I highly doubt cheating will kill multiplay. Also, from what I have heard, it doesn't take very long to get Titans and Sabres legally.

I doubt it. I've never run across any obvious cheaters before but if I ever do I plan to get as many people together as possible and kill them as soon as they try to undock. Hopefully whenever the first patch comes out it will fix most of the cheating that does exist.

thats the problem. nothing is handled server side, all the variables like cash, sheilds, etc are handled on your own computer. Its easy to hack your cash, give yourself unlimited shields and energy. etc. This isnt something that they can just easily fix imho. You havent seen cheaters out there, because the game is new. Once more people find out that you can cheat, you will see cheating. A few servers have already gone to PW only because they cant control it without controlling who is allowed onto their server.

I also would like to refer to Motocross madness 2. They identified the problem, and cheating killed their online community. Same thing, the bike profiles were handled by the client not the computer. The company that made the game wanted to patch, but MS wouldnt let them.


There is only a few ways to stop this cheating

1. Try to change the netcode. Im not a programmer, so I cannot even say as to the possibility to change all the important variable to server side only.

2. Add some server side checks to prevent leveling up so rapidly. Im not sure how long it would take to reach level 38 maybe 6-8 hours of game time? Allow servers to set a time limit on how fast you can go from level to level. Now this wouldnt stop people from cheating, but it would force cheaters to wait to level up.

3. Playerlogs would be a big help, because admins could browse through logs and find people that instalevel etc. Even better would be the ability to retrieve an players cash ingame. if you use the hack you gonna have about 38 million in credits. Now unless you've been playing on one server for a long time your not gonna have that kind of cash.

I think that they made a big mistake keeping important variables on the client side. I hope that they can fix these problems, and at least make it harder to cheat, easier to detect, or both.

isn't everything already handled on the server side?

If it was handled on client side why is it that one cannot move their character from one server to the next.

If what I've said is true thus far, then whatever you're saying is total BS and I call it right now.

No, he's right I'm afraid. You could paste some text in and buy a titan in manhatten if you wanted.

Perhaps someone can make a client and server side program that monitors the client ini files and either kicks players or overrides different files. Would take a lot of work and be very annoying at times, but unless DA fixes it on their own there's not much anyone can do.

Using the hack, it took me 3 seconds to jump from level 1 too 38. I had 38million credits. It was easy. I dont have anything to prove to you or anyone else for that matter, except that it is very easy to cheat.
Yes, the actual save data resides on the server. And alot of what I posted is based on my own speculation. But I do know for a fact that the hack works, and it is easy to overwrite the amount of money you have. I havent tested the inifnite energy and shields, but if you can dupe the server about how much money you have than the other variables should be just as easy to do.

A Client side INI check could possibly work. its the same idea that Quake 3 uses to check for valid pk3 files to prevent cheating. I think this would elminate the possibilty of hacking the ini files, but im not sure it would help with the money cheat.

Edited by - airhog on 11-03-2003 08:10:44

One thing that you could try is just reporting the person that you think is cheating to the server admin. If enough people report the same person then the admin should take action. (Ex:ban account or delete player) Its really the only thinh that one could do right now.

Another thing is to try to get on a private server where you know that no one is cheating. Thats what I am doing.

barFly

Main problem I thing is weapon hack.
Money and lv.38 you can get sooner or later anyway but you can hack weapons to shoot anybody down from any distance in two sec and you don't even have to see bullets.
That happened to me so I tried to hack some weps and it's working.
This have to be fixed or I'll play something else.

I can assure you that DA is aware of this!

Best Regards
Christian "Bargib" Koerner
Editor in Chief, The Lancers Reactor

The _only_ way to prevent your game from being spoiled by cheaters/hacks is by only playing with people you know.

Out,
Volstag

thats true, But look at the quake3 community, granted this game was centered around MP. but I played online for quite some time, and Very rarely did I ever encounter someone that cheated. Granted you will never be able to stop 100% of the cheaters, but eliminating 80-90% of them is possible with the right idea about netplay.

Remember that hacking a server is illegal. You don't know if that server is run by a cooperation or a private owner. I do know that if you hacked my server you will be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

Webendeavorsusa, please give me your server ip so I can cheat on it. I can just see you going to the local cops saying "DavyT cheated on my Freelancer server, please prosecute him."

Lay off the crack.

It would most likely be a FEDERAL authority breathing down your neck DavyT. I'm pretty sure that if Blizzard can find people who use hacks, Microsoft can also. But the most that would probably happen is a cd-key ban =P