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We Need More Transparency With Enforcement


Tylanater

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Stop saying "exploit fixed" just say what the exploit was. You are not preventing cheaters by doing this. Speed hacking is so bad right now I know many people who are leaving because of it. When it's fixed, if it even ever gets fixed, "exploit fixed" will not be enough to get people to come back. Just say you fixed speed hacking or whatever the issue was. Also "fixed a recent duping method" or something of this nature doesn't give any information or lead to more instances of cheating in the future. It's just silly.

 

Say when you take enforcement action. Many other games do this, there's no reason it needs to be a secret. Just send a message like other games saying "thanks for your report, we took enforcement action based on your ticket." Only reason not to do this is because enforcement doesn't act when they should, which is a huge issue with transparency and also creates a lot of conspiracy theories in the community.

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3 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Exactly what is that going to change. How will it help you? And exactly how is that going to do anything to prevent cheating?

because if there's a god hack for example and a patch note comes out saying "exploit fixed" I know nothing. Did they fix some tiny rat hole or mesh hole or something? did they fix the god mode? could be anything. The games not worth playing with a god mode hack still in. If it says "god mode fixed" then I know okay that stuff is gone. I never said it would prevent cheating. It's helpful for the non cheaters to know when those specific issues are fixed.

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2 hours ago, GrumpyBear said:

If its any consolation, I know they just patched an exploit that wasn't speed hacking.  Since they won't say what it was, I'd assume I can't say it.  BUt I can assure you - it wasn't speed hacking.

ya speed hack def still in and rampant haha. All beginner servers have speedhackers right now going to all yellow drops instantly. No way to report them either because you can't spyglass them before they are out of render.

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I would think part of the problem is hacks and patches is an arms race between the developer and the cheaters.  By identifying the fix, it gives the hackers a short cut to figure out what got patched and they can focus their time on just the hack and not tracking down what the patch was for.  Its like doing the work for them, when nobody gave WC a heads up on the hacks in the first place, why should the hackers get good info like that right away?

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Just now, GrumpyBear said:

By identifying the fix, it gives the hackers a short cut to figure out what got patched

But that doesn't really make sense if you think about it. They are the ones cheating. They are going to know as soon as it doesn't work again. It doesn't matter if the patch says it or not as soon as they go to do the exploit it won't work and they will know before anybody else.

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1 hour ago, Tylanater said:

because if there's a god hack for example and a patch note comes out saying "exploit fixed" I know nothing. Did they fix some tiny rat hole or mesh hole or something? did they fix the god mode? could be anything. The games not worth playing with a god mode hack still in. If it says "god mode fixed" then I know okay that stuff is gone. I never said it would prevent cheating. It's helpful for the non cheaters to know when those specific issues are fixed.

To people playing the game legitimately. None of it should matter.

To people trying to cheat... I can see the interest in what was fixed.

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1 hour ago, Tylanater said:

But that doesn't really make sense if you think about it. They are the ones cheating. They are going to know as soon as it doesn't work again. It doesn't matter if the patch says it or not as soon as they go to do the exploit it won't work and they will know before anybody else.

unless an exploit they didn't know about yet was patched, so why would they know for sure what was patched? Your logic only works if all the cheaters know all the exploits and are actively using them all.  

 

I can see why they don't list all the things they patch out.  By putting all the exploit fixes into the log, they give the cheaters a check list to check everytime WC patches the game.   There have been things they fixed, and then broke again later on.  Since that time, I think I've noticed the change logs to have been scrubbed of most of the explicit changes regarding exploits in the past.  It doesn't bother me that they removed that info , but then again, I'm not trying to cheat - I don't need a checklist to hunt for old bugs to have resurfaced.

 

I'm sure that if I was running a website selling subscription services to players wanting to cheat in games, it would help me a lot if wildcard sped up my development time by giving me the info I needed to cut my costs on developing fixes for my product.  

