As long as I didn't hack it in right?

[tarquinbb 28]

what if you're a noob who doesn't know which weapons are hacked?

i mean, your character getting vapourized is fine - but BANNED for that... i'm somewhat familiar with the legit weapons in game, but not so much that i would instantly recognise a hacked one.

[crazyairborne 18]

theres not very many weapons in the game, you'll start remembering them soon enough.

[enforcer1975 1111]

Maybe not BE but maybe the DayZ hive is already monitoring which equipment players use and adding players with suspicios items to a list and ban them regardless if they hacked the weapon in or not. Due to the fact that some servers had BE turned off there are lots of illegal items circulating the servers. Now with a forced equal version and BE activation check things might change. As a developer the last thing you want is your game beeing ruined because if irresponsible behaviour. Use some common sense once and a while.

[ZomboWTF 527]

Well I recently killed a hacker on the hill Dobryy just outside of Elektro and he had an AS50 TWS. I picked it up but haven't used it yet cause I don't want to get banned. I was just curious if I am allowed to keep it and use it freely as I please without being punished or anything of the sort? I'm sure I will get plenty of hate for wanting to keep it and use it but if you could at least answer my question that would be nice.

if you pick up a weapon thats hacked, you are the same as the hacker in dayZ devs eyes, this has been discussed long before and often

just dont pick up stuff thats not in the mod or you might have to live with getting banned

[Kilocuna 6]

Maybe, maybe not. Battle-eye HAS banned people for this before, but they've swept it under the rug and say "They must of hacked it in".

Yeah no, bullshit, Do you even know how Battle-eye even works? "not saying i fully understand it but" Its not a maybe maybe not thing, i mean its not a randomized fucking bot that thinks "oh i like this guy ill keep him/ Oh NO I HATE YOU BANNED"

Its operated how it was developed, a script detection system.

It has to detect it being brought it, once its in game it doesnt even know who has it or whats being done with it. All it can do is detect client side of the case.

[ZomboWTF 527]

Yeah no, bullshit, Do you even know how Battle-eye even works? "not saying i fully understand it but" Its not a maybe maybe not thing, i mean its not a randomized fucking bot that thinks "oh i like this guy ill keep him/ Oh NO I HATE YOU BANNED"

Its operated how it was developed, a script detection system.

It has to detect it being brought it, once its in game it doesnt even know who has it or whats being done with it. All it can do is detect client side of the case.

however, if a player films you with the gun, gets your name somehow and posts it in the cheater reporting forum section, you are in BIG trouble

[KField86 237]

We all know there's nothing legally stating he can't use it if he picks it up. It's called having a moral compass and knowing using a hacked weapon against people who are unable to obtain it is pretty much the same as spawning the weapon in yourself. If I found it, I'd hide it on a body and watch it disappear immediately. Without even second thinking it, because my mind would tell me "that's wrong" and I get much more satisfaction getting kills with a weapon that is found within the mods files, then having to use one that was scripted in for the purpose of having a gigantic advantage. The only thing that changes here is the user. Will you be banned for picking it up? Probably not. Would rocket himself tell you to go ahead and actually use it if you do? FUCK NO. That's the point. They are purposely trying to clean the servers of scripted in weapons on a weekly basis. You're just adding to their work load because chances are you'll die with it, then some other noob will take it and die with it, and so on and so forth. Do whatever you want. If you don't know the difference between right and wrong, there's no help for you. Some people like to play this game fairly. Those people tend to have "skill".

[enforcer1975 1111]

We all know there's nothing legally stating he can't use it if he picks it up. It's called having a moral compass and knowing using a hacked weapon against people who are unable to obtain it is pretty much the same as spawning the weapon in yourself. If I found it, I'd hide it on a body and watch it disappear immediately. Without even second thinking it, because my mind would tell me "that's wrong" and I get much more satisfaction getting kills with a weapon that is found within the mods files, then having to use one that was scripted in for the purpose of having a gigantic advantage. The only thing that changes here is the user. Will you be banned for picking it up? Probably not. Would rocket himself tell you to go ahead and actually use it if you do? FUCK NO. That's the point. They are purposely trying to clean the servers of scripted in weapons on a weekly basis. You're just adding to their work load because chances are you'll die with it, then some other noob will take it and die with it, and so on and so forth. Do whatever you want. If you don't know the difference between right and wrong, there's no help for you. Some people like to play this game fairly. Those people tend to have "skill".

Unfortunately most peoples moral compasses are broken thanks to the annonymity of the internet or maybe their parents didn't tell them what's right and wrong. Otherwise we would never have pvper hating threads or threads such as these.

