What do you all think of sever side saving now?

[Saligun]

Well Welll Well...What do you know server side saving doesn't seem to be living up to what alot of you have said it was...Very Safe...I always know server side saving couldn't possible be any safer the having your hard earned stuff on your own memory card(Sure a memory card isn't perfect)but with people getting stuff ripped off right out of there own rooms it make me think servers side saving is a joke.And given how you have to work twice as hard to level up and takes alot longer to make any meaning mesta online plus trying to raise your PM to 80 it just make it hurt alot more.You can say .I don't care if i lose my stuff.and i know you would be lying to me.you have all played for weeks to find or earn rare stuff only to have a few asses rip your room off...It my only be 0 and 1's but where paying 10 bucks a months for um.so if someones stealing are stuff they need to be banned or something...

I play online to and this makes me feel like there's no point at all trying to be successful online knowing that my rare hard earned stuff could be ripped off or deleted because of a server side glitch...

The real sad fact is it only takes a few to ruin it for the rest of us.

[Bleemo]

Just because data is saved through Sega's own servers, doesn't mean that it is hack proof.

World of Warcraft has encountered, over it's life, far more hacking/duping than PSU will in years(If it lasts that long.). The company's response is what defines safety.

[McLaughlin]

I'll take being robbed over data corruption any day.

[VelosofLight]

Yeah, I think I'd really rather a few problems online instead of the massive hacking with client-side saves.

[Laranas]

If it were clientside there would be people changing their lvls, types, PAs... the whole nine

[PALRAPPYS]

I dunno... it was nice to be on Memo's, so we wouldn't have to worry about the hax and all, but I haven't encountered anything bad yet for me, so I'm fine. I do hope Sega will do something about the hacking now though.

[AeraLure]

On 2006-12-17 19:24, Laranas wrote:
If it were clientside there would be people changing their lvls, types, PAs... the whole nine



Agreed. This is at least better than an environment where Gamesharks and deveices of that sort simply work for a range of things. Note I just said better. I expected a bit more, but its by and large in SEGA's hands as to how well its taken care of.

[RuPiKa]

It is not like this is something new. PSO all versions had "Hacking" problems. DC, BSOD, FSOD, and others. NOLing (Ver.2)was about the same thing, if not worse. Having your character reset to a Lvl 5, losing all your equipped items and returning to the lobby(everyone knowing exactly what just happened to you). At least now you still have your skills, LVL and identity to work your way back up.
No, It dosen't help that it is pay to play without a sense of safty. But as long as "X" gets paid there isn't a need for "X" to make any major movements against it. Corporate pride has nothing to do with it. It comes down to making money. Like every other busines.

[MaKaVeLi_X]

Hacking should slow down a bit I think, but if this was client side this game would be dead already.

[Pengfishh]

I just love that I don't have to worry about losing my hard earned weapons because my power went out. Hacking can be ignored.

[ezcactus]

Well, one can hope that moving everything server side means they keep logs of things such as what gets transfered in/out of your room, shop transactions, visitors, PM levels, and other stuff.

If not... then whats my 10 dollars going to? :

[AeraLure]

On 2006-12-17 21:27, ezcactus wrote:
Well, one can hope that moving everything server side means they keep logs of things such as what gets transfered in/out of your room, shop transactions, visitors, PM levels, and other stuff.

If not... then whats my 10 dollars going to? :


I wonder about that sometimes. How can hundreds of millions of meseta be brought into the game or onto any one account through duping and it not set off some sort of flag in a report run off of server logs? They arent run often enough to be remotely relevant? They arent checked often enough to be of use or arent checked at all without a documented report coming to them first? There arent any logs at all? Kind of makes me wonder, but I try not to wonder anymore.

[Garnet_Moon]

At least with server side I can get my items back from being hacked if I submit a report. Can't do it if your memory card dies.

