Article: Sega patrolling PSO games?

[gideon]

watashiwa writes, "Apparently, Sega could be out patrolling your PSO games. A friend of mine mentioned to me earlier that during one of his games, a translucent (see-through) white HUmar was seen on Pioneer 2 as well as Ragol with them. This was in addition to him being in a full game. So therefore, number of players is 5. (If we're counting the HUmar as a player.) The HUmar didn't say anything, but just walked around and came and went. This is important news. If true (and I don't see why my friend would lie to me, never has before and has always been trustworthy), this could mean Sega is trying to catch cheaters in the act. The process of duping, using hacked items (not all have been filtered out), etc,. would all get you caught.
Thanks to Sengson for this information. He mentioned it in the general board, but I felt it should be posted here.
If anyone has any follow up on this, by all means post it.
I just wanna see this white HUmar and say hi to him. It'd be kinda neat. :)"

Yah, I saw that too along with someone else in the game room, it was on pioneer 2, we both thought it was a ghost.... =p

[Xaken]

I'm not really sure what the point of doing this would be. I play near constantly and (of late) I don't think I have actually SEEN anyone cheating.
When people dupe, they dupe off-line. All the hacked items have been removed from the game as far as I know.
What cheating is there left to catch? Stealing isn't really cheating. Sure it's bad sportsmanship, but it's a fully allowed activity of the game.
The only thing I can think of for them to monitor is what we say. It's just as easy to do that without actually entering games. In fact they probably wouldn't even use people to do it, but rather have the servers detect and record text based on the use of particular phrases.
If what has been seen really ARE people from Sonic Team, and not some graphic error or hoax, then it is more likely that they are observing the game not to find cheats, but to take note of how the game could be improved.
Version 2 is probably still under developement, and then there is still the possiblity of a full fleged sequal. Both of which could be improved by the information gained in simply watching players play.

If they were trying to 'catch' cheaters, why would they bother to make themselves visible at all? Same goes for monitoring gameplay..

[Crystal]

Do these people show up on the upper left corner like regular people or must you see them to know they are there? And one more thing wouldn't the game have to pause to let them in?

[Iniaes]

Well, I don't know about a ghost white humar... but apparently last night I appeared to my teammates as a ghostly blue humar.
I was down on the forest, walking around... killing stuff, and my teammates (who were all aboard P2) saw an image of me walking around town (including off railings and other places you're unable to actually go). We noticed some other graphical quirks and serious slowdowns in town. It seemed to stem from too many discarded Varista's and DBs lying around. Maybe that, coupled with the new addition of Eggs is leading to some as yet unseen quirks.

First of all explain to me how you dupe offline ive never even heard of such a thing and a second thing people who work on the hubs can place their character in every single room of pso at once, by jus pluggin in their dc into the hubs and playing the game and editing a few things through the hubs. sum jus do it for fun, i dunno about cheking on people, they probably made themselves translucent cuz they didnt want you to see them doing this cuz they might get in trouble, but i guess they are going to hehe. oh yes on a side note there is a full fledged sequel being made right now and supposed to be released for dc in christmas in japan, we jus havent seen anything from it. if they are developing ver. 2 still it is minor details nothing major in gameplay because they are in the last few months before it gets released in japan.

It would be MUCH easier for sega to just have invisible people instead of translucent ones...and plus if they can do that then they could just change into one of the towns people and observe players duping/cheating/talking or they could turn into an inatimate object and observe while in the game lvs..................

I HAVE SEEN THIS GHOST BUT IT WAS A MECH AND SPOKE TO MY FREIND WHO WAS TALKING ABOUT God/HP AND THE GUY SAID U REALLY SHOULDNT TALK ABOUT THAT STUFF U NEVER KNOW WHO IS LISTENING AND THEN THE GOD/HP DISSAPERED AND HE CANT GO ONLINE AT ALL WHAT IS WRONG WITH SEGA!arghhh

B.S. I like how you wrote in all caps and for "God/HP" you turned cap locks off. Nice. Funny. You make me laugh.
God/HP is a legal item, able to be found. With that said, it seems silly to not really talk about it for god knows what reason. Perhaps your friend's dial up account has expired? NetZero maybe?

i dont know about yall but i think it has sumthin to do with the easter update...cause i saw it to, and i never saw it till the update...but mine wasnt a white translucent figure...it was me (or so my freinds say).....spooky aint it?

