Dayz, fanboyz myths , and impact of hacking on the game [different approach]

[bw.shuggoth@gmail.com 15]

Hey guys , i think starting this thread was important.

i fucking love dayz , this game is just intense , i can't remember a game where you had such adrenaline rushes because you can loose it all in just one mistake. i only seen that in 2 others games : diablo 2 hardcore mode , and ultima online.

those games are rare. and i just love the feeling they give.

i started to play dayz for more than a month now , explored almost every aspects of the game , had a clan, build camps , tried to find all ingame different gear and cars .saw every guns in the game , no hacks everything legit. (i admit i was no life to see all this in a month)

i had a lot of fun.

after that i wanted to explore more the game and directly enjoy the pvp aspect of the game so i started to go to some airfields and try to find some people to kill.

all the time i would die after 5 minutes , because of a guy in my back with an AK . happened all the time at night , and i understood the only way to locate me was hacking as i took uncommon sniping spots to avoid sniper hopers.

i knew the game was full of hackers but untill i started pvp i had no matter at all.

everytime i would logon wearing a ghillie suit at a sniping spot on any server would let me live only 5 to 10minutes what ever i do , even if stealthy , even if ucommon sniping spot , even if pitch dark night.even if empty server. a guy would login then go in my back and kill me. that happened 10 times in 10 days of trying.

i started to read on the forums and saw so many fanboys post telling that hacking is common but that the game is still playable.

so i decided to do my own little study. i would study players behavior and servers health !! not like rocket would do with a stupid database that only logs actions.

at that time i wanted to monitor ingame encounters and how they happens , what dynamics results of this and how hacking is impacting the "whole" game at a point even rocket can't imagine because he is not monitoring this at all.

i also wanted to monitor the real rate of hacking because we have no numbers and if pretty much difficult to tell how many servers is legit or how many games about 10 that you play will not meet hackers.

i wanted to answers those question so i started to monitor it.

so here is basically what i did i ... hacked... yeah guys i hacked but in a whitehat way , im not gonna explain here what is a whitehat , but lets says i used hacking in a good way to understand how hacking was afecting the game.I did all this whitout killing players or taking any advantage of the game.

i just monitored how players where acting. i didnt loot camps , didnt ruined camps , didnt took vehicles or stuff , nor killed players.

after few days of coding my software was ready to work and i could locate every players , every tents , every camps , every vehicles , every survivors , every bandits , every snipers on the map.

the purpose of this study was not pure cheating so i just added those basics features without aimbots or stupid grieffing tools.

i just wanted to see what really happens instead of speculating like fanboys do.

so here is what i saw today as my first whitehack hacking days :

i just log on the server and see that there is almost no vehicles on the map , and i understand hackers probably destroyed them all previously.(i would say 6 servers on 10 are affected from what i seen today after trying 100 different servers )

i see 3 guys on my locator and one is in the middle of the nw airfield looting stuff in the barracks.

i can see another one that is located south of the airfield at a very common sniping spot that is aiming players who are trying to travel to airfield from roads and usually coming from south or aiming at the player going out of the airfield going back to south.

seems legit. but ....

that guy direction is pointing to the barrack airfield direction and i start to understand the guy probably use a locator too and is waiting for the other guy.

sadly the other guy logs out (server hopper)

snipers changes instantly direction to my direction

then i saw him for like an hour trying to ambush me from 2kilometers aways , again and again. all the time i would take a road he would be waiting at the end of that road. could have kill him but it was not the purpose as im whitehat hacking for this study.

for a first login it was interesting. what are the odds of being victim of a semi hacker using only locator smartly ?

how could you know that you where victim of hacking in that case ?

absolutely no way to tell except if you where also hacking to understand and see it.

ok so this was an exemple for my first log in of the day.i tried 100 different servers and i can confirm you guys that healthy servers not victims of hack are super duper rare.

so many servers are : empty of vehicles / hacked and all vechicles stashed in middle of a city or south coast (those server get super laggy and i also understood that low fps servers are the servers victim of this)

the other problem i noticed and very severe problem is that one server about 2 . wich is very very small odds (same as a coinflip)

every time you join a server you have 50% chance of beeing victim of a smart hacker only using wallhack or a locator.

i noticed that everytime i would log on a 10 player server instantly one of the player in the zone arround me would try to get me from miles and miles away.

i also noticed that every 4 servers about 10 i would log in wearing a ghillie suit near a sniping hot spot i would get killed in the next 15 minutes by a teleport hacker.

