The problem is: in a PvP game with consequences such as Darkfall, hacking will have a greater impact than a PvE MMORPG.

If you think cheating at single player games is doing the same damage with competitive MMORPGs featuring long term goals, you are wrong.

I think players who got annoyed by losing gear to a cheater or something have the very right to complain. It's the company's responsability to keep their server clean. At least I don't think it has gone THAT rampant, or maybe people using "downloadable skills" are being subtle when using them.

Originally posted by Routver

The problem is: in a PvP game with consequences such as Darkfall, hacking will have a greater impact than a PvE MMORPG.

If you think cheating at single player games is doing the same damage with competitive MMORPGs featuring long term goals, you are wrong.

I think players who got annoyed by losing gear to a cheater or something have the very right to complain. It's the company's responsability to keep their server clean. At least I don't think it has gone THAT rampant, or maybe people using "downloadable skills" are being subtle when using them.

True but they cant release a game thats client side

As far as I can tell, Darkfall is a "video - game" which is no different then any other" video-game" which has been exploited. Every player of any game would think they are more important then anyone elese. Darkfall is no different, it is not a life , it is a video- game, and the more people complain, the more it seems people want to live in the game ? People who have been effected by the exploiting have left the game, the people still playing have no one to blame but themselves, no matter who is cheating.

seriously don't understand why this is even a discussion, log off , unsub., play shadowbane :)

Originally posted by solareus

As far as I can tell, Darkfall is a "video - game" which is no different then any other" video-game" which has been exploited. Every player of any game would think they are more important then anyone elese. Darkfall is no different, it is not a life , it is a video- game, and the more people complain, the more it seems people want to live in the game ? People who have been effected by the exploiting have left the game, the people still playing have no one to blame but themselves, no matter who is cheating.

seriously don't understand why this is even a discussion, log off , unsub., play shadowbane :)

haha shadowbane :P

As a teenager (YEARS ago) I got bored with a few FPS games and created speed, high jump, and the other usual crap...and was involved with a teleport program. Thankfully for me and everybody else I moved on after growing up, and now quit games I become bored with instead of ruining the experience for others.

From those experiences, I figured out the best way for developers to prevent hacking is to receive programs hackers have created. There is a lot of "thinking outside the box" to create a few of the hacks, and while the devs are just as smart, they may not have thought about some of the loopholes. With MMOs they can sneak patches in behind the scenes to stop most of the hacks, but not all. Several of the hacks we made were done in a way to not be detected by server logs or other detection methods - aka within the boundaries of the game in different scenarios. If the smart folks manage to create those type programs the only way to stop it is by catching them in the act.

Furthermore, companies have legal issues banning paid accounts if the only evidence is a video or screenshot. Videos and screenshots only help the companies choose individuals to monitor. Nearly all new games (notably with starter companies) have rampant cheating problems to start out with; after a couple weeks the kiddie hacks are stopped, but the other stuff takes more time. I assure you cheating was just as common in many of the other MMOs in the beginning, but those games were not as heavily based on PvP, thus people did not notice as often (or anger them as much).

Updated the main post with yet another hacker video! :D

Updated the OP with more information about exploiters getting away with exploiting...

I love this game I am not like the trolls looking for each and every update and rip it apart

But yes here is lot of hacking , exploiting and macroing going on in the game and its a matter of time things will turn for the worse

1) Speed ,stamina hackers and teleporters are still very much active .Contrary to what Tasos says AV dos not have an active way of detecting hacks .They mostly rely on GM reporting.

2) For a skill based game unfortunately its a skill grind game Therefore peoplr feel the need to macro.

     a) Press numlock leave your character across a wall or tree  ,Your sprint an run level goes up ( I did it)

     b) Go to chaos stone, kill red afk players and skill up your weapons skills , leave your character when not playing

          peopel will kill u over and over threby increasing your survival skill ( this has been fixed in the new patch but will make life miserable for new players versus those who have skilled up like this . Newbies wont stand a chance)

   c) People who have built cities have activated /exploied towers in such a way that they zap low damage to all in the vicinity

       There is proof of at least 10 clans over 100s of player sitting there getting zapped and healing . Effect of such macroing increases rigor.

   d) the alignment system has made it impossible for solo PVP players to survive .Get in a clan or get out.

   e) Lets not get to the daily server crash ( u loose your mounts if u happen to be on one ), sync issue s, lag issues,

   f)  The par between people who have managed to skill up way up the ladder ( by whatever means ) vrsus newbies is so big that each time a newbie get killed so fast he feels there was a hack/exploit involved . In the current situation newbies cant level up to these skilled players in a month or so ( unless palying 14 to 20 hours a day is a norm)

g) YEs gold sellers are in officially selling fom min $20 to $200 gold .If u looking for quick money reallocation to China is a good option.