 

And are we barking up the only tree on this topic?  Doesn't Ark use BattleEye to protect servers from cheating?  Is that a Wildcard product, or is that a Steam product?  Maybe it would help WC out if we the players leaned on Steam and Epic to improve their services?   

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8 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Exactly what is that going to change. How will it help you? And exactly how is that going to do anything to prevent cheating?

Trust.
Trust that making reports is not a waste of time. As well as not wasting time on reporting the same over and over again.
Trust that GM's do enforce in a structured way and not all on their own.

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19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Stop saying "exploit fixed" just say what the exploit was.

No game does that, please explain your reasoning for why ARK should be different from every other game, ever.

To be sure, for every game they tell us some of the exploits they fixed, but every game in the history of games has described some proportion of these as simply "exploit fixed'. You need to spend some time thinking about why this might be. If every game does then then obviously there are reasons for this universal pattern. Mind you, some of them may just be bad game makers. If, for example, we've known for decades that EA can't be trusted and therefore if EA is vague about what they're doing with a game then we should start from a position of suspicion. But even the best, most dependable, most trustworthy game makers do the exact thing that you're complaining about, so it really behooves you to think about the reasons why this can often be the right thing to do.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

You are not preventing cheaters by doing this.

You don't know that, you have no earthly idea of what they're preventing, you're just blurting out a silly claim because you're mad about something. Are they preventing every king of cheating? No, of course not. But if you stop thinking with your angry brain it should be obvious that there are many situations in which this could stop cheaters of various kinds.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Speed hacking is so bad right now I know many people who are leaving because of it.

So you think that one specific type of cheating is the only type of cheating that exists, or even if others exist this is the only one that matters. This may be your personal pet peeve but that doesn't mean it's the only type of cheating, or the most common, or even the most important, it's just the type that bothers you. WC has fixed many cheats over the years. Of course anyone who wants to play honestly wants to see all cheats fixed and prevented, and of course speed hacks are bad, but arguing as though this is the only type of cheating that matters and that since it hasn't been fixed then all other cheat fixes don't matter is a silly argument.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

When it's fixed, if it even ever gets fixed, "exploit fixed" will not be enough to get people to come back.

Again, you have no idea if that's true. And if the history of gaming tells us anything it's that you're almost certainly wrong. The world is full of games that players went back to when problems got fixed, because of course they did. Human nature is human nature, that's true with games just as much as with anything else. Look at all of the Battlefield games - they were all released with game breaking bugs, cheats, hacks & exploits that drove people away in huge numbers and then... as the games got fixed & improved lots and lots of those people came back to the games. How many would come back? I don't know, no one does, but it's pretty obvious that some people would come back. Maybe not the ones that you, personally want to come back, but many others.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Also "fixed a recent duping method" or something of this nature doesn't give any information or lead to more instances of cheating in the future. It's just silly.

Yes, yes it does. Thinking that it doesn't is what's silly. I've known people, heck I was even in a tribe with some people, who deliberately looked for ways to take advantage of the game mechanics to do things that were obviously intended to be illegal. As soon as they knew that something was patched or fixed they would immediately start looking for ways to get around the change and find some new method for accomplishing the same goal. People who want to cheat are always going to want to cheat, and they're always going to keep looking for new ways to cheat. When you tell cheaters exactly what you have done to fix a cheat they immediately start looking for new ways to cheat, that's how cheaters work.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Say when you take enforcement action. Many other games do this, there's no reason it needs to be a secret. Just send a message like other games saying "thanks for your report, we took enforcement action based on your ticket."

That's true, many other games do, and yet many other games don't. Would it be nice to get an e-mail like this? You bet, it would feel good, but if you have so little faith in the game maker that you think you need a confirmation that your report got people banned then why are you playing their game?

So, yeah, some games do this, and it feels good to get that confirmation, but there are reasons for it to be a secret. If you don't believe that then feel free to google the many articles from the gaming press that discuss this topic.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Only reason not to do this is because enforcement doesn't act when they should

Nope, that's not the only reason. You need to do some searching & reading, this is a more complicated topic than you want to pretend it is.

