Aimbotters vs Head Hitboxes

ArchivedUser

As title says,  for most, if not every online game with a head hitbox, for the purpose of introducing a sniping mechanic, based upon actual active human skill, a 3rd party program or "cheat" has been created to allow perfect aim.  The developers would the patch the game or anti-cheat, in attempt to resolve the situation.  

I am not advocating to remove or keep a head hitbox.  A head hit is effectively a guaranteed "if-I-hit-this-exact-spot-I-get-a-crit"  that requires skill to pull off.  I am wondering is is possible, at all, to have a non-exploitable hitbox? 

The  devil is in the details and the length of time to patch a game to fix the aimbot exploit... that is process cycles away from working on an expansion, or other things more fun.  Too long a wait for a patch, and players think dev's are blind (hello Blizzard's Warden).

In the end, the head hitbox crit is a mechanic, that shall be exploited in the future by our elite haxor who hides beind a VPN + No-IP, for the uber pwnage, a worth while dev risk?

ArchivedUser

At this point all that can be done is to wait and see. Intrepid has stated multiple times that they have multiple levels of anti-cheat planned from internal and external vendors. Whether they can catch and ban those people that cheat is a great unknown that will only be seen on release.

ArchivedUser

Aimbots are applicable to the entirety of action combat. Even without separate hitboxes they'd still be cheating an enhanced accuracy.

ArchivedUser

You'll never be the best if you cheated to get there.

ArchivedUser

The easiest way is to build the game on security. Aim bots then will be automatically band IE just like fortnight. Implementing security after the game Foundation is implemented just asking for problems and easy security breaches

ArchivedUser

Good points UnknownSystemError and CyanideInsanity.  We have to wait until release to see in acton.  My scope of the proverbial aimbotter was indeed too small.  An aimbotter does apply to all action combat mechanics, not just the head hit box.  Just that the 1 hit and dead mechanic of the head hitbox crit is a prime thing to focus on!

A good "Old Scool" way an exploit is created is by using wireshark to record message traffic. via reapeated use to see the messages going to Intrepid Studios, when an advantagous action is performed, and the specific area in the message is determined, one would be able to manually calculate the bits needed.  The next stage is to write a script that then takes advantage of knowing what to calculate to edit the message field,  and set up the timing of the tampered message.  The final stage is a program that automates when to dynamically modify the message to Intrepid, to create the desired effect.   Of couse encrypted messages and message checksums block simple haxors but the better ones work on the checksum calculations to further hide their exploit.  Encryption and checksums only go so far  aka Computer Science's Towers of Hanoi problem going round and round... then comes decompilers, vulnerabilities, etc. aka 

TLDR   much has to be done and maintained mindfulness on the Dev's side to stop aimbotters

ArchivedUser

Headshots won't be an instant kill. No idea where they plan on taking the game, but I'm assuming hp and damage will be comparable to similar MMOs. The idea is that headshots are the equivalent to tab targetings crit chance.

ArchivedUser

Mindseye said:

Good points UnknownSystemError and CyanideInsanity.  We have to wait until release to see in acton.  My scope of the proverbial aimbotter was indeed too small.  An aimbotter does apply to all action combat mechanics, not just the head hit box.  Just that the 1 hit and dead mechanic of the head hitbox crit is a prime thing to focus on!

A good "Old Scool" way an exploit is created is by using wireshark to record message traffic. via reapeated use to see the messages going to Intrepid Studios, when an advantagous action is performed, and the specific area in the message is determined, one would be able to manually calculate the bits needed.  The next stage is to write a script that then takes advantage of knowing what to calculate to edit the message field,  and set up the timing of the tampered message.  The final stage is a program that automates when to dynamically modify the message to Intrepid, to create the desired effect.   Of couse encrypted messages and message checksums block simple haxors but the better ones work on the checksum calculations to further hide their exploit.  Encryption and checksums only go so far  aka Computer Science's Towers of Hanoi problem going round and round... then comes decompilers, vulnerabilities, etc. aka 

TLDR   much has to be done and maintained mindfulness on the Dev's side to stop aimbotters

Already told them how to defeat that.....infallibly.

But yes, only a fool would believe hackers wont hack.

ArchivedUser

sunfrog said:

You'll never be the best if you cheated to get there.

People who dissagree;
Lance Armstrong 
Mark McGuire 
All the top NCAA basketball teams
Clinton's
Bush's
Russian Olympians 
Patriots 
I think you get the idea

ArchivedUser

sunfrog said:

You'll never be the best if you cheated to get there.

TRUE!!!

ArchivedUser

More like you'll never be the best if you got caught cheating to get there. When people dont know they praise your name.

