Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Linux has taken over every area of computing in the world, except the desktop... where ultimately monopoly power keeps Windows hanging on...
Mac won't be a gaming platform any time soon... at least not until they finally give up Metal for Vulkan... and even then, the move to ARM will hurt them in that regard... Linux is a much more viable gaming solution than Mac!
As for Nvidia... they've been exploiting the market with excessive prices etc, over the last several years... I for one think it's important to have competition, so I think AMD's efforts are critical, and I welcome Intel into that market also.
I did not mean to imply that with the "still" haha. It's not going away any time soon (if ever) especially because of its systematic design and pretty much what you said lol. Linux has a lot of good OS options I've noticed over the more current years.
I agree with the intel hitting the GPU market, it's smart, could take some time to get where they want though but considering their history with CPU's it shouldn't take them too long but wont be that soon. They've even been doing what AMD has been doing with their chip designs that they poked fun at AMD for past years.
Imagine if Nvidia hit the CPU market.. a true trifecta competition. be ironic though considering their history.
I actually bought one, to see what the performance was like, and honestly to support Intel in their efforts and show them that we do actually want a 3rd vendor in the market.
Here's my benchmark of ROTR running on Proton with an A770...
How can you promise that the majority of you guys aren't going to report issues? Maybe you yourself won't but what about the thousand or more of others?
Well, that's a good question... and of course you know that I can't speak for every Linux user in the world... but there are some things I can say...
The relationship that CCP had with the Linux players was certainly productive... you may not know but Eve Online originally had a native Linux client, and quite early on, the Linux player groups approached CCP and proposed that the native Linux client be scrapped in favour of running the Windows client under Wine (what you'd call Proton now)... We felt that it was better for CCP not to spend X time creating that parallel client, but instead spend that time developing the game... in exchange, they have done one or two fixes specifically for Linux over a 10 year period, and there's always been a good relationship there.... some Linux users are in the early access testing, and generally any issues have been worked out on our side before release.
The steam deck may have changed that demographic a little, but the point is that the typical Linux user understands that harassing companies over bugs which, are by definition on our side, is not a good way to establish a good relationship with that vendor etc... much of that demographic that understands the hard work and dedication it's taken to get here, and seen the monumental effort my the Wine developers, Valve and Codeweavers over the last decade... is the same demographic that's likely to be interested in a more serious subscription MMO...
Therefore, I think on balance the number of idiots on our side will extremely likely not be more than it is on the Windows side... moreover, the translation layers at this point are so good, that if we encounter an issue, odds are that it will also impact Windows.... Many times I reported a bug, noted that I was running Linux in that bug, but also stated that I had verified with X, Y and Z other players that they can see the problem on Windows.
My advice, is to acknowledge the presence of those players, create a forum, and pin some messages with reasonable guidelines for how to approach any issues, even if those messages say "respectfully, we don't have the resources to deal with any Linux specific issues, ... please ask your questions here, and it's likely that another user will be able to help.... that culture will take shape on it's own... and support issues will get handled there, instead of generating calls...
You seem to be focusing on the technical, without factoring in the social.
If that button is pushed, the negative impact is that the game can then be run on Linux. This in itself opens the game up to a number of cheats that would then become both possible and undetectable.
This isn't necessarily to say that people wanting to use Linux cheat, but rather people wanting to cheat would then use Linux - enabling them to cheat harder, and be more difficult to detect. If you are as pro-Linux as you claim, you should already know this. The freedom you get from Linux, the reason most Linux users like it, makes it easier to do a lot of things that can be taken advantage of.
This is why that button exists - so developers can prevent games running on Linux and thus prevent these cheats.
If there were no negative side effects, Valve would have paid EAC a chunk of money to just have it always on.
This is why the question isn't "how much money will Linux users bring the game", but rather "how much money will the additional cheating cost the game".
BUT.... this is not e-sports... and while other MMO's have had issues with things like gold farming, etc... those are generally not issues that could be solved with this kind of anti-cheat... and those games don't feel the need to use it...