19 hours ago, Tylanater said:

which is a huge issue with transparency and also creates a lot of conspiracy theories in the community.

I'm as much of a fan of transparency as anyone, yourself included, but this doesn't mean that it's good for every single aspect of a game needs to be publicly disclosed. There will always be conspiracy theories, nothing that any game maker (or anyone else on earth) can do will prevent conspiracy theories in the community. Every community no matter how large or how small will have people who make up conspiracy theories. As long as there are humans breathing oxygen there will be conspiracy theories. What a game maker (or politician, or CEO, or book club leader, or anyone else) needs to do is to think about how much transparency is good for the game, how much communication is necessary to help people make reasonable decisions about what's happening in the game. Trying to squish every single conspiracy theory cannot be done, and not one should ever think that transparency will cure this problem. Transparency should be about doing the right thing, and doing what promotes the health of the game, it should not be based on the foolish goal of trying to prevent conspiracy theories.

Beyond that, there is no such thing as "the community", that's a false way of looking at the game (or any game, or really anything else). There are many communities that pay the game and some of those communities completely disagree with each other, players don't all want the same things. Cheaters are a part of "the community" too, but I'm betting you don't want WC to listen to them or give them what they want. No matter what you do, no matter which of the many communities you make happy, there will always be other communities that you make unhappy. And, no matter which communities you make happy the unhappy communities will then create their own share of conspiracy theories.

Obviously I'm not saying that WC should try to make cheaters happy, that would be bad for everyone who wants to be an honest player. The point here is that conspiracy theories will always exists, and the guiding principles for when to be transparent and when not to should have nothing to do with conspiracy thinking.

 

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15 hours ago, Tylanater said:

But that doesn't really make sense if you think about it. They are the ones cheating. They are going to know as soon as it doesn't work again. It doesn't matter if the patch says it or not as soon as they go to do the exploit it won't work and they will know before anybody else.

What your ignoring is that even the cheaters don't know about all the cheats. If WC says, "Fixed and exploit with God Mode on Official servers" there will be some cheaters who didn't know this cheat existed and now they're going to say, "Wait a minute, there was a cheat that let you use God Mode on Official server? I didn't even know that was possible. Apparently I need to stop trying to look for rat holes in the mesh and spend my time looking for a new way to exploit God Mode."

When you tell cheaters something new, something they didn't know was possible, you have just informed people who want to cheat that now they might be able to find a new way to cheat something they would have never known about.

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27 minutes ago, Pipinghot said:

When you tell cheaters something new, something they didn't know was possible, you have just informed people who want to cheat that now they might be able to find a new way to cheat something they would have never known about.

Excactly: WAS possible but no longer is.

This discussion is kind of the difference between MS an Apple in the ancient days. Where Apple tended to announce every possible hack even before it was fixed, MS was not even acknowledging issues untill they fixed it.
Things have changed by now, I know, but in those very same days Mac OS was the platform with the least issues. It never hurted me to know there were certain security risks in some programs, awareness helps to be more secure when needed.

In my opinion hackers are not all stupid idiots, more the opposite. The (ab)use of flaws in programs can be a fun and creative process, most of the people involved in this don't need to get more ideas. Hackers are in fact the people with the ideas.

There is more to gain in making the other users aware so at least they recognize hacks: Less false reports, more (timely?) accurate reports.
And the trust of the community that Wildcard is not taking us for dumb cashcows only that are happy when you feed them just enough to not starve.

And for the people that have no clue or just don't care? That's not the group you are doing it for, it is for all the other people it should be done.Also, pointing to other games does not make sense. Some (actualy most) companies are more communicative, others are worse. But that does not matter since we are just discussing ARK and how to improve the experience.

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1 hour ago, MMaas said:

Excactly: WAS possible but no longer is.

