How not to surrender while hosting a HackZ server.

[FFrank 18]

Hello dear Server Admins!

I'm hosting my own HackZ server for about 2 weeks now.

Before I became an admin myself, I rarely met any hackers and thought there wouldn't be more than 10% of all players cheating.

Now I know better. By now it's nearly 25%, that means 1 out of 4 guys is hacking. This is not DayZ anymore, i pefer to call it HackZ.

I've been killed by invisible or porting hackers about 10 times in the last week. It's awful to have to kick masses of players if you don't know WHO is the cheater. I do not want or like to kick or even ban players who did absolutely nothing.

Luckily I managed to get to know someone who has an undetected map hack running. He's not playing with me or my group, he's just somewhere in the woods tracking suspicious players. In the last week, he told me EVERY evening about at least 3-4 people who were teleport-killing other players and spawning vehicles en masse.

This guy is the MOST EFFECTIVE CHEAT PROTECTION, his speed of detection is insane, which makes him 1000 times better than BattlEye.

"Someone just spawned a huey near Kamenka. His name is ... oh wait, there's a second one who just ported over to him. His name is..."

I Log on to RCon, BANHAMMER INCOMING - 2 cheaters less.

I think it's quite sad to say this but you better have your own friendly hacker to detect others because the games anti-cheat engine is totally worthless.

If this guy is going to leave my server one day, I will shut it down and never try to set up a new one - unless there will be an extremely improved anti-cheat protection in this mod.

Another bad thing is that server admins get their servers blacklisted/ disconntected from hive if they kick/ban too much. This means if many hackers visit your server and you do not know who it is you'll have to kick/ban many players to re-obtain power over your server. This will lead to a server blacklist.

Hackers win, server admins lose. It's not going to change as long as useless BE is running.

[NomadGameCenter 0]

The enemy of the enemy is your friend...

[Zeromentor 169]

Yeah, I feel sorry for both admins and players. I'm not sure which more. Admins pay money, so maybe them. But many cheat the system, so a little less, making it equal again.

I have no idea where all these hackers are coming from. Usually it is some blog, or a forum, but the numbers are insane. I played for 5 hours, died 8 times. Friend of mine played for 4, died 10 times. All to hackers ALONE.

I'm sitting back wishing battleye would just mass banwave like 20k players, innocent or not, and get it over with, instead of making my life and others' hell as we try to play a game and systematically get reset every 30 minutes by being tossed into the air, insta-capped by a teleporter, or dropped into a crowd and ripped into by an LMG. I actually jumped on my 360 to play Gears of War 3 with friends... I hate Gears.

[sonicrainbrony 136]

I've heard stories of hackers like this. It is amazing that people need to HACK in order to fill the place of ANTI-CHEAT.

ArmA II, making sense since release.

[T.G. 48]

Fight fire with fire I guess. Cautiously optimistic for future stand alone's security.

[Swineflew 480]

This thread isn't what I thought it was going to be.

Although I still hope that ALL hackers get banned and I wish people would educate themselves even a little bit about the uphill battle anti-cheat services have to deal with.

[Legacy (DayZ) 1091]

Post Deleted

I don't want to lock this thread, even so there is no issue with it besides some random user declaring he is hosting a server and using a hacker to fight hackers. I suggest not shitting on the thread and giving your opinion in a civil manner. It's a interesting way to combat hackers, while risking yourself being blacklisted.

I don't encourage it, but I do applaud your efforts. I don't recommend doing this... but if you really think about it, what choice do we have now? Hackers have gone quite crazy, and it's getting pretty god damn ridiculous. So I'm not blaming people if they resort to lesser known methods and risking themselves banned/blacklisted.

[Swineflew 480]

Mods sticking up for this is disappointing to me.

There shouldn't be a double standard for hackers.

"He hacks in a nice way so it's OK" is something that I can't get behind.

Like it or not being a mod gives your opinions a certain type of authority and power, and adding fuel to the "hackers are ruining the game" fire is something I'd suggest steering clear of.

Of course I'm just some nobody posting on a forum so I hope I don't come off sounding "preachy" of condescending.

[ArakkAttack 10]

Yep, good idea. I personally like the idea of passworded servers which have, say, 75 slots, and they have a website where up to 500 people can sign up to the website and register to the forums and receive a password. If someone hacks, the admins only have to look through much less of the logs to find out who it could be, and remove them from the community. It's a shame it has to come to things like this, but at the moment the game is pretty much unplayable without community action.