A more likely reason for this would be a server split. Sorta like IRC. Have you ever joined a block and randomly moved around, even say stuff? That isnt Sonic team moving you. It's not a hacker ethier. Its the server sending the wrong movements to the wrong player. When you move it sends the movements to the server for everone else to see you move. If the server gets confused then the wrong movements can get sent. You move. This has also happened in games with 4 people when person A can see everyone, but person B only sees a, and person C/D can only see person A. Person C/D cant see person B. If person B talks it shows up as a comment from etheir noone or as your own comment (too both C and D at the same time)
These translucent people are most likely regular players who are "split" from one of the servers which make up the PSO world.
It would be stupid to ahve translucent people walking around tring to catch dupers etc. If a duper sees a translucent person dont you think they will STOP duping and talk about the translucent player? They would at least strop duping/cheating/being bad. It just doesnt make sense. Sega doesnt need to be in the game to see what your doing. They can most likely only see your person inv. and not the bank. If they could see the bank, they would be filtering out that too. Im sure they can see your char lvl also.

[n64psxds]

I have never seen a transparent person before, but one time I was invisible to my team mates. Its probably not be Sega checking on us, but more like server errors like said above.

[Cruzn15]

I think he meant God/HP ++, now that was hacked and is illegal. He probably had it equiped and the Sega rep just removed it from his inventory and banned him.

[mj23thegoat]

how come he didnt take a screen shot?

[watashiwa]

Not everyone is as fortunate to have their DC hooked up to their computer as well as have a video capture card. :)

[bboybigd]

The other day i played online with three people but i only saw two of them. the third one was listed on the side, but there was no one. i saw the monster die and nothing was killing them, i was in the ruins. i know it was not a glich because i saw my teammates move perfectly normal. i know the other two teammates couldn't do the damage the thrid character did. what could that be? could it be related to this character?

I've suspected sega was up to something since the last upgrade. The games have slowed down a lot, and the joining time takes like 300% longer.

this is stupid! Codes are an enhancement of all other videogames ever created. Nobody called you a cheater if you entered the minus world, or you used the infamous Contra code. The point is, all games have tricks and codes. As long as they don't effect other games in a negative way I don't think it should be a problem.... Those GSers can hack away for all I care. I've got a legit 100 and the knowledge of what it took to earn him. Now I'm pretty bored, and if someone's going to offer me an item i don't have in town Im going to take it without asking twice or thinking abouts its creation. :P Just chill and have a good time, remember PSO isn't about winning or losing to other pople but enjoying each others comradery while blasting some monsters...

what the hell is that crad thing

what the hell is that card thing

[Pequod]

I was playing saturday on Puck 9. Our party was joined by a lvl 100 HUmar with a blank name. We called him 'no-name'. I got simple mail from the lobby mentioning rumors that this guy was from sonic Team, and I flat out asked him. He did not deny it, but said that he does beta test games. I talked to him quite a bit, mostly technical stuff regarding mags, etc. He wanted to trade for my mag really bad (a Naga) but i would not do it. He made 4 in our party, but he was gone a lot. He did help us beat DF, managing to stay alive and revive us all several times (I'm FOnewm lvl 80). He was a nice guy and very knowledgeable. He was a full character, not a ghost. I did notice that during that game there were lots of freeze-ups of theother characters, where they simply stood still while I could still move freely. that was weird. He wanted my mag bad, but did not have much that was very good to trade for it. he could or could not have been monitoring the game.

There is a GS code that lets you basicaly name your new character anything. That's what he used.

I have to disagree with you on that one. Lag or server problems wouldn't cause a player to look transparent. The code in the client-side software has to process the translucency of the polygons in the users avatar. Translucent effects require a lot of code to implement them, so it's impossible that it's caused by server problems. The ability to have a user displayed like that already has to be on the PSO disc. If it was server lag that was causing it, there would have to be a way for the PSO software to detect that it's getting incorrect data. But if it could do that, why do you move around in the lobby? The game would just ignore the false info. Same with the translucent user, the game would have to recognize false data, but if it's false, why display it at all?
This isn't intended as a flame or anything, I'm just displaying my conflicting viewpoint.