The list is endless acid pools. I havent used any 3rd party programs to macro myself but in game mechanics I have used .There is no option or you will be left behind.

I like the game I actively PVP , explore the world but hacks exploits and macros are killing it .AV needs to actively look at the grind in its skill.The grind has to be removed .

Personally I will stick  for a month or two.Many of us are waiting for a new EU server to hop on and make a fresh start

 That not disco lighting or fireworks those things are suppoed to zap and kill u but as u can see players are busy farming rigor

teh damage is low and u heal fast

Originally posted by sassoonss

I love this game I am not like the trolls looking for each and every update and rip it apart

 

But yes here is lot of hacking , exploiting and macroing going on in the game and its a matter of time things will turn for the worse

 

1) Speed ,stamina hackers and teleporters are still very much active .Contrary to what Tasos says AV dos not have an active way of detecting hacks .They mostly rely on GM reporting.

2) For a skill based game unfortunately its a skill grind game Therefore peoplr feel the need to macro.

     a) Press numlock leave your character across a wall or tree  ,Your sprint an run level goes up ( I did it)

     b) Go to chaos stone, kill red afk players and skill up your weapons skills , leave your character when not playing

          peopel will kill u over and over threby increasing your survival skill ( this has been fixed in the new patch but will make life miserable for new players versus those who have skilled up like this . Newbies wont stand a chance)

   c) People who have built cities have activated /exploied towers in such a way that they zap low damage to all in the vicinity

       There is proof of at least 10 clans over 100s of player sitting there getting zapped and healing . Effect of such macroing increases rigor.

   d) the alignment system has made it impossible for solo PVP players to survive .Get in a clan or get out.

   e) Lets not get to the daily server crash ( u loose your mounts if u happen to be on one ), sync issue s, lag issues,

   f)  The par between people who have managed to skill up way up the ladder ( by whatever means ) vrsus newbies is so big that each time a newbie get killed so fast he feels there was a hack/exploit involved . In the current situation newbies cant level up to these skilled players in a month or so ( unless palying 14 to 20 hours a day is a norm)

g) YEs gold sellers are in officially selling fom min $20 to $200 gold .If u looking for quick money reallocation to China is a good option.

 

 

The list is endless acid pools. I havent used any 3rd party programs to macro myself but in game mechanics I have used .There is no option or you will be left behind.

I like the game I actively PVP , explore the world but hacks exploits and macros are killing it .AV needs to actively look at the grind in its skill.The grind has to be removed .

Personally I will stick  for a month or two.Many of us are waiting for a new EU server to hop on and make a fresh start

 

 That not disco lighting or fireworks those things are suppoed to zap and kill u but as u can see players are busy farming rigor

teh damage is low and u heal fast

 

Yep, agree

 If I still played (which I don't) I'd really be by now.

Originally posted by Gorilla

 If I still played (which I don't) I'd really be by now.

You would be "pissed" ??  Lol... what does hitting your head on a wall mean? :)

Originally posted by sinjin

Originally posted by PatchDay

new hacks popup all the time I'm looking at a bunch for WoW on youtube vids. there is no perfect method for detecting if packets being routed from client to server is being modified.

Not to sound like an instigator but I m very tehnical and  have some discrepancies to correct you on.  First there are several methods of detecting packet tampering.  You can buy hardware devices now that do his for you or you can setup a system with software (IDS).  If you change the information in the packet the size of the packet changes from the standard. Packets are broken down to a standard size and if that size changes there is packet tampering. I can build systems to sniff for these and drop them with no response to the originator.  Anywho, believe me the people with the skillset are not wasting their time hacking and selling WoW gold or accounts.  The  return is puny compared to what they would most likely be doing for a living.  There wouldn't even be  "a rush of the hack" feeling.

I spent almost 2 years hacking a well known MMO for nothing more than the rush of it. If you were a real computer guy you'd know why they did it. Not for any "return" other than just having something technical to figure out. A challenge, nothing more. Why do you think Linux exists? Anyway, simply checking the packet's size will do jack shit. If I randomly changed all the numbers in a packet using something stupid like ROT13, it would still be the same size.

Also no way to verify memory corruption. If software engineers could easily validate memory modification, then you would not have buffer overruns

Server side you should at least check for the velocity the player is moving at. I dont know why MMOs don't do this. Simply test the magnitude of the velocity. If it exceeds the threshold you got a speed hacker

If they are moving at the threshold or less then they are at least within acceptable range

 

MagnitudeSquared is a quick test and cheap CPU cost. Will bypass the performance loss for a square root calculation

Sounds like a lot of gibberish, I can however tell you in speedhacking packets flow at an accelerated rate.  This sets off red flags in most established security measure systems.  Very easy to detect imo, at the end of the day yes many games have hacks to some degree and there was no reason for the retaliator to try pick on WoW.  