That's not necessarily the case. Most of the time, these exploits have multiple ways of being achieved. Giving details about the exploits, or their fixes, just gives ammo to exploiters for finding different methods to get the same results or directly ways to circumvent the fixes themselves. Not only that, but fixes are not always pushed to all platforms at the same time due to certifications and whatnot. Giving details would just encourage and publicize these exploits on platforms that are not patched yet.

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6 hours ago, MMaas said:

Excactly: WAS possible but no longer is.

You ignored part of what I said and by doing so you missed the point, for many types of cheats (not all of them, but many) there is more than one way to accomplish that cheat. I'm guessing you don't have a professional background in programming or IT, which means you're not familiar with how complicated systems are behind the scenes and how many different ways it can be possible to accomplish the same goal using different methods.

Just because WC was able to fix one method of accomplishing a cheat does not mean that they have fixed every possible method of doing it. Knowing that ONE method of accomplishing a cheat was fixed lets cheaters know that that particular cheat is possible, which then lets them know that they might be able to accomplishing their same goal using some other method.

As I said before, I've been in a tribe that had people who constantly looked for new ways to cheat. When WC fixed one method they immediately started looking for a new method. The reason I left that tribe was that the tribe leaders weren't willing to kick the cheating members. It's important to note, these people were not creatively working hard on figuring out new ways to cheat. Each individual cheater wasn't spending dozens of hours figuring things out. They were just looking for efficient ways to cheat the game and most of the time they were sharing info with other cheaters they knew from previous tribes and servers they had been on. They only knew about the cheats that were discovered by their friends and former tribe mates. There is a word-of-mouth system among cheaters and the more people that a cheater knows then the more cheats they know about, but none of them know about all the cheats.

Just because one method is fixed doesn't prevent people for looking for new methods, that's why most game companies will not explicitly talk about many types of cheats.

6 hours ago, MMaas said:

This discussion is kind of the difference between MS an Apple in the ancient days. Where Apple tended to announce every possible hack even before it was fixed, MS was not even acknowledging issues untill they fixed it.

Well no, it's not the same, you're ignoring a great deal of the reality of what was happening.

Apple did that for marketing purposes, to pretend that they were better at security than MS. That was during a time when the vast majority of hackers hated MS and were trying to hack them while ignoring Apple as 'the good guys'. Apple wasn't any more secure, and they weren't any better at fixing hacks, than MS. They just enjoyed the false perception that they were better because basically no one was trying to hack them.

As time went by, and hackers started to think of Apple more and more as being one of 'the bad guys', Apple lost this advantage and the cracks in their false appearance of better security practices started being exposed by reality. Apple stopped doing what you're talking about because Apple discovered repeatedly that full disclosure made them more vulnerable to future hacking.

6 hours ago, MMaas said:

Things have changed by now, I know, but in those very same days Mac OS was the platform with the least issues. It never hurted me to know there were certain security risks in some programs, awareness helps to be more secure when needed.

It was "security by obscurity", when no one is trying to hack your OS then the OS looks like it's really good. It's an illusion, and it was an illusion that Apple took advantage of in spite of not being any better at security than MS was.

6 hours ago, MMaas said:

In my opinion hackers are not all stupid idiots, more the opposite. The (ab)use of flaws in programs can be a fun and creative process, most of the people involved in this don't need to get more ideas. Hackers are in fact the people with the ideas.

You're conflating hackers with cheaters. Neither of them are stupid, but they have different goals and different things they're willing to do. Most cheaters do so because they're looking for convenience, not a creative challenge, they want ways to save time. While there are people who work hard at figuring out new ways to cheat & exploit the game the vast majority of cheaters are just looking for shortcuts to make the game easier. There is a limit to how much time & effort most cheaters will spend spend individually, their knowledge of cheats is limited to what they and their friends know. Giving too much information about which specific cheats & exploits have been fixed only serves to make them more aware of more types of cheats are possible.