*reads cue on the monitor*Oh? Oh... uh... so we can't get our stuff or chars back if they are tampered with? Well what in the hell is this monthly fee going to? Their wallets?

<_<;;;

[DoubleJG]

Server side saving prevents crazy stuff like stat modding and Battle Leveling, all that insane stuff which existed on PSO.

I do miss the offline/online character thing though. But, it's a small sacrifice to pay I suppose.

[DarkSeph]

....3 words...

It F#$%ing Sucks!

Why? Do you really need a why?....

....ok, if you do then think about this.......... What has ALREADY happened in Japan.......they f#$%ed things up and had to reset everything and yeah.......by by char, parts, etc.......guess they must really love the game cuz that would have bumbed me out to the point of selling the game........so if that were to ever happen again do you think they would give a damn? No Sir! They would continue screwing everyone out of money and we'd allllllll start over again.... THAT's why I hate server side saving.......regardless of the impact it makes on cheaters (which I DO appreciate their efforts) but it leaves us all hanging on the hope they wont screw us all......and If I were to quit for a couple months in the future or something cuz I felt like it.....they could delete my char off the server.......

It just sucks! And it's the same with a lot of SEGA games now....take Chromehounds.......I don't even know if I have my game save anymore cuz I haven't been on in awhile but the offline portion is crap! so online is Awesome but nothing is saved and you can't even play of course unless your online......at least it's free but still.....do you see my point?

[EphekZ]

I think it's great, yeah woopdedoo hacking, all I really care about is that when I d/c I don't lose a hour or two of playing or any rare I may have found.

[ViciousXUSMC]

omg if it was client side saving it would be so much worse. people running around with slavious swords, max lvl and max stats... flying on unicorns and wearing overcoats..

yeah.

[Ryudo]

USE THE FUCKING REPORT FORM AND GET A ROLLBACK

Genius.

[happy_cricket]

On 2006-12-17 19:16, Saligun wrote:
Well Welll Well...What do you know server side saving doesn't seem to be living up to what alot of you have said it was...



Someone never played PSO DC.

[DarkSeph]

........it is a definate improvement........but they should still A: let people have the option to save their file and play "offline" perminantly with that file if they so choose, and if they want to go back online they have to play with the server file only! and B: make it possible to play with someone "besides" a goofy guy if they choose to play offline!

[-Dainslef-]

Sega does rush jobs and makes beautiful games with major programming errors. Then they release their broken games on systems without hard drives so that it can't be patched over, and the game gets ruined by hackers and glitches.

<3

[Silenced]

People who are saying that server side saving is bad highly supprise me. Lets compare the two possiblities on a few major points of concern:

Duping / Character hacking / all that jazz:
Server side compared to client side all of these should be greately reduced. True, some if it must have occured by now, but at least there is some way to control it rather than no way. We can consider it a tie for now since SEGA seems to be doing little about it.

Character / Item Loss or Deletion:
Server side: people can steal your stuff, but from the number of reports this seems to occur rarely and can be avoided by using mule characters and not selling stuff in shops. Your character level / appearence / identity are pretty much safe unless SEGA decides to delete them, although I get this feeling that's HIGHLY unlikely to occur. Maybe if you didn't play for more than a year. Also, major resets are also probably not gonna happen, or if they happen they will be for the best since the game will probably be IMMENSLY hacked for them to do such a thing.
Client side: have you ever had your memory card character file corrupted by a FSOD? I have. Guess what? There is NOTHING worse that this short of your guild card file also getting deleted. Seriously. It sucks. And knowing how buggy SEGA's games are, I find it would be very easy for such corruptions to occur. And then everything's gone down the drain. Chances are much higher you'll lose everything with client side as opposed to server side.

Being able to play offline:
Well, client side wins here, obviously, since it offers it. But if you have a stable internet connection, I don't see what the big deal is.


