Most of you might remember that closed thread (posted by MoMaN) about Blink.blink and his blatant maphack.
Well, I just met him today and despite that one might have hoped (that he quickly and swiftly got dealt with), he's still maphacking. Luckily I expected just as much and still raped him, but the whole ordeal sent me into nerd rage mode only comparable to -orb- so I made myself register on the Bnet board and post a long-winded OP about how Blizzard should crack down on hackers. After a quick PM exchange with Plexa, I decided to repost aforementioned topic here to ask for your support.
We need our voices to be heard. I don't want to wait on Warden going live (or if it's working now, it's doing a damn shameful job), I want support staff that deals with complaints quick and swift, just like in WoW (but perhaps a bit more competent). I don't want hackers run amok the beta, owning betakeys that should go to deserving fans, like the very ones TL has.
Thanks for taking your time with this, here's my post:
First off, hello everyone!
This is my first post here (I just made this account 'cause usually I browse this forum only, didn't feel the need to post / participate in the discussion yet), but please bear with me. The topic at hand made me want to raise my voice.
It's a widespread fact that you can already (and easily) find working maphacks for SC2, however, I didn't encounter any really obvious instances of maphacking so far (maybe because I'm at the top x % of the EU server, and people here usually are legit, they wouldn't want to tarninsh their reputation with using an imperfect hack, as they're notable players from SC1 / WC3 / other RTS' , you name it), but today I did.
(link to the replay at the end of my post)
Yes, the hack is imperfect. If you re-watch the replay from the hacker's POV, you'll see him checking things out in the fog of war all the time (SC1 had a much more sophisticated kind of MH, where it erased actions like this from the replay manually, so that it was a lot harder to detect. Or so I believe, I'm not an expert in this regard as I've never used a MH).
The question: what is Blizzard doing atm to stop this? Do you guys even have time (I know you have various tasks on your hands) to try and combat this at all? The reason I'm asking this is when I've met this certain opponent on the ladder, I already knew he was maphacking (due to another high-level EU player posting a topic on teamliquid.net asking for guidance about how to report the aforementioned offender). Much to my dismay, he was still BLATANTLY (and I really mean that!) using a maphack, not even trying to hide what he's doing...I only won 'cause I expected what he would be doing and countered it blindly (I failed to scout his proxy even though I knew it should be around).
I know it's a beta and all my stats are somewhat meaningless, but I want a hack-free competitive environment to play, compete, and test this game. Beta keys are still hard to come by, and undeserving people shouldn't have one. Ban them one by one if you must, and send out one to those die-hard fans who would enter any kind of silly competition just to test this game for You, Blizzard. Do not fail us, please show zero tolerance! (that's the only deterrent, we already know that from the history of SC1)
Cutting my rambling short, a short description of the blatant hacking behavior: PvP, Lost Temple. Opponent sends one of his first 6 probes right towards my mainbase (which could be a coincidence of course) but he just builds a pylon outside my cliff without even going up my ramp to check if I'm really there(he didn't meet a scouting probe sent my be either). If you watch it in his FPView it's clear that he's checking out my base and what I'm doing right from the start. Chat including me teasing him (because as I stated, I already knew he's maphacking due to a thread on TL.net), hoping that I'm actually wrong. I'm not, watch it.
Once again, I'm asking Blizzard to take immediate action. We can't have people like these on top of the platinum ladder, much less playing the Beta at all.
SC/BW/WC3 were all riddled with map hacks, clearly proving that the 'three strike's policy that blizzard has employed for some time simply does not work. If people have three chances to hack before they get banned, then the cost of buying another key to keep hacking for three more chances isn't as much as a deterrent. But if 6 times getting caught hacking meant getting 6 cd-keys banned I'm sure we would see a large decrease in their use. People say 'what about younger players who don't understand what this does to the game'.
1. If you are under 15 you shouldn't be playing a T rated game to begin with.
2. A simple message that can come up alongside the 'pick your skill level' dialog we already receive stating 'Use of a map hack or any other 3rd party software used to give you an unfair advantage in play will result in an immediate ban'
3. Implement an appeal system where-by players who legitimately did not know that a hack was running on their computer, or was not intentionally using it can appeal to Blizzard to have their key reinstated.
Overall I have to say that a one-strike you banned policy is the only way to deter people from hacking.
On April 18 2010 05:37 SichuanPanda wrote: Overall I have to say that a one-strike you banned policy is the only way to deter people from hacking.
They already got that, it is just that instead of banning people as soon as they find them they develop better ways of detecting it till they can ban almost everyone using that hack at once. You basically have to do it that way to keep the hackers in the dark about what you do, by striking too early you let most of the fish get away.
Not to mention that this is a beta meaning that they have no reason at all to ban the guy, instead they can use him to finetune their programs.
Edit: And I know there are many rampant hacks currently within wc3, but it was relatively hack free in the ladder for a long time, only the past few months have been bad. Don't know what happened.
On April 18 2010 05:37 SichuanPanda wrote: SC/BW/WC3 were all riddled with map hacks, clearly proving that the 'three strike's policy that blizzard has employed for some time simply does not work. If people have three chances to hack before they get banned, then the cost of buying another key to keep hacking for three more chances isn't as much as a deterrent. But if 6 times getting caught hacking meant getting 6 cd-keys banned I'm sure we would see a large decrease in their use. People say 'what about younger players who don't understand what this does to the game'.
1. If you are under 15 you shouldn't be playing a T rated game to begin with.
2. A simple message that can come up alongside the 'pick your skill level' dialog we already receive stating 'Use of a map hack or any other 3rd party software used to give you an unfair advantage in play will result in an immediate ban'
3. Implement an appeal system where-by players who legitimately did not know that a hack was running on their computer, or was not intentionally using it can appeal to Blizzard to have their key reinstated.
Overall I have to say that a one-strike you banned policy is the only way to deter people from hacking.
I agree with most of what you said except that if you are under 15, you should not play T rated games. I play games since I was like 4-5 and played pretty graphic games at a young age. Young gamers make up a huge part of the gaming industry!
I totally agree with you and "support" you, but don't kid yourself here. Doesn't matter if blizzard puts all their resources towards this.. there will always be a greasier nerd out there that can hack. Accept it or quit.
What is it, 12 years of bw now? Still maphackers. Good luck on the fight!
Blizz should definitely make it a 1 strike = ban rule and make a very clear warning explaining the consequences of hacking when people make their account.