[KField86 237]

Yeah no, bullshit, Do you even know how Battle-eye even works? "not saying i fully understand it but" Its not a maybe maybe not thing, i mean its not a randomized fucking bot that thinks "oh i like this guy ill keep him/ Oh NO I HATE YOU BANNED"

Its operated how it was developed, a script detection system.

It has to detect it being brought it, once its in game it doesnt even know who has it or whats being done with it. All it can do is detect client side of the case.

I've read the threads, I've seen the arguments, and I know how battle-eye works. I have no reason to sit here and lie to you. I WATCHED my friend pick up an Mk16 or the silenced semi auto sniper rifle. He mucked around with it for about 4 or 5 hours..didn't even kill anyone with it in fact.. We played pretty much all day. We join up on teamspeak the next day, "Dude, I'm fucking global banned?" He logs in every day around the same time I do, and everyone in my group knows that hacking is immediately grounds for removal so I know he wasn't running other scripts. I mean, we would run together each and every time we played DayZ and I'm pretty sure I would of noticed something out of the ordinary ie: hacks being used. Bottom line: He found a Mk16. And was global banned. And as I already said, I have no reason to lie. People can kick and scream and say "Do you even know how battle-eye works" but the fact is, 95% of the people who say this, are only capable of saying it because they were told HOW it works by rocket. I don't deny there's a ton of people crying foul and trying to get appealed by claiming they just picked up the weapon when they did indeed spawn it in, but I know for utmost certainty, my buddy did not. As I literally watched him pick it up off a corpse near prig.

[Taso (DayZ) 13]

The moral obligation is iffy at best.

What's the real difference between someone hacking in an AS50 then dying to a fresh player, and someone stockpiling AS50s from heli crash sites and dying to a fresh player with one.

For the sake of the discussion, let's pretend we're dealing with regular AS50s (and we can consider OP's case a unique circumstance).

Ultimately, the only difference I see pragmatically is one of time. One person took the faster, less rewarding route to get the gun. However, in both circumstances, someone with an abundant supply of normally overpowered weaponry lost it to a fresh player. The fresh player picks it up for virtually no work.

What moral compass is at play in that scenario? Is there an obligation to assume that an easy kill on a ghillied sniper was probably a result of it being a hacker? Or do you assess the likelihood of the alternatives? Or do you not worry about it, take what you got lucky enough to find, and move on with it. You'll end up dying eventually- as will the next person who uses whatever gun you have and the next after that, and so on in that fashion.

Disclaimer- I'm not suggesting it's okay to hack items, simply that to best a player with a large advantage over you yields certain rewards in-game comparable to the advantage the player had. If you get the kill, you earned the gear. (This is merely an opinion of mine, feel free to disagree)

EDIT: And I hate to call your buddy a liar, but Battle Eye is script detection. If he was globally banned, there was no human component to it. He was caught with a script. Whether or not it was a false positive (those can happen with automated systems), I couldn't say, but I can say with full confidence that he was not banned for a weapon he picked up.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Taso

[[Gen]Adzic 241]

Use it if you want to god dammit!

If you hadn't come here posting 'can I' then you could have just played the 'I didn't know' bullshit card, the fact you've come here to ask tells me you are a good player who don't want to turn bad, so drop it and go find something else. Simple :)

[ironman3112 11]

The moral obligation is iffy at best.

What's the real difference between someone hacking in an AS50 then dying to a fresh player, and someone stockpiling AS50s from heli crash sites and dying to a fresh player with one.

For the sake of the discussion, let's pretend we're dealing with regular AS50s (and we can consider OP's case a unique circumstance).

Ultimately, the only difference I see pragmatically is one of time. One person took the faster, less rewarding route to get the gun. However, in both circumstances, someone with an abundant supply of normally overpowered weaponry lost it to a fresh player. The fresh player picks it up for virtually no work.

What moral compass is at play in that scenario? Is there an obligation to assume that an easy kill on a ghillied sniper was probably a result of it being a hacker? Or do you assess the likelihood of the alternatives? Or do you not worry about it, take what you got lucky enough to find, and move on with it. You'll end up dying eventually- as will the next person who uses whatever gun you have and the next after that, and so on in that fashion.

Disclaimer- I'm not suggesting it's okay to hack items, simply that to best a player with a large advantage over you yields certain rewards in-game comparable to the advantage the player had. If you get the kill, you earned the gear. (This is merely an opinion of mine, feel free to disagree)

EDIT: And I hate to call your buddy a liar, but Battle Eye is script detection. If he was globally banned, there was no human component to it. He was caught with a script. Whether or not it was a false positive (those can happen with automated systems), I couldn't say, but I can say with full confidence that he was not banned for a weapon he picked up.

i'd give my beans for this here, this is what i was thinking actually

[Shaiking 0]

OP did you happen to kill that guy on a uk server?

