Hack discussion

On a side note that I'm sure has been discussed before, I really hope hacking doesn't get that big in this game.

Being a programmer I know that there is no such thing as a game that's not hackable. Blizzard made Warden which stumped 95% of hackers, and we had a fix for that in 2 hours.

That being said, the mass hacking ruined Diablo 2 for me, and ruins a lot of other games for me. I think this game is going to be amazing, and since I no longer program I play games more often, so I hope that the hackers stray away from this game and go toward the already-failed Diablo III. (If you'd like to know why Diablo III is an already failed game, maybe some time I'll get the random urge to type up some topic points on it later on.)

-Tyler

I always wondered what attracted hackers to a game. Like are there more wanting to hack the PvE part or the PvP part of the game.

I thought for awhile that it was PvP that drew hackers. After all you hear it the most when it comes to PvP. Or at least it does for me.

The I thought that some people just can't play a game the way it is meant to be played. Whether it be PvP or PvE. It is just you don't hear it as much for PvE do to it not being as obvious.

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Just occured to me. Maybe it is one of those disorders. Like OCD. The just find themselves driven to cheat. This doesn't cover the ones that make the cheats though. They most likely do it for the challenge. And to drool at there own awesomeness when they beat the enemy the only way they can , by cheating.

Well to be honest some hacks are made because people legitimately feel like certain features of games should have been made differently.

An example, in Maple Story people believed that you should be able to re-roll your stats more than 5 times, thus there was a hack made to instead of re-roll your stats, give the stats you want on the first roll.

On the other hand, some hacks are made because people want to test their limits. As an example, Blizzard claimed Warden "impossible to bypass", so Sheppard made cGuard which completely nullified Warden.

And then yes, there are the users who legitimately suck at games and either can hack, or use hacks.

So in theory, hacks are made for pretty much every reason that there can be. But if a game is fun, not hard to learn the basics, and doesn't send a huge "you can't hack us, because we're awesome" message then it should be a little bit safer.

Edit: To add a little bit, the reason PvP is the most hacked is because it's the largest appealing area to be hacked. Users who want a challenge hack PvP because it will be the most used, so there will be more users giving them feedback/suggestions. Users who suck want to hack PvP or use PvP hacks because they want to seem cool to people. etc. etc.

Hacking any service requires two weaknesses-- a weakness where the client does some amount of some of the work, and a weakness where the server's portion of the work is not checked.

Really, you can make a game that is completely unhackable, the trick is that the server architecture has to be one that does all of the work on the server-- thus making it impossible for the client-side to do anything but interact with the server in ways that represent the data on the server.

A great example of this kind of setup is Ragnarok Online, which uses a completely server-based architecture. Your position, skills, items, everything, it's all server-side, item generation, everything. The only time you find things like duped items, etc, is when there is an error on the developer's part that causes a script or something similar to allow an abuse. The client and the server as a whole are however, unhackable. At least, by how "hack" is defined.

The dupes and other such things in Diablo II happened because Blizzard had not prepared for circumstances where things like item generation could happen client-side and then were saved server-side, which in this day and age is a big no-no.

So, as long as GGG extensively test all of their stuff before they roll it out, hacking, and hopefully, bug abuse, will be near-0 in terms of exploits that hurt the game like the ones that happened in D2.

Ryukaki I agree with a great deal of that but there are still areas of exploit in everything imaginable.

Key example, one could create a child-client to communicate with the server, and in some ways alter server related functions. It's not easy, but possible. Another point of view is altering/blocking what the server actually receives/sends. Such as the server sends to player X