Cheating 101

Mon Mar 17, 2003 12:48 am by Ivar

I have been conducting a little experiment and would like to announce the results. I have been able to cheat on MP Freelancer on five different servers. These servers will be sent emails in the next few days so that these accounts can be deleted. Thus far, I have not been detected on any server (although my roommate has mentioned log-in problems that might be due to my experiment...not sure yet).

The reasons for doing this are simple. First, I wanted everyone to know how easy cheating is on this game. I have no programming ability whatsoever. I am not a Windows guru by any means. I am probably in the area of "power user" in that I can usually fix most problems given enough time to figure them out. Yet, I was able to successfully figure out enough of this game's structure to cheat successfully many times over.

The second reason for this experiment was to illustrate how the community contributes. Everything -- EVERY SINGLE THING -- I needed to know about cheating on this game I found out through this forum (with a possible glance or two at a newsgroup...can't remember for sure). I found out that cheating was possible and even easy. I found the exact file locations. I found the program necessary to augment those files. In essence, I want to thank all of you who complain so readily and so freely about cheating for helping me do it so well.

It is my sincere hope that this experiment serves as a notice to the game's makers about the obvious flaws in their game. I'm sure they knew about them before the game even went gold, but I hope that next time they'll ignore the marketing department's push to get the product out the door on time by sacrificing a completed program. I also hope that this experiment helps to inform you, the Freelancer community, how much you help contribute to the very cheating that you claim to despise. We can help curtail the problem if we are willing to accept some responsibility for it.

If desired (and allowed), I will be happy to post exactly how I performed these nefarious deeds. However, I would prefer not to do so until a patch is released, as I would hate to contribute further to the problem. Server admins, rest assured that if I did this to your account, you will receive an email explaining it. Do not freak out and go around deleting other people's accounts yet, please. My roommate would probably hate that since I used his handle for a couple of accounts, which might cause some of his legitmate accounts to get axed as well (a really stupid mistake on my part, I grant you, but then I never claimed to be experienced at this sort of thing).

Mon Mar 17, 2003 12:52 am by RevRaz

Why cheat? Are you really that pathetic to actually play the game for 4 hours and earn money? I'll bet the time it took you to do your "experiments" you could have actually leveled a legit character.

If anyone needs to cheat in such a simple game as this, you are truely pathetic.

And of course most sysops wont know, you know why? Because the Server tools for this game are weak.

You're not really impressing anyone from what you figured out.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 12:58 am by Ivar

The "why" should be obvious -- people need to know that they are helping to contribute to this problem. I did it to see if it could be done and to try and help the problem if I could. I didn't do it to have fun in lieu of playing a normal character. I should think that would be readily apparent. There really is no justificiation for being rude.

And I'm not trying to impress anyone (although you seem to have a serious inferiority complex). As I said, I don't know squat about hacking, cracking, or cheating, yet I was able to pull this off easily. Think of the implications of that and you'll see how quickly that can completely ruin the mulitplayer aspect of this game unless it's fixed QUICKLY.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 1:19 am by Ashrak

1 cheaters suck
2 if you want to cheat to "have fun" do it on your own server
3 cheaters are lamers

Mon Mar 17, 2003 1:59 am by kanehart

And so are you

Owner od server -=Canada Server 24/7=-

Mon Mar 17, 2003 3:04 am by Apocalypse

I suggest that all that start flaming to fast, first read again.

He is more or less doing what a beta tester should do ... though its abit late for beta tests

still, we can hope if he describe his experience more in details, and write a mail to the support at ms/da, that the problems he found so far can mabye fixed in a patch.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 3:13 am by Nataku

But he has a point.

Cheaters can get the info they need right of these forums, forums that dont support cheating in what way so ever. But since ALLOT of things are client side then cheating IS a piece of cake.

And on top of that server admins like myself cant do a damn thing about it.
First of i have to be in the server 24/7 to keep a eye on things but i cant do that i still have a life. So i assigned multiple admins who cant do **** either then just memorize someones name then tell me so i can ban the guy, but then again i cant check anything if hes telling the thruth. we have no logs we cant check ingame chat we cant check client stats.

So you have two things that are a serious problem, cheaters dont always stick out they want to a advantage thats big enough to win but hard to detect with the naked eye you need better regestration for that and as long there is no any we are at the hands of them we cant do much about it...

