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How Cheaters Cheat at Halo 2
An anonymous reader writes "Built on a network that automatically bans gamers that have modified their Xbox, Xbox Live should be nearly cheat-proof. However, it's not, as anyone playing Halo 2 online already knows. How do cheaters on Xbox Live manage to artificially boost their rankings? What is Bridging? What is Standby? This article takes a look at what exactly is done when a cheater cheats, and what exactly Bungie is doing about it. It includes videos and some very funny letters from 13-year-olds that have been baned from matchmaking on Live and are desperately trying to worm their way back onto the system."
By being better than me. It's the only possible explanation. The bastards.
Actually, I'd have to say, the control scheme is quite nice considering the hardware. As far as the ability to customize sensetivity and button layout, I think it might be one of the better setups for a controller based console. (gotta be specific now with the wii mote)
I am full of goo... black evil goo
Or is that the substandard gameplay or horrible control scheme?
Really? I thought it was the 12 year olds screaming obscenities about my sexual orientation at painful volumes into my headset that made the game not fun to play.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Here's the thing. They don't even need to modify packets. They just download an auto-aim mod to instantly lock on to your head all the way across the map with a sniper rifle that shoots 1000 rounds a second. As much as the cheaters suck, half the blame goes to Bungie for not validating DLC, like 98% of other Xbox games do. Heck, even KotOR validates it's content, and you can't even play that with other people on Live! Standbying is near unavoidable given halo 2's setup (ie, not dedicated servers at all). This makes me hope they are considering dedicated servers for ranked games for Halo 3.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
The real question is, who gives a shit?
I was wondering what all those terms meant!
So, if one persons connection drops, he is the only person who can carry on playing the game? And they wonder why people cheat so much?
They run the games peer to peer, and wonder why people cheat so much? Surely even using a server to connect the clients, even if its not hosting the game could prevent alot of this
Someone give these guys a class on network security 101: NEVER TRUST THE CLIENT, EVER, WHOEVER THEY ARE, NO NOT EVEN YOUR MUM.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
If I cut off my internet or slow it down (I know that is possible) then how the fuck does that affect everyone else in the game?
This could only work if you happen to host the game. In PC multiplayer game the guy hosting it offcourse always has the least lag but surely anyone hosting a game that routinely drops out would very quickly be ranked down?
Anyway you pay for x-box live but still got to host your own games? Surely for the money MS should be hosting the games so everyone plays on a level playing field?
So my question is this. A does this only work for the guy hosting the game, B why does bungie not host the game for you C why doesn't bungie drop people who host games on a connection that drops out?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"...letters from 13-year-olds that have been baned" Ah, the irony!
What these cheaters done understand is that the ranking is there to place you against players of even skill. by ranking up, they get placed against players of better skill. at that point they have to cheat keep the rank.
I was a average player. I could school all my real life friends, but they didn't have halo. I reached a rank where the matches were even and it was fun. I got a little better by getting the shotgun and hiding in the corner. It worked every time, until I moved up a rank. It never worked in that bracket, the players were better and knew the trick. I was at the loosing end even when i played like normal and eventualy droped back down to where I belonged.
They have it all wrong, they should drop rank to clean up on the less skiled players. Atleast they run in a circle and you dont have to risk the banhammer.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
The article sums itself up by saying that they don't understand why people would cheat and artificially inflate their rating.
Duh! To be at the top!
How many times do you see on gaming forums some clown posting "FIRST!" or "First Page!", like it matters. Just about every Blizzard post on their forums has that stupidity going on, and you even see it happening on non-competition sites like the forums for Order of the Stick webcomic.
It's all about having bragging rights, or as I like to call it, "showing off the size of your e-penis".
It's almost homo-erotic at this point. (Not that there is anything wrong with being gay, btw.) Before the computer game evolution, guys usually tried to have bragging rights in some sport, and a lot of the hot "cheerleader" type chicks dug the guy with the letterman jacket. The guys tended to get buff, be athletic, and do something worthy of praise. (They also tended to be morons, but that's besides the point.) They competed with each other to gain the attention of women, mostly.