Actually, bud, it's not gibberish and in fact, that's how WoW stopped them. You determine how fast a person should be going then you compare that to how fast they actually went. If there's a significant difference, you've got a speedhacker.

Also, you don't know what the Hell you're talking about. You don't speed up packets in speedhacking.  Seriously dude, what Geek Squad dumbass sold you that line of bullshit? You simply tell the server you're in a different location than you are! There are a lot of smart people on these boards, don't think you can bullshit them so easily.

Darkfall will have many hacks until they figure out what security measures they will use.  I bet dollars to donuts they have none at the moment. If they do it is probably some default standard out the box crap.

Hater much. 

 

 

Comments in red.

Also, Prow, what the fuck is your avatar? That's just disturbing. I can't stop looking at it.

 Every video game in the history of the world has hacks, face the hard truth. Those who hack in Darkfall get banned, simple as that. I have to hear all the people that were banned whining in the IRC. But keep running around thinking Aventurine is doing nothing. And keep telling yourself no other game has hacks (if that was true, how come such a mature and wealthy game like WoW just banned many thousands of hackers last month, you'd think with all their money and security there wouldn't be any hacks? lolz)

HAcking has been apart of gaming since Half life 1.

I see you go way back, man. HL1, that's oldschool! God, you're clueless...

There's a thread in the official forum about a guy who was stupid enough to forget about his radar hack in the minimap and posted it for everyone to see. Unluckily for him, someone else was quick and clever enough to save that pic to his hd and reup it. Funny stuff. Anyway, I log in to play the game tonight, not 5 minutes after me and my buddy leave our town we see a guy standing on top of the hill in front of us. We're trying to determine if he's looking in our direction, but after he starts strafing at 2-3x horse speed while on foot and naked, we realize it doesn't really matter that much. We proceed to "chase" him to at least catch a glimpse of his name and report him. I don't think it'll do any good, though, because every other cheater I've reported so far, including some asshole who had the nerve to teleport through dungeon walls right in front of me, is playing the game to this day. A few hours later, after some killing and some looting, we're on the other side of the main continent, standing on a plateau that's overlooking a hamlet. We're dismounting. Right before my friend is done hiding his mount, some fat turd (a dwarf) appears right on top of his horse (there was not a single person in the area where we were and there was no possible way of getting to where we were standing without making a noise and/or getting noticed by us), just to teleport out a second later. I couldn't even see his name. One second the mount was there, the next second it was gone. I guess I'm just not hardcore enough to put up with bullshit like this in a competitive game, especially considering the fact that the devs have no grip on what's happening -- they have no tools to determine who's cheating and who's not.

Originally posted by SignusM

 Every video game in the history of the world has hacks, face the hard truth. Those who hack in Darkfall get banned, simple as that. I have to hear all the people that were banned whining in the IRC. But keep running around thinking Aventurine is doing nothing. And keep telling yourself no other game has hacks (if that was true, how come such a mature and wealthy game like WoW just banned many thousands of hackers last month, you'd think with all their money and security there wouldn't be any hacks? lolz)

its funny how the poster after yours contradics what you just said.

But i do agree every game does have hacks, however some games are harder to hack than others.  Darkfall saves to much info client side making it very easy to hack. The truth is AV has done little as the voices of the players in the darkfall fourms gets worse and worse about hacking. The effect of hacking in darkfall is much bigger than in wow. Wow you dont lose shit if you die. if people hack it will be for the heck of it . but they do get caught.

Darkfall has everything going for it. if a hackers messes around the effect is much greater than a pve game like wow. But whats worse, you dont even need to hack to cheat.  I think it was on the 1 vs 1 thread where maxnwhatever found a page that shows a vid which i even posted on a few areas where you can easly swim under the land. its not a glitch or a bug, just holes in the textures where one land mass meets with the other and there are clear visible holes where you can easly swim into. people can simply do this, kill people above ground but how can you call them hackers if they legitly found a way under the ground.

Poor programing is hindering this game.

Originally posted by mcquaided

Originally posted by SignusM

 Every video game in the history of the world has hacks, face the hard truth. Those who hack in Darkfall get banned, simple as that. I have to hear all the people that were banned whining in the IRC. But keep running around thinking Aventurine is doing nothing. And keep telling yourself no other game has hacks (if that was true, how come such a mature and wealthy game like WoW just banned many thousands of hackers last month, you'd think with all their money and security there wouldn't be any hacks? lolz)

its funny how the poster after yours contradics what you just said.