So that pretty much covers it. Server side provides so many advantages while only losing offline playability (realistically you shouldn't consider SEGA deleting your character as a valid possibility) that this discussion is pretty pointless. If you need more evidence, just look at what every other major company is doing. Do you think it's cheaper for them to do server side saving? Of course not. But they know that they'll have far less customer satisfaction with client side, so they do it despite the expenses. Why else would anyone pay more to provide server side saving if it would not satisfy their customers?

[MORB]

Character stored server side is a must. But, it's not enough if you fuck up the general architecture of the game.

As far as I know (after visiting some "specialized" websites), they pull off money dupes etc. by altering client memory. This should not be possible ever unless the programmers at sonic team are unredeemable morons.

Likewise, the chat hack that allow a player to impersonate another should not be possible in any way, shape or form regardless how hard you rape the game client.

Ultimately, your ip should be the only thing the server relies upon to determine which player sent a particular chat message, and so it shouldn't be hackable from the client side
(I'm not considering any potential buffer overrun based attack on the server because broomop and the likes don't strike me as the sharpest knives in the drawer, they are merely action replay or similar codemonkeys who know how to use memory search and altering functions)

It can only be caused by a sonic team farkup at that point.

As far as I know, dupes in WoW were only ever caused by exploiting server side bugs, that have been fixed. They don't rely on the client or on such retarded things as gameguard. Sonic Team has been proven repeatedly for the past 6 years that the client is not inviolable, whatever they do. Therefore the game servers should never take what the client says at face value. Is it so hard to understand?



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: MORB on 2006-12-18 06:24 ]</font>

[Akaimizu]

I agree. But it's easy to sum up for me. I'm not a afraid, for my data, to actually play with strangers on PSU. Plain and simple. That NOL stuff in PSO was pretty much enough to kill any aspect of truly exploring and trying to group with other people I didn't know. It was to the point that if you weren't already an establish friend of mine, I wasn't partying with you.

Character data overwriting is, by far, the worst thing I've seen on an online game. And stuff like that only existed in spades, on client side saving.

[Realmz]

On 2006-12-18 01:27, -Dainslef- wrote:
Sega does rush jobs and makes beautiful games with major programming errors. Then they release their broken games on systems without hard drives so that it can't be patched over, and the game gets ruined by hackers and glitches.

<3



hi, welcome to every online game ever http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif

[MORB]

On 2006-12-18 07:21, Akaimizu wrote:
I agree. But it's easy to sum up for me. I'm not a afraid, for my data, to actually play with strangers on PSU. Plain and simple.

There are very annoying things, which you currently really have no way to protect yourself from:

- people stealing your stuff from your room and zero-ing your PM. Given the time and effort needed to levelup the PM, it is a pretty strong loss of data.

- the economy becoming a joke because ridiculous amounts of money are put in circulation.

This will tend to an end-result of money worth nothing, everything with ridiculously high prices and everyone with ridiculous amount of money - and you'll have to jump on the bandwagon if you want to keep the ability to synth items, thus in effect a whole interesting part of the gameplay (the economics of selling stuff to other players) will be neutered and rendered irrelevant, ultimately rendering the game less interesting.

[McLaughlin]

What astonishes me is that the game allows each client to spawn the monsters, and not the server. Everyone is hitting something, but nothing's in the same place.

DarkSeph, what the hell are you talking about?

[Akaimizu]

On 2006-12-18 07:42, MORB wrote:
There are very annoying things, which you currently really have no way to protect yourself from:

- people stealing your stuff from your room and zero-ing your PM. Given the time and effort needed to levelup the PM, it is a pretty strong loss of data.

- the economy becoming a joke because ridiculous amounts of money are put in circulation.

This will tend to an end-result of money worth nothing, everything with ridiculously high prices and everyone with ridiculous amount of money - and you'll have to jump on the bandwagon if you want to keep the ability to synth items, thus in effect a whole interesting part of the gameplay (the economics of selling stuff to other players) will be neutered and rendered irrelevant, ultimately rendering the game less interesting.


