Dealing with hacking (Server rollback)

[MorphineJunkie 13]

Like alot of you im getting tired of hackers, either getting killed loosing days of progress or going AFK and come back an hour later with ALL your stashed vehicles missing on a server (If you are a hoarder, like me, that is).

So I have a suggestion, it may get your panties in a bunch depending on your view of the game, or you may think that this could be a temporary solution till dayz goes standalone / gets fixed.

Before proceeding im blatantly assuming that vehicle location, tent location / loot etc is stored in the hive.

What about making some sort of makeshift server rollback system.

when ANY player connects, store login time and server id (?) in the hive (I dont know if you are doing this already).

Also store inventory at this stage.

Vehicle positions and player inventory could also be backed up at fixed intervals (Put in a backup table / database along with a timestamp and serverid).

Now if a hacker attacks a server, what do you do?

If you don't care and really like starting all over (I like it, as long as its an honest death, and not a hacker telling me "One of these days... POW!!! Right in the kisser! BANG, ZOOM! Straight to the moon!" prior to actually sending me there) then just login to another server, rinse and repeat.

If you LIKE the persistency in this game, wait for a server admin (or user?) to report the incident. And don't join any server till the servername changes the [reset:dd-mm hh:ii] tag to a timestamp prior to the attack.

Maybe there could be some other means to notify players of a reset than a server title (dont even know if its possible). A website, RSS feed or some data send to the launcher?

I don't know how much hacking there is exactly, so i have no grasp of the amount of man hours would be spend in analyzing and responding to such reports. It might be really unfeasible, in that case just disregard this entire post, or recruit some volunteers, I would gladly be of assistance

PS. I fully understand that this might seem like a waste of time, since the standalone will be realeased soon and will be "hacker free", but if the standalone is somehow delayed, or suffers the same amount of hacking i think it could be considered, as a temporary fix.

PPS. excuse me for this long and messy post, I have fantasized about lines upon lines of SQF, code and DB structure, to detect hacker attacks, keep track of inventory / vehicles and handling rollingback on incidents, i DO realise that this would be quite some endevour at this stage, but i really feel that this game is broken because of hackers and its a shame.

[bond1971@tpg.com.au 92]

Unfortunately I have seen personally and read about numerous occasions on this forum about Server Admins actually restarting their own servers as soon as they lose their stuff or vehicles. So this sort of rollback does already occur.

Personally I would be pissed though if I was on a server that got rolled back cause someone lost their precious car only to cause me to rollback to just before I picked up this leet weapon ..

No easy fix im afraid.

[MorphineJunkie 13]

Consider cases where an entire server gets killed, and all vehicles destroyed or relocated to the desert, im not talking about serveradmins cheating death and destruction, nor do i think that it should even be in their power to do so in a "hive based persistent game"

[MorphineJunkie 13]

Also i dont see how this would conflict with my suggestion in anyway.. Did you really read the entire post?

[crcantos@gmail.com 7]

Hacking will always be a part of every single game. No code is perfect, and someone will always exploit its inherent weaknesses. I mean come on, will there ever be a day when we stop having criminals in the real world? When that day comes, then we MAYBE will see the end of hacking.

I will say that server rollback is like putting a morphine laced bandage on a severed arm. It does nothing and the patient can abuse it.

Even the standalone wont be hacker free, at least not after release + 7 days (Standard time a hack is available after a game release. If its COD then its a 0-day hack).

[MorphineJunkie 13]

I disagree. you simply cannot ISTA KILL 50 people in everygame outthere, a game like this should NOT rely on a engine where ANY client can inject ANY code into the server.

Sure there will always be aimbots, speedhacks wallhacks, ESP and whatever, but its simply frustrating to see 25+ players getting killed because of hackers.

"No code is perfect" my ass, you know you can improve, release updates for a game right? Of course there will always be hackers to some extend, but the architecture of arma makes it rediculously easy to cheat. Don't tell me you can teleport people by cheat in every other game.

"Even the standalone wont be hacker free, at least not after release + 7 day" - Is just a reason to implement this, not a counter argument.

Been a looong time since i saw a hacker in BF3, and never did i see one teleport / instakill / affect other players position or state.

Edited August 16, 2012 by MorphineJunkie

[Travis31 2]

Server rollbacks are great for people who want to get their stuff back for free, great for people who pick up gear, but terrible for people who store looted gear in tents. I don't know if it was a rollback or what, but i looted the crap out of cherno and fiilled 3 tents, one with some basic gear, one with some cool gear i was gonna let my bud have, and one with literally all car repair parts except the engine. I log on today. All gone. It's almost as if i shouldn't have even played yesterday. Rollbacks hurt just as many people as hackers do, imo. If the server has it's own community and can coordinate it so you don't lose your shit, thats one thing, but me as some plebian, losing out on an m4a1 sd. Easy come, easy go, but still a bit of a slap in the face. Wasted time goes both ways.

[MorphineJunkie 13]

When server admins rollsback a server i presume he has a limited time to do so.. Server rollbacks that you are experiencing is NOT a mechanic of the game, its a flaw (If a server admin is quick enough to do a reset of a server vehicles will be restored to their last save position etc)

But not all servers have admins online at any given moment, if you read my suggestion you would know that i don't even want to see this power in the hands of admins, because YES then it would be used to rollback and cheat when loosing gear to other players.

[MorphineJunkie 13]

I don't get why you guys put effort into replying when you clearly haven't read OP.

[crcantos@gmail.com 7]

Yah you don't know the first thing about hacking in games. And yes, BF3 still has hackers. No, they cant teleport you, but they can still insta kill everyone on the server.

Improve Arma2 code you say? Ok, 2 days later hackers have broken your patch and injected another scirpt bypass into the game. Whoops, didnt do shit and costs programmers a lot of time. Oh well, keep doing it twice a month for 4 days of being hack free.

[MorphineJunkie 13]

I don't know how to respond to this since you are clearly not reading OP.

Are you dyslexic or something, when have i mentioned anything about improving arma code? Im basicly suggesting this as a desperate last resort to keep the players who actually enjoy the PERSISTENT part of this game content!

Please don't clutter this thread with your nonsense fallacies and TRY not to have this negative attitude.. How come you seem to know what i know? yeah you don't. What you are doing is called acting like a dick where i come from.

And by the way, im not questioning your knowledge of hacking games, I bet you have tried your share of kiddie tools

Edited August 17, 2012 by MorphineJunkie

[MorphineJunkie 13]

Well for anyone who cares about this, it seems like Rocket talks about implementing a rollback system for the standalone.

You’re never going to completely clear out hacking, so solving that is not getting rid of it completely. But at the very least we should be able to detect it adequately and deal with it adequately and roll it back and such

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/21/interview-the-standalone-future-of-dayz-and-what-it-means-for-players/