6 hours ago, MMaas said:

There is more to gain in making the other users aware so at least they recognize hacks: Less false reports, more (timely?) accurate reports.

You've obviously never spent any time in customer support for a game, or even paid much attention to people complaining about cheating on the forums. A great deal of the time when people don't understand how something is done they just assume it's a cheat. "I can't figure out how that happened, so obviously they were cheating." This happens all day, every day, in every game. There is always a constant stream of reports about cheating in every game, because there are always many people who don't understand how other people might be better than they are.

Publishing more information about fixes wouldn't have any affect on players reporting cheating, that's wishful thinking.

6 hours ago, MMaas said:

And the trust of the community that Wildcard is not taking us for dumb cashcows only that are happy when you feed them just enough to not starve.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this sentence, it's rather garbled.

Again, there's no such thing as "the community", the players are many communities.

Beyond that, yes, WildCard is definitely "taking us for dumb cashcows only that are happy when you feed them just enough to not starve", as a general attitude about the game, but not on this particular issue.

WC is a pretty terrible company, but they're not terrible on this specific issue. They have a long history about being terrible at caring about cheating, but that doesn't mean they're terrible about their style of communication when they actually do take actions against cheating. They're generally terrible at customer service, but that doesn't mean they're terrible about this issue. They're generally terrible at making quality of life fixes to the game that would prevent people from losing many hours per person because of glitches that should have been fixed a long time ago, but that doesn't mean that they're terrible at this particular issue.

I'm not a fan of WC in general, and playing on the Official servers is a time-sucking nightmare. The only reason I'm playing ARK today is that we can play it on a private server which gives me the ability to overcome the major flaws with the game. They'll never get my money for ARK2 because their core company culture hasn't changed - in fact the longer that the CEO of Snail Games running the show it's only going to get worse.

But... with all that being said it's still true that WC is not worse than other companies on this particular topic. Every game company refuses to give specific details on some of the things that they patch/fix because they know that giving away too much information just opens the door for more bad from cheaters.

6 hours ago, MMaas said:

Also, pointing to other games does not make sense. Some (actualy most) companies are more communicative, others are worse. But that does not matter since we are just discussing ARK and how to improve the experience.

Talking about other games makes perfect sense because it helps people to understand how things work. If every game company does something then there are probably good reasons for doing so and it's important to discuss and understand why they do so. Even if only most, or say half, of game companies do something then it's still important to discuss and understand why they do it.

There's not one single game that discloses everything, and there are very good reasons why they don't. Giving out too much information is a great way to make a game more vulnerable to additional hacks, exploits and cheats.

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5 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

You ignored part of what I said and by doing so you missed the point, for many types of cheats (not all of them, but many) there is more than one way to accomplish that cheat. I'm guessing you don't have a professional background in programming or IT, which means you're not familiar with how complicated systems are behind the scenes and how many different ways it can be possible to accomplish the same goal using different methods.

Just because WC was able to fix one method of accomplishing a cheat does not mean that they have fixed every possible method of doing it. Knowing that ONE method of accomplishing a cheat was fixed lets cheaters know that that particular cheat is possible, which then lets them know that they might be able to accomplishing their same goal using some other method.

As I said before, I've been in a tribe that had people who constantly looked for new ways to cheat. When WC fixed one method they immediately started looking for a new method. The reason I left that tribe was that the tribe leaders weren't willing to kick the cheating members. It's important to note, these people were not creatively working hard on figuring out new ways to cheat. Each individual cheater wasn't spending dozens of hours figuring things out. They were just looking for efficient ways to cheat the game and most of the time they were sharing info with other cheaters they knew from previous tribes and servers they had been on. They only knew about the cheats that were discovered by their friends and former tribe mates. There is a word-of-mouth system among cheaters and the more people that a cheater knows then the more cheats they know about, but none of them know about all the cheats.