[ArakkAttack 10]

Mods sticking up for this is disappointing to me.

There shouldn't be a double standard for hackers.

"He hacks in a nice way so it's OK" is something that I can't get behind.

Like it or not being a mod gives your opinions a certain type of authority and power, and adding fuel to the "hackers are ruining the game" fire is something I'd suggest steering clear of.

Of course I'm just some nobody posting on a forum so I hope I don't come off sounding "preachy" of condescending.

Yeah, there shouldn't have to be, but what else do you want people to do? At the moment, hacking is out of control. If doing this helps someone to reduce hacking on his server, he'll do it. Very very simple...

[Legacy (DayZ) 1091]

Mods sticking up for this is disappointing to me.

There shouldn't be a double standard for hackers.

Really? I thought it was just more of me saying "Hey, thats kind of cool. But you understand it's dangerous, you risk blacklisting and it's not generally acceptable. Right?"

Forum Moderators don't speak officially, so I really don't think anyone should care too much if we say we like something or not when it comes down to this type of topic. If I like the idea of this, does that mean it's acceptable for everyone? No, it's just what I think alone. I help the community, but I do not run this community.

[Swineflew 480]

Really? I thought it was just more of me saying "Hey, thats kind of cool. But you understand it's dangerous, you risk blacklisting and it's not generally acceptable. Right?"

Forum Moderators don't speak officially, so I really don't think anyone should care too much if we say we like something or not when it comes down to this type of topic. If I like the idea of this, does that mean it's acceptable for everyone? No, it's just what I think alone. I help the community, but I do not run this community.

I understand that, and addressed it in the part of my quote you left out.

[Legacy (DayZ) 1091]

If people think I represent the community, they might be mistaken then. I like the idea, thats it. Oh well. I'll continue to state I agree with what they do until told otherwise. (Honestly I see no point in not doing it. Really, what CAN you do besides sit and watch the hackers be unlogged?)

[tockeR 16]

It hasn't been until this week that we finally saw how bad the hacking really was/has become.

Before last week, we had banned 1 player from our 60slot server.

Now our forum is full of reports, a lot with brazen evidence from streams/fraps of the hackers not even caring.

The worst part is, the longer this goes unpunished the more new/seasoned players end up turning to hacks themselves.

[Swineflew 480]

The worst part is, the longer this goes unpunished the more new/seasoned players end up turning to hacks themselves.

Aside from your forums being the wrong place to report hacking, I'd just like to say its a bold statement to state that players resort to hacking because they've been hacked.

That's not really how morality works, and I'd be very surprised if that was a true statement.

[puppetworx 474]

The only problem with OPs solution is 'who watches the watchmen?', but if it's managing to tip the balance back in favor of the honest player then I'm inclined to support it even though it's far from an ideal situation.

[j_riddell@live.com 32]

Nice statistics. Where'd they come from again?

[j_riddell@live.com 32]

Like it or not being a mod gives your opinions a certain type of authority and power, and adding fuel to the "hackers are ruining the game" fire is something I'd suggest steering clear of.

This is not true. It's a perception you might hold because the title of moderator usually has some level of authority connected to it, but that doesn't mean someone who is a moderator can no longer have a personal opinion that doesn't reflect the views of other moderators. They're not a hive mind.

[FFrank 18]

I'm somehow impressed that there isnt 2 pages of people swearing at me like "you're supporting hackers yourself" and stuff. Glad at least Legacy and some more of you guys understood.

As I said before we are not playing with him, we have a straight agreement that he will not spawn, port or kill anything or anyone. He's only hunting hackers and oh my gosh he's damn good at it.

I highly doubt what he does still matches the common hacker out there. If he wasn't there, I'd have to choice to let hackers take over the server or to kick everyone I don't know. For me, both choices are inacceptable. Most players on my server actually benefit from that guy because he provides that they can play the game how it was intended, without being turned into animals or port-killed or whatever.

Even though I didn't mean this thread to be a general recommendation how to solve the hacking problem because as Legacy already said I'm risking a server blacklist. I was just trying to point out that the hacking problem has reached the boiling point. Not saying having your own hacker would be a legit way to handle it. Believe me, I'd be more than happy to tell our guy that his abilities won't be needed any longer, but I don't see that happening at the moment.