So, yes... running on Linux makes /some/ of the EAC protections theoretically easier to circumvent... but in practice history has shown that those are not the issues that MMO's generally have to deal with anyway. If this was an e-sport title, I might agree that it's increasing the attack surface, and so vendors will want the option to consider that, but the fact remains that the majority of cheats I've seen are run on Windows anyway...
Personally, I think the kind of issues that occur in an MMO, compared to what might be the case in e-sports are such that what you can control this way is down in the noise compared to simpler issues such as item farmers, gold sellers and bots, which can really only be addressed by actively monitoring players for unusual activity and having good GM's.
what are the issues then?
The issues I believe are most significant for MMO's are:-
* Farming bots
-> Trading bots (depending on the design of the game)
* Account / Character trading
* Item trading
* In game currency selling
* Character leveling services
* Credential theft (Phishing / Malware)
* Multi-boxing (Depending on what's permiited)
* "Gold" farming (or whatever the in-game currency is)
-> specifically to support in game currency trading for real money.
* DDoS attacks against the game servers/infrastructure
* Exploits of bugs/glitches in the software
-> Some harmless like falling under Stormwind, or the hidden area in Ironforge in Wow, but others might include item duplication, infinite in-game money etc...
Primary use of "Anti-Cheat" software
* Speed Hacks
-> doesn't really apply if the server software is properly written, at least it should be trivial to detect.
* Aimbots
* Wall hacks
Those last two are /critical/ for e-sports but don't apply much to MMO's since probably manual aiming isn't a thing... and wall hacks in an MMO scenario seem like something that would just not be worth it...
That's 13 issues, only 2 of them would be addressed by "Anti-Cheat" software such as what we are discussing, rather than what would more easily be implemented at the server side, and/or by good GM's and policing by other players.... and those two mostly are not an issue for an MMO.... or are a very minor issue compared to what they would be in an e-sport title.
No, but it is going to be VERY competitive.
Also, with Ashes being a hybrid of tab and action, some aiming will be involved (to what extent is yet to be seen, but enough that some people will want aim bots if they are available).
Wall glitches are indeed an issue that would be exasperated on Linux, but so are a number of other things you've not listed (you can do a lot in an MMO if you can intercept the data being sent from your client to the server).
The thing is, regardless of the specifics, you know allowing Linux compatibility will increase the amount of cheating in the game. You are now asking for a trade off in allowing that 1.6% of people to play (it is actually lower than that, as u said, most of those people also have a windows computer, or are duel booting, almost no one on Steam is Linux only) in exchange for an increase in cheating.
As such, at the very least, you should understand why people are generally against it, and will be against it in almost any competitive game.
If you purchased a Steam Deck in order to play competitive games, that just seems like a poor decision on your part.
https://video.hardlimit.com/w/uZGK12oU5FeSsy8CDLP4hD
It's not made clear, but if you examine the video, you can see this is an AMD 7900X CPU, paired with a Radeon RX 7900XTX GPU.
what i mean is, what kind of cheating can you do on linux that you cant do on windows and could also be, but not necessarily, undetectable
Well, I can't tell you that without seeing exactly what the capabilities of EAC are, and how different they may be between Windows and Linux.... however, /if/ EAC installs a kernel mode driver on Windows, but not on Linux, then it is at least theoretically possible that an exploit operating in the kernel could be used to potentially be invisible to EAC...
The problem is that this is the excuse used by DRM companies to argue that they cannot trust HDCP on Linux as someone might have modified the kernel to lie about whether HDCP is enabled.... of course that's at least theoretically possible, but in practice there are many easier ways to pirate movies so this has never actually happened.
My view is that although these extremely complex exploits are /theoretically/ easier on Linux than Windows... in practice, the exploits that are published are almost exclusively for Windows... so the trade off between additional complexity, vs pay off for the hacker who created the exploit just isn't there to make those exploits a reality.
Anyone who has written any software, or even a website knows that you can't trust the client... protections for this stuff need to be in the server if you really need for it to be reliable... EAC and the likes just hit the low hanging fruit. Have AV, but don't download and run software from http://icanhazmalware.zip.
It worries me that this thread nearly got a bit toxic, but I think it's a valuable discussion...