On April 18 2010 07:00 Chunkybuddha wrote: I totally agree with you and "support" you, but don't kid yourself here. Doesn't matter if blizzard puts all their resources towards this.. there will always be a greasier nerd out there that can hack. Accept it or quit.
What is it, 12 years of bw now? Still maphackers. Good luck on the fight!
Yea but we have facilities like iCCup's antihack which eliminate the vast proportion of hackers. If blizzard aren't willing to take charge with it they can hand it over to the community since we can handle it.
On April 18 2010 07:00 Chunkybuddha wrote: I totally agree with you and "support" you, but don't kid yourself here. Doesn't matter if blizzard puts all their resources towards this.. there will always be a greasier nerd out there that can hack. Accept it or quit.
What is it, 12 years of bw now? Still maphackers. Good luck on the fight!
Yea but we have facilities like iCCup's antihack which eliminate the vast proportion of hackers. If blizzard aren't willing to take charge with it they can hand it over to the community since we can handle it.
Was that the case with iccup?? Or did blizzard contribute to that?
Blizzard does do a lot but most of the "high level" players that use these are using very exclusive hacks that only a select few know the code for. Most of the stuff Blizzard bans is unknown newbies using public hacks. They can't keep up with the amount there are which is sad, but they still do ban a lot of folks as well.
I have noticed a few that I have reported to their email have had their profiles disappear, wasn't instant but a few weeks later.
On April 18 2010 05:37 SichuanPanda wrote: 1. If you are under 15 you shouldn't be playing a T rated game to begin with.
If that were the case, we wouldn't be watching the day9 daily.
uh what?
day9 is in college. and even if he werent...wait i'm like fuckin confused.
He's probably thinking along the lines that Day[9] played SC when he was "too young" for it.
It doesn't really matter if kids are playing SC2, as long as Blizzard is stating that you shouldn't play this game under the age of X they are free to assume that everyone who plays it is at least X years old. So if a kid is maphacking his age won't be an excuse. The 1 strike rule doesn't need exceptions because kids are playing the game.
I really wish Blizzard would come out and say their thoughts on the issue of hacking. They've been oddly silent on the matter, which is kind of out of character for them. In WoW, they took very harsh stances on cheaters and their community managers made that very clear in posts.
To be honest, they are in a pretty good position of making SC2 a fair environment. The improved replay system makes catching hackers much easier and less disputable. What Blizz needs is a good reporting system.
It isn't a perfect system, but it's certainly an improvement over War3/BW ladder experiences (and possibly Diablo but I never played Diablo so I can't comment on that.)
It's beta and they are perhaps finetuning/working on warden. And since they have a anti-cheat system on the way it's a matter of time so saying that you want it now instead of later, well it's beta. I'm not trying to berate you or anything just saying that the beta period is for testing and working on alot of things. So just hang in there and try to not let the hackers get to you, coz they will get what they deserve later this year
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
This is what I said about keeping the beta secure from people trying to crack it, but lo and behold, 2 months later, no one's cracked it.
On April 18 2010 05:37 SichuanPanda wrote: SC/BW/WC3 were all riddled with map hacks, clearly proving that the 'three strike's policy that blizzard has employed for some time simply does not work. If people have three chances to hack before they get banned, then the cost of buying another key to keep hacking for three more chances isn't as much as a deterrent. But if 6 times getting caught hacking meant getting 6 cd-keys banned I'm sure we would see a large decrease in their use. People say 'what about younger players who don't understand what this does to the game'.
1. If you are under 15 you shouldn't be playing a T rated game to begin with.
2. A simple message that can come up alongside the 'pick your skill level' dialog we already receive stating 'Use of a map hack or any other 3rd party software used to give you an unfair advantage in play will result in an immediate ban'
3. Implement an appeal system where-by players who legitimately did not know that a hack was running on their computer, or was not intentionally using it can appeal to Blizzard to have their key reinstated.
Overall I have to say that a one-strike you banned policy is the only way to deter people from hacking.
point three is quite stupid to be honest.
Not knowing that you're not intentionally using a hack must be the worst excuse ever. Appeal systems aren't needed for this kind of stuff. They don't ban people because they *think* they *might* have been hacking. I'm pretty sure that they want to be rather sure of something like that before banning.
But meh, with the russians on their own server, the hacking shouldn't be that big of a problem(:p)
Hacking cannot be stopped and will not be stopped plain and simple, as soon as there is new security software to prevent it, the hackers just write a new version of the program to accommodate. The best thing you can hope for is a strong community of legitimate players, such as on Iccup who have a mutual agreement like an anti-hack software installed while they play together.
On April 18 2010 07:00 Chunkybuddha wrote: I totally agree with you and "support" you, but don't kid yourself here. Doesn't matter if blizzard puts all their resources towards this.. there will always be a greasier nerd out there that can hack. Accept it or quit.
What is it, 12 years of bw now? Still maphackers. Good luck on the fight!
Yea but we have facilities like iCCup's antihack which eliminate the vast proportion of hackers. If blizzard aren't willing to take charge with it they can hand it over to the community since we can handle it.
Was that the case with iccup?? Or did blizzard contribute to that?
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
On April 18 2010 06:56 virusak wrote: and why didn't you post this on the beta forums? User was banned for this post
Why was this guy banned for a serious and justified question? I think this post would get a lot more attention if it was posted in the SC2 Beta Forums instead of the SC2 Forums. Unless op posted it twice and provided only one link but I couldn't find it in the beta forums.
On April 18 2010 06:56 virusak wrote: and why didn't you post this on the beta forums? User was banned for this post
Why was this guy banned for a serious and justified question? I think this post would get a lot more attention if it was posted in the SC2 Beta Forums instead of the SC2 Forums. Unless op posted it twice and provided only one link but I couldn't find it in the beta forums.
For crying out loud read the thread. It IS posted on the SC2 Beta Forums and he was banned for failing to read the thread.
On April 18 2010 05:53 Klockan3 wrote: They already got that, it is just that instead of banning people as soon as they find them they develop better ways of detecting it till they can ban almost everyone using that hack at once. You basically have to do it that way to keep the hackers in the dark about what you do, by striking too early you let most of the fish get away.
Not to mention that this is a beta meaning that they have no reason at all to ban the guy, instead they can use him to finetune their programs.
Edit: And I know there are many rampant hacks currently within wc3, but it was relatively hack free in the ladder for a long time, only the past few months have been bad. Don't know what happened.