Now, we have the same behavior going on, but with computer gamers. They have to be the best, be the coolest, etc. Except, there aren't a lot of chicks out there that will drool all over them. What they get is other guys wishing to be like them, instead of chicks wanting to be with them. There isn't a big call from girls to date the guy with a high Halo2 ranking, but the H.S. quarterback still gets a hot chick more often than not.
I don't know about you, but when I was in H.S. or college, I didn't want the adulation of other guys. I wanted to be noticed by chicks. But hey, that was just me.
The linked article only talks about bridging+standby, which is one of the oldest and easiest to execute forms of cheating. It's also rather lacking on the technical side. Here's a quick rundown of what I know:
=== Network manipulation ===
Bridging One player on a team sets up their router/firewall so that their xbox can only communicate with bungie, XboxLive, and a specific other player on the team. This results in that other player being selected as the game server for every match.
Standby The bridged host can interrupt network traffic to some or all players in the game. Because they're the server, their game keeps running for several seconds while everyone else gets the "standby, reconnecting to game" screen.
Lagging Out The bridged host selectively manipulates network traffic to players in the game and observes the on-screen network quality indicator. After isolating the IP address of a player on the other team, they block network traffic to that player, causing them to "lag out" of the game. After reducing the other team to one or two players they're pretty much guaranteed a win.
Team Lagging Same as lagging out, but instead of blocking traffic, just increase network latency to players on the opposing team. Not as effective as other mechanisms but VERY hard for Bungie to spot.
=== Game manipulation ===
Mods The bridged host has map files are modified to give them an advantage. Examples:
spawnmods: player start points are modified to make the spawning player defenseless or unable to move.
weapon mods: auto-aim, rapid fire, increased damage, changed projectile type
other: vehicles where there shouldn't be, running faster than normal, jumping higher than normal
Superbouncing Makes it possible to reach extremely high areas in certain maps. Caused by a bug in the physics engine. === Ranking manipulation ===
Boosting a group of dishonest player teams with an otherwise-honest and/or unskilled player. The dishonest players carry the match, but the other player still gets the ranking benefit.
De-ranking A group of skilled players intentionally throws matches to decrease their rank. This results in matching against lesser skilled players, and is often used for boosting.
Not only that, they aren't evening using any really nasty networking tricks. The article suggests they basically just drop packets at will. In the world of PC games we have (among other things) these nasty things called "aim proxies". Cheater's game connects to another machine under his control which maintains the actual connection to the server and monitors the game state as the traffic passes through. Every time he fires a shot, it changes the outbound traffic of what he was aiming at to say, the head of the nearest enemy player. Go ahead and scan his client/PC for cheats, its perfectly clean. Nasty.
What kinds of cheating is not technological? Stalking or harrassing a teammate instead of getting the token/bomb/flag, offering to tell opponents where teammates are in exchange for not being killed, teaching about the map (three players climbing a trail in a corner) in a public game instead of playing the game, quitting early so teammates quickly become outnumbered, screaming so nobody can hear useful information.
Um, maybe it's just me, but I think I see a simple way to end the use of 'standby'. It seems that if the game looses connect to all the other players it would be able to detect that. Oh certainly not instantly, but with in a short time. If that happens it could freeze that player as well. If the standby-er freezes right along with every one else, then there is no advantage to it and one tool goes away. Certainly it doesn't fix everything, but it does help to make the cheat less useful.
Question reality.
You don't pay for dedicated servers. You pay for the ability to play online.
I can see it now:
You're cornered, they have loads of BFG'sbig, frightful grammatics aimed at your sorry melon. What to do? What to do? Ooh, the temptation... You reach for it, just this once. Oh, of course! Should-would clauses are for sissies!
"I never end a sentence with a preposition, my mother told me not to," you shout. Suddenly, a piercing ray of in-game sunlight rips across the digital wasteland. Your opponents are mercilessly fried, no Fricasseed!
Days later, your account gets banned. You whine with the best of them, but to no avail. Your own incompetence incriminates you, as your seemingly victorious sentence is diagrammed, nay eviscerated before you.