My position however, is that I think participants here are perhaps a few years out of date with regard to the situation with Linux and Linux users... I mean, for example... would you say to someone with a Mac "yeah, but all Mac owners have a PC too"... no, of course you wouldn't... 5 years ago, it might have been reasonable to assume people dual boot, but not so much now.
Also, even 1 or 2 years ago... it was reasonable to assume that Wine/Proton was a bit hit/miss in terms of compatibility... where now, the compatibility is so good that you actually have to work hard to make something that doesn't work on Linux.
I've read a lot of previous comments on these forums about Linux, but they are all 2+ years old, and so that's why I posted again... as the climate has changed a lot. My understanding of the word from Intrepid is that they do want to have Linux compatibility at some point, but they don't have manpower to dedicate to that currently... I can respect that, but an MMO like this really puts someone at a disadvantage if they join a year in... or whatever it is... so it seems to me that not actively blocking Linux, and handing off that work to the Proton developers to ensure compatibility is a reasonable approach that has worked for others vendors... I mean it only took Microsoft 9 months to go from "wow, FH5 works on Linux"... to finding value in releasing Proton specific hotfixes.
We can only wait and see how Intrepid handle this... but I hope they will make use of the open source developers, and those at Valve, and other places that are very motivated to make sure that software like this works flawlessly.
There were many points in this thread where I nearly responded to *some* of the points being raised with the tone one would have after being pestered by a 5 year old for over an hour. I think you're on the money here in that there are certain Hard Headed individuals who have based their world view of linux and its users on some old, possibly very biased sources. These people aren't going to try linux, and there's no real point in engaging them any further. You cant logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.
I use a linux machine as my daily driver, and have no issues playing GW2, EVE, other multiplayer games as well as pretty much every other single player game under the sun. Proton has come leaps and bounds from where it was even a year back, and most shit just works out of the box.
If Intrepid go down the route of locking the game to Windows like they did with the Alpha, I'll be disappointment. Even more so if they rely on client side anti cheat for... anti cheat. Windows, Linux, OSX, you cannot ever trust the client. It should only be an IO and rendering stage of the game's technology.
I want to stress this point again...
It shouldn't matter if i compile a custom version of the linux kernel to be able to circumvent anti-memory-access tools, suspicious behavior should be picked up on the server and the actions reviewed by a GM. It's laughable that there are people who think the windows kernel is more.... *secure* than linux.
I need to stop here as the level of ignorance being peddled as fact is making me angry.
Look, that describes me too... I'm not blind to that... I'm just approaching this from the other side of the fence... looking above, you can see the comment "I'm ok with windows tho, so... ", which I think is a pretty terrible approach to the preferences/needs of others! What if I don't want my personal data to be sucked up by a giant (foreign) multi-national corporation... with a questionable history...
What I say to those people is that we have spent as much as 30 years to reach a stage where legally, the Windows API's are a "standard", and we have implemented that "standard" to the point where we're actually so compatible that almost every AAA game is working flawlessly... in some cases even faster and more stable than on Windows... and now we have FUD about theoretical cheating... which I can't think of a single real world case of this actually happening, as all the cheating seems to happen on Windows anyway.
My goal, ideally is to help get the Alpha/Beta clients working with Proton, so that it can be a smooth experience at launch... because that's the critical time, no one wants to join a new MMO when everyone else has been playing for 3 months.
How arrogant is that?... did you even read the very specific questions I asked, to clarify what the Wiki actually says.... which is virtually nothing by the way.
The Wiki says, two things
* "Native support may be possible in future"... well, native support would require a lot of development effort from Intrepid, and the Linux users don't actually want that.
* "We'll have to evaluate how much work it will be at some point in the future".
What I'm suggesting is that there's likely more people working on Proton than in the whole of Intrepid, and they're motivated to get as close to 100% of the new releases working, ideally on day one.... and they don't require any investment of time from Intrepid, they just need some clarification regarding if Intrepid will actively try to stop them... I think the entire discussion around EAC above is moot, since there's nothing to say that it'll even be used as the Wiki just states that there is extensive work to stop any cheating... which could all be server side for all we know.