Just because one method is fixed doesn't prevent people for looking for new methods, that's why most game companies will not explicitly talk about many types of cheats.

Well no, it's not the same, you're ignoring a great deal of the reality of what was happening.

Apple did that for marketing purposes, to pretend that they were better at security than MS. That was during a time when the vast majority of hackers hated MS and were trying to hack them while ignoring Apple as 'the good guys'. Apple wasn't any more secure, and they weren't any better at fixing hacks, than MS. They just enjoyed the false perception that they were better because basically no one was trying to hack them.

As time went by, and hackers started to think of Apple more and more as being one of 'the bad guys', Apple lost this advantage and the cracks in their false appearance of better security practices started being exposed by reality. Apple stopped doing what you're talking about because Apple discovered repeatedly that full disclosure made them more vulnerable to future hacking.

It was "security by obscurity", when no one is trying to hack your OS then the OS looks like it's really good. It's an illusion, and it was an illusion that Apple took advantage of in spite of not being any better at security than MS was.

You're conflating hackers with cheaters. Neither of them are stupid, but they have different goals and different things they're willing to do. Most cheaters do so because they're looking for convenience, not a creative challenge, they want ways to save time. While there are people who work hard at figuring out new ways to cheat & exploit the game the vast majority of cheaters are just looking for shortcuts to make the game easier. There is a limit to how much time & effort most cheaters will spend spend individually, their knowledge of cheats is limited to what they and their friends know. Giving too much information about which specific cheats & exploits have been fixed only serves to make them more aware of more types of cheats are possible.

You've obviously never spent any time in customer support for a game, or even paid much attention to people complaining about cheating on the forums. A great deal of the time when people don't understand how something is done they just assume it's a cheat. "I can't figure out how that happened, so obviously they were cheating." This happens all day, every day, in every game. There is always a constant stream of reports about cheating in every game, because there are always many people who don't understand how other people might be better than they are.

Publishing more information about fixes wouldn't have any affect on players reporting cheating, that's wishful thinking.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this sentence, it's rather garbled.

Again, there's no such thing as "the community", the players are many communities.

Beyond that, yes, WildCard is definitely "taking us for dumb cashcows only that are happy when you feed them just enough to not starve", as a general attitude about the game, but not on this particular issue.

WC is a pretty terrible company, but they're not terrible on this specific issue. They have a long history about being terrible at caring about cheating, but that doesn't mean they're terrible about their style of communication when they actually do take actions against cheating. They're generally terrible at customer service, but that doesn't mean they're terrible about this issue. They're generally terrible at making quality of life fixes to the game that would prevent people from losing many hours per person because of glitches that should have been fixed a long time ago, but that doesn't mean that they're terrible at this particular issue.

I'm not a fan of WC in general, and playing on the Official servers is a time-sucking nightmare. The only reason I'm playing ARK today is that we can play it on a private server which gives me the ability to overcome the major flaws with the game. They'll never get my money for ARK2 because their core company culture hasn't changed - in fact the longer that the CEO of Snail Games running the show it's only going to get worse.

But... with all that being said it's still true that WC is not worse than other companies on this particular topic. Every game company refuses to give specific details on some of the things that they patch/fix because they know that giving away too much information just opens the door for more bad from cheaters.

Talking about other games makes perfect sense because it helps people to understand how things work. If every game company does something then there are probably good reasons for doing so and it's important to discuss and understand why they do so. Even if only most, or say half, of game companies do something then it's still important to discuss and understand why they do it.

There's not one single game that discloses everything, and there are very good reasons why they don't. Giving out too much information is a great way to make a game more vulnerable to additional hacks, exploits and cheats.

Tl;dr
Sure you touched on ever word yet?

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6 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

That's not necessarily the case. Most of the time, these exploits have multiple ways of being achieved. Giving details about the exploits, or their fixes, just gives ammo to exploiters for finding different methods to get the same results or directly ways to circumvent the fixes themselves. Not only that, but fixes are not always pushed to all platforms at the same time due to certifications and whatnot. Giving details would just encourage and publicize these exploits on platforms that are not patched yet.