For someone who knows alot about HUBS, i don't understand how you dont know how people dup offline and that you have never heard of that. It's called gameshark! duh!

A video capture card is a type of video card that fits in your pc that allows you to plug a tv into it, and record the data off of it and encode it into a movie file (normally mpeg) or take screen shots. The person that originally posted about screen shots was probably talking about putting a pad in port 4, VMU in slot B, and then hitting A+X+Start.

[DynStatic]

(I wrote the 1st statement before class, didn't have much time. This gives more info.)
I agree with your points about the code being on the CD to begin with. It would have to be. I was not trying to state that Lag or server problems would directly cause a player to look transparent. More like with some of the recent server upgrades, this could have been added. A was to identify players who are lagging heavily or split.
I have had my character move more then one time on me. I came to the conclusion that it was cause by server errors from events that happened during it. After joining a ship and block, I started to walk around half randomly. I walked all the way around the center of the room. I stopped and then a Symbol chat appeared with my name on it. This is significant because it was a symbol chat which i had not made. It was of a silly face with a arm and a peace hand on the right. Again, not one that I had made. Soon after this, I regained control of my character. I asked if anyone saw the symbol chat I did. Everyone said no, that I didn't do one. I guy in the room then did the exact symbol chat that I did. (with the arm and peace sign) I am assuming based on what I saw that I was split/lagged or the server was sending the wrong information to me and that it was that individuals movements that I were doing. (It's the only explanation I can think of with out that other guy being a hacker or a member of sonic team - both of which seem highly unlikely since this scenario has happened on more then on occasion)
The next thing that happened dealt with the A/B/C/D person thing. John W. started the game. Ben (not sure what his name was) joined. They played for a little before calling me and polak into the game. Once polak and I had joined we did not see Ben in the game. 3 people had their names on the right, polak, John and myself. Ben was actually still in the game. He typed a few things which showed up as something I typed. (and showed up as something polak typed to him) Things that John typed all of us saw. This went on for a few minutes. It was crazy. Sometimes something Ben typed showed up as just a message with no name. I am assuming that ben couldn't see what polak and I typed because he did not answer our Qs. He went to the lobby and rejoined and we went on not thinking much about it.
It's really hard to explain something like this. I'm sure it has happened to other people too.

It just seems silly that the Sonic team would be translucent trying to see people cheat when they should have total control over everything.
DynStatic
F.Y.T.C.

I was playing for 4 hours and I was hoping to catch him and take a screen shot but I didnt see him, maybe next time.

[Daminite]

the plygon fade is on the disc. when ever you teleport your appears to other player as though you have faded away!

[watashiwa]

Yes, but what you're missing here is that it was an EXTRA player. And the player's form was in a semi-faded away form and walked around! So, picture if you will, 4 solid players, and 1 translucent player who no one knows who it is and comes and goes... It sounds crazy, I have yet to see it. Would be cool though. :)

[PRIME]

ITS TRUE ITS TRUE I TOO SAW WE SAW ONE I THOUGHT IT WAS A RARE MONSTER BUT I COULD NOT KILL IT AND IT LEFT WHAT A COOL JOB SOME ONE GETS PAID TO SPY ON US AND MAKE SURE WERE NOT BREAKING THE "LAW" LOL

[sengson]

erm... i would to take the shot. but unfortunately
i have only 1 controller. =(

I don't believe SEGA is patrolling the games. Ask yourself, why would they? To catch dupers? Nope. Who actually dupes online anymore anyways? I believe it's most likely a glitch, as you can sometimes see shots and things while your on pioneer 2 from other pepole in the same game. What SEGA really needs to do is stop those Gameshark using wusses.

One question for people who have seen the translucent player: Was your game locked with a password? Or wouldn't it matter since the game was full anyway?

Hey, why would they not just make the person COMPLETELY invisible, if they are patrolling?

Eh, Xbob here, to clear things up, that is NOT Sega, that is a person from another game, strange as it is, it's been happening since the beggining, white HUmar eh? My HUmar is white...

what does it matter if they are patroling the areas its ok with me i believe they cant do anything unless your caught duping , making hacked items or running online codes.if your not doing these three things when there in the room your fine u cant be blamed for a item that was givin to u. but anyway injoy it for what it is a game nothing more.im outta here

I too have seen then once. But I thought it was a another crapy lag. He was standing next to the principle's office. He ran alittle then just dissaperad :O! I thought it was a ghost or somethin too. Sega needs to lighten it up a little. Where not wit the russian mofia for god sakes.

