At this stage, DayZ is not playable.

[baz (DayZ) 19]

Fortunately I can say that I have never been affected by a hacker either. I really enjoy the game... I suppose that means it is playable for me.

[Gauche 1]

Noobs needed for DayZ's long term survival. Why not target vet players if you wanted some challenge? Not fun enough or not good enough? :)

Agreed...shooting noobs is like shooting deer at La Grunta Hotel & Resort (beans to anyone who gets the reference)

[aaron.inkursion@gmail.com 0]

I completely agree. I spent 40 hours on this game having a great time with friends, gearing up a character and enjoying a real sense of sandbox narrative. However, it was ruined in 5 seconds by a visiting hacker. It really is not proportional: it takes so much effort to survive in this game for any real meaningful amount of time, and yet any script-kiddie can join in and have you dead in seconds.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Which is an easier problem to manage through the already-implemented blacklisting procedure? Which situation has more immediate, far-reaching and negative reprecussions on the Dayz community?

Your suggestion is the game design equivalent of burning down your house because it is infested with cockroaches. You propose a completely fundamental change to the entire vision and philosophy of the game because it is currently being plagued (though not nearly to the degree that you intimate) by an extreme nuisance.

I concede that hackers are an issue. I have every confidence that a stand-alone DayZ product will make fundamental, engine-level changes that will prevent nearly every instance of hacking that is occurring currently. Almost all of the hacking in the game is not hacking. It's just executing scripts that are permitted as per the engine in order to make mods like DayZ possible. All rocket has to do is shut off the client's ability to do this and the door will be locked on the vast majority of hackers.

Will some still slip through? Of course. Just like they do in every game in existence and just like they would still if every server in the game were private.

But the problem can be contained, and easily so.

There is no need to burn the house down.

Lets just stay in a hotel for the weekend and let the exterminators do their work.

Which is to say have patience and confidence that the issue will be resolved.

I understand it's incidental and subjective, but in 600+ hours in-game across 100's of servers I have never been killed or seen a server killed by a hacker. I was attacked once by a guy in an Apache but I successfully logged off. I've had two friends meet hackers, once each - and they have both also played 200+ hours.

I do not mean to understate the extent or severity of the problem, but you should meet me halfway on your "every server, all the time" kind of hyperboles.

EDIT: Read that you are a project manager. If your company is public, I would appreciate if you would inform me of its name so I can short sell it.

I would appreciate it if you would go fuck yourself.

Edited July 20, 2012 by ZedsDeadBaby

[ninami 37]

Because private servers break DayZ. Why is that such an incredibly difficult concept?

You can't develop a cruel, harsh, punishing and uncertain world if people just fill it with their friends and neighbors. That doesn't work. The game breaks. It's not DayZ anymore.

Why would he pour all of this effort into creating a game specifically to create an experience, and then immeidately develop a server hosting strategy that undermines the entire design?

By reading your reply, I assume that you've never been to these forums before.

This issue is well known. The developers have responded. There are many posts every day on the topic. Some of them are reasonable and respectful. Others make ridiculously asinine claims like "the game is unplayable" which add nothing to the conversation and don't help the developers track down the issue. It's needless drama in an attempt to garner attention.

Notice the sticky at the top that advises posters to search before posting?

Hackers are a problem. Everyone knows it. They're working on it. The issue is not so bad as to make the game unplayable. In 600+ hours I have seen one hacker.

So, spare me your righteous indignation, please.

I'm just going to reply like I always do to posts like these. And please, get this into your little head...

Just because you played 600 hours without getting killed or seen anyone cheat, doesn't mean they don't exist. Maybe it's very playable for you, well then good for you! Congratulations!

But this was not a post about lucky players like yourself, I was making a post about my experience with hackers. I have just as much right to post something like you do. And if this post angers you, then I suggest you leave and let the players who actually want to debate and comment about this situation.

And tbh, no one ever posted this before me. I wrote my experience which no one else have experienced. So why don't you just leave me the hell alone and annoy someone else. Thanks!

[deathTouch (DayZ) 17]

Your suggestion is the game design equivalent of burning down your house because it is infested with cockroaches. You propose a completely fundamental change to the entire vision and philosophy of the game because it is currently being plagued (though not nearly to the degree that you intimate) by an extreme nuisance.

The suggestion to allow admin-level policing of servers is equivalent to using chemo (read chemo, not cherno) to stop a malignant cancer from infecting vital organs in the body to the point it starts to destroy functionality of the body as a whole. Sure, it may cause some harm, but it's a more manageable, smaller-scale problem that can be controlled. For some reason you seem to think every single admin wants to lock their server and prevent anyone and everyone else from using it, with no way to police such behavior (ever hear of blacklisting?), when in fact my experience with most admins has been a plea to empower them to at least attempt to regulate their servers such that they can maintain a fair environment for themselves and their player base.

I concede that hackers are an issue. I have every confidence that a stand-alone DayZ product will make fundamental, engine-level changes that will prevent nearly every instance of hacking that is occurring currently. Almost all of the hacking in the game is not hacking. It's just executing scripts that are permitted as per the engine in order to make mods like DayZ possible. All rocket has to do is shut off the client's ability to do this and the door will be locked on the vast majority of hackers.