If there are multiple ways, then don't report it as "fixed" until all is fixed.
There is a healthy middleground between the generic "several" and full details.

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On 7/16/2022 at 8:44 PM, Joebl0w13 said:

To people playing the game legitimately. None of it should matter.

To people trying to cheat... I can see the interest in what was fixed.

To people playing the game in a fair way it is 100% in their benefit to know when things like this are fixed. What info are you giving cheaters that is valuable? Everytime there's a patch they will test to see if their exploit is still working or not. If it's not,and not been announced then they are the only ones who know it is fixed. So normal players live in obscurity whether or not they have to worry about things that may or may not be fixed. 

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12 hours ago, invincibleqc said:

That's not necessarily the case. Most of the time, these exploits have multiple ways of being achieved. Giving details about the exploits, or their fixes, just gives ammo to exploiters for finding different methods to get the same results or directly ways to circumvent the fixes themselves. Not only that, but fixes are not always pushed to all platforms at the same time due to certifications and whatnot. Giving details would just encourage and publicize these exploits on platforms that are not patched yet.

I agree with most of this, I don't think they should give the specific details on exactly what you had to do for an exploit. Saying a method is fixed is not providing valuable information to cheaters though. Either way they are going to know if it's fixed or not. Even in theory you're saving them at most a couple minutes while keeping non cheaters in the dark. After a patch they are obviously just going to check if their exploit is still working or not. 

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11 hours ago, Tylanater said:

I agree with most of this, I don't think they should give the specific details on exactly what you had to do for an exploit.

In other words... it's all about you.

You don't need them to "give the specific details", you want them to give the exact amount of details that makes you, personally, happy and nevermind the fact that there will be lots of other people want a different amount of details than you do. As long as they give your personal preference for amount of details then you think everything will be fine.

11 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Saying a method is fixed is not providing valuable information to cheaters though.

Yes it is, which has been explained multiple times. Repeating your falsehood doesn't make it true.

What you're not hearing is that this is not an argument, it's an explanation. The reality is that saying a method is fixed is, in fact, often providing valuable information to cheaters. This is a true thing whether you like it or not. You can keep on trying to argue about your wishful thinking but this argument you've presented is false, plain and simple.

11 hours ago, Tylanater said:

Either way they are going to know if it's fixed or not.

And again, what you're ignoring is the fact that not every cheater knows about every type of cheat. If WC is specific about which cheats have been fixed that alerts other cheaters that a certain type of cheat is possible that they might not have known about. Again, this is true even if you don't like that it's true.

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The game is in it's end life, this conversation isn't gonna change anything.  It would be more constructive to learn from this what limits there is to the conversation between players and developers. 

Maybe going forwards into Ark 2 they could have a more polished approach to dealing w/ cheating.   Maybe it would be more constructive if we learned more about why it's so very difficult for every game developer to fight cheating.   I don't see anyone saying Call of Duty is perfect, and we all know there's millions more dollars at stake w/ that franchise.   Expecting Wildcard to have some magic bullet to fix cheating and to let you know exactly what they fix is an unsustainable viewpoint.  THe list we do get is just a window into a list of things they had to do , too numerous to detail in full.  Some of it has to be minimal in nature, that's a standard practice in software development.  

 

I've gone back through the list of changes and I remember some specific changes they put in related to a certain hack.  They purged the bullet point and I'm glad they did.   With the info they had in there, I know for sure someone could have figured out how to redo it even with the fixes they put in to stop it. 

I'm biting my tongue not saying any of it out loud, but it was one of the most common issues we had to deal with in the first couple years of the game.  These cheaters were making the servers completely unplayable, now they are just mildly unplayable for the most part.  Night and day, from how it was back then.  I do not want to return to those dark days.

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