Klockan3 has a point. During the Beta phase, it's actually quite beneficial for Blizzard to leave these hackers in because you can test your code on their hacks. In the next patch, if this hacker gets dropped from his games, and Blizzard tracks this hacker getting dropped, Blizzard will know its code is working.
When the game goes live though, Blizzard might have to step up the banning because we are paying customers at that point and these hackers will ruin our experience. Right now, we are not paying customers so Blizzard owes nothing to us.
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
No one directly hacks banks anyway its a good example of something which DOESN'T happen and is infact secure. People steal customer details or have inside people working at banks, they don't 'hack' banks so i think some of you have been watching too many films.
Regardless, you can't stop maphacks cause of how the engine works. With first-person replays though you can now prove beyond a reasonable doubt if someone is obviously maphacking and i'm sure they will take this into account if someone is reported a few times. Of course people can still get away with smart maphacking aka only looking at your minimap and very rarely into the fog of war. But i'm guessing the majority of people are too stupid to do that. If you start bringing down harsh punishments on obvious ones it'll definitely make people think twice and keep the ladder fairly clean. Maybe not 100%, but i think maphacking can definitely be stopped a lot more than in SC1.
On April 18 2010 18:04 Ocedic wrote: The improved replay system makes catching hackers much easier and less disputable. What Blizz needs is a good reporting system.
Yes but any smart map hacker won't actually look at their base, or at least not click anything and just use the minimap to see if they are proxying, or when they are attacking, etc etc.
As long as blizzard continues to use an outdated system in how they handle replays and fog of war, (ie. allowing the replay hole), maphacks will continue to exist.
On April 18 2010 18:04 Ocedic wrote: The improved replay system makes catching hackers much easier and less disputable. What Blizz needs is a good reporting system.
Yes but any smart map hacker won't actually look at their base, or at least not click anything and just use the minimap to see if they are proxying, or when they are attacking, etc etc.
Hats off to the guy who can master this just so he can get away with hacking.
On April 18 2010 06:56 virusak wrote: and why didn't you post this on the beta forums? User was banned for this post
Why was this guy banned for a serious and justified question? I think this post would get a lot more attention if it was posted in the SC2 Beta Forums instead of the SC2 Forums. Unless op posted it twice and provided only one link but I couldn't find it in the beta forums.
For crying out loud read the thread. It IS posted on the SC2 Beta Forums and he was banned for failing to read the thread.
???
Sorry if I'm blind but I dont see it posted on SC2 beta forum at all.
SC2 forum != SC2 beta forum
SC2 beta forum constantly has blizzard employees checking and replying while I feel like noone really cares about the SC2 general froum.
Maybe I'm blind and he did post it in sc2 beta forum too, but in that case it should be included in the OP so yeah naib I think you should repost that in the sc2 beta forum. For that you wouldnt even have needed to create an account cause in that case you simply use ur SC2 beta accountname.
edit: OK now I looked at the automated ban list and you banned him for not reading the OP properly so yeah.. you should have read Unignore's post more thoroughly
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
No one directly hacks banks anyway its a good example of something which DOESN'T happen and is infact secure. People steal customer details or have inside people working at banks, they don't 'hack' banks so i think some of you have been watching too many films.
Regardless, you can't stop maphacks cause of how the engine works. With first-person replays though you can now prove beyond a reasonable doubt if someone is obviously maphacking and i'm sure they will take this into account if someone is reported a few times. Of course people can still get away with smart maphacking aka only looking at your minimap and very rarely into the fog of war. But i'm guessing the majority of people are too stupid to do that. If you start bringing down harsh punishments on obvious ones it'll definitely make people think twice and keep the ladder fairly clean. Maybe not 100%, but i think maphacking can definitely be stopped a lot more than in SC1.
Well, I just continued Random69's use of "hacking". "Hacking" is a very broad term anyways, and in the case of banks I am using it in this way: "somehow passing by security measures and acquiring money or data that can be sold". Doesn't matter if the security leak is technical or human.
On April 18 2010 06:56 virusak wrote: and why didn't you post this on the beta forums? User was banned for this post
Why was this guy banned for a serious and justified question? I think this post would get a lot more attention if it was posted in the SC2 Beta Forums instead of the SC2 Forums. Unless op posted it twice and provided only one link but I couldn't find it in the beta forums.
For crying out loud read the thread. It IS posted on the SC2 Beta Forums and he was banned for failing to read the thread.
It's not in the SC2 Beta forums, it's in the SC2 Gameplay Discussion forums.
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
Uh, I'm pretty sure people who create maphacks aren't in it for monetary gain. More often than not, it's because winning is that important to them, or they just get off on ruining other people's gaming experiences.
The argument that people make hacks for money doesn't really make sense in general. For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game? You can't use it in tournaments since it's extremely obvious when you use it, so there's effectively no way to make money off of such a program. And yet, people have made aimbots for virtually every FPS game out there. It's pretty clear that financial gain is the least of their concerns.
Come on. the value of sc2 beta key is close to gold on the stock market, unworthy people shouldn't be able to defile on of those. You did a great job OP, blizzard is used to deal with hackers but they are kind of busy right now so its always a good thing to warn them. Plus some devs could be pissed that their game is hacked even before its release.
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
Uh, I'm pretty sure people who create maphacks aren't in it for monetary gain. More often than not, it's because winning is that important to them, or they just get off on ruining other people's gaming experiences.
The argument that people make hacks for money doesn't really make sense in general. For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game? You can't use it in tournaments since it's extremely obvious when you use it, so there's effectively no way to make money off of such a program. And yet, people have made aimbots for virtually every FPS game out there. It's pretty clear that financial gain is the least of their concerns.
Ye this is kinda my point.
They dont hack for money, they hack because they can.
and because they can they ruin the game for others.
It quite simple, some people are just not able to cope with losing so they take every precaution not to lose, hence map hacks.
Humans are just a failed concept, the individual dream and idea is perfect in its design, but that is just where the problem lies, individual idea, needs, greeds, so as a whole we fail, because we need to use exploited means to gain a step ahead.
I just hope Blizzard will do something about it in the release version. If there's too many hackers, the whole ladder becomes a joke. I don't want it to become a joke, and hopefully Blizzard has a solution. Banning C-key accounts is definately a good deterent, but they need to crack down on hackers, chop a few head.
