Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The continuing problem of BF3 hacks


Ok, this is from a forum post on the official BF3 forum.  The discussion was about how to deal with cheats.  

That said, get a cup of coffee first...lol

Original Link to the forum.
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I agree that we should all be careful before pointing fingers but that said, the advice to go to another server is becoming increasingly ineffective.  These guys are everywhere.  BF3 hacks are  a multimillion dollar business now and a Google search will fill your browser with links.  Punkbuster is kind of a joke as it only gets the most rudimentary of hacks. 

Anyone who plays this game long enough gets a feel for how a given game's going and if you're like me you just know when something's up.  I've had lots of great games where I had many more deaths than kills and still had a great time with players of any level.  A game played straight up is an awesome thing.  So awesome that hacks show up pretty quick when present. 

Look at the scores for your first hint.  If you go into a 600 ticket conquest and the game is 3 minutes old and the losing side is 200 tickets down it's fairly obvious what's going on.  On a full server an entire team can't suck that badly especially with balanced player levels on both sides.  When you check stats and see 38 kills and one death or similar domination, that's another clue.  I've been taken out by a sniper outside the entrance to the Russian base on Caspian when I just stepped across the line from the U.S.base entrance  That's not even possible but the killcam said differently.  I bet real life snipers would like to get a kill 5 miles away across a mountain and through a forest..lol

I currently have a 44 magnum outfitted on 3 of my character classes.  I know for a fact that I can get a critical if not a kill shot at 350 meters with it as I tested it out on an unranked server when I unlocked it.  I've been less than 10 meters, staring a player straight in the face and unloaded 3 shots almost point blank and the other player was able to kill me and took no damage.  Then I've had the same experience and things went as they should.  One shot to the head with that gun at less than 50 meters is a kill shot, no exceptions.  Was it lag? a hack? who knows but it ruined my day for sure.

I've seen some servers actually start enforcing level bans so that high level players can't dominate.  That's a bit unfair but understandable to keep the game going for newer players.  So how do cheats get around it?  They buy a new key online, start a new character, apply shortcut kits and suddenly a level 3 player has the ability of a level 90.  You can see it from the tactics and of course the K/D ratio.  Nobody at level 3 really knows what's going on in BF3 even if they played previous titles.  It takes getting used to.  So a level 3 sniper shouldn't be able to get a head-shot  from 800 meters with the level of equipment available to them even with shortcut kits.  There's lucky then there's suspicious.

I don't know how to stop the cheating.  I like the rewards and level ups but they're also the reason people cheat.  It's stat addiction.  The real problem with cheating in BF3 may have less to do with the game and more to do with the platforms it runs on.  Most of the hacks out there are DirectX video hacks which are almost impossible for PB to catch. It seems most of the hacks that get caught are stat hacks to boost health etc.  Since those modify a game variable they're easier to catch but if it's something that say removes all the textures and just shows the players that's a hack on something the game can't detect.  It's like recording a video with an Iphone pointed at a TV.  No copy protection is going to stop it because it's separate from the processes involved in the broadcast but the information is there just the same.

I don't know any games out there that don't have cheats in them.  In Orcs Must Die 2, for example there was a guy on top of the leader boards within 4 hours of the game's release with 1 Billion points!  Not possible in that game even  if your played 24/7 for 10 years!  It's a hack.  But then, It's still fun and I don't care about the leader-boards. because they have no effect on my game-play, everyone's pretty much equal no matter what level they're at.  Someone who's hacked their way to the top of BF3, however, not only has the hack effect but the legit bonuses from the game itself.

The only thing that EA/Dice could do at this point would be to get tighter control of the keys and limit volume purchases so the hack vendors can't operate.  Maybe a start up or randomized DirectX check as well.  What we can do as players is make the cheats uncomfortable.  If your team suspects a cheat and they're dominating a game then forget the spawn captures etc.  The whole team should just go after that player.  You're not going to be playing the game the way it was meant to be played anyway so might as well tar and feather the cheat.  Or if it's really bad all the honest players should just quit the server.

So that's my .25 cents.

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