Or maybe his friend equipped it offline and never unequipped it before going online. ;)

I haven't experienced the "Saying what others say" thing, but I know in the lobby I've walked around without even touching my analog. I'd be eating, typing, or just waiting there, and my character just starts moving... o_o

i dont know of its true or not, but i've been hearing about a guy dressed in weird clothing nmaed MR. GUU : any truth to this? on a board at gamefaqs.com , a user reported his character was deleted by this MR. GUU , but his new one is lvl 100 already , so maybe he's just lyin

Gameshark users arent wusses ! So what if they use GS, big deal. Why would you care about what others are doing. I bet you have used GS before so quit complaining !

Yeah that happens to me, im typing something in the lobby and my character moves around. I think that might be because another player is coming online and you're where he is supposed to show up. But that doesn't make sense cuz you can move through other players anyway.

I have no clue what 2 say abou this except that i think we might as wel call these dudes in white The Snic team "poolice". heh, heh
If you have AIM Im me so we can talk about this dude. My SN is SSJTrunks1400

[Telboy007]

I don't know about the techy stuff but I have this problem all the time if anyone playing in the game is from France (I'm not being anti France!!!) my DC just will not pick them up and update their actions, sometime they will appear at switches or in the middle of the room, sometimes the blue arrow just isn't on the map yet they are in the game and talking.... very bizarre and annoying as it ruins the game.
Laters,
Entropy Lvl 85 Hunter

hmm about the no name guy I met him too he was really nice said he liked to be called god but he said he didnt work for sega hmm same guy? you decide

[Sam]

Well, im not sure if it was a hacker or anything but in the middle of the principles office and the wall outside of it i saw the rays the heaven punisher come down. it repeated until i had finally left the room. later on, i was playing in the ruins and I saw a white humar. i kept on talking about it but no one else said they could see him. i noticed he was using a heaven punisher but not doing damage. Then i thought to my self for a second. Why would a humar be using a heaven punisher???? i havn't encountered him agiain ever since then either. wierd...

It is just a glitch, i play with my friend all the time and he uses a heavens punisher, and ever since the NEW HAPPY EASTER EGGS!! when ever he uses the gun on Ragol I can see it in town both the shot and the special... it looks like its coming from by the transport tp the principal... im sure the ghost people are the same type of deal...
sega wouldnt waste time like that, they can do it with out going to such an extreme measure as that and if they wanted to observe game play ...... WOULDNT THEY JUST PLAY?

This doesn't make any sense. If Sega wanted to watch in game, why would they let you see them? Whatever it is, it certainly isn't a "game cop".

Gameshark is pure evil. It's not how the game was meant to be played. Those guys that needed 9999 or Infinte HP with all that hack crap just to stay alive must really suck at PSO. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. If you really suck that badly at PSO, go try an easier game.

This site is a joke for making this msg. its a easy thing to pull off. but the guy cant see you and cant talk to u. he can just walk around and hope he is in a spot were u r.
^
DOT & ZERO
People call me DOT

[vahid]

how do they dupe offline! how a dumb @$$ its called GS(gameshark) its pretty simple too but theers that 1 problem of them duping then the saved memory on your char becomes currpted, but its possible to do it off-line i have tons of friends who do it

[Vertigogo]

I'm not sure if this is what the news story refers to, however, it was quite odd. Upon entering a game, I could only see the translucent silhoutte of one of the players. Apparently, his character's image was not loaded into my game, but I was still able to talk to him. All of the other people playing could see him, so this occurence was most likely a result of my bad internet connection losing a packet of data. When we defeated Falz, his pose didn't appear, and I was able to snag a screenshot of it. If anyone is interested, I might be able to post it somewhere.

[Telboy007]

The heaven's punisher makes the game go screwy, thats all there is to say on the matter.