I always figured this boiled down to: a) don't play with assholes, and b) don't take online games seriously.
Short of a radical redesign of the networking model, it's impossible to stop or reliably detect cheating. You can only catch clumsy and crude methods.
To make an extreme example, you could run the game in a virtual machine and have a program outside of the VM examine the contents of the VM's memory. Everything inside the virtual machine thinks that the VM is a complete physical computer, and can't see anything going on outside of it. A program outside of the VM can look into the VM and examine anything going on inside.
As with anti-piracy measures, anti-cheating measures just challenge hackers, and make the problem more interesting and fun to crack. There is a theoretical bedrock where you can't touch them, and if you push them hard enough, they'll go there.
You can build an RTS to make maphacking impossible. What you'd need in any two-player game is a third "referee" computer that runs the actual game simulation, and only sends the player machines the information that their player is supposed to be allowed to see. There are serious technical challenges involved, and the game has to be designed from the ground up to support this.
Starcraft 2 is not built that way, therefore maphacks.
I would care to a lesser extent about this whole thing if I could choose who am I playing with. Without an AMM system, you could just avoid people you don't trust and still find more than enough challenging opponents.
But when there's an AMM system in play, and I get matched up vs assholes like this I simply can't help but rage and demand a solution asap.
Because, hell, I have goals. I want to rank up, I want to make myself known internationally and enjoy the moment while that lasts. But if I hadn't known this guy was a hacker beforehand, I would've just lost the game and got further away from my goal - not fair.
I know there always will be hackers. They're free to infest public games as they like, while the competitive scene plays where everyone is monitored to a sufficient extent (yes, this is a direct Bnet Pub - ICCup comparison). I would consider the top of the platinum ladder a competitive place (I would consider a lot other places competitive as well, you get my point hopefully ). I want the top few percentage of the ladder to be monitored constantly, and the abusers removed. Right now - because they hurt those who want to put their names out there to get recognized, and that's not just about beta testing, it's about a lot more. So yes, Blizzard indeed does owe me something here in my opinion.
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
Uh, I'm pretty sure people who create maphacks aren't in it for monetary gain. More often than not, it's because winning is that important to them, or they just get off on ruining other people's gaming experiences.
The argument that people make hacks for money doesn't really make sense in general. For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game? You can't use it in tournaments since it's extremely obvious when you use it, so there's effectively no way to make money off of such a program. And yet, people have made aimbots for virtually every FPS game out there. It's pretty clear that financial gain is the least of their concerns.
Ye this is kinda my point.
They dont hack for money, they hack because they can.
and because they can they ruin the game for others.
It quite simple, some people are just not able to cope with losing so they take every precaution not to lose, hence map hacks.
Humans are just a failed concept, the individual dream and idea is perfect in its design, but that is just where the problem lies, individual idea, needs, greeds, so as a whole we fail, because we need to use exploited means to gain a step ahead.
lol
People are attacking banks because they try to make money. They aren't hacking SC2 for money. At least most of them. And because they don't do it for the money, they put much less effort into it. So SC2 is threatened way less than banks.
Oh and where should I have posted this in order to get some Blue reading it / perhaps some feedback? After reading through the responses it seems I posted it on the wrong subforum? (yeah I'm frankly that clueless about Blizzard forums, why would I be posting there)
On April 18 2010 23:49 Naib wrote: Oh and where should I have posted this in order to get some Blue reading it / perhaps some feedback? After reading through the responses it seems I posted it on the wrong subforum? (yeah I'm frankly that clueless about Blizzard forums, why would I be posting there)
People who say that hackers of games like SC/Diablo/etc are not in it for monetary gain are wrong, there are a lot of people who create game hacks to sell them. And people do buy them. I don't think it's possible for any company to have a hack-proof game regardless of how much time they spend trying to secure it, hackers will always find new vulnerabilities. The best they can do is identify the most used hacks and make them unsecure.
Well, it is understandable if blizzard want to keep some hacker on the beta. They might get some infomation on vulnerability of the game from these hackers. or may be i am too optimistic.
On April 19 2010 00:21 pedduck wrote: Well, it is understandable if blizzard want to keep some hacker on the beta. They might get some infomation on vulnerability of the game from these hackers. or may be i am too optimistic.
I don't think it's possible for Blizzard to get much info on specific vulnerabilities from maphacks unless the hackers have released the source-code, or Blizzard is attempting to reverse engineer them.
On April 19 2010 00:21 pedduck wrote: Well, it is understandable if blizzard want to keep some hacker on the beta. They might get some infomation on vulnerability of the game from these hackers. or may be i am too optimistic.
If that explanation is true, then the very least they should be doing is preventing this from harming real players. For example, the hacker would get points (so that he doesn't notice and could still be monitored), but the legit player losing won't lose any (it would still waste his time, and would be annoying, so it's less than optimal but it would at least be a gesture towards legit players). If what you suggest is true then Blizzard is extremely tunnel-viewed and / or selfish. I really hope it isn't like that, it's just that they didn't address this issue yet. Hence me brining the topic up.
On April 18 2010 07:24 Kralic wrote: Blizzard does do a lot but most of the "high level" players that use these are using very exclusive hacks that only a select few know the code for. Most of the stuff Blizzard bans is unknown newbies using public hacks. They can't keep up with the amount there are which is sad, but they still do ban a lot of folks as well.
I have noticed a few that I have reported to their email have had their profiles disappear, wasn't instant but a few weeks later.
Warden actually works almost the same way as ICCup's AH. The number or variety of hack doesn't matter.
For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game?
For obvious reasons I will not mention any names here, but I can give you a very specific example:
1. Guy decides to make a cheat, an aimbot for counter-strike. 2. Guy teams up with similar minded people 3. Team develops a hack that soon becomes very popular 4. Authors of counter strike responds with patches 5. Team realizes this could be long-term deal, playing mouse and cat with the authors if you will. 6. Introduce monthly fee for continious updates for this cheat/aimbot. 7. There should probably be a "???" here. 8. Profit.
Edit: This example happend a few years back, but i fail to see why it would not be relevant to today.
I will never understand the concept of map hacks...Sure maybe it's a little bit funny to use one for *a game or two* to see some people rage, but to play the game only using hacks? That's just sad....It would ruin the game.
One cannot really compare how Blizzard handled hacking in the past to how it will handle it in SC2. Why? Simple....beacuse players can no longer easily change accounts.