I know those numbers are still too small to make statistics and its impossible to really check the level of hacking but from what i seen today i would say not wearing a ghillie suit would less attract frustrated hackers. remember that when they see where you are using a hack when you wears a ghillie suit they will see your name followed by "sniper" (like the map normally would on a recruit server)

im sorry for all this text but i think this was important for some people to realize at what point hacking is really destroying the game actually .there is actually so many hackers that every time you play a game you have same chance as a coinflip to die because of hacking.

here is a recap on about a hundered games on different servers , different location and countries.

about 100 games played :

-1games about 2 i got instantly followed by guy in my area.(smart maphack)

- 6 servers about 10 have no vehicles at all , all vehicles detroyed or none spawned , (empty map cleaned by hackers) only few ones where i can see usual old stashing but they almost not exist at all actually.

-100% of the servers affected by the hacking stashing near south coast result in massive fps drop for the whole server.

-if i decided to repair a vechicle on a server it will be destroyed the next day to a hacker 1 times about 2 , if i choose a server where i can see the whole map vechiles are healthy it works. i would say it work 2 servers about 10.

-if you spawns near an airfield wearing a ghillie suit on any server your life time expectation is 5 to 10minutes to a hacker teleporting in you back.

the whole game pretty much corrupted and all the servers seemed fucked up from what i seen whith whole vehicles health status and spawning.

my 2 cents but i had to tell this im tired of reading bullshit that this game is still playable.

have a nice day. hope you read this rocket.

[Jasmer 77]

gratz on your findings... sad to see that these are up to date stats

[Mr duck 5]

This post seems slightly exaggerated although I do see your point.

[Hot Pie 27]

Nice post.

[Angel Knight 427]

Unfortunately, just confirms what most of us already know. This is a game of cat and mouse right now, where the legit players are mice and the hackers are the predators.

Edited August 18, 2012 by (CNDF) Angel

[ALiborio 13]

If this is all true it makes me feel better about all the deaths I've had recently. I thought I was just deficient. lol

[Slide885 59]

Well, I'm a statistics type guy, and I like your methode of data gathering, but would feel better if I knew you had strong records to back this up (i.e. Server names, and what had been done on each server, what servers you had some one using a map hack and how far away they were from you.) To clarify, I personaly wouldn't want to see the list of servers but knowing that it was there would go a long way for me.

[intensity (DayZ) 312]

I've been playing the game for over a month and I've never met a confirmed hacker. On my recently bought server the vehicles don't spawn yet and when I saw a chopper today I reset it while it was in the air. I might be lucky... I usually played on servers with 10-20 people during the day, 4-8 night. I've had my share of pvp.

[Buick72 27]

I'd like to see some video evidence of this as well. I keep hearing the same horror stories, and the numbers all seem to match up from the different people I have heard them from, but some video proof would be awesome.

[bw.shuggoth@gmail.com 15]

i'll try to get fraps and show you how unealthy are most of the servers that i'll choose randomly.

i can film this.

i will also try to fraps a funny one showing what you can expect at almost any airfield in the game wearing a ghillie x) (5 to 10min life expectation)

won't be dificult to record it , numbers said here are a low level of sample so it definitly not big enough to make any conclusion

but from my experience with stats i can tell the factor "dying to teleporting hacking" occurs actually way too much and doesent need any sample higher than 100 to be revelant due to the crazy actual number of hackers. ;)

the only one i wont fraps is vehicle stashing as it took me a full week to try and gets to much time to fraps again.

for people who doesent believe this one just save 5 vehicles on different low pop servers and you will see that , 1 or 2 wil not save , the other will save but get destroyed or steal to hacker next or same day

usually only one vehicle will stay (and this one is usually always on healthy maps i saw with hacking tool, by healthy i mean vehicles spawning that seems legits + normal stashing all over map those servers are extremly rare from what i seen hackers didn't ruined those.

another important fact to the whole study is the ghillie suit , i know it might sound stupid but many people will stay out trouble since they wear none which explain their "hole loads of pvp without any problems"

as soon as the hackers see that damn "sniper tag" on their screen it attracts them like sharks.

i am wearing ghillie 99% of the times. when i don't wear it hacker doesent target me. as soon as i wear one + approching any pvp place i will die in the next 10 minutes.

veteran players of the game might understand what i actually means as i suppose they have loads of ghillies they might have noticed that noticeable difference .

