Is duping possible?

[Veg]

I've noticed the sales of PSO items on eBay, and I was just wondering how secure a system PSO really is. I haven't had a chance to play online yet, but I was considering this as a possible dupe. Someone please tell me its not this simple.

I send my PSO data to my email address using Planet Web 2.0(I've confirmed that this works, even if you restore it to a different VMU)

I log on my character with Ultra Cool Sword +8 and go into a password game(just to make sure no one tries stealing my stuff) .

My friend logs in, I give him my sword, mesetta, and anything else. I quit.

I delete my PSO data and restore my backup by checking my email and downloading the PSO data.

Now both me and my friend have an Ultra Cool Sword +8, mesetta, etc.

So does this work, or does the system have some sort of safeguard against this kind of thing? This seems really obvious to me, so I'm hoping that it will not work. Even if PSO's economy is not as advanced as most MMOG's like Everquest or Ultima Online, tons of duped items and money flowing into can't possibly be good(especially in light of eBay sales, selling duped items is such a scam).

Well, comments?

(note to moderator, if this is in fact a sucessful recipie for duping, please delete this post, very quickly)

[Cheech]

You either figured it out and have a LOT of time on your hands, or, umm.... have TOO much time on your hands... Heh ^_^;

[faceless]

it works.
i tried it.
i got a friend to stay in a passworded room with me
then, i dropped:
all my meseta (50,000+)
my mag
my good weapons

then i quit.
restored my old save
came on and went back to room
they were all there on the floor still
with my friend watching...
i took the mag, gave him 10k and let him choose which weapons he wanted...



i did this with a Nexus w/ pc cable BTW.... not by emailing to myself....

[Fragged]

Nt something I'd reccomend anyone does.

Specifically, creating a set of server-side heuristics to detect this should be relatively easy.

Specifically, the server would only need to have code added track the items you had when you initially joined, and code to track the items you had when you disconnected. If you then rejoined the same game and had the original item set, you clearly were doing this.

Obviously someone clever/motivated enough could bypass this by effectively laundering the items by having the other person pick up the items and move them to a new game on a new server in an attempt to launder the items significantly enought o clear tracking information.

Unfortunately, it looks like the design team didn't take the obvious step of encoding each item created with a unique tag (making duplicates easy to detect.) This would have been relatively easy based on the unique serial numbers (basically whenever an item was created offline you'd encode a combination of the current system time in milliseconds post-epoch and the serial number of the account used on the dreamcast as a part of the item data, and server coordinated games you code merely use the serial number of the client that triggered the item creation.)

Cheating offline is an easy way to reduce the value of a game you buy, cheating online is an easy way to get banned.

Of course, the ball is in Sega's court, but I doubt they can do too much, outside of catching people who cheat *while* online, those that cheat offline, then go online would be much more difficult to identify, and I'm guessing Sega is, unfortunately, not going to have much luck there.

[Ratsmack]

Cheating...the plague of online rpgs. I have a suggestion, that this entire topic is deleted so no one is tempted to try it out. Don't need someone walking around with a bank full of double sabers and whatnot. I'm not sure if this would work, but why not make dropped items disappear after the player that dropped them leaves?

[KarnaJ]

wouldn't help, your friend picks up the item and it certainly wouldn't disappear then. I agree, delete this thread, we don't need a bunch of item duping going on, not at the same time as these stupid gameshark codes. Now all my hard-earned meseta has no more value than someone who spends 5mins getting 2million

[Veg]

Well if this system does work, anyone who really wanted to dupe could figure it out easily enough. This IS the basic duping technique, give stuff away, then get your character back to a previous backup. It's how it worked in early RPG's like The Bard's Tale, it's how it works in Ultima Online. Unlike Ultima however, there are no GM's to make sure people play nice, nor do I think people can be banned from PSO. While server side systems *might* be in place to catch duped items, but somehow I bet Sega didn't really consider this.

All I know is that when I get my broadband adaptor, and I go online with this game(hehe, that's a big if, isn't it? Can anyone point me to a thread discussing using the BBA with PSO?), I will not engage in any trading, for weapons or cash. I wonder how long before this trick shows up at a major site? It's only a matter of time. Then say goodbye to any kind of an economy where players can sell or even trade with each other. There will be rare weapons lining the streets of every server, and everyone's bank will be full.

[Ratsmack]

Nonetheless, the people who are stupid enough to cheat are stupid enough to not figure out how to dupe. This thread really should be deleted, that just my opinion.