That, I feel, was probably the biggest detriment to Blizzard's efforts of dealing with hackers and cheaters in the past. It did not matter how many thousands of Battle.net accounts they banned. Hackers would just get a new CD-key and continue as if nothing happened. On the Battle.net forums, people would practically brag about how they had an entire list of CD-keys ready for when Blizzard moderators banned them. Overall, Blizzard had to deal with hackers in a system which was, in itself, hostile towards their efforts.
This time, however, it will be different. Since your game is tied to your account, having your account banned means you "lose" your copy of the game as well. This is going to make people a lot more weary of violating the rules. Unlike before, there will be actual consenquences as opposed to the temporary nuisance that a loss of an account represented previously.
So while I am worried like anyone else about hackers and cheaters, I think Blizzard will have a much easier time handling it then before. So I think we have a reason to be optimistic (although that does not mean we should not keep Blizzard aware that it is a serious problem).
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
Uh, I'm pretty sure people who create maphacks aren't in it for monetary gain. More often than not, it's because winning is that important to them, or they just get off on ruining other people's gaming experiences.
The argument that people make hacks for money doesn't really make sense in general. For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game? You can't use it in tournaments since it's extremely obvious when you use it, so there's effectively no way to make money off of such a program. And yet, people have made aimbots for virtually every FPS game out there. It's pretty clear that financial gain is the least of their concerns.
Ye this is kinda my point.
They dont hack for money, they hack because they can.
and because they can they ruin the game for others.
It quite simple, some people are just not able to cope with losing so they take every precaution not to lose, hence map hacks.
Humans are just a failed concept, the individual dream and idea is perfect in its design, but that is just where the problem lies, individual idea, needs, greeds, so as a whole we fail, because we need to use exploited means to gain a step ahead.
lol
People are attacking banks because they try to make money. They aren't hacking SC2 for money. At least most of them. And because they don't do it for the money, they put much less effort into it. So SC2 is threatened way less than banks.
Everyone try and keep up with sheath here, he is just specifying incentive with the money/hacking example that was provided i.e. winning a ladder game is likely much less important to the individual than a successful bank "hack," therefore the response measures by Blizzard would not be as difficult to implement as for the bank.
I agree with sheath and think that Blizzard is capable of successful anti-hack measures and, as Plexa said, the community has already proven it is possible with SC1.
Yeah, sure it is possible. But tell me one thing... Why the F... people use that sh... ? Oi, come on... It's not even fun, like playing single player games with cheats enabled... Q_Q
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
Uh, I'm pretty sure people who create maphacks aren't in it for monetary gain. More often than not, it's because winning is that important to them, or they just get off on ruining other people's gaming experiences.
The argument that people make hacks for money doesn't really make sense in general. For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game? You can't use it in tournaments since it's extremely obvious when you use it, so there's effectively no way to make money off of such a program. And yet, people have made aimbots for virtually every FPS game out there. It's pretty clear that financial gain is the least of their concerns.
Ye this is kinda my point.
They dont hack for money, they hack because they can.
and because they can they ruin the game for others.
It quite simple, some people are just not able to cope with losing so they take every precaution not to lose, hence map hacks.
Humans are just a failed concept, the individual dream and idea is perfect in its design, but that is just where the problem lies, individual idea, needs, greeds, so as a whole we fail, because we need to use exploited means to gain a step ahead.
lol
People are attacking banks because they try to make money. They aren't hacking SC2 for money. At least most of them. And because they don't do it for the money, they put much less effort into it. So SC2 is threatened way less than banks.
Everyone try and keep up with sheath here, he is just specifying incentive with the money/hacking example that was provided i.e. winning a ladder game is likely much less important to the individual than a successful bank "hack," therefore the response measures by Blizzard would not be as difficult to implement as for the bank.
I agree with sheath and think that Blizzard is capable of successful anti-hack measures and, as Plexa said, the community has already proven it is possible with SC1.
Now if you would just call me "spine" or "spines" or even "spinesheath" I would really like you I am by no means saying that there won't be any hacks, though. There'll be plenty. But Blizzard should be able to avoid major damage if they just pay attention and keep up with the developments in the hacking scene.
On April 18 2010 18:36 Random69 wrote: Look no matter what anyone says or does
Maphacking will never stop and can never be stopped
Think about it in a realistic manner, banks which have the top security people in the world working for them 24/7/365 and they cant even stop hackers from accessing bank security, so what are the odds of a gaming company having even the slightest chance of that.
Banks spend million upon millions to improve their security and still they can not stop hacking, so Blizzard has 0 (ZERO) chance of stopping hackers
This is the reason i stopped playing WC3 and then WOW, well I stopped playing wow because Blizzard done seem to care about goldsellers etc, i mean these guys were advertising 24/7 their gold sales but blizzard do nothing.
I am actually glad for this article bringing forward the maphack issue, but since it is already happening in the beta, i can say this next line with confidence.
SC2 is FUCKED, there will be soooooo many maphack players it will ruin the game
I forgot to add Diablo, people duped runes and item etc and blizzard could not fix it.
SIGH
GG
The big difference between hacking banks and hacking SC2: Money.
Sure you can win online tourneys with maphacks and earn prize money, but there is much more money to be made from hacking banks. You can't hack in offline tourneys at all, and the really big tourneys will most likely be offline. So hackers invest much more time and resources into hacking banks compared to SC2. If they manage to hack SC2 once, it can be fixed fairly quickly and the money the hackers made through that will be quite limited. If a bank is hacked a LOT of money can be made in a very short time frame (especially through acquiring and selling customer data).
SC2 is much less threatened by hackers than banks, and reactionary measures (banning etc) are way more effective than they would be for banks. SC2 is definitely not "fucked".
Uh, I'm pretty sure people who create maphacks aren't in it for monetary gain. More often than not, it's because winning is that important to them, or they just get off on ruining other people's gaming experiences.
The argument that people make hacks for money doesn't really make sense in general. For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game? You can't use it in tournaments since it's extremely obvious when you use it, so there's effectively no way to make money off of such a program. And yet, people have made aimbots for virtually every FPS game out there. It's pretty clear that financial gain is the least of their concerns.
Ye this is kinda my point.
They dont hack for money, they hack because they can.
and because they can they ruin the game for others.
It quite simple, some people are just not able to cope with losing so they take every precaution not to lose, hence map hacks.