[Akira_Fujiyama]

First It could possibly be a Sega patroller because I have a friend who told me about it. And It may be heavy server lag.
Now this would happen with the fact that you can walk through each other in the lobby and the color pallete. I have seen people appear dead in the lobby or spells being cast in the lobby with no person there well they are still in the battle area. With how they have the color pallete with heavy lag the disc is still reading fast and putting other colors together taht aren't there. Now I also think it could be the thing that the servers are sending false information. Many times my character has started walking when I was no where near the control stick. I have also been creating a team and my character walks away from the counter while the menu is up. But no one knows for sure. But why would it constantly be a white HuMar?
Either that or we have ghosts invading the PSO servers! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! Run for your very lives!!! We are all doomed!!!
LOL!

[Arcanite]

I think that sega should not be patrolling us. If sega put theivery and duping able to do in the game then what is wrong with it. Im not revealing my online neme because you all will not play with me because i am a master theif with 57 rares. ANd no they are not all the same. I think sega is really cool for adding this feature in the game so whats wrong with stealing.

Come on, man. Thats lame. 57 people worked hard for those weapons and you just take them like their yours. Just because you can do it doesnt make it right. Theives Suck!

[Tyrant]

as much as i hate theifs heds right sega would probably NOT ban theifs dupers yes,but theifs no duping is ileagel theifary is immoral........

[Jet_Fonewmn]

I didnt say ban them, But theyre THE LOWEST FORM OF PSO LIFE. Theyre beneath cheaters, Beneath dupers, Beneath soccer moms who play the game and are at lvl 4, Beneath Everyone! I dont know why you would want to brag about being a thief, Its like bragging about being a telemarketer or prostitute. And whats this Master Thief Crap? "Master" Theif. HA! Quit acting like its actually a skill to wait until someone dies, take thier weapon and log off. Master theif. At least i can say my name online without fear of people hating me in Pso. The names Jet, and watch out theives, Your days are numbered!

Why would Sega patrol it that way? Why have a 'ghost' character, why not just watch games invisibly, or better yet let their "unjust items" flags take care of cheaters.

I have had the same thing happen to me. Me and a friend were in a password game and we both saw a white hp bar flash on for a split second we heard the same sound you get when a player joins the team and a bit of lag.then we were in the mines killing stuff and we saw things dying behind us.
Then we continued a conversation we were having earlier about cloning this guy offered me duped stuff and said to me "i wanna clone your god/ability so we both have 4" i repeated this to my friend and then my character was biited off and i could no longer use him so it has to be sega patrolling because who else would throw me off for suspected duping

it would seem that sega takes this game way more seriously them most of the users. i mean, if this is a game and nothing more, then why would sega even take the time, or pay people the money to monitor games in progress. I have seen the translucent character before, once or twice. nothing happened, but he was there, he flashed on the screen for about a second or two. There are many rumors about what sega is doing to stp cheating, and i'm for the haulting of GS or xploder or what have you. PK CK and BSOD is the main problem i believe. This must be stopped, but to haunt users to the point that the game is not enjoyable? is this a wise move by sega? I know many users who are so worried they have a duped item by one means or another, they sell off thier entire inventory, or just dont have the same fun factor that they had before whil playing the game. if sega reads this message, let it be known that the users are not having a good time inside the police stae and the number of users who have not run into a hacked or duped item at some point in thier PSO lives, is very very low. happy gaming!! from a owner of 7 characters and way over 1000 hours played :) DIE FALZ DIE!!

[Xavier]

Sega may be patrolling the games but it wont really matter. How many people will still play ver 1 when ver 2 hits the streets on July 11? Not too many I'd say. We paid about $60 each for ver 1 now were going to do it again? It doesn't make much sense to me!

NO IM THE MASTER THIEF.......and peeps who dont like thieves should just stay the hell off PSO thivevery is the life blood of the game. Yo wanna be master thief we mabe need to do a couple of jobs together. LOOK FOR a midget named SERGE blue DBZ hair and a black suit

[thewise]

Sega is patrolling but from what i understand they have normal old chars except they game them names like sonic tails knuckles,exc you will know couse of the name and the first thing they do is ask 4 your cards if u ask if they are sega cops they dont answer they just leave.

Well, you deserved it.

[fyrewyre]

uh uh those are xploder users on ghost servers. (so i've heard)

sega does patroll the game but they have a character just like every one else.I know one he has at least two chars he gave me his card the other day. the name of 1 of his chars is quite obvious. I agree with the screwd graffics idea.

[Jepp027]

shut it xavier you have no say in this