That would be a great point if:

1) The standalone product was weeks or even a few months away. This isn't going to be standalone for a very very long time given the size of the dev team.

2) If you didn't pull the "on/off" switch thing completely out of your ass. First you say the vulnerabilities are with the game engine itself (something of which is outside of Rocket's control to modify), then you say that the solution to this problem is a client-level modification. As per Rocket's previous post:

I could stop development of the *mod* until the *game* is patched.

But what would I do during that time? Updates need to be tested regularly to ensure things are patched and fixed, much easier to identify issues if only a small number of changes are made.

You are confusing vulnerabilities with the game with those in the mod. The engine and cheat-engine changes take more time because they have greater effect on many other things.

The vulnerabilities lie in the engine themselves as you first state, but consistent with logic and the most basic understanding of programming, there is no "on/off" switch to these engine level vulnerabilties with a mod client. If there was a magical clientside plug for stopping unitended scripts of the game, Rocket himself wouldn't say the issue of preventing the executing of unintended scripts to be largely or completely outside of his control.

Even if we didn't have this information, or even if the vulnerabilties were limited to the mod client rather than the game engine, it would be absolutely asinine at this point to think that a game developer would allow individuals to kill entire 50 man servers with the click of a button at an ever-increasing frequency and not simply switch the modability of his builds to "off" before every update.

Will some still slip through? Of course. Just like they do in every game in existence and just like they would still if every server in the game were private.

We're not talking about "some". Count how many 50 man servers were entirely killed just yesterday in the cheat report section. Count up the total number of people who lost all of their progress during those attacks. Now make a reasonable assumption of the average amount of time those individuals spent on their characters, which would probably be around 4-5 hours. Figure out how many hours of those people feel they lost in the attack as a whole.

Now figure out how many seconds it took the hacker to drop down a menu and press a single button to initiate that attack.

I'm sure hackers are still a small minority of the overall playing population. Unfortunately in Dayz, a single hacker can ruin 50+ people's enjoyment of the game in an instant, which is why Dayz should have some of the most stringent cheat prevention and response policies, not some of the most lackadaisical I've seen in a game.

But the problem can be contained, and easily so.

Based on what evidence provided by a developer even remotely connected to either ARMA II or this mod?

I do not mean to understate the extent or severity of the problem, but you should meet me halfway on your "every server, all the time" kind of hyperboles.

Which would be relevant if I said every server, all time. What I said was, at an ever-increasing rate.

I understand it's incidental and subjective, but in 600+ hours in-game across 100's of servers I have never been killed or seen a server killed by a hacker. I was attacked once by a guy in an Apache but I successfully logged off. I've had two friends meet hackers, once each - and they have both also played 200+ hours.

No one cares about testimonials. A simple paging-through of the hacker report threads over the past few months quickly reveals that the number of unique and relatively unmistakable hacking events (spawning in of obvious objects not in the game, nuking cities repeatedly and killing of entire servers) has been on the rise continuously.

I swear to God I've seen less denial from drug addicts about their problems than some members of this forum exhibit concerning the increasing problem of cheating in this game and the impact it's having on the community.

Edited July 21, 2012 by deathTouch

[insolentfool 17]

I've never ran into a cheater while playing. I kind of wonder how many times people die legit and still think its from a hacker, everyone is so paranoid about it.

first time i died to a hacker i was pretty damn sure it was a hacker.

first my winchester started shooting chairs.

then everyone in the server was given ghillie suits.

then a10's rained out of the sky and squished me.

pretty sure it was a hacker ;-)

[bbq (DayZ) 4]

Then don't play it... Post your likes, dislikes, bugs and thoughts don't just bash it and say OMGZ UNPLAYABLE SH*t.

[daze23 549]

Let's evaluate which is the bigger problem...

no. I don't see how private servers will help anything in the long run. the solution has to be something that's going to benefit all players, not just those lucky enough to have access to a private server

[deathTouch (DayZ) 17]

no. I don't see how private servers will help anything in the long run. the solution has to be something that's going to benefit all players, not just those lucky enough to have access to a private server

Read the post. The suggestion is not to allow private servers, it is to allow people to police their servers via server bans on hackers without the current red tape.

Locked and private servers would still be blacklisted. Admins abusing their kicking and banning powers would still be blacklisted.

Edited July 21, 2012 by deathTouch

[lille_bingo-mannen 10]

I haven't encountered a cheater in what, one or two months?

btw satchel charges and M136s exist, along with the M203 and the M203 HE.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Kuningas

[aaron.inkursion@gmail.com 0]

Encountered a hacker tonight with a script that allowed him to respawn, fully military-equipped & ghillied, behind players out in the field. In 20 minutes the same ghillie+M14 player appeared directly behind me and my friend in NW Air / Elektro Hills respectively. Knew it was him because he appeared immediately after bottom-left respawn message ('Gonzo was killed'). I was in a very unobvious place on the backside of the hill - not an obvious spawn-in area, at all. Script spawns him in fully geared, lay on the ground facing the player. In the few seconds it took him to get his bearings and aim, I had heard the sound of footsteps and turned around to kill him. His body immediately despawned in the ground.