Humans are just a failed concept, the individual dream and idea is perfect in its design, but that is just where the problem lies, individual idea, needs, greeds, so as a whole we fail, because we need to use exploited means to gain a step ahead.
lol
People are attacking banks because they try to make money. They aren't hacking SC2 for money. At least most of them. And because they don't do it for the money, they put much less effort into it. So SC2 is threatened way less than banks.
Everyone try and keep up with sheath here, he is just specifying incentive with the money/hacking example that was provided i.e. winning a ladder game is likely much less important to the individual than a successful bank "hack," therefore the response measures by Blizzard would not be as difficult to implement as for the bank.
I agree with sheath and think that Blizzard is capable of successful anti-hack measures and, as Plexa said, the community has already proven it is possible with SC1.
It could be said that if there was a lack of public maphacks in SC2 (ie, if Blizzard tightened their security) then there would be a far greater incentive for people with hacking skills to attempt to create cheats for SC2, simply because they could easily sell it to all the idiot cheaters who have no alternative and make a decent amount of money. This is the unlikely scenario though, I assume that Blizzard will just rely on Warden to deal with cheats through the usual means (process checking, etc), and not actually attempt to stop anyone from creating them.
Here's the gist... Protoss never scouts me, no probe, no observer... nothing. I go for a slightly cheesy all in muta build with a fairly fast expansion... I get to his base and he's got 5-6 phoenix waiting for me and then immediately hits my expo with his few zealots.
Normally I'm not one to call "HACK!" when I lose, but after watching the replay, I can't help but feel something strange is going on...
Here are the reasons:
#1: No scouting, whatsoever. #2: Perfect counter units to mine, especially odd considering my unorthodox strategy this game. #3: He immediately attacks my expo without scouting it prior, and ontop of that, the expo is not in a "usual" position (I went right for the out of the way gold minerals on Desert Oasis, not my natural... he didn't stumble upon it, he sent zealots directly to it)
Again, maybe I'm just paranoid and this guy got lucky in building exactly what he needed to counter me, but it sure seems funky.
For instance, what's the rationale behind making an aimbot for an FPS game?
For obvious reasons I will not mention any names here, but I can give you a very specific example:
1. Guy decides to make a cheat, an aimbot for counter-strike. 2. Guy teams up with similar minded people 3. Team develops a hack that soon becomes very popular 4. Authors of counter strike responds with patches 5. Team realizes this could be long-term deal, playing mouse and cat with the authors if you will. 6. Introduce monthly fee for continious updates for this cheat/aimbot. 7. There should probably be a "???" here. 8. Profit.
Edit: This example happend a few years back, but i fail to see why it would not be relevant to today.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard is keeping guys like blink.blink in the games on purpose simply to see the effect they're having on the system. Preventing hacking is all and well and good, but unless it makes a noticeable impact they are not likely to invest too many resources into stopping it.
For example, WoW hackers create a HUGE impact due to the nature of the game. Legit players feel obviously threatened and since they're paying like $15 a month they can seriously hurt Blizzard if they decide to stop playing because of hackers. On the other hand, WC3 and SC1 hackers pose less of a threat. Mainly because the competitive, serious scene in SC1 is not even played on bnet. I can't really speak for WC3, however.
In SC2, they likely want to see the extent of community anger and rage at hackers. If they feel that hackers are hurting the system enough, they will likely invest more into preventing them. Additionally, by keeping hackers in beta, they can see what kind of exploits they are using and also figure out how to patch Bnet 2.0 to better stop hacks.
On April 18 2010 05:37 SichuanPanda wrote: SC/BW/WC3 were all riddled with map hacks, clearly proving that the 'three strike's policy that blizzard has employed for some time simply does not work. If people have three chances to hack before they get banned, then the cost of buying another key to keep hacking for three more chances isn't as much as a deterrent. But if 6 times getting caught hacking meant getting 6 cd-keys banned I'm sure we would see a large decrease in their use. People say 'what about younger players who don't understand what this does to the game'.
1. If you are under 15 you shouldn't be playing a T rated game to begin with.
how old were you when sc1 came out? it had m rating. i still have a copy with the M rating on it. it was later changed to t, and i really feel like your opinion is just wrong about this one. do you REALLY think people under 15 shouldn't be able to play this game?
On April 18 2010 05:15 Naib wrote: I want support staff that deals with complaints quick and swift, just like in WoW
HAHAHAHAHA
Seriously, WoW customer service is HORRIBLE.
No, it's not. It's actually rather good, and there's practically no hacking in WoW (unless you count people buying gold).
Well that because its all server side so short of hacking blizz servers it be hard to lvl hack or something like that when the generated content comes from their server all the client does is render what it's told. Something like that is a bit harder to do on a game where lat matters and you have hundred of units moving around needing to be constantly updated.
Here's the gist... Protoss never scouts me, no probe, no observer... nothing. I go for a slightly cheesy all in muta build with a fairly fast expansion... I get to his base and he's got 5-6 phoenix waiting for me and then immediately hits my expo with his few zealots.
Normally I'm not one to call "HACK!" when I lose, but after watching the replay, I can't help but feel something strange is going on...
Here are the reasons:
#1: No scouting, whatsoever. #2: Perfect counter units to mine, especially odd considering my unorthodox strategy this game. #3: He immediately attacks my expo without scouting it prior, and ontop of that, the expo is not in a "usual" position (I went right for the out of the way gold minerals on Desert Oasis, not my natural... he didn't stumble upon it, he sent zealots directly to it)
Again, maybe I'm just paranoid and this guy got lucky in building exactly what he needed to counter me, but it sure seems funky.
Honestly that's a pretty bad replay. The protoss just decided to attack randomly with random units. If you look closely, he started bulding the stargate at 4:10, when you were only building spine crawlers, the only thing that this replay demonstrates, is that you raged and blamed some random (bad also) player of something that happened randomly. I know there are maphacks out there already, but a maphack that lets you view into the future? Wow, I want that one, maybe I can get the lottery numbers with the algorithm!
And the Zealots it's easy explained, he decided to go from the left, checking expansions, and just randomly encountered your expansion at the same time he was attacking your main.
gg.
EDIT: Honestly, if they use maphacks, that's better! I prefer the enemy knowing what I'm doing, at some point I will be able to get really powerful builds that even if my opponent knows what I'm doing, I'm still able to beat him/her. Yet I can't really see people wasting their game on maphacking knowing that blizz will make you pay another 60dlls just to be able to play again. Or imagine if you have the expansions too!... That's a huge loss... I just don't see it happening a lot, so I'm not really worried about it.
