gummy52

Here's the real point. The majority of hackers and people making hack tools are no longer interacting with ArmA 2 scripts, and this new trend is relatively new over the last two months. I'm not necessarily suggesting that every person hacking has made the program they're using themselves. I am suggesting that more programs are being made because the thread explains how to do it in Visual Basic. I choose to assume that everyone has one of these because I think many, many people are very smart and capable. The rest is up to opinion.

If it was possible to make progress, even a little, then people would work together and form an isolated civilization. If DayZ were real life and your mutual enemy infinitely existed and reappeared without end and there was no possible way to ever change that by working together... then yes, everyone would be forced into a situation where it was every man for himself. The only people who would work together would be fools who falsely believe its possible to fight back against the mutual enemy. They die off. That also describes new players to DayZ rather well, wouldn't you think?

What could they do with that info? That info is where to spawn loot. You tell me; what nefarious things could a server admin do if he peaked at where all of the loot is?

True, and that means the central server tells the third party server what loot to spawn. Anything you tell a server, you're telling the person who owns the server. Are you comfortable with server admins having the ability to listen in on that information?

For those who are still interested in this topic, I made a post about my concerns on http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/ You can view that topic here, http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/1hbiq1/it_is_critical_that_there_are_no_third_party/

That's a very silly statement. I'm not going to play it because of my concerns. If those concerns were removed, then I'd want to play it. I'm seeking what's best in the interest of the game so that it could be something I'd enjoy.

Frankly, anything is better than having the players host the servers. I fear that our concerns fall on deaf ears.

Well, that depends. If it's $5 or less then I may buy it for laughs. I don't think it will be, though.

Nothing will work and it will cost $19.99

You named loose suggestions yourself in all of a few minutes. I seriously doubt that Bohemia could not come up with things to sell that give no advantages and I see no reason why they couldn't map out which of them can be looted naturally or lost on death. I don't think they would need to exactly copy Valve to do it, either. I also believe there are a lot of people out there who would pay a big price for something silly like their character having Goku styled hair. So I'm going to politely say that I won't propose what they sell because the specifics are inconsequential if they orchestrate it in a way that is inconsequential to players. Now then, you still seem to think that abusive server administrators are very likely to get caught. I want you to consider this. Why does it have to be that extreme? In a game like this you don't have to go to such extremes to have a huge advantage. My suggested example was the cheater taking a quick peak at where all of the vehicles are. If someone tried telling the central server to give his character a bunch of gear all at once then a red flag probably would go up. But, again, you don't need to do something that extreme to get an unfair advantage.

I'm going to take a leap of faith and say that how you feel has much to do with this quote; "who'll likely get their servers blacklisted anyway". If that were a possibility then I wouldn't have started this topic. Going back to the points I raised at the end of page 1 of this thread, cheating server side with a machine that players have root access to can easily be done without detection and in secrecy. If someone abuses it and tries making their self invincible then, yeah, they'll get black listed -- but you need to consider things that can be done quietly that no one will notice, like taking a quick peak at where all the vehicles are. Okay, so you dislike the model where Bohemia hosts the servers by selling things. Context is everything. Selling things when players are already paying for the servers would be a horrible money grab. I would be completely against that. Selling things that give unfair advantages is what we call "Pay 2 Win". I would be completely against that. Selling things before the game is finished would be a horrible money grab. I would be completely against that. However, selling things because its necessary for the game's health is not a horrible money grab. That is the point. It is necessary. It is necessary that Bohemia host the servers. It is necessary that this game be as secure as possible. It's in the game's nature. It needs to be more secure than a FPS server. It needs to be, at the very least, as secure as every other MMO on the market.