These are very valid fears, though whether this actually becomes the wide-spread reality, is unknown. There's many fixable conditions here that Sega can work with. Still, the NOLing thing plays on a whole different fear level. In that case, once it happens Sega nor you could do anything about it. Nor could they fix it up, in the future.

The PM thing can be bad, though not widely exploited like NOL was. But fortunately more reparable. High levels and non-increasing PM costs helps that out, considerably. And careful consideration over who gets let in your room, also avoids the problem. The alternative (PSO) had issues with no other avoidance than to shut yourself off from pretty much everybody else.

So while one situation can be bad, this whole issue is not about the fact there are things to fix, but how bad things are in comparison to the alternative. And for that reason alone, non of those valid worries you listed even touch the bad stuff that happened in PSO.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Akaimizu on 2006-12-18 08:39 ]</font>

[Kent]

Server-side saving is probably the biggest improvement in the online Phantasy Star games that has been made, since the initial Dreamcast release. People complain about how rampant cheating is on here - odds are, they haven't seen what the original Dreamcast Version 1 was like.

Remember the original Diablo? That, if not worse.

The "hacking" in PSU isn't nearly as overblown as people are making it seem. Granted, it is a problem, but it's not the widespread viral infection it was back in PSO. In relative terms, it's pretty minor. Sonic Team does seem to be pretty lazy, on getting things patched up, though.

[mogshaz]

how exactly would a rollback fix the problem? You might remove the duped meseta that hackers have collected, but they could just dupe more.

edit: used the wrong quote

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: mogshaz on 2006-12-18 08:41 ]</font>

[Saligun]

Well i'm glad to see that i'm not the only one who doesn't see Server Side Saving as a Perfectly SAFE thing.When people can steal your room full of stuff,and you can't do a dang thing about it,and if you do get robbed,no ones gonna replace your loss,then all you efforts go in the toliet.No wonder they put one in the game,so put a toliet in your room so you'll be remined what you face ever time you log off,and thats the possiblity of having nothing but a empty room to return to,unless they steal your room to...

[Akaimizu]

Nobody disagrees with that. In some case or form, every online RPG get hit with something or other and fixes come. As long as there are nasty people out there, who get their joys off at someone else's expense; you have to deal with junk.

On the other hand, the REAL discussion, in this topic, is not about infallability, but the level of security between offline saves and online saves. That's it. Nothing else. The topic reads, what do you think of online saves, and then discusses about offline saves in comparison. I thought that was what we were discussing here, not a case of arguing a bullet proof situation.

[MORB]

On 2006-12-18 08:35, Akaimizu wrote:
These are very valid fears, though whether this actually becomes the wide-spread reality, is unknown. There's many fixable conditions here that Sega can work with.

Oh, Sega certainly has many options when it comes to fixing these holes.

Don't trust the client, that should be pretty obvious. Yet it apparently wasn't obvious to them when they developed the game (especially since they decided to rely on a client-side protection aka GG), so I have little reason to think that it is any more obvious to them now.

How can we trust them to be competent enough to fix their obvious security holes if they were incompetent enough to have them in the first place?

[Saligun]

I started this thread so i can add my extra two cents whenever i need to,but the topic has built in flexabilty.if my stuff is saved sever side and someone one else can clean me out while i'm off line by just going to my room then i highly question the value and saftey of sever side saving verses saving on a memory card.(with a memory card i could backup my data with servers side saving a loss means i'm left with nothing).



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saligun on 2006-12-18 09:17 ]</font>

[Akaimizu]

I wish. But PSO did not allow you to save off offline data like that. Your offline data could not be moved, copied, or anything. All you had was one file, and if that file got screwed, you were screwed.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Akaimizu on 2006-12-18 09:19 ]</font>

[Chronosv2]

On 2006-12-18 09:16, Saligun wrote:
I started this thread so i can add my extra two cents whenever i need to,but the topic has built in flexabilty.if my stuff is saved sever side and someone one else can clean me out while i'm off line by just going to my room then i highly question the value and saftey of sever side saving verses saving on a memory card.(with a memory card i could backup my data with servers side saving a loss means i'm left with nothing).