[dallas 5195]

Using an OP hacked in weapon, like the AS50 TWS, knowing it's a cheat weapon, makes you a cheater yourself. Since most cheaters don't care about right/wrong, they only care about getting caught or not, I don't think the moral argument will work on OP.

[Acix 132]

put it on a zombie and burry the zombie

[Taso (DayZ) 13]

Let's give this a bit of a metaphorical spin using (unfortunately) Halo.

There was a multiplayer game mode in Halo 2, if you're familiar, called Juggernaut. One character was the juggernaut, the others were not. To become the Juggernaut, all you had to do was kill the Juggernaut. However, he was significantly faster, stronger, and depending on the game mode, had better weapons than you.

Frankly, that's how I view any DayZ situation, hacking or otherwise (except for God Mode. That shit crosses the line).

If someone has better stuff than you, find a way to kill them. If you kill them, you earned their stuff. Whether or not THEY earned it doesn't matter because by overcoming that advantage, you DID.

Now yes, it might be one thing to find 100 of this gun spawned on the ground. There was no earning to be had. But if you legitimately killed a fellow who had this weapon, then by the laws of DayZ, you earned that weapon because you earned the kill.

I don't think it's fair to conflate hacking with killing a hacker and taking his stuff.

If I kill a hacker who had a helicopter, then I earned that helicopter just the same as if I'd killed a legit player with a helicopter.

[Skint (DayZ) 138]

Just want to clarify, my previous post was not intended to condone the use of hacked in weapons, but to inform the OP of the technical facts.

I totally agree with the other posters about the morality of using hacked weapons and, as always in DayZ, each player is left to decide how they wish to proceed in such circumstances.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Skint

[Zarathustra (DayZ) 87]

If someone has better stuff than you, find a way to kill them. If you kill them, you earned their stuff. Whether or not THEY earned it doesn't matter because by overcoming that advantage, you DID.

Now yes, it might be one thing to find 100 of this gun spawned on the ground. There was no earning to be had. But if you legitimately killed a fellow who had this weapon, then by the laws of DayZ, you earned that weapon because you earned the kill.

I don't think it's fair to conflate hacking with killing a hacker and taking his stuff.

If I kill a hacker who had a helicopter, then I earned that helicopter just the same as if I'd killed a legit player with a helicopter.

Sophistry.

If you kill a 'hacker' who has helicopter and take his helicopter, the helicopter remains a sanctioned weapon/vehicle/item. Even if he spawned it using cheats, it is quite unreasonable to think you could possibly distinguish it from a legitimately sourced helicopter.

If you kill a 'hacker' who has a cheat weapon (it's quite reasonable to call all weapons not intended for use in Day Z cheat weapons) and take his weapon, that weapon remains a cheat weapon. You know that this weapon is not allowed in the game (items that don't belong to Day Z do not have a description), but you continue to use it. You are cheating by using this weapon, even if you did not spawn it; ergo you are a cheater - you deserve a ban.

You guys are lucky I am not responsible for investigating cheating. I would be running daily queries on the character database, and handing out automatic temporary bans for having non-DayZ items. Do it more than once? Permanent ban.

[Taso (DayZ) 13]

What's the difference? You didn't put any work into finding the helicopter- you merely killed the person who obtained it.

What does it matter if it's a Huey versus any other helicopter (since no others are in DayZ)? The chances that you would have obtained it on your own, whether legitimate or not, are roughly the same (zero, against a fraction of a percent).

And there's a completely reasonable grievance against people who are mad at new players who happen upon a hacked weapon. They would have no idea it's hacked and there's no reason for them to believe it would be (apart from being suspicious of every new gun they find).

In that case is it morally wrong?

If not, then really, the moral distinction being made is only one of knowledge and not one of action. I take issue with moral grievances like that.

EDIT: As a philosophy graduate, I respectfully disagree, and I believe the distinction is real and noteworthy.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Taso

[Zarathustra (DayZ) 87]

What's the difference? You didn't put any work into finding the helicopter- you merely killed the person who obtained it.

What does it matter if it's a Huey versus any other helicopter (since no others are in DayZ)? The chances that you would have obtained it on your own, whether legitimate or not, are roughly the same (zero, against a fraction of a percent).

I'm afraid that I do not understand what you are saying here, though I feel that it probably has something to do with my not being precise in the helicopter example. I was assuming that the helicopter is the one Huey model that exists in Day Z. Using any other helicopter from Arma is a using a cheat item, and should be punished.

And there's a completely reasonable grievance against people who are mad at new players who happen upon a hacked weapon. They would have no idea it's hacked and there's no reason for them to believe it would be (apart from being suspicious of every new gun they find).