Definite hacker.

[deathTouch (DayZ) 17]

I haven't encountered a cheater in what, one or two months?

A good read on why anecdotal evidence, although initially persuasive to many people, is unreliable.

http://www.scientifi...entific-results

btw satchel charges and M136s exist, along with the M203 and the M203 HE.

I suppose those were farmed legitimately though, with that .11% barracks-only drop rate.

Just because something is in the game does not make every instance of it either a legitimate or illegitimate find.

When 200 of them are found or go off in a city, then I think it's safe to say they weren't farmed.

Edited July 21, 2012 by deathTouch

[Mourek 40]

I have ran into hackers only once, those dumbasses crashed their chopper and they were all dead, we just looted their bodies for hacked items such as VSS Vintorez, maybe they weren't even hackers and they just picked up those weapons from someone else. And all of this happened about a month and a half ago, haven't seen a cheater since.

[TheMachine 803]

It's funny that everyone comes in saying they've never personally seen a hacker, therefor it's not a problem.

There's been a definite influx of 'hacking' (people using scripts to spawn stuff, go invis etc) lately, but don't expect it to get better.

[Electrolyte 4]

I sympathize with you OP. The frequency of hackers/cheaters has remained consistent as more and more people join the Alpha. The mod seems now to only serve as a platform for stress testing and performance optimizations until the standalone is announced. From a publishing perspective Rocket and team are treading dangerous ground leaving the Alpha in Its current condition with little communication to compensate.

[ninami 37]

Then don't play it... Post your likes, dislikes, bugs and thoughts don't just bash it and say OMGZ UNPLAYABLE SH*t.

Please, quote me where I say "OMGZ UNPLAYABLE SHIT". I would love to see that because I don't recall writing anything like that.

If you can't discuss a problem within the game on the forums, then why the hell are you here? What do you think forums are for? I've never "bashed" DayZ.

But in order for us to test this game so the developers can progress, we need a game where we can play without getting killed 24/7 by cheaters.

[jimmy_rustlers 24]

Abusing private servers by admins... Riiight. I mean come on! You know that this server is sh*t when admin team took all the vehicles and looted all your tents just by reading logs. If you found such server you just don't go there anymore. And this can happen on public servers NOW and before. As an admin I can read logs you know. I know what gear you carry in inventory and where do you hide your possessions. But if I want to have fun and have no ego issues - I will let you have your vehicles and your tents untouched. And try to ensure that no hacker will spoil your fun. Because it's not fun to play alone or beat some unarmed players.

I want you to gear up and meet me at Cherno so we can shoot each other and have some fun after work. I want you to raid our fully stocked tent, steal our stuff, our cars... so we can chase you later and have even more fun! You don't realize what kind of bloodbath we had on our server when someone found our main tent city with huge stockpile of weapons (2 weeks of gathering by the team of 10-15 players online every evening). Now we have clan wars. I don't know these guys but they are at each other’s throats because of our stash. Battle raging third day already, they killing each other like crazy and our old camp is filled with dead bodies. Now THIS is fun.

Somehow they play when we are going to sleep but I’m eager to meet them. And I'm really happy that they play on our server now. This is the best reward I ever had in DayZ.

Edited July 21, 2012 by Jimmy Rustlers

[derailed000 20]

Its wrong to call these guys hackers, they are cheaters as anyone can cheat in any game. The cant play it without cheating and they are probably cheating in other games aswell as they cant manage it without it. When cheating one is destroying for themselfs since you dont get the feeling of the reward then you manage to get the sniper rifle or survived for 50 days without dying. You eventually get tired of being in god mode since you no longer get that feeling. People that cheat also often has it hard in real life to achieve certain goals. I feel sorry for those guys and hope they one day stop cheating it wont bring you any good out of it.

[DopeGirl 6]

Luckily havent ran into any cheaters so far.

[JakeXP 4]

I've personally only had a few incidents concerning cheaters or what I believe to be the work of a cheater. Once a message popped up saying "Enjoy your new weapon" and everyone on the server had been spawned a silenced M4 CCO. The second was a player who I strongly believe teleported as it was his only viable means of escaping and the third was a dead body we found with an L85A2 ACOG GL. Though I don't believe it's not going on just because I've not experienced anything overly malicious. Every game has its issues with cheaters and since DayZ is still in its early days there's plenty of time to improve upon this.

[Guerrilla (DayZ) 0]

I think i was victim to a hacker, basically i was running along in a totally open field and my leg broke. (Pitch night time server i had NVGs though.) After applying my only morphine i climbed a deer stand in the middle of no where and it was empty, stood there a moment and my leg broke again! I pressed escape and just as i was about click abort someone shot at me. Earlier my friends had said there was a hacker at the cherno church and at stary. all on the same server in the same 30 minute period 0__0