It's a bug which will hopefully be fixed soon.
Would you rather risk being NOL'ed (or equivelent)?

I'd much rather lose all my things than lose my character and all the hard work I've put into it. Items can easily be relaced--just farm some meseta or items, etc. Your character has a lot more than meseta and items pumped into it.

So you have to ask yourself: Your items or your character?

And were it not for Server-Side saving, hacking and duping would be rampant, and then this game could be classified as dead.

[Saligun]

I think we may need some clairity here about server side saving to better understand how it works and who is who maintains it,and how seriously do the maintainers take the job of protecting peoples accounts and inventories while stored in there databanks.

Can any of you PC enlighted tech savy experts fill us in on the topic so we can better understand the ups and downs of this topic...THANKS.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saligun on 2006-12-18 09:33 ]</font>

[OMGTank]

Server Side Saving > Client Side by a far. PSU is the only MMO I've played ever played to really have this kind of problem, which leads me to believe that it's Sega's fault the most. Though to be fair I hadn't played WoW till last summer so most bugs were fixed I'm sure. But GW and XI I played since their respective releases and I never had this big of a scare with hacking. I'm pretty sure it's just Sega being lazy and not fixing these problems.

[RoninJoku]

personally, i've never liked the idea for server-side saving... I like having my character on a little card that I can keep at my side if I so choose. But I'm just weird like that.

[ezcactus]

On 2006-12-18 09:31, Saligun wrote:
I think we may need some clairity here about server side saving to better understand how it works and who is who maintains it,and how seriously do the maintainers take the job of protecting peoples accounts and inventories while stored in there databanks.

Can any of you PC enlighted tech savy experts fill us in on the topic so we can better understand the ups and downs of this topic...THANKS.


Storing stuff server side doesn't magically make you immune to hacks and exploits. However, it still has a huge advantage over stole data client side (ie, your memory card).

It's the fact Sega can keep logs and backups.

The old system meant if your character got corrupted, hacked, etc., you had no way of proving you actually had a character. You were screwed unless you had copied over to another memory card.

By storing server side, they can keep logs and back ups themselves. So if someone glitches into your room and wrecks everything, you can contact a GM. He'll be able to look at the logs, and notice someone else besides you were in your room when it happened (proving it wasn't you). Then they can load up a back up of your character from a few days ago and everything will be back as it was. Of course you'll lose anything you've gain recently, but it's better then "Sorry but we can't help you."

Of course, this is assuming Sega is actually doing this. If not, then I'll just go ahead and cancel my account, because logs/character backups are MMO 101, and if you can't afford to do it, then you shouldn't be making an MMO. Period.

[Akaimizu]

Too bad you couldn't get a complete character copied onto another memory card unless you hacked something, in the first place, thus making your data kind of invalid. Any data loss in PSO was pretty much it. There was no valid backup measure.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Akaimizu on 2006-12-18 10:57 ]</font>

[Silenced]

On 2006-12-18 09:31, Saligun wrote:
I think we may need some clairity here about server side saving to better understand how it works and who is who maintains it,and how seriously do the maintainers take the job of protecting peoples accounts and inventories while stored in there databanks.

Can any of you PC enlighted tech savy experts fill us in on the topic so we can better understand the ups and downs of this topic...THANKS.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Saligun on 2006-12-18 09:33 ]</font>


I don't get what you are asking. Maintains what exactly?

I think you're just sore that someone robbed your room, and think that PSU would have been a better experience for you if you had a character on a memory card, thinking that this would magically protect that character.
I'm sorry for your loss, but don't let it blind you into thinking client side would make PSU a better experience. It wouldn't, trust me.