So, if Intrepid confirm that they aren't going to be banning Wine developers... then we do our thing, Intrepid does theirs and things either work out of not... if they /are/ going to be doing that kind of thing... then half of those guys will use dummy accounts and VPN's and the other half won't touch it... and I'll lash together my own solution.... but that doesn't feel like productive co-operation.
Also, why am I asking these questions on the forum, and not discord?... well, I asked on Discord and someone said "This is too complex for Discord, ask on the forum"... so here I am.... go figure.
You really should read the first half dozen comments on this thread, it might help you understand...
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/17h1i7n/linux_vs_windows_tested_in_10_games_linux_17/
TL;DR, if you buy the right hardware, then Linux is better at running Windows games than Windows... both performance and stability... and that's a statement I wasn't expecting to be able to ever make.
Oh, so you're saying it's OK to cheat in Ashes? Now you seem to be saying that si ce some other much more involved cheating methods will be available, Intrepid shouldn't eliminate the easier to eliminate methods.
I hate it how some people think a single action needs to deal with the problem entirely or else it isnt worth doing. And now you are saying that only people already using Linux would use it to cheat. It's as if you have forgotten that anyone wanting to cheat can simply duel boot their system.
Baaa, this is just FUD IMO... come back when you have an example of this actually happening... every example I've seen of this kind of thing happening, it was done on Windows. It might in theory have a different attack surface, but in the current climate, this kind of thing is done to monetize it, and so it's going to target the platform that lets them market it...
Sure, defense in depth is a thing... but given zero information about what's actually going on, I'm going to assume that we can get it running.... which hence my request for clarification of the "no real information" that's on the Wiki, particularly regarding how Intrepid will view us working on that.... because clearly they are saying that
a) they don't have the time to invest in a native client, and
b) they would like to have support but they need to work out how much developer time it would take.
Yet the Linux users don't want (a), and given that Proton likely has more developers than Intrepid, in an ideal world (b) doesn't require any developer time from Intrepid, since for the vast majority of the work, can (and should) be on the Proton side.
Actually, I'm saying that the return on investment for creating some kind of exploit vastly favours Windows ... and this is born out by what you see available in the marketplace, I've seen MANY exploits for e-sports games, even ones with EAC, and they are all running on Windows. You're also implying that the potential differences in the EAC client on Linux will make it "easy", which is certainly not the case... especially given the implication that Intrepid are doing a lot to manage any kind of problem... likely a lot server side too... and, given that they have experienced people from Blizzard (and CCP I believe?)... among others, which both have large communities of players on Linux, I'm sure they know that it's not been an issue for those services.
it means that they will add native support, not emulator support. its clear to me T_T
the people who do it dont advertise themselves doing it. they do it secretly lol
they run on windows because most people play on windows. thats why there are more viruses for windows too. linux and mac can still catch a virus..you just need ot make it lol. the people who makes things like that focus on windows because thats where most users are.
also, really, who would rather play on an emulator over natively? T_T
Yes, that's what worries me... because that approach was tried by CCP with Eve Online and it was bad, in all honesty and it's wholly unnecessary... The Linux user community for Eve ended up agreeing with CCP to scrap it, to that developer time wasn't wasted on it....
You might not expect that this was the approach of the Linux user community to a company having a native Linux client, but the deal that was worked out benefited everyone.
UE5 does have some cross compilation options, so it would be easier than what CCP was doing in some ways, but still, a LOT of developer effort, plus testing and I can't see this being a thing... perhaps I'll be proved wrong.
That's not how exploit development and monetization works... it's not one guy deciding he needs a bit more gold and then spending thousands of man hours developing an exploit...
What happens is hacker groups will develop an exploit, and then market that via one of a dozen or so dark web marketplaces that provide hacking services... probably then selling them on to organized groups of gold farmers or whatever it is the exploit does, who will use that until they are discovered... with a goal of making the money back on the cost of the tool... a LOT of money changes hands this way.... like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you ever find exploits downloadable for free that you can use yourself... they are likely ones that have been burned by the larger scale groups who will have made their money off it, and now they can't use it any more as they will be detected too quickly... As one individual you might get away with it for a bit, as you are ultimately not making a big difference using that personally, and it can go un-noticed... or, you know, you might get banned in an hour... you just don't know.
i know thats how the exploit business works, but its not the only way.