Here's the gist... Protoss never scouts me, no probe, no observer... nothing. I go for a slightly cheesy all in muta build with a fairly fast expansion... I get to his base and he's got 5-6 phoenix waiting for me and then immediately hits my expo with his few zealots.
Normally I'm not one to call "HACK!" when I lose, but after watching the replay, I can't help but feel something strange is going on...
Here are the reasons:
#1: No scouting, whatsoever. #2: Perfect counter units to mine, especially odd considering my unorthodox strategy this game. #3: He immediately attacks my expo without scouting it prior, and ontop of that, the expo is not in a "usual" position (I went right for the out of the way gold minerals on Desert Oasis, not my natural... he didn't stumble upon it, he sent zealots directly to it)
Again, maybe I'm just paranoid and this guy got lucky in building exactly what he needed to counter me, but it sure seems funky.
LOL
I watched the replay
That was not a maphack from the player.
What he did was actually an old strategy that protoss used against zerg players from SCBW
Corsair rush and kill all overlords leaving the zerg player with no way to reproduce population.
This is a trick I have been working on and testing myself and it works alot of the time vs zerg, since the only anti air unit zerg have early is the queen, since 3 Phoenix can kill the queen it will leave you with no other anti air, then use the phoenix to kill all your overlords and "walla" no way to procude more units, build more overlords and they get shot down.
You left the game so fast anyways.
If you had built a evolution chamber and some spore colonys you could have guarded your overlords from the phoenix and then start building a counter unit, like hydralisk.
But you just gave up after the phoenix rush which in this case was quite genius by the protoss player, I liked it.
PS: I play random and I did a simmiliar rush with Terran versus Zerg, I went for block in and fast Vikings, then I went to his base killed all his overlords and left him no way to produce units, the player fought hard to combat it but in the end I won because he just could not produce units at the same pace as me.
Overlord hunting is one way to keep zerg production at a low for the first few minutes.
Here's the gist... Protoss never scouts me, no probe, no observer... nothing. I go for a slightly cheesy all in muta build with a fairly fast expansion... I get to his base and he's got 5-6 phoenix waiting for me and then immediately hits my expo with his few zealots.
Normally I'm not one to call "HACK!" when I lose, but after watching the replay, I can't help but feel something strange is going on...
Here are the reasons:
#1: No scouting, whatsoever. #2: Perfect counter units to mine, especially odd considering my unorthodox strategy this game. #3: He immediately attacks my expo without scouting it prior, and ontop of that, the expo is not in a "usual" position (I went right for the out of the way gold minerals on Desert Oasis, not my natural... he didn't stumble upon it, he sent zealots directly to it)
Again, maybe I'm just paranoid and this guy got lucky in building exactly what he needed to counter me, but it sure seems funky.
... rofl are you for rela??
that is pretty damn fast to accuse someone of hacking. Did you actually put in the effort and watch it out of his camera perspective? He didnt look into fog of war like... even for a split second. He was incredibly focused on nothing but his base.
And that base of yours he miraculously scouted.. IT WAS ON THE WAY TO YOUR BASE ANYWAYS Also this was... ahh shit forgot the name of the map but its really not surprising for either of you to go for air since the air distance is so short compared to the walking distance....
please put in the effort and watch it from his perspective, that's the last you can do before calling someone a hacker.
Wtf.... I didn't know hacks were out for SC2 Beta already. A few games I thought 100% people were hacking but I didn't know there were hacks so I just figured they just got lucky or somthing. Wow.
On April 20 2010 03:01 nAi.PrOtOsS wrote: Wtf.... I didn't know hacks were out for SC2 Beta already. A few games I thought 100% people were hacking but I didn't know there were hacks so I just figured they just got lucky or somthing. Wow.
Yeah, the first maphacks appeared roughly a week after the beta first released, before even the first patch.
I support 0-tolerance and insta-ban of hackers by Blizzard. I hope they read TL because I'm US and can't post in SC2B-EU forum. =\
I also hope that Blizzard is purposely leaving whatever system they have designed (Warden?) inactive in order to catch both the hackers (ban by IP I hope as well as added to watch-list for SC2 post-release) and to watch for exploitation of unknown vulnerabilities. If that's the case, I'm happy to have no anti-hack support throughout beta because SC2 would be a much better game because of it.
On April 18 2010 07:00 Chunkybuddha wrote: I totally agree with you and "support" you, but don't kid yourself here. Doesn't matter if blizzard puts all their resources towards this.. there will always be a greasier nerd out there that can hack. Accept it or quit.
What is it, 12 years of bw now? Still maphackers. Good luck on the fight!
Yea but we have facilities like iCCup's antihack which eliminate the vast proportion of hackers. If blizzard aren't willing to take charge with it they can hand it over to the community since we can handle it.
Too bad Blizz is blatantly also trying to prevent 3rd party goodness like iCCup which in turn is also preventing nice anti-hack.
Seriously Blizz, if you won't deal with it, at least allow a 3rd party venue to instead of focusing on keeping balls deep in the money pile.
IMO blizzard should let them all hack away, but keep track of them, and then use them to reveal vulnerabilities and make anti-hacking features such as warden that much more effective. THEN, when the game is released start the ban-hammers in waves similar to how they handle botting in wow. At least thats how I would do it.
I wish blizzard would get rid of the maphackers just so I don't have to listen to whiny terribads cry about how I MH and raging about how they're going to get my account banned. Though, they're almost as hilariously retarded as zerg players who call any 2 gate build cheese as their fast expansion gets destroyed.
On April 18 2010 07:00 Chunkybuddha wrote: I totally agree with you and "support" you, but don't kid yourself here. Doesn't matter if blizzard puts all their resources towards this.. there will always be a greasier nerd out there that can hack. Accept it or quit.
What is it, 12 years of bw now? Still maphackers. Good luck on the fight!
Yea but we have facilities like iCCup's antihack which eliminate the vast proportion of hackers. If blizzard aren't willing to take charge with it they can hand it over to the community since we can handle it.
Too bad Blizz is blatantly also trying to prevent 3rd party goodness like iCCup which in turn is also preventing nice anti-hack.
