An all-round solution to alt-F4 & server hopping

[Leeroy (DayZ) 2]

Yeah totally fix the fucking ghosting piece of shit. Seriously now by just writing this I am pissed off. Me and a friend were camping up on a building because 4 people were below us and had already killed our friend. We told them to come up and shit if they wanted a fucking war. Two of them came up the ladder boom dead, one sniper started to shoot and broke my leg, my friend took him out with his as50 then the last one with a fucking 1911 went onto another server climbed up the mother fucking ladder, went back to our server shot my friend from behind quit and ran to the ladder came behind me while I was at my friends body. Ghosting piece of shit, this need a fix right now, ban people that presses alt + f4 and make a timer of 15 seconds for a abort. Fixed.

[davidecibel 55]

I don't like the anti server hop measures because I have no way to know beforehand if a server is currently on day or night, so I'm often forced to try out several different ones until I find a daytime one.

I completely agree with the anti alt+f4 though: I'm actually surprised such a basic feature isn't into the game yet (and 10 seconds next to a campfire seems still too low: I'd go for 30)

[davidecibel 55]

The serverjumps caused by nighttime on the server can be avoided by using the dayzcommander. in this tool you can not only see whats turned on/off on the server, but you can also see the actual time on the server.

this is a nice tool to be used after updating the game with the six launcher.

@Topic:

I am for a general 30 seconds delay on logout. AFAIK this is difficult to be built in. I think, Rocket said something like this but I don't remember well.

I use dayzcommander as well, but this is inaccurate.

The time of day displayed by dayzcommander is based on the server name (GMT+2, UTC-6, etc.). The problem is that admins can change that (even automatic restart influence the day/night cycle as well), hence they are wrong most of the times. Some times it takes me 40 minutes to find a goddamn day server.

[necroslord 73]

Anti ALT+F4 can be solved easily. If you get harmed in any way or have zombies pursuing you, you can't logout, if you force it your character stays there for a certain mount of time to get killed.

Anti hopping is another story, best solution I can thnk of would be that the game registers your last played server and starts a timer (I don't know how long, maybe 15min). If you try to join a different server, it shows the error "You left a server and must wait <TIME> before joining a different one".

Edited July 30, 2012 by necroslord

[pepsiblue 8]

I think the 30 second delay isn't that bad of a deal, most games have a timer anyway. And I think if you are bleeding, or being persued by zombies, or have fired your weapon, you shouldn't be able to log out, for 30 seconds anyway.

Also making it so that you can't fire your weapon, until you've been in a server for a minute or two, would prevent the ghosting..

[Sol (DayZ) 132]

Rocket has already said the "rested" logout is not possible because of ARMA's netcode.

That's only because he's going about it in the wrong way. He's trying to keep the logged out character persistent on the server, AFTER the connection has been dropped. Clearly the ARMA2 engine doesn't have support for non-local entities to be maintained if the receive packets are dropped. All that needs to happen, is Rocket needs to nicely request from his work buddies that they add the ability to disable certain keys from functioning while in-game.

I propose the F4 key, and the "Windows" key be disabled through engine hard-coding. Following this... make certain conditions for the ABORT/LOGOUT button to be active, such as;

+ Player has not moved for 30 seconds

+ Player has not sustained damage (blood loss) for 30 seconds (cannot log out while bleeding to wait 7 hours for your mate to come save you)

-->Logout is now allowed

This would eliminate the need to keep some ghost/phantom/imaginary connection of a player that's not there, and likely already logging on somewhere else, simply be reversing the thought process.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Like all other things in life, there are always rules and laws. I know, that while many of them are "made to be broken", most people can discern the difference between "right and wrong" or the "50 shades of grey". There should simply be rules in place where, if enough evidence is captured of players performing unsportsmanlike behaviour can be banned through submission and review. Tracking data and making life hard for people who have kids, run a business, have unexpected visitors, internet trouble (thanks, rainy weather) is really just crazy.

If the community gets fed up enough by this behaviour that "can't be fixed because of X reason" then give us the power to do it ourselves.

Then and only then will we stop seeing endless threads about the topic, and endless posts of Rocket repeating the same thing over and over again to everyone. Give us the ability to submit these screenshots and videos, and a way to more easily identify a player by name since everyone looks like a fucking clone of the next guy (I love APB Reloaded customization... you can't get any two players confused), and follow up by banning the individuals who cause the problem. When you die, you should be presented with your killers name, not for realism but for policing hackers that insta-kill entire servers worth of people from some place you can't even see them.

Quite simply if someone submits a video recording of poor behaviour, like ALT+F4 or server hopping to move covertly... get enough "strikes" they get banned for life. Simple as that. No need for any more "solutions". No need for anything I even said above... give us the power and the means, and the hackers and griefers and ALT+F4'ers will all be gone. If the community truly hates it so much, we will make it happen if you give us the means.

~Sol

[herd 69]

Sol doesnt realise that you can close the program without altf4 via task manager etc

[Sol (DayZ) 132]

Sol doesnt realise that you can close the program without altf4 via task manager etc

Yeah dude GG, that's why I said disable the "Windows" key, and ended with... fuck you don't even need that, just do this instead.

I'm glad you read my whole post and not just the first sentence.