Having worked in IT security in major financial organizations for many years, mainly with Linux... I can tell you that what you are saying is only partly correct...
The exploits are on windows because most people play on Windows... but not for the "obvious" reasons... Ultimately the time and manpower it takes to develop these exploits is often such that only if there is a way to monetize it via large scale gold/item farming... and then selling items... etc. and those large scale organizations obviously want to remain under the radar, so they will want to be using absolutely bog standard systems the same as every other user, so they don't stand out.... there might be a secondary market to individuals, but again, almost universally it wasn't those individuals who created the exploits.... and eventually they will leak onto the usual download sites for free, but by that point you're taking a huge risk by using them.... not least because they probably also contain other malware by that point!
The reason there are more viruses for Windows is also a complex issue... at one point I was reviewing every CVE that came out for an online gaming company... and I did have to assess the Windows vilnerabilities as well as the Linux ones... and for sure it's been a minute... but I can tell you that the incidence of malware, particularly worms on Windows was 100% a factor of the types of vulnerability that were present in the Windows platform... and Linux virtually never had similar issues. The reason for this is dead simple, Linux uses the Unix security model, which is a) FAR simpler than the Windows model, b) Unix servers have been the backbone of the Internet for 40+ years... open to the raw internet with no firewalls, or NAT routers to protect them... and Linux both inherited all that learning, and benefited from it directly in a way that Windows almost never did.
Yes, of course bad software exists, wordpress springs to mind as something that had a lot of issues... so, yes... it's possible to get malware on Linux... but it's generally focussed on /server/ systems where Linux outnumbers Windows 100 to 1... citation needed
As regards playing on an "emulator" over native... Wine/Proton is not an emulator... it's just a set of libraries, I'm sure windows comes with DirectX pre-installed now, but at one point you had to install that... or, the visual C++ runtime, or .NET runtime... that's what Wine/Proton is... at it's core it's /just/ a set of libraries that provide Win32, Win64 and DirectX... the games you might run with Wine/Proton are absolutely running "natively" from the perspective of the OS, and the CPU at that point.... just as that visual C++ program is running "natively" once you install it's runtime.... yes "native" can mean different things at different times... but the reported 20% performance improvement and increased stability running Windows games on Linux with Wine/Proton would absolutely be impossible if this was "emulation" in the sense you are implying.
Anyway, I'm done answering this thread... it's clearly not going help me, and at this point it's just going round in circles for no obvious reason.
Mate, I feel ya here.
Welcome to the AoC forum community.
You're learning the same lesson I learned a year back about engaging with some of the forum regulars here... you don't, not unless you enjoy losing IQ.
Edit: I just checked your join date and you've been around longer than me
There are people who unfortunately:
They would not survive in our industry (I'm inferring your line of work from your posts) very long with their mindsets.
To round shit up...
Foolish of me to believe this message will change anyone's behavior, but alas I keep hoping.
If you don't know what your talking about, either be humble and open to ideas OR shut up.
What *could* be done on Linux that can't be as easily done on Windows?
I don't think you need examples of that.
If you have access to the data packets between server and client, and to the information stored on your systems RAM, there is almost nothing you can't do.
Now, you may say that Intrepid should just protect against those things properly, and you wouldn't be wrong. However, the easy way to protect against then is to only allow the game to be run on an operating system that will let the server know if the client is being read.
Since Linux won't do that, part of protecting against it is in not allowing the game on Linux.
That is how protecting against things work.
I'm sure you would want to say "but they should do it this other way instead" or something. Sure, there may be other ways of doing it. The thing is, how much will that cost and how invasive will that need to be?
Is that 1.6% maximum additional players worth that cost and invasion?
Intrepid don't seem to think so, and you aren't providing any argument as to why it would.
@Botagar Funny thing... there is probably more gamers using Linux than gamers using apple lol You can still use windows on apple through a VM if I remember correctly.
No hurry though.
Still, I definitely wouldn't mind AoC on Linux. (You have my soft weak vote)