I anyhow trust IS to be able to handle these cheaters because when a game is looking this good in alpha I have no reason to think otherwise. 

ArchivedUser

Also to add on, I.S. hired VETERANS OF GAMING DEVELOPMENT.  They have had their past developed games hacked and exploited so know how to handle things on their side.  The goal should be to make exploit's resonably difficult, so it cant be mass exploted, yet still economic enough time-wise to implement fixes ahead of time.

It is a cat-vs-mouse evolution game.  

ArchivedUser

ChuckSteak said:

sunfrog said:

You'll never be the best if you cheated to get there.

People who dissagree;
Lance Armstrong 
Mark McGuire 
All the top NCAA basketball teams
Clinton's
Bush's
Russian Olympians 
Patriots 
I think you get the idea

If you are cheating you care more about being perceived as the best than actually being the best. This list contains people who's motives are not about challenging themselves to be better, they instead care about fame, or money, or power, or praise. 

I get your point, but I still think @sunfrog is right. If you really care about actually being the best, you would never cheat.

ArchivedUser

Whoa, I started all kinds of controversy today. 

ArchivedUser

Cheating kills off the fun anyway whats the point ? Aside from ruining the game for others

ArchivedUser

AutumnLeaf said:

Cheating kills off the fun anyway whats the point ? Aside from ruining the game for others

:shrug: Different people enjoy different things. I'm sure, for some, ruining the game for others is the fun. Others might be compensating for poor accuracy or mechanics, or might just be trying to win no matter what. People will try to cheat, but hopefully Intrepid can build a strong enough anti-cheat to where the impact of aim-botting on the general population is negligible.

One major deterrent to aim-botting is the fact that while we will definitely have action combat that can be abused, Ashes is still an MMO. The character that a player has spent countless hours creating and progressing with is at risk every time they cheat. It's not like Fortnite, where they can just make a new account and VPN in if necessary.

I'm sure it will be handled well. I don't think it will be as big of an issue as people anticipate.

ArchivedUser

Sikuba said:

AutumnLeaf said:

Cheating kills off the fun anyway whats the point ? Aside from ruining the game for others

:shrug: Different people enjoy different things. I'm sure, for some, ruining the game for others is the fun. Others might be compensating for poor accuracy or mechanics, or might just be trying to win no matter what. People will try to cheat, but hopefully Intrepid can build a strong enough anti-cheat to where the impact of aim-botting on the general population is negligible.

One major deterrent to aim-botting is the fact that while we will definitely have action combat that can be abused, Ashes is still an MMO. The character that a player has spent countless hours creating and progressing with is at risk every time they cheat. It's not like Fortnite, where they can just make a new account and VPN in if necessary.

I'm sure it will be handled well. I don't think it will be as big of an issue as people anticipate.

Yeah and well to be honest most people who cheat using aimbot or similar ones are usually the ones who give up trying to get better though this usually applies to fps games :>

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

At this point all that can be done is to wait and see. Intrepid has stated multiple times that they have multiple levels of anti-cheat planned from internal and external vendors. Whether they can catch and ban those people that cheat is a great unknown that will only be seen on release.

yeah they said... like every other company without a single exception...

And you can guess how many popular game there are without hackers?

It's impossible to 100% prevent it, and even if you really waste resource in fighting them, by definition, the defender will be always one step behind. All you can do is prevent the current tools, however the ones that ain't popular yet, or not found out yet can't be prevented...

ArchivedUser

akmaa said:

UnknownSystemError said:

At this point all that can be done is to wait and see. Intrepid has stated multiple times that they have multiple levels of anti-cheat planned from internal and external vendors. Whether they can catch and ban those people that cheat is a great unknown that will only be seen on release.

yeah they said... like every other company without a single exception...

And you can guess how many popular game there are without hackers?

It's impossible to 100% prevent it, and even if you really waste resource in fighting them, by definition, the defender will be always one step behind. All you can do is prevent the current tools, however the ones that ain't popular yet, or not found out yet can't be prevented...

One of the big differences at least in the MMO landscape is how early Intrepid are building in ways to monitor, and designing with anti-cheat in mind.  While I think the intent of your statement is correct you aren't exactly right that just because you don't know about something that you can't prevent it.  You can use the methods that are known, along with your knowledge of how the systems work to extrapolate and proactively stop many forms of attacks that may not be popular at this time regardless if you are aware of them or not. 

I think your intent was that you cannot prevent 100% of the exploits and I agree, the main thing is that you prevent the largest portion and have the ability to react fast to the ones that you couldn't, And the early decisions