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Bungie Wields the Banhammer
Gamespot reports that an update to Halo 2 via Xbox live has dropped the hammer on cheaters who have been warned in previous weeks to cease their malicious ways. From the article: "These undefeatable foes aren't some new alien species that have invaded the ruckus created by Bungie. These are the work of hackers and modders, gamers who spend time improving their stats with cheats at the expense of others. As with any high-profile title, cheaters will run rampant in an effort to 'pwn n00bs' and generally frustrate those who play fairly. Bungie has not taken kindly to these folk."
As an H2 player I have seen a number of different cheats over time. We should have a small grace period of minimal cheating until new cheats are found. Hopefully bungie keeps up with the updates or else this game will be unplayable for myself and many others.
PS.
Does anyone know why people on Team Slayer sometimes kill themselves the whole game?
It's called griefing. They ruin their own teams chances of winning by -1 suiciding themselves over and over again.
Why don't you just link the bungie.net article? News sites just continue a pointless cycle of linking.t oupdate4&p=4040317/
http://www.bungie.net/News/TopStory.aspx?story=au
Bungie has the advantage of being on xbox live, a controlled service. PC games with internet play have it much tougher.
You WILL provide me with full details about that "mod" that "hackers" are using to "cybersexual" with people. I will not stop until my countrymen are free to play video games without encountering sex of any sort.
Sincerely,
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Senator
Halo for PC isn't that bad though. Since its fairly easy to run a modded map, the people that like to do weird stuff play those maps. Regular people play the other maps.
The ones that get out of line can usually be taken care of with a little social engineering. If they're relatively new to the game, having somebody tell them to "press Alt F4 for the mod list" sometimes works. Other times you can just annoy them until they leave. For example, follow them around and keep walking in front of them. This usually has the effect of making them TK you. 6 of those and you're banned from the server.
So there are ways of dealing with jerks online, you just have to know how to handle yourself most importantly.
An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind - the solution to griefing shouldn't be griefing (your "handling") the griefers.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Yet, another part of me is saying "Ya know, I wish they diddnt have the power to do that. I mean, sure, they're cheaters, but they bought the game and now bungie gets to tell them how to play it?
They're not telling people how to play it, they're telling people how to play it on their servers (Xbox Live). If you had read TFA, you'd see that people are still able to play with their mods via system link. It's one thing if you hack the game for your own personal enjoyment, but completely wrecking their matchmaking service by unbalancing the game through cheating? C'mon, that's not even a fair comparison. It has absolutely nothing to do with your issue with software licenses.
No, it "shouldn't" be the solution, but in the case of a dedicated server where the host isn't available to kick a player out, you have to come up with your own methods. The only other solution you have in that scenario is to leave the game yourself. I'd much rather get the problem players to leave.
You can play the game any way you want to. You just can't cheat while playing on bungie's service. Seems fair to me.
If you went to play a game of pickup b-ball at the gym and proceeded to take the ball and run around screaming "my ball baby!! my ball!!" and not actually playing the game, do you think you'd be alowed to continue to play there even if you payed to get in? I doubt it, you'd be harming the experience that other people payed for too!
Now, you can go home and play with a basketball anyway you want. But as soon as you enter a public arena that you don't control you have to learn to play well with others.
Halo for PC uses server-authoritative netcode, however. It is very hard to cheat, but at the same time you have to aim 10 feet in front of players in order to hit them because of the inescapable lag.
English is easier said than done.
This is quite possibly the worst idea I've ever had!
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
BZFlag is also open source, and more popular than HaloPC.
The only "cheat" I've found is for detecting invisible people. Although many people have video cards that don't handle cube mapping which gives the same results. So I guess it can't really be called a cheat.
Lag is lag, I can't really imagine xbox live as being any better. I'm not familiar with how the xbox version works though.
But as soon as you enter a public arena that you don't control you have to learn to play well with others.
Unless you play on the NBA. Then it's called "yelling the ref" until he gives you a good call.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Whoosh! went the somewhat humorous attempt at avoiding remaining negatively modded, although... a non-logged in AC may post a reply to the post modded down - personally I wish more people had the nerve to log in and leave an email address available so that any discussion concerning negatively moddable issues need not disturb the entire thread.
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
Halo 2 uses predictive netcode, as does basically every other internet FPS today. It also uses things like simplified physics and event priority to ensure that the game is as playable as possible. Lag is lag, but in most games, you can at least aim directly at your target. The problem is that Halo 1 was never written with internet games in mind.
English is easier said than done.
Has anyone gotten banned for having non-Halo 2 mods on their Xbox, e.g., disablable modchips, software mods, cheats for other games, installed Linux? I think I have the font exploit somewhere (not that it worked for me) and I know I have the "Emergency Linux" MechAssault hack - will Bungie bother me about these, or does it only look for Halo 2 hacks?
Nahhh. You do the same thing with guilds and various services and programs. The difference is, those of us in PC land don't have to pay for it.
You play with your friends. You use things like XFire to keep in contact with your friends. You join guilds/clans and play guild/clan matches where cheating/griefing will get you banned.
Drop out of losing matches frequently? Banned from that server. Cheat? Punkbuster will ban you from numerous servers.
Within a few days of playing a new game you have your lists of servers you like, and probably quite a few new friends. Plus all the friends you've been gaming with for years if they picked up the game.
It's pretty much the only system that works because it's not really a system. Play with those you know or take the risk that stranger jim is an asshole. As long as the players have control of the servers, it works.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Wow that really goes over your head doesn't it. I think the whole point is to undo the modding down of the post.
Managing a community is not BZFlag's problem. BZFlag can't issue a patch that bans people who use modified content, because the program is open source and over the internet. If for example, md5sum checks of files is done and then sent to the server, someone could just modify the source to pretend it got the right sums. Trivial. On the internet, there is no central server that you can ban people from. Sure, you can use your approach, but thats a different subject, and almost completly irrelevant to the BZFlag code.
I wasn't talking about BZFlag just the difference between Live and our nice little patchwork of PC programs.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
If you used voice chat you'd be disturbed by how deep "her" voice was.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
You don't need to invent a new term. There's already a word for this: sandbagging.
The problem, of course, is that modders get bored just playing against one another when you're all flying across the map. It's less fun w/o the element of surprise. Compare that to going up against 4 or 8 people that aren't modding and don't now what's up, and you can kill them without retribution and win easily. Clearly modders and cheaters will head into matchmaking.
After all, cheating against people you actually know just isn't fun ;D
But yeah, it's just matchmaking, not Live overall. So if you have other games that are Live enabled, it doesn't affect them at all.