MIlestone: 100th Threard about cheat ...
Maybe not the 100th thread, but there were lot of discussions about this topic and the problem still exists
Today i took a look to Story, war mage leaderboards, first level - 16 cheated hiscores
second level - 8 cheated scores
third level - 8 cheated scores...
Robots say they clean leaderboards, but clean only doesnt help.
Clean once or twice in a week, so the leaderboards are ONLY clean some hours, maximum 1 day after cleaning. The rest of the time the leaderboards are "dirty".
I have asked several people i met who play / played omd2, no one play it anymore for hi scoring, they all say the same...
No (clean) leaderboards is like removing replay ability for omd and make the game inactive. That means less people play this game and would buy DLCs.
Crapped leaderboards make people dont want to play the game.
The idea: When a cheater has posted his hiscore to leaderboards, in the cleaning process, robots can send a command to the cheaters client that FORCE it to "-DoNotPostToLeaderboards"
The problem would be solved!
Cheating happens in the client. Leaderboards just reflect game results
The idea: When a cheater has posted his hiscore to leaderboards, in the cleaning process, robots can send a command to the cheaters client that FORCE it to "-DoNotPostToLeaderboards" (permanently)
The problem would be solved!
So, you would have them run special code on one system that doesn't run on all systems? I'm not sure that's allowed under their TOS, and more importantly opens the door for viruses to install themselves. After all, Steam only checks the game against the most recent build to see if it's correct. If you have more than one build out there, you'd have to turn off that functionality.
Any and all board banning has to be done on the server end for Steam. Just like with VAC bans. It doesn't affect your program files at all, it's just Steam ignoring your requests to post to the board.
Cleaning once or twice in a week, so the leaderboards are ONLY clean some hours, maximum 1 day after cleaning. The rest of the time the leaderboards are "dirty".
Today i was playin omd2 and watching story, war mage the edge leaderboard. In the 5 hours there get 3 hacked highscores to THE ONE leaderboard, and one of them has just 0,4 hours of gameplay... seems to be failed existences with cheat engine downloading the demos for games and just crap where they can at the leaderboards. Maybe nothing else to do and they want "revenge" for ban by VAC.
SOLUTION AGAINST HACKED HISCORES
Bots could make it this way: Run a server with gameID's
Posting highscores to the leaderboards would work this way:
Client ---> the server ---> Leaderboards
Robots can additionaly to cleaning leaderboards, add cheaters gameID to the "blacklist"
Client ---> the server: If the client ID is blacklisted, it will NOT post the highscore to the leaderboards
Similar to your thought, Chthon.
I don't think cheaters necessarily ruin the game--I mean pretty much everyone knows who's cheating and who's not by those scores.
At least the people that play for points do.
Sure, bragging rights are awesome, but it's just a game.
Sure there are jerks who pollute the boards for the sake of being jerks. But I'm afraid here most of the "hacked" scores are actually an unforeseen consequence of a design change from OMD1 to OMD2.
Contrary to most tower defence games, in OMD1 you didn't get any reward for saving gold (Robot had explained at the time that they wanted to encourage players to lay down as many traps as they could, not to go for minimalist setups). In OMD2, "gold score" was introduced. And thus anyone who uses a trainer for "infinite" gold to fool around the game or just try it in super-easy mode ends up posting a "hacked" score...
Just see how the very first story mode maps or weekly challenges leaderboards are plagued with hacked scores, while later maps or endless mode maps tend to stay relatively clean.
Cleaning once or twice in a week, so the leaderboards are ONLY clean some hours, maximum 1 day after cleaning. The rest of the time the leaderboards are "dirty".
Today i was playin omd2 and watching story, war mage the edge leaderboard. In the 5 hours there get 3 hacked highscores to THE ONE leaderboard, and one of them has just 0,4 hours of gameplay... seems to be failed existences with cheat engine downloading the demos for games and just crap where they can at the leaderboards. Maybe nothing else to do and they want "revenge" for ban by VAC.
SOLUTION AGAINST HACKED HISCORES
Bots could make it this way: Run a server with gameID's
Posting highscores to the leaderboards would work this way:
Client ---> the server ---> Leaderboards
Robots can additionaly to cleaning leaderboards, add cheaters gameID to the "blacklist"
Client ---> the server: If the client ID is blacklisted, it will NOT post the highscore to the leaderboards
Similar to your thought, Chthon.
We run our cheat detection system manually every few days or so. The programmer who runs it sits next to me. He's on vacation now, or I'd have him run it this morning again. What happens is that when it finds a score we've identified as cheated, it removes it and restricts that player from ever posting to that leaderboard again. It's not a global restriction because that means writing thousands of entries into the leaderboards database per cheated score we find. But once htey're "marked" they can't post to that board again. If they post a cheated score to another board, that'll get marked, too. People can cheat their scores if they like, but it's not likely that their scores will stay on the boards for very long, and they won't be able to post up there again. So there's not a whole lot in it for them.