In that case is it morally wrong?

If not, then really, the moral distinction being made is only one of knowledge and not one of action. I take issue with moral grievances like that.

I understand what you're saying regarding ignorance of the wrong committed, perhaps I was a little too hasty in calling for bans. But you agree then that it is wrong? In your original post you said that it was fine to use such cheat items as they were essentially earned.

I still feel that it is acceptable to be tough on those with cheat items, even if it means a little 'collateral damage'. Ideally, the database would be queried, characters with illegitimate items would have those items removed and be presented with an in-game warning about picking up such items. Then their name would be added to another database of potential cheaters and further transgressions would be noted and tallied.

If this is too difficult to implement, I am still in favour of querying the database for those with illicit items, and then killing them (resetting their character). They'll learn after they've lost successive characters, or when they come crying to the board, why they kept getting killed.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Zarathustra

[[email protected] 11]

TWS can see at night. People would get suspicious sooner or later. It has a grayscale thermal scope with impressive zoom. It works during the day and night just like the hugely useful L85. So yes, stuff it in a cows ass or something.

[[email protected] 3]

Having hacked weapons in inventory can get u a ban is so poor! There will be much people playing dayz, but not using this forum or still are noobs in dayz!

How the Fuck should they know if a weapon they`ll find is a hacked one???? So the Devs shouldnt be lazy and ban the basterd who hacked it in, not the guys finding/using it!

[CrashB111 2]

Don't be a douche, kill a zombie or a pig, put the gun on the corpse and hide it. The weapon isn't legitimate and it makes you as bad as the hacker for using it.

[Taso (DayZ) 13]

The first part of my post is attempting to find a pragmatic reason for the distinction between a "cheat" helicopter and a non-"cheat" helicopter. Your odds of finding either one are virtually zero, and if you find it in possession of someone else, it doesn't matter whether it was hacked in or not, since you didn't put the work into building it either way.

The distinction, I feel, does exist when something breaches the line of acceptable power. A helicopter that can drop nukes? Yeah, I can understand wanting to see some sort of penal action against both the people who use it and the person who spawns it.

However, what if it's just another model of helicopter very similar to the Huey in capabilities? What's the actual pragmatic difference?

In the case of the TWS, it has thermal and nightvision- that's a pragmatic difference and should be considered as such. To an extent, it matters. However, many people see "hacked" items as all spooky worthy of bans regardless of what they are. Most hacked items, however, are not really any better than other in-game content that IS available. So the witch-hunt for those who find a hacked weapon on a kill they earned is mostly frivolous.

In the case of the TWS- yes, it's better than the regular AS50, but as a person who has used an L85 to spot and then swapped to the AS50 to snipe- it's really not that much better. You shave a second or two off of a kill. Someone will still kill you eventually.

I don't see any problem in using any item you find so long as it doesn't break the game. While "breaking the game" may be a bit subjective, I don't think the TWS breaks the game much more than the L85.

Frankly, I'll be happy when NVGs and the L85 are gone from the game entirely. Maybe even the nightscope FAL (but I kind of like the idea of it filling a niche) However, until that time, the TWS is, in my opinion, not much more game-breaking than the L85 and therefore, falls under my criteria for acceptable usage of an item you find.

[Zarathustra (DayZ) 87]

Taso,I feel you're making this more complicated than it need be. The resources it would take to distinguish between those who spawn a nuke-armed Hokum attack chopper or those who spawn a light transport helicopters are too great. We would need jury panels assessing what cheats were used, what weapons were spawned, how they were used and what the motivation of the cheater was before determining an appropriate punishment. This might be in important real life when we're talking about crimes like murder, but this is a game.

We need to stick to a simple principles that everyone can understand:

Spawning weapons into the game is cheating. Using weapons that have been spawned into the game is cheating. Cheating is punished.

I don't see any problem in using any item you find so long as it doesn't break the game.

But that's still using cheat weapons. If you agree that this is wrong, and what is wrong should be punished, then you have to agree that we must punish those who use such items.

Edit: I understand that we fundamentally disagree on this:

You feel that the advantage conferred by a 'hacked' weapon is the most salient point, and that possessing weapons that do not confer any advantage is acceptable. I feel that this is a bad precedent; that it doesn't matter whether a weapon confers any advantage at all, only that it has been 'hacked' and that we must use the weapons that Rocket has provided with - and only those weapons/items. My concern is that obscuring the simple distinction between cheat weapons and Day Z weapons will result in more of what is perceived as 'harmless' cheating, which is still cheating and still introduces weapons or items or methods of play that Rocket did not want us to use.

Edited July 29, 2012 by Zarathustra