**NEWS FLASH** WHAT YUJI NAKA (President of Sonic Team) HAS

[Sheepss]

I got my Nintendo Power this month and found a question and answer section but I will only post one ( unless anyone says different)...I thought all of you less fortuneate to recive NP...I'll shut up and post it now...

QUESTION: The Dreamcast version of PSO had its fair share of online cheaters and hackers. What has been done to cut down on such problems in the Ninteo GameCube version?

Yuji Naka: Well, we can't really go into the exact details, of course, but we've taken all the experience of what happened with the Dreamcast version of PSO and have spent a lot of time trying to make it more secure for a fun gaming experience.

Sounds like they really made an effort to combat hacking and cheating...but never really went any furthur...

This is Sheepss singing out...



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sheepss on 2002-12-01 17:15 ]</font>

[EsperFlame]

Yuji Naka: Well, we can't really go into the exact details, of course, but we've taken all the experience of what happened with the Dreamcast version of PSO and have spent a lot of time trying to make it more secure for a fun gaming experience.

Thats business talk for "We've improved over the old version and blocked all the old ways to hack". My question would be what about new ways?

[Tavia]

Thats business talk for "We've improved over the old version and blocked all the old ways to hack". My question would be what about new ways?

Can't fix them until they're discovered, can you? They are "new," after all.

[Sheepss]

Hmm....You'r probably right but think abut it...they have HAD to found some way of checking out the new game and testing for bugs before they actually made a new game...I think...

[Sapphire87]

Sonic Team should make an effort to permanetly ban accounts this time. It's not their fault that there's cheating on PSO. It's only Sonic Team's fault for having a blase attitude toward punishing the perpetrators. The problem with the DC was that there was no incentive to stop cheating since you knew you could get away with it. Sonic Team tried patching the enable code several times but this was a futile attempt. As long as you can read about "mass bannings due to cheating online", people will have second thoughts about popping in their Xploders in the future.

[Tavia]

On 2002-12-02 16:23, Sheepss wrote:
Hmm....You'r probably right but think abut it...they have HAD to found some way of checking out the new game and testing for bugs before they actually made a new game...I think...

Sure, they could. You know they did bug testing, too; everyone isn't falling through floors, having their game freeze when they equip an item, walking through walls, et cetera. The game, really, is not bug-ridden. Even the famous "EverQuest" is currently suffering because of a program called "ShowEQ" -- if I remember correctly -- that lets people cheat.

It happens... unfortunately. Cheaters exploit the bugs and make them famous. Really, only having one or two problems in a game is excellent. Think of everything you do in PSO. Even moving your character a step forward is taken for granted. There are so many games where the control is horrible, the graphics shoddy, the style unoriginal, with bugs and polygon clipping everywhere... there are countless things that are wonderful about PSO as it is.

SonicTeam really cannot do much to repair this. If they replaced all of the copies of PSO in the world, they would have to eat the cost of every disc that was returned. They could not rewrite them. Maybe they could recycle them, but that's hardly a financial return.

All you have to do is find people who do not cheat. I find that pretty easy to do.

[Vol_Opt]

.. Playback mode engaged..

On 2002-12-01 17:12, Sheepss wrote:
I got my Nintendo Power this month and found a question and answer section but I will only post one ( unless anyone says different)...I thought all of you less fortuneate to recive NP...I'll shut up and post it now...

QUESTION: The Dreamcast version of PSO had its fair share of online cheaters and hackers. What has been done to cut down on such problems in the Ninteo GameCube version?

Yuji Naka: Well, we can't really go into the exact details, of course, but we've taken all the experience of what happened with the Dreamcast version of PSO and have spent a lot of time trying to make it more secure for a fun gaming experience.

Sounds like they really made an effort to combat hacking and cheating...but never really went any furthur...

This is Sheepss singing out...



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sheepss on 2002-12-01 17:15 ]</font>

.. Bzzt..

.. Statement is as threatening to cheaters as a plastic spoon is to a tank..

[DJ_Monkey]

This statement doesn't give me any hopes about cheating. If they really wanted to fight the cheating, they would enlist the aid of the hackers who tried to ruin the game. Maybe even pay them a little, or give them exclusive items. Then watch the open flaws in the game get fewer and fewer.

This has worked for the PC industry for years(in fact, Mitnick[probably the most famous hacker ever] was hired as a security consultant]), so why not try it with the consoles? The amount of people that will buy the HLs for a more-secure game will more than pay for the costs of hiring the hackers.

And we wouldn't have as many FSoDs(Baru knows how to stop it...hint hint)

[Sheepss]

.. Playback mode engaged..

.. Bzzt..

.. Statement is as threatening to cheaters as a plastic spoon is to a tank..

What the heck is with the STUPID BUZZING and clicking and hissing?!?!!?

Back to the subject...
Sonic team did make an effort and did get rid of lots of pontential bugs, but they went no further then the simple things that you could think of...like walls that you could walk through, camera bugs, things like that, but they didn't consider that...oh say...maybe if you went and talked to this guy and went to another guy and fought him then went and traded for something, then the cheat is activated.
They needed to go into a little more detail on the hacking process...and things like that.

[Spy]

It's that cheapskate Vol Opt! Shoot out his monitors everyone, quick!