Greetz Nataku

Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:13 am by LordArkais

Cheating is always such a touchy subject, Yes cheating does suck!! But the only way cheating really effects this game is on servers that allow players to harm other players. I made the Anubus available for use for me in Multiplay, It's not the best fighter you can't use level 10 weapons or the best shields, Some people might call that cheating because it's not included as a regular multiplay fighter. But it's my Fav. Everyone is entilted to his/her opinoin. If this gent feels that he has to tell the community so be it. But only cheaters will cheat the rest of the non cheating freelancer players will not>

Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:46 am by Euronymous

Ivar you are still drawing attention to the fact that cheating exists in the first place with this post - and in fact would encourage other players to go and seek out the other posts which you speak of and learn how to cheat for themselves.

You should delete/edit this post as soon as possible.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:49 am by Anchor Wayfaire

Now if only we could get MS or DA to patch the bloody game so cheating isn't so easy...

Oh, and Euronymous, I doubt anyone inclined to cheat at Freelancer will be inspired to find the necessary information by this post. All they'd have to do would be to type "Freelancer cheat" into Google, and I'm sure they could find what they need.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 7:26 am by [[]Killswitch]

I read rev's post after and most of the first one, Im not going to both reading rest simply because I want to just say STOP POSTING THIS!
if people read that its easy to cheat, then they are going to cheat more dumbass,
jeez, leave it alone

Mon Mar 17, 2003 10:19 am by Nephilim

I saw someone cheat with an indestructible Starflier (armed with customized Nomad cannons no less) on my regular server the other day, which at the time struck me as unusually fast for a game that had only been out a couple of weeks. But then the magic words "client" and "side" began to float around, so I did a little homework. The result? After spending a mere thirty (30!) minutes of reading up on Freelancer editing, I now:

-know how he did it
-know how to do it myself
-know how to show others

That is a VERY dangerous situation, and while I commend DA on making FL so accessible to the modding audience, I can't likewise applaud them for programmer stupidity (*no* CRC checks? what the heck where they thinking?).

Edited by - Nephilim on 17-03-2003 10:18:55

Mon Mar 17, 2003 10:50 am by Ivar

well, this was obviously a complete waste of my time. most of you seem to think i did this for fun and/or bragging rights (neither of which is true, since in most cases i didn't even play for more than 30 seconds. and i can hardly brag about being a complete computer dumbass, now can i?). the rest just seem to think i suck for mentioning it at all. i was trying to help, but now i'm sorry i bothered. rest assured, i'll not be posting here any longer, nor playing any online games, so i won't be troubling anyone further.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 11:30 am by jaywat

Ivar, you're right. I wouldn't waste your time and energy. Evidently the majority of people here are about 6 years old.

RevRaz comes in and calls you pathetic without even reading your post. If he had, he would have realised that you weren't cheating and then coming here shouting 'hey! I cheated!' for personal glorification.

Euronymous would rather stick his head in the sand altogether, as if deleting your post will magically stop people cheating. That makes about as much sense as saying that if you stop listening to what George Bush has to say that there won't be a war in Iraq.

Killswitch seems to think that only mindless zombies play Freelancer. Ok, judging by these forums you might be forgiven for thinking that is true, but in general people don't just go 'there is a cheat here. I must use it because it's here.'.

I tell you - it's a good job that the same isn't true of MS security advisories, isn't it? "Ooh... there's a flaw in this software.... must exploit it because it's there!". Or "must create a virus... because I can".

Only Apocalypse and LordArkais had anything sensible to say. And LordArkais hit the nail on the head when he said "only cheaters will cheat". People will always cheat. Campers will always camp outside Manhatten and kill newbies. One guy in your group will always think it's funny to fire on your allies and ruin the reputation for everyone.

You know what? If you don't like playing with these kinds of people, then don't! I only play in groups of people I know well - people I know are above all that and will play the game as it's supposed to be played.

So why don't all you flame-first-fink-later freelancers all go bury your heads in the same server together where you can all shake your heads and complain that nothing is being done about all the cheating and that it's ruining your game, while the grown ups work at trying to solve the problems.

All I ever seem to see in this forums are people with no useful comments of their own ripping in to people who are trying to be constructive.

As with Ivar, this is the first and last time I'll be posting. I've said what I wanted to say, and now I'm gonna stop reading these forums because it's depressing how moronic some people can be.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 1:27 pm by StarNova

One trend that you will see in every case of online gaming is that Pay to Play servers are anti-cheating while on the reverse side of the coin Free Online Servers is where you find all the cheaters, newbie killers who camped and kill newbies as they leave the planet and they leave the game and never return.

You will never get rid of cheating on Free Online MP servers, no matter how hard you try. (I do not cheat but will not play on Free Online MP servers due to the presence of newbie killers and cheaters).

Plus I have seened this on some Free and Pay to Play MP games that some hosts or moderators will ban a player for using a good tactic that they do not like for you to use and will call you a cheater giving them an excuse to ban you.

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Cheating 101

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Cheating 101

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