa stuck in the past in this regard.

Not as much a fan of the uncertainty of not knowing what I need to buy, and what I don't that F2P brings. Also not a fan of the lowest common denominator type of players that it attracts. And the hackers. So yeah i'm definitely skeptical of whether its the best directions for PS2. I do believe dropping subscriptions is a good thing though. I don't think the FPS community will accept that sort of thing in mass. So no Subs is good. But going full F2P with no box? That to me sounds risky.

I worry how in the long term that if there are too many people like me who could care less about cosmetics. Where does that leave SOE? They got no money from selling a box. They are paying to keep the server up. They got to make money somehow. It seems like selling power is what will happen.

[basti]

Originally Posted by Fenrys

One of the times I stopped playing Planetside, it was because every time I logged on there would be multiple invulnerable flying maxes that could instagib entire continents. The weren't banned. They weren't booted. They'd just go on cheating for hours on end, and from the perspective of the players, nothing was done to get rid of them.

Was SoE doing "everything in our power" then too? Was Planetside still considered an SoE game during the time you would "catch them quickly and nuke their account"?

I'm sorry if it seems like I keep giving one of the community managers a hard time, but to me it seems like the things they post sometimes just don't add up.

Nope. Planetsides cheating issue is because of the way the game is coded. You can simply alter certain values in your memory, and be invincible/have crazy ROF, unlimited ammo, etc.

Im 100% certain that wont be possible in PS2 anymore. Means a whole lot of cheats just wont be possible in PS2. Part of the list are:
Rate of Fire
Speed
Ammo
Unlimited Health / Shield (for vehicles)
Flying

I dont see any of those returning. Its rather easy to make sure they cant appear, and im sure those Engine folks at SOE got a clue.

Now, what could return are the usual FPS hacks, like
Cone of Fire/recoil
Aimbot

Aimbots may proove usefuly only on a few weapons, or in combination with a recoil hack. But, there is Punkbuster. And while punkbuster itself only automaticly detects the cheats it knows (like any other AC software), it has some nifty extra tools.
It also does Hardware bans.

[WellWisherELF]

Originally Posted by Shanesan

RadarX, can you explain your banning policy? Hardware hashes, username, both? I have not seen enough games have hardware hash bans and I would very much like to see that instituted in all games ever created.

I don't know about you, but "Hardware hashing" is over the line, as any company has no right, neither will I give them the right, to sleuth my machine. The only thing I'll willingly give a company is my I.P. address, which is one of the reasons I won't touch Origin with a 10 foot pole.

[basti]

Originally Posted by WellWisherELF

I don't know about you, but "Hardware hashing" is over the line, as any company has no right, neither will I give them the right, to sleuth my machine. The only thing I'll willingly give a company is my I.P. address, which is one of the reasons I won't touch Origin with a 10 foot pole.

Well then, bye.

Punkbuster scans your Memory.

[Forsaken One]

Originally Posted by basti

Aimbots may proove usefuly only on a few weapons, or in combination with a recoil hack.

Big question. This is a MMOFPS with high persistence, not a match game. One guy, with one sniper rifle, plus a aimbot if let loose for only 2 minutes could easily screw the enemy so hard that they lose the whole base.

Is there going to be a rollback or something every time a hacker runs loose for just a minute?

will everyones deaths and death penalties that got effected be reimbursed/rolled back?

Will the base be given back to other empire via dev command tools?

Are we going to get a "lived through a random Hacker moment and kept playing to tell the tale" medal/pin?

[Shanesan]

Originally Posted by WellWisherELF

I don't know about you, but "Hardware hashing" is over the line, as any company has no right, neither will I give them the right, to sleuth my machine. The only thing I'll willingly give a company is my I.P. address, which is one of the reasons I won't touch Origin with a 10 foot pole.

There are ways to make hardware hashes without actually knowing anything specifically about your computer, generated straight from the client itself without sending anything specific to the server - only the completed hash.

Take the number of the first serial and compound it into a hex code. Take the second and compound that. Eventually it will generate a unique code for your computer that can't be broken down to their unique parts.

BitCoin does this, I believe.

[Bonius]

Originally Posted by Forsaken One

Big question. This is a MMOFPS with high persistence, not a match game. One guy, with one sniper rifle, plus a aimbot if let loose for only 2 minutes could easily screw the enemy so hard that they lose the whole base.

Is there going to be a rollback or something every time a hacker runs loose for just a minute?

will everyones deaths and death penalties that got effected be reimbursed/rolled back?

Will the base be given back to other empire via dev command tools?

Are we going to get a "lived through a random Hacker moment and kept playing to tell the tale" medal/pin?

As you said yourself, it's a MMO. One individual will not be able to change the course of battle to such an extent that one side gets a huge advantage over another (unless he magically relives the AMD-speedbug times of PS1, loved those moments).

Any form of rollback, reimbursment or anything similar to it will probably never happen due to the point I'm trying to make above.