I think a necessary point that people need to consider is that there are a limited number of ways to implement an online game and the model you choose has a list of weaknesses. It doesn't matter how many angles they consider or how many possibilities they consider. The model they choose will always have the same weaknesses. That's the point and that's why we don't need more information. We know the model they're choosing and therefore we know its weaknesses. Now then, I absolutely agree that the developers are going to know the weaknesses of this model. I'm sure their lead programmer is a very capable man. But the developers are not always in charge and the intentions of men who wear suits are not as divine as one might hope. Let's assume Bohemia is a company and their number one goal is profit. Now let's say you're Bohemia and you have thousands of people willing to pay hundreds of dollars per month to provide a service necessary for your product to function. Okay, so here you are, a suit working at Bohemia, and someone working under you raises a concern that cheating becomes easier under this model. What's the number one question you, this suit working at Bohemia, ask? You're going to ask "will that affect sales?". Will it? Will more cheating affect sales? I post threads like these because I really, really dislike cheating. I want to play the game legitimately and want others to as well. But does anyone else share my concerns? When I read remarks such as "I think I'll take my chances with the hackers" by a representative of the DayZ consumer base, I can't help but feel that very few others seriously care about cheating. If it doesn't affect sales, then what reasons do they have to use a more secure model? I mean, look at DayZMod. Cheating is as easy as 1, 2, 3. It sold millions. We can't just sit back and demand "we want less hacking". We need to be more specific and we need to demand that Bohemia host their own dedicated servers.

You made a post. I replied. You edited your post. Then you criticized mine for ignoring points that were made after I had already replied. You're the one sniping and causing conflict.

You rewrote your post four times after I had already replied and call that a "reasoned debate"?

Do I think they should offer vanity, non advantageous, items as a way to pay for servers? Yes. Do I think they should do it while the game is in Alpha? No. I don't even think they should be doing a "paid alpha". They should do a closed beta and foot the minor hosting cost to do so. I mean, testers are doing them a favor, after all. I think you're editing your post too many times. It's like I said in my comment above. Everything changes when the game is a "paid alpha".

The bottom line is that there are four possible ways for the servers to be paid for. We pay a monthly fee We pay for our own servers Bohemia pays for the servers out of their profits Bohemia does what Valve does and sell meaningless trinkets like funny hats Here's the problem with the first three No one wants to pay a monthly fee Allowing players to host their own servers opens up more ways to cheat Bohemia can not afford to pay for the servers for the next five to ten years I don't think a subscription model would work at all for this MMO. I think the best answer is for Bohemia to host the servers and pay for the costs by selling items that do not give advantages. In online games people can and do pay for cosmetic items such as different hair styles or cooler looking clothes. I think that's a greatly superior alternative to their current plan.

You're right, and that's because it's impossible to control what someone does to a computer they own. The advantage of a game that runs mostly server side is that they don't own the computer the server is running on. That advantage goes out the window when people DO own the computer the server is running on. We go from "as secure as it could ever be" to "not secure at all". That is what worries me.

I gave examples, Zeppa. What do you want me to do, stand here and list all of them? Here, have more. Flares, skinning animals, chemlights, blood bags, and so on. Also, if you ask me, I think lumping vehicles in as just "another missing feature" is a tremendous leap of faith. That's going to require a huge amount of programming and they're also a huge chunk of game play.

Without even realizing it, you're proving my point.

It will? The whole point I made was that "it doesn't yet have". You and others were the ones who jumped in and said that it has more features than the mod. I gave counter examples.

There's a difference between "a couple thousand" and "hundreds of thousands". Maybe I missed them, but I didn't see Campfires, Tents, Vehicles, and so on. The mod has those. Does the Alpha?

I really don't understand the point to these showcases. On one hand Rocket will claim that only a small and devoted portion of the DayZ fan base should buy the Alpha. On the other hand, in this demonstration, he mentions wanting "hundreds of thousands of people" to access the game for testing. The Alpha will have very little features, much less than the mod (we haven't seen tents, campfires, vehicles, flares & chemlights, etc), yet Rocket feels the need to talk about many, many awesome things they'd like to eventually put in the game. His trademark "but first we need to get the Alpha out there" is going to make people think that development will rapidly pick up after release. The reality, that many of the "hundreds of thousands of" buyers don't realize, is that in the history of game development has no product ever increased productivity after releasing to the public. Productivity will slow down after release. For that reason I do not think these hype conferences are honest.

I've moved the content of this reply to the original post of this topic

What? What's next? I'm saying that there are security concerns for letting the server files be publicly available on machines hosted by private individuals. I gave two examples. Are meme pictures and triple dot's really necessary?

The only possible way anyone can not consider this a train wreck is if you fill in the gap by saying "oh well I'm sure they'll do something to make it secure". Based on the information available, it's not. It will be possible to cheat. You don't even need to modify the server program to make this a train wreck. The program will have the locations of everything in memory. Anyone with access to the server now has access to that program's memory. People talk about how exciting it will be to know that an item someone has was gotten legit. All of that goes right out the window based on the information available.