Edited August 18, 2012 by Shuggoth

[sostronk 334]

Im not seeing anything new here. All this was blantantly obvious to me.

[ZekkCC (DayZ) 51]

We all know this bro. :)

[Jag (DayZ) 0]

Well let me say this I am sooooooooooooooooo tired of running around server after server and finding NO vehicles and I am talking about checking 20 -30 spawn spots.... but I figured out why its hacks.... yesterday i joined my buddy who had a truck on a server and found a downed chopper so went to loot it while my buddy stayed in the chopper. Well within 15 secs of me getting out he and the truck where GONE to some spot up north..... apparently someone was spawning or teleporting ALL the vehicles in the server and loading them with stuff while spawning teleporting whatever.... he saw a sniper guy on the edge of a field with like a parking lot of vehicles boats included... and he logged out fast... so I told him go back in and try and kill him. But here is the funny part apparently the hacker dropped a car or something on himself and had killed himself accidently while spawning stuff OR he had grabbed some vehicle and driven off not sure but someone did die secs before my friend got back in the server. Anyway my point? Well I think the reasons we never find vehicles is these aholes are spawning them all to get stuff in them and so there arent any vehicles at any spawns..... this is ridiculous and pathetic but I am so tired of running across the maps checking for vehicles when my chance of getting one is pretty much nil due to this type of behavior..........

[rainf 76]

Explains how my buddies and I died recently. I was a little bit away from them when they got engaged in the middle of the woods, they were cut down, I fled further away, into a 3 story shed and Stary Sobor, got to the 3rd floor, prone in 3rd person and watched the direction they were killed from. Minutes passed and then I see a distant silhouette moving deliberately toward me. I freeze, get gets closer and closer and closer, to the ENTRANCE right below me, a smoke nade goes in, but he doesn't enter, I see him backpedal and freeze. I crouch walk back along the catwalk making sure I'm not clipping then BOOM, i'm dead.

[big_t 66]

good post, the game is in a sad state indeed.

I still want to play,, but this is madness.

[crisu 1]

So rockets "log magic" is not to be trusted? Instead let's take word of hacker who presents no proof at all... We all know there is a lot of hackers out there (like post creator) but your "research" is wall of text with nothing to back it up.

[watcher (DayZ) 0]

nice post,

i hope i you make video's about it to proof it.

[puppetworx 474]

Your statistics sound improvised at best but everything you say conforms well with my experiences. The getting killed at a sniper location doesn't have to be hacking though it may just be server hoppers looking for quick and easy loot, I avoid sniper locations.

I'd be interested in seeing video proof if you have it, even though we all know this is happening.

[lordopeth 274]

Good post. A lot of work to prove something thats already known. Hacking is a problem, yes.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

Tons of conclusions that you had to leap to, no verifiable numbers, no data. This is not a study.

Hackers are a problem. Hacking sucks. Nobody needs to be told this.

But they're not everyhwere. I'm on Day 26 and play daily. I would be dead many times over if hacking was anywhere near as ever-present as your "study" implies.

And beside that point, even if it WERE as common, what do you think you've accomplished by doing this apart from hopefully receiving a global ban? Do you think they're going to go "Oh, we thought it wasn't a big deal until that dude posted that one thread now we're totally going to flip the 'allow hackers' switch to OFF.

[flimsypremise 94]

Tons of conclusions that you had to leap to, no verifiable numbers, no data. This is not a study.

Hackers are a problem. Hacking sucks. Nobody needs to be told this.

But they're not everyhwere. I'm on Day 26 and play daily. I would be dead many times over if hacking was anywhere near as ever-present as your "study" implies.