But i do agree every game does have hacks, however some games are harder to hack than others.  Darkfall saves to much info client side making it very easy to hack. The truth is AV has done little as the voices of the players in the darkfall fourms gets worse and worse about hacking. The effect of hacking in darkfall is much bigger than in wow. Wow you dont lose shit if you die. if people hack it will be for the heck of it . but they do get caught.

Darkfall has everything going for it. if a hackers messes around the effect is much greater than a pve game like wow. But whats worse, you dont even need to hack to cheat.  I think it was on the 1 vs 1 thread where maxnwhatever found a page that shows a vid which i even posted on a few areas where you can easly swim under the land. its not a glitch or a bug, just holes in the textures where one land mass meets with the other and there are clear visible holes where you can easly swim into. people can simply do this, kill people above ground but how can you call them hackers if they legitly found a way under the ground.

Poor programing is hindering this game.

 

What you are describing is an exploit. Poor programming aside, if you see something that shouldn't be there, like swimming under the ground, then its an exploit.

Sometimes its hard to differentiate between exploits and clever tactics. Like what I used to do back in EQ1 with a buddy of mine, we would "pull mobs between us". Meaning, I get agro, mobs runs towards me, buddy casts a spell, gains agro, mob turns and runs for him. I cast a spell, mob turns and runs for me. This way mob is always running between us, never actually hitting any of us. It was hard to do, required good ping and player synchronisation. But it was doable.

Since sometimes there is no clear line between an exploit and clever tactics, it comes up to GM to decide whether to ban a player or applaud them for their ingenuity. With Av I would not risk it, they are not known for being logical or reasonable. Forcing people to delete their character's with "confusing" names instead of giving them a choice to rename it? Very unreasonable.

Originally posted by SignusM

 Every video game in the history of the world has hacks, face the hard truth. Those who hack in Darkfall get banned, simple as that. I have to hear all the people that were banned whining in the IRC. But keep running around thinking Aventurine is doing nothing. And keep telling yourself no other game has hacks (if that was true, how come such a mature and wealthy game like WoW just banned many thousands of hackers last month, you'd think with all their money and security there wouldn't be any hacks? lolz)

Suffice it to say that at least 2 of the leaders that were interviewed in the article that Paragus wrote thought that Hacking/Exploiting was one of if not THE biggest issue with DarkFall right now. 

If we are to believe Tasos' words on the subject then those 2 leaders are:

"...most of complaining is highly exaggerated, even bogus, and a lot of it is coming from the people making and promoting these programs, from players who are banned already, by players who are using the cheats, by people with an agenda, by people who aren't even in the game, and others who are just jumping on the bandwagon."  Tasos
 

Unless they are exempted from the "most". 

It is also the main issue mentioned by Tasos in his postings on the News section over on the Main Forums right behind Server down time.  Go ahead and count up the number of times that he mentions something about it in the News section.  It's obvious that it's not a "small issue".

So... despite what you might say... it would seem that hacking/exploiting is indeed an issue that needs more attention than it is getting.  Either there are not enough assigned to manually check out those reported, or the "automated" detection is not working as intended.

It's not a matter of IF there is hacking going on... as you've said... that happens in every MMO. 

It is the speed in which those reported are banned and prevented from harming the experience of those who are following the rules.  That is the part that seems to need more work. 

And a kind of 'limp' reponse to macroing (which 50%+ of the player base concider OK). 

i'ts not really a matter of 'every game has macroers/exploiters/hacks'... its more a matter of what percentage of players are using them at this point.

It took me less than 2 hours of being in a guild for almost everyone encouraging me to download the 'instant-loot' hack.  it's the reason so many new players get discouraged trying to do the newbie quests, because there are a ton of older players there doing insta-looting.

The stamina hack is also very prevalent.  Stamina isn't even an issue in the game any more and the hack is so widespread, nobody even thinks about it.   Watch half the movies on youtube, notice something odd?  The same can be said of insta-looting.. it's so prevalent that people don't even bother editing it out of their movies.

speedhacks, disappearing hacks and teleportation hacks are not as prevalent, but certainly not rare.

The problem is that so much of the game is client-side, that the creators of these hacks will always be ahead of Tasos.  It's much easier to create auto-detectors if more calculations are done server side.  The only way Tasos will get ahead of the exploiters is if he has much more stuff done server-side, which he isn't going to do because then he'll have to reduce the number of players on his ONE server

They've banned a bunch of people lately.... personnaly havnt found anyone cheating yet and been playing a lot.