Seriously Blizz, if you won't deal with it, at least allow a 3rd party venue to instead of focusing on keeping balls deep in the money pile.
lolz, I was banned for asking you why you didnt posted on beta forums (because I didn't read the first post - guess who didn' read it mods...), when you posted it there day after I asked... no comment
anyway, wonder if they will try to solve these, so far no answers, they only told us to send replays and report player, but not if they will look into it or only ban the hackers
On April 21 2010 18:02 virusak wrote: lolz, I was banned for asking you why you didnt posted on beta forums (because I didn't read the first post - guess who didn' read it mods...), when you posted it there day after I asked... no comment
anyway, wonder if they will try to solve these, so far no answers, they only told us to send replays and report player, but not if they will look into it or only ban the hackers
only way to stop hacking is a private server. 1) private server will always have many users and many users means that many people will offer hacks 2) private servers can deal way faster with new hacks than blizzard could
I thought it was a bit suss when he came straight into my base. i used my zerglings he was chasing and send them in the opposite direction, but somehow he magically came all the way to the top and even send his first probe straight to my expo to setup a proxy pylon/cannons, as in right when the game started lol
Replay File Incase people think i made it up lol...it's pretty easy to spot something fishy...
FuryX, yeah, dude, and why did you send your first overlord straight to his base? You maphack too, undoubtedly! That makes so much sense. Why didn't you post screenshot where he warps proxy pylon before seeing your overlord, instead? Or why didn't you post whole replay? Right now to me it looks like you're trying to badmouth legitimate player and the only thing worser than maphackers are people who cry hacks whenever they lose
I sent the overlord that way because i have been watching a lot of vod's while i didn't have the beta access, and one of the things to do in lt is to send the o/l to the closer side to ure base.(if u get what i mean)
Its the same with everything illegal, supply and demand mean the harder you try and stop something happening, the greater the reward for doing it.
The way to stop hacks is to stop the demand for hacks.
1. Insta-perma-life-firends-family-and-grandchildren ban if actually caught cheating. The end users need to know that if they are caught, there are serious consequences so they are afraid to even think about looking for hacks
2. Game review services. If you think your opponent cheated you can send the game for review. Even if there is a low detection rate from an automated review system, the prospect that their past actions could catch up with them will deter them further.
3. Advertise the fact that accounts are getting banned, take action against cheaters / coders of cheats. Again this is to dissuade people from using the cheats, rather than prevent them being made.
As mentioned by others, the arms race of making undetectable cheats and detecting them is unending, in exactly the same way as computers are never 100% secure, they are 'secure enough'. By making the level of sophistication (cost) required high enough, and the demand (reward) for making them low enough then professional cheats will disappear, leaving random amateurs to get picked off by the warden.
I think that a method of prevention rather than allowing it to happen, and then punishment is the way to go.
Many law enforcement agencies have decided to use this method in respect to speed cameras. IE: Instead of having dodgy vans with speed cameras on the side of the road, there are massive signs saying "SPEED CAMERA AHEAD", which emphasizes prevention.
With starcraft 2 this could be done by: (1) having a simple reporting system for players, and when they are reported they are NOTIFIED they have been reported. (2) when a player is reported more than, say 10% of games, this is publically published somehow, maybe on their profile. (3) when a player is banned for hacking, a message notifier is sent out to ALL his friends, saying what has happened.
On April 21 2010 20:40 Yaros wrote: I think that a method of prevention rather than allowing it to happen, and then punishment is the way to go.
Many law enforcement agencies have decided to use this method in respect to speed cameras. IE: Instead of having dodgy vans with speed cameras on the side of the road, there are massive signs saying "SPEED CAMERA AHEAD", which emphasizes prevention.
With starcraft 2 this could be done by: (1) having a simple reporting system for players, and when they are reported they are NOTIFIED they have been reported. (2) when a player is reported more than, say 10% of games, this is publically published somehow, maybe on their profile. (3) when a player is banned for hacking, a message notifier is sent out to ALL his friends, saying what has happened.
Or maybe Blizzard could upgrade their network code out of last decade and it wouldn't be possible in the first place.
On April 21 2010 20:00 FuryX wrote: Ok hang on raged, i will upload something for ya.
I sent the overlord that way because i have been watching a lot of vod's while i didn't have the beta access, and one of the things to do in lt is to send the o/l to the closer side to ure base.(if u get what i mean)
mr o.lord did a straight u turn.
I was being sarcastic about overlord ;P
Of course you need to send your ovy to the closest base, and your op have done exactly same with his probe, so what you have in screenshots seems perfectly fine, what happens next though in replay seems very fishy, indeed, so I'm sorry for jumping on you =)
On April 21 2010 20:40 Yaros wrote: I think that a method of prevention rather than allowing it to happen, and then punishment is the way to go.
Many law enforcement agencies have decided to use this method in respect to speed cameras. IE: Instead of having dodgy vans with speed cameras on the side of the road, there are massive signs saying "SPEED CAMERA AHEAD", which emphasizes prevention.
With starcraft 2 this could be done by: (1) having a simple reporting system for players, and when they are reported they are NOTIFIED they have been reported. (2) when a player is reported more than, say 10% of games, this is publically published somehow, maybe on their profile. (3) when a player is banned for hacking, a message notifier is sent out to ALL his friends, saying what has happened.
Or maybe Blizzard could upgrade their network code out of last decade and it wouldn't be possible in the first place.
If you mean some server-side shenanigans preventing map-hacking by not sending all info, there's no way It could work for SC2
On April 18 2010 05:15 Naib wrote:We need our voices to be heard. I don't want to wait on Warden going live (or if it's working now, it's doing a damn shameful job), I want support staff that deals with complaints quick and swift, just like in WoW (but perhaps a bit more competent). I don't want hackers run amok the beta, owning betakeys that should go to deserving fans, like the very ones TL has.
Now it might be fun, but what after game release?? Fighting this is already a lost battle - waste of human powers and resources. The concept of the game is wrong.
On April 21 2010 21:53 InRaged wrote: If you mean some server-side shenanigans preventing map-hacking by not sending all info, there's no way It could work for SC2
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Who are you to say anything is impossible? Why do you think that?
If you are going to give me the line about StarCraft II having many more users or too many units in game or anything else about how it is somehow fundamentally different from HoN and therefor impossible, you better be ready to back it up with some actual knowledge of the subject.
I agree his probe scout direction is legit, however his probe sat at your expo and didn't even scout up to your base. So he didn't even know you were there. VERY FISHY!!
EPT
). I don't want hackers run amok the beta, owning betakeys that should go to deserving fans, like the very ones TL has.
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