And beside that point, even if it WERE as common, what do you think you've accomplished by doing this apart from hopefully receiving a global ban? Do you think they're going to go "Oh, we thought it wasn't a big deal until that dude posted that one thread now we're totally going to flip the 'allow hackers' switch to OFF.

The dude is trying to collect some helpful information. No need to be a dick about it.

[SmashT 10907]

Welcome to online multiplayer gaming. To be fair, DayZ has more "hackers" then any other game I have ever played and that's mainly because the ArmA engine is designed to allow scripting, a lot of that is what make ArmA great though. That being said, most of your conclusions are incredibly weaksauce.

No vehicles on a server at all, must be hacking? What about that common bug where all vehicles will vanish on restart, then reappear on a later restart? Repaired a vehicle and the next day found it destroyed? Must be hacking, couldn't possibly be that another player simply found it and destroyed it, I mean it's not like players actually go looking for hidden vehicles or anything and fuck your hiding spot was so good. Spawn at an airfield wearing a ghille and are killed, must be hacking, because nobody ever camps airfields, and hell that ghille suit pretty much makes you invisible, not like anybody uses thermal either. Killed at night, must be hacking, not like there is a piece of equipment in the game to give you vision at night or anything.

Since the introduction of the new BattlEye features last week, servers with competent admins can actually significantly reduce most of the hacking players experience each day, 100% of the obvious cheaters I have encountered since then (teleporting, spawning weapons, spawning vehicles, invincibility, parachuting cows, turning players into animals, players dancing etc) have shown up in the logs and they can be banned within minutes with active admins monitoring them, there are even rcon tools to parse the logs and automatically kick/ban when a cheater is logged. http://www.reddit.com/r/dayz/comments/y7wf6/dayz_antihax_v01_a_very_simple_console/

Obviously things like esp/radar/aimbots are always going to be a problem, that's not an issue unique to DayZ though, nor are the majority of complaints about them. You offered no solutions regardless, so you cheated and risked a global ban to tell us something we already knew. I hope it was worth it. Cheating is a massive problem in DayZ, no doubt. The only conclusion I could draw from your post though was that you are the type of player who will always blame cheating for your own ineptitude.

after few days of coding my software was ready to work and i could locate every players , every tents , every camps , every vehicles , every survivors , every bandits , every snipers on the map.

At least this gave me a laugh, ten meats you couldn't code shit.

Edited August 21, 2012 by smasht_AU

[sausagekingofchicago 4711]

I didn't need to hack to figure out the game was full of hackers.

I hope OP at least tried to hide his IP before posting.

[TheMachine 803]

Tons of conclusions that you had to leap to, no verifiable numbers, no data. This is not a study.

Hackers are a problem. Hacking sucks. Nobody needs to be told this.

But they're not everyhwere. I'm on Day 26 and play daily. I would be dead many times over if hacking was anywhere near as ever-present as your "study" implies.

And beside that point, even if it WERE as common, what do you think you've accomplished by doing this apart from hopefully receiving a global ban? Do you think they're going to go "Oh, we thought it wasn't a big deal until that dude posted that one thread now we're totally going to flip the 'allow hackers' switch to OFF.

You're a denialist or you've been incredibly lucky, I mean win the lottery type luck.

If you've played at least once a dayz and on different servers each day, that's 26 servers.

Even if it was the same server it's thousands of different players, the fact you haven't been teleported or thunderdomed or at least killed by someone in god mod is nothing short of a miracle.

[ZedsDeadBaby 2287]

You're a denialist or you've been incredibly lucky, I mean win the lottery type luck.

If you've played at least once a dayz and on different servers each day, that's 26 servers.

Even if it was the same server it's thousands of different players, the fact you haven't been teleported or thunderdomed or at least killed by someone in god mod is nothing short of a miracle.

I was actually teleported twice, and one time my guy started to do a dance while I was running in the woods.

ESC-->Abort-->New Server each time worked.

So that's three hackers across probably ~15 different servers and lets call it 24 days since I probably took a day off here or there.

I'm not here to argue that hacking isn't a major issue. But it's big enough on its own without the help of silly hyperbole, questionably-conducted "studies," or the constant forum spam we have to deal with every day.