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SOCOM Online Cheats Ruin Experience
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a GamePro report discussing GameShark cheat provider Fire International's touting of itself as "the first source of cheats for PS2 online title SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs, effectively encouraging gamers to ruin online gameplay for fair SOCOM players." According to Fire's European press release, the cheat "..enables unlimited ammunition and now boasts cheat codes for no recoil, rapid fire, unlimited grenades and a code which allows the player to steal their opponent's ammunition!" This brings to Europe a problem that is already rampant in the States, but which Sony claim they will fix for November's SOCOM 2, which should "..solve these issues and also feature the ability to ban cheaters from online play."
Why do these people even bother cheating online? They pay for the PS2, pay for the network adapter, pay for the game... and then ruin it all by going and spending more money on a cheat device.
It's just so self defeating as well - when everyone cheats, people stop playing. This means no more games for the cheaters to join. They destroyed PSO on the Dreamcast, and they STILL haven't learned their lesson yet...?
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
Should we be against this?
Should we be against deCSS, too? Kazaa?
Nah.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
Not being a gamer myself but playing around with Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, I noticed a think called punkbuster, a countermeasure against online cheating? Maybe more games should support this (yeahyeah its PC only now).
p hp
http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=info.
So maybe Microsoft is right. Controling and centralizing the online infrastrucutre can limit abuses like this.
So when you add them together I get- WTF!!!
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
I have been playing Socom online since day 1. I love the game, but it has become nearly unplayable because of the excessive cheating. The only wayto get a fair game is to play in locked rooms with people that you know. Sony claims that this problem ahs been fixed for Socom 2, but I'll believe it when I see it. I suppose it's tough to complain when Sony doesnt charge for it's online games (yet), but I would be more than willing to pay a monthly fee as long as the game was cheater free.
My cats breath smells like cat food.
"Smoking is bad for your heath"
"Killing and stealing are deamed illegal"
SOCOM Online Cheats Ruin Experience
Gasp!
However, my question for Sony (or the game creator) is why the fuck did you leave this in there? In the past online PC games had alot of cheats in them, but things have gotten better (note: this has nothing to do with hacking online PC games).
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
Developer: Zipper Interactive
However the cheats were not left in there by the developers, rather it was done with a 3rd party cheating/hacking device (Xploder). So it was no direct fault of Zipper.
That being said, I still stand by my Ren & Stimpy gasp!
evil-osm.
E.
Never rub another man's rhubarb - The Joker
My understanding is that these "cheats", especially on a console, are testing codes... why would these be left accessible or even in the game on release? I can understand leaving them in for single player games, it really doesn't matter that much, but does this not seem like a horrible oversight for the developer of a competitive online multiplayer game to leave these in?
My vocabulary is so huge it's enormous. if only I could think of a word bigger than enormous, like huge.
I don't really understand why it is still allowed to happen.
Modified models let you see someone through a wall. Ok, why was a player behind a wall's position even transfered to said client? Hack removes gun recoil, why is the client software what determines if the bullets suffer from recoil? Unlimited ammo, why does the server trust the client to keep track of ammo? And so on...
Yeah, yeah. I know. It takes processing power to keep that sort of stuff on the server. So what. I paid for a game, with the expectation of fair play with other people. If they can't deliver that to the players, then perhaps they shouldn't be pushing the game out. Why aren't these companies held accountable for the mistakes they release?
Apparently you haven't been following the mod chip saga. Microsoft has been banning modded xboxs from playing online. If you get caught they change your settings/system so that the xbox that got caught can not play on xbox live(others please ignore the technicalities, I just want to make the following point).
So Microsoft has one way to combat the cheater problem, they can ban their xbox system. They can transfer their account to a new xbox, and it will cost them to do so each time. This could be a good deterrent to prevent people from just the cheap and easy route of buying a new xbox live kit, and they won't have to deal with continually dealing with and banning xbox live cheater accounts.
I can see Microsoft doing this with people who use cheating devices, but I doubt that Microsoft will resort to doing that for people who act like dicks. They would be killing off those customers who are helping them make a profit from their losses on the xbox.
The solution is to do an md5sum ofthe binary for the game. Players should be allowed to ban non-standard md5-sums from joining.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Of course the real trouble with cheats, is that after the game has been "violated" the game in general is less fun to play online even without an actual cheater present.
Why?
Because as soon as many people are certain it is possible to cheat, they will begin accusing every single person that can beat them of cheating. It's like the camping thing. I used to play Unreal Champ on X-box live, I liked doing base defense, and I got accused of "camping" all the time. What the hell do you expect? I am defending a base, of course I am going to stay inside or near it.
See the problem isn't that its possible to cheat, the problem is that many many gamers are spoiled little brats that can't stand competition. If I win they will accuse me of cheating, or if they can cheat they will do so in order to beat me. In either scenario nobody is happy; even the passive observers on the server have to put up with the name calling and asinine behavior. I don't think this sort of problem will ever go away until someone designs a way of preemptively detecting assholes and kicking them off the server before they ruin the game.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I know companies put cheats in to test out the game. But why do they leave em in?
What's the point of cheating in a game with no plot only other players?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
What a relief.
If I am allowed to run an md5sum check on another multi-player's binary from my computer -- using my run-times -- then how is that exploitable? Hacker's can't alter my run-times.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
1. Purposely allow cheats to remain in SOCOM
2. Hundreds of thousands of people play SOCOM
3. Gameshark makers discover cheats
4. Rampant cheating destroys gaming experience
5. Sony announces cheats will be fixed in SOCOM 2
6. Profit!
Most of these cheats are not "real" cheats inserted by the developers. Gameshark-type devices patch the game in RAM (the data coming off the cartridge/CD) to alter its behavior. Find the correct address/value combination to change the instruction that commits a decrease in the player's ammo to the game world data and change it to a nop, and your ammo will never decrease. Find the place where the authoritative value of the other player's ammo is kept on your local listen server, and you can fuck with that too.
That wouldn't matter, because the other (non-cheating)player still has the correct value and sends such info to the server. The server believes the (non-cheating)client and allows the gunfire to register as hits/misses, as opposed to invalid gunfire(if ammo really is depleted). In the cheating player's "world" the (non-cheating)opponent's ammo would be depleted, but the server is still telling the cheater that he's being hit. This can easily be countered by only sending packets to the sever telling it that your health is still at max. Of course server-side health calculation would prevent this, but that might prove heavy on processortime and bandwidth(constantly telling every client what his health points are)
Also, some (un)fortunate lag could let you get an extra shot off before you died.
When you shoot it must be instant, so the shots must be handled client side, so you cannot have health server side because when you die that must be instant too.
Of course the server should be able to compare numbers and detect cheating.
For example if my clent registers hit hit hit hit, and your client registers miss miss miss miss, and that becomes a patern, someone is cheating.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Game shark and xploder type devices hack the values existing in RAM in order to enable infinite ammo, lives etc. They usually aren't exploiting existing cheats, they are simply locating in memory where the value exists and adjusting it. Trainers for PC games operate the same way.
- They plan to fix the bugs in SOCOM 2, but not address those in the original SOCOM at all? Down with consumer loyalty - who needs it! They'll all update like good little drones to the new version!
- That the ability to ban players was never a consideration in SOCOM? What, you think people will hack our system? No way! We are 1337. They don't stand a chance, banning is for sissy programmers!
The president of Sony's Playstation division should ask the Gameshark's president to meet over coffee and discuss this issue in a civilized manner. Then... once the president of Gameshark's company is nice and comfortable the Sony president should punch him in the eye and declare it a new civlility cheat he discovered.