~Sol

[herd 69]

Yeah dude GG, that's why I said disable the "Windows" key, and ended with... fuck you don't even need that, just do this instead.

I'm glad you read my whole post and not just the first sentence.

~Sol

??? Disabling the win key wont help. I just kill the arma2.exe process. I read you post

[Sol (DayZ) 132]

??? Disabling the win key wont help. I just kill the arma2.exe process. I read you post

I forgot about Alt+Tab... so disbale Alt, and Windows key, damn. Like I said, I nullified my though process anyway on that part of my post. The only reason I didn't delete it is because it's still a viable method of solving the problem. Even with alt+tab, and using taskman to shut down the game.... still takes a fair bit longer than mashing ALT+F4. If you haven't taken damage or moved in 30 seconds, the functionality of the keys can be restored (in case of a partial client crash or a genuine need to end-task on the game client arises).

Again kudos for only really pointing out the flawed part of my statement, even though clarification was not necessary since that train had left the station.

~Sol

[P3T3RSAM 5]

The little signature at the end of your name is super annoying (we can read your username) but I agree with you. I completely agree with the "strikes" Idea. Infact, there should be an area on the forums/website where you can post screencaps/videos of Alt-f4ers. I'd also like to see an easier way to take/access screenshots without going to steam. Only problem I see with all these ctrl-alt-delete task manager solutions, Is that I occasionally have to close Dayz/arma because it will get stuck on "loading on different servers. This solution would have to make sure that the player is actually "in the game".

[herd 69]

I play in the window. You cant disable alt+tab being a OS feature.

[hulkingunicorn 20]

I forgot about Alt+Tab... so disbale Alt, and Windows key, damn. Like I said, I nullified my though process anyway on that part of my post. The only reason I didn't delete it is because it's still a viable method of solving the problem. Even with alt+tab, and using taskman to shut down the game.... still takes a fair bit longer than mashing ALT+F4. If you haven't taken damage or moved in 30 seconds, the functionality of the keys can be restored (in case of a partial client crash or a genuine need to end-task on the game client arises).

Again kudos for only really pointing out the flawed part of my statement, even though clarification was not necessary since that train had left the station.

~Sol

Developer disables key X -> exploiter binds key Z to do the same thing

Developer completely hijacks the keyboard -> exploiter uses second computer/device to send a process termination signal

Developer prevents process termination -> exploiter uses modded OS or simply pulls the network/power cable

Anyways, rocket's plan is for now to log player/client behaviour. Then, based on collected data, write rules do determine whether you've been a bad boy disconnecting in combat and jumping servers for loot. Finally, have players triggering those rules result in a ban.

[Bludy 324]

Anti ALT+F4 can be solved easily. If you get harmed in any way or have zombies pursuing you, you can't logout, if you force it your character stays there for a certain mount of time to get killed.

Anti hopping is another story, best solution I can thnk of would be that the game registers your last played server and starts a timer (I don't know how long, maybe 15min). If you try to join a different server, it shows the error "You left a server and must wait <TIME> before joining a different one".

this plus delay logout which stops if you move, like bandaging.

it has been all already said about this question..i can just hope for a good solution by devs

[wordplayuk@gmail.com 101]

OP, thanks for the long detailed post. I love reading stuff like this because it shows that people care about the mod and want to improve it. However, I think that you, and most people, are over thinking/engineering this, including Ander's radio tower. From all the posts I have seen I have consolidated my own version of how to deal with ghosting and help minimize server hopping.

Solutions to Ghosting:

1) Disconnect timer (30-60 seconds)

2) NO DISCONNECT IF YOU ARE IN SHOCK

3) If someone uses a weapon within 100-200m of you, +10-20 seconds on your disconnect timer.

I have a different opinion on how to rid the game of server hopping entirely, which I won't go into here. I also LOVE the idea of radio towers, but only for the suppression of ZED spawning.

What if your in shock and have no painkillers? Not sure about 3, it gives people away. Otherwise agreed

[chaR 40]

I actually really like the idea of adding seconds to your DC timer when shots are being fired in your vincinity. Really good idea imo.

And to the people saying you need to serverjump to find day/night server, I also implemented the possibility for that in my post, so I don't really see why that would be a problem.

[koze 113]

bad enough it takes us 5 mins to join a server, there is a better solution, which i've posted before

[hulkingunicorn 20]

bad enough it takes us 5 mins to join a server, there is a better solution, which i've posted before

Do you expect people to search all your posts because you're too lazy to link to it (I just verified it wasn't in this thread), or do you simply hope we'll blindly accept that you came up with something better? While the suggestions of the OP aren't ideal (as I've discussed myself (before you get started, I don't consider my own as flawless)), there have been several variations posted here.

In the end this thread is probably moot now though, considering rocket has laid out his plans for dealing with this (possibly with the exception of the suitable punishments): a, b, c, d, e.

[indominator 95]

a nice one could be just like other games, alt and f4 are blocked keys in multyplayer

[hulkingunicorn 20]

a nice one could be just like other games, alt and f4 are blocked keys in multyplayer

No. Did you even read the three pages of this thread?

Developer disables key X -> exploiter binds key Z to do the same thing

Developer completely hijacks the keyboard -> exploiter uses second computer/device to send a process termination signal

Developer prevents process termination -> exploiter uses modded OS or simply pulls the network/power cable