Item: Murphy's Law and game makers trying to combat cheating

[SnAPPUrU-nyan-ko]

Diablo II by Blizzard:
New Year's evening, a few years ago, a major exploit went rampant in the online-only character servers. You see, even with the files saved only on the server, there are still cheaters. People could access other peoples' characters without the password and without the account name. No special software was needed. No hacking ability was needed. All they needed was the name of the character.

And so, people accessed other peoples' online-only characters and ravaged their items. Battle.net didn't even do a temporary shutdown to cease damages. People were robbing each other's items for quite a few days, I think. Hardcore players were slain by normal mode zombies.

And we get to the 50/50 decision: Do we rollback to a previously backed up image of everyone's characters? Mind you, this would cancel out any progress done after the backup was made; so, people would lose some items and levels.

Nah, instead, a voluntary rollback was initiated. If you wanted your characters rolled back, you typed in a server command to flag your account. If you didn't want to, you wouldn't get rolled back.

The people who volunteered to be rolled back transferred their items to accounts that wouldn't be rolled back. Dupe.

But, Diablo II's online-only server might have ID'd items back then. I don't know, but it wasn't effective. Half of the damage done was by people who stole items in the first place. Taking away the items again would just restore the damage. Oh well, I guess it's either roll back everything, or roll back nothing, bitches.

[SnAPPUrU-nyan-ko]

PSO by I don't remember:
JP v1: If you don't save properly before quitting the game, you'd lose all of your items.
US+JP v1, v2: Use a cheating device and you can create items and kill other peoples' data.

Pipipi this'll be an easy post. PSO stores the game data on the user's memory card, or hard drive. You're a step behind Diablo II.

Why do you even bother to delete peoples' items if they don't save and quit properly? That hasn't been doing any good. Please turn it off in Episode I & II & III & IV.

[SnAPPUrU-nyan-ko]

Dark Sun Online on the Total Entertainment Network by I don't know:
Character data was mostly saved on the server. Users could store items on their character sort of like in Diablo II. There were easy-to-obtain items known as bags, that took up only 1 space in the inventory, but held 6 more spaces within themselves.

By dropping the bag on the ground and picking it up repeatedly, the lag that existed between the server and client would eventually lead to the bag and its contents being duplicated. Or maybe just crappy server back in the 90's.

People have been abusing lag in all three games.

I wish I could create a puurfect algorithm for handling items and data in an online game. Too bad I have no voice, and too bad the people that make PSO haven't changed much :3...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: SnAPPUrU-nyan-ko on 2003-03-03 03:18 ]</font>

[Wewt]

On 2003-03-03 02:58, SnAPPUrU-nyan-ko wrote:
Why do you even bother to delete peoples' items if they don't save and quit properly? That hasn't been doing any good. Please turn it off in Episode I & II & III & IV.

I guess it was meant to be an anti-cheating method they had made. If items wouldn't delete when you didn't save properly, and you'd revert back to the old save, you would have the simplest, yet most effective way of duping. Too bad you couldn't rely on the game not crashing so often.

[SnAPPUrU-nyan-ko]

:3.
PSO Episode I & II by I forgot:
The game saves a second time when you join a team. This saves the same wrong way as version 1 did: Th game doesn't halt when the save occurs. You know, when a FSOD code comes out, we're gonna be fawked.

And item duplication still happens with this new saving sceme in effect. And people lose their characters to the game freezing during this unstable save.

Please make the save a part of the disc, and make the game halt when it occurs, if you still feel the need to even keep it, in episode I & II & II & IV.

[Zophar]

Here's an idea to stop duping in PSOv3; modify the item dropping feature. First of all, when do you really need to drop items? The only practical reason is when you have 30/30 items in your inventory. They could make it so when you 'drop' an item, it simply deletes it. This way you wouldn't have to worry about a full inventory or duping.

This would eliminate all current forms of item duplication on PSOv3.1. As far as I know, the only way one could dupe would be through third-party means.

[SkyHawkX]

Fux yes. Gibe FSOD.