Server side saving just means that your character data is stored on the server. Usually there are some extra things added to this, such as back-ups of your character. I'm confident SEGA does have back-ups... otherwise I don't see how they would be able to roll-back the game (I think they did at some point). But yeah, they must have back-ups, otherwise if some destruction-bent hacker went ahead and got into their servers and nuked the shit out of everything, and they couldn't recover from a back up, they would lose a major portion of their subscribers.
Besides these aspects, I don't see what else there is to say about server side vs client side saving. Look at it this way: the "imaginary" memory card holding your character is constantly connected to the network. Backups are also made the way you could've illegaly made backups of your character files using various memory card readers or whatever.

The development team at SEGA just doesn't know how to do some things... but the problem is unlike other MMOs they can't just release a patch and fix duping because of friggin PS2 and it not having a HD. Although I think that meseta duping, the way it was described, should still be fixible with a server side patch (if it really is a trick that involving NPCs and some invalid value being sent by clients). I'm not sure how item duping works. If someone wants to message me a link I'd much appreciate it, since I'm into game development but haven't done any MMOs yet, and I'd like to see how it's done so I can prevent it. (if you think I'm bent on using it to dupe items in PSU I can assure you I wont (especially since I don't even own the game yet)



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Silenced on 2006-12-18 14:14 ]</font>

[Chronosv2]

On 2006-12-18 14:13, Silenced wrote:
... but the problem is unlike other MMOs they can't just release a patch and fix duping because of friggin PS2 and it not having a HD.

*sigh*
The PS2 version can be patched. That's why we have a 2.5MB "System File". Also, all the exploits are PC-side. Sony's DNAS service checks the PS2's memory to ensure that there are no cheat devices attatched or loaded in memory. If DNAS discovers a discrepency, it spits out an error at you.

And because I'm not the type to post debate/information without some backup, this might be an interesting read to those that seem to think that the PS2 is the source of all of PSU's problems:
http://boardsus.playstation.com/playstation/board/message?board.id=ps2na&message.id=57045

[Ronzeru]

This is why you guys should of got the 360 version. It's way harder for them to fuck with this one, and the problems are easier to resolve. If it's connected to PC, it's like a large target. Way easier to access the PC/PS2 version.

[Silenced]

The irony of it is, when the game finally arrives at my "door" in a few weeks, ill be playing it on a PC with an XBOX 360 controller -_-

How sad.

[Ras]

On 2006-12-18 06:22, MORB wrote:
As far as I know (after visiting some "specialized" websites), they pull off money dupes etc. by altering client memory. This should not be possible ever unless the programmers at sonic team are unredeemable morons.


Exactly, they're morons. They're making the same mistakes that the original online games did in the 90's: trusting the client with anything important.

You walk into a store, hack a memory value in your client to say you have 255 scape dolls, and you sell them. On top of the fact that you can't even carry that many, the server is perfectly a-ok with the transaction without even checking to make sure you have the items in your inventory?!

You hack your client to say you have 99 junolines, drop them on the ground, perfectly cool with the server? Apparently! Pick them up and now you really have them! Take 99 copernias out of your PM even though you only have 1? Why not.

These exploits are literally two lines of server-side code to fix, and no one that makes mistakes like that should be allowed near a compiler, let alone have a job as a programmer.

Is Sega really trusting Gameguard exclusively? You know how Gameguard works? It scans your processes for a list of hack programs by examining strings, file names, file sizes, function imprints, etc. Every time Gameguard updates to block a new list of things, the hackers change some function names, obfuscate their code a bit more, and recompile their cheat programs. That's it. Anyone who takes the time to modify their own cheat program is virtually immune to Gameguard updates.

Server side storage is great when done correctly, but that isn't the case for PSU.

Disclaimer: The above information isn't going to help anyone cheat, it's just educational for people who aren't familiar with what's going on.