We run our cheat detection system manually every few days or so. The programmer who runs it sits next to me. He's on vacation now, or I'd have him run it this morning again. What happens is that when it finds a score we've identified as cheated, it removes it and restricts that player from ever posting to that leaderboard again. It's not a global restriction because that means writing thousands of entries into the leaderboards database per cheated score we find. But once htey're "marked" they can't post to that board again. If they post a cheated score to another board, that'll get marked, too. People can cheat their scores if they like, but it's not likely that their scores will stay on the boards for very long, and they won't be able to post up there again. So there's not a whole lot in it for them.
I still believe a "Freeplay mode" would help clear this up.
From what is being bandied about it's because people are using a money cheat presumably to just to play however they like on a level.
No leaderboard rankings, select the level, ton of cash, play with traps, layouts, whatever not having to worry about coins.
Play either story or endless. Again, not ranked--just around to have fun (it's a game afterall).
This should help lower the rates of cheating.
Maybe implement this as a checkbox next to the "play now" button.
It grants the player, say, 1,000,000 coins, gain rates of 20,000 coin per wave, and it does NOT report to the leaderboards when the level finishes.
If it unlocked after completing the campaign Freeplay Warmage, Freeplay Nightmare etc etc. That wouldn't be an awful idea. Same levels, same waves, unlimited coin. Doesn't take away from the game.
If it unlocked after completing the campaign Freeplay Warmage, Freeplay Nightmare etc etc. That wouldn't be an awful idea. Same levels, same waves, unlimited coin. Doesn't take away from the game.
Ha! 'not an awful idea'
Ha! 'not an awful idea'
Think of it as a backhanded compliment.
If it unlocked after completing the campaign Freeplay Warmage, Freeplay Nightmare etc etc. That wouldn't be an awful idea. Same levels, same waves, unlimited coin. Doesn't take away from the game.
Which would be totally bassackwards and defeat the entire purpose. Any implementation of a sandbox mode should be available to all, from minute one. The idea is to reduce the motivation for people to use external cheats, NOT provide them with yet another reason.
It's not just money hacks. Last night, I was having a little bit of fun by making the trap reset trinket not have to cool down, and every wall surface covered with boom barrel dispensors. You see where I'm going with this? (I was in offline mode BTW)
Ha! 'not an awful idea'
Think of it as a backhanded compliment.
I do. I still think Freeplay would be a great mode--I'd play it.
Which would be totally bassackwards and defeat the entire purpose. Any implementation of a sandbox mode should be available to all, from minute one. The idea is to reduce the motivation for people to use external cheats, NOT provide them with yet another reason.
QFT. Exactly.
It's not just money hacks. Last night, I was having a little bit of fun by making the trap reset trinket not have to cool down, and every wall surface covered with boom barrel dispensors. You see where I'm going with this? (I was in offline mode BTW)
I'm not familiar with Cheat Engine at all. Is that a VAC bannable offense (only if you're online?)?
I personally would like Freeplay to just be a money mode; unless you made Freeplay also halve recovery times or something. :-/
Kinda hard to get a VAC ban in a game that isn't VAC secured...
Kinda hard to get a VAC ban in a game that isn't VAC secured...
So no then? How do you tell which games are VAC secured and which ones aren't? Valve games only?
Incentivise playing the game? God forbid. Many many games including Saints Row give you cheat information after you complete it. It's not like this is a 'new and untested' concept. Deafeat the game, cheat modes unlock.
Adding an open sandbox mode with zero incentive with what, all unlocked levels off the bat? Perhaps you haven't thought this through. On one hand right now you can't progress without passing a level.
Should there be a sandbox mode with ALL the maps available off the bat? Who would play the actual game?
Or perhaps you should get sandbox mode after you defeat the map normaly? God forbid what I was saying earlier.
Maybe more thought is needed to be put into the idea before calling it backwards; seems to be the only backwards concept would be giving someone the entire game in freeplay mode with no need to unlock any maps what so ever because they are all there already and then forcing them to engage story mode and unlock each level one at a time to play the game how it was designed.
If it unlocked after completing the campaign Freeplay Warmage, Freeplay Nightmare etc etc. That wouldn't be an awful idea. Same levels, same waves, unlimited coin. Doesn't take away from the game.
Biggest problem is that when we take all the limits off, monsters, traps, and everything else goes through the roof, performance becomes impossible to guarantee, and we get a thousand more people complaining that the game doesn't run right when they have 19 million physics traps on the screen in freeplay mode. Which means more support emails and forum and social media posts, and more time we have to spend responding to customers for what seems like a pretty crappy experience.
There's an angle I hadn't prior thought about. Guess you just can't please everyone. They'll have to accept the fact that they have an awesome game that they are just gonna have to get better at. Hehe.
Leaderboards are controlled by steam. That restricts our friends at RobotEntertainment in what they can do as a preventative measure.
I think we just need to accept the fact that people will cheat and we are lucky to have a vigilant team of dev's who listen to their community.
Strider051:
I'd like to see a Rogotin skin for the warmage and sorc. I envision it as kobold runner with a nifty hat riding your shoulders as he lobs grenades at your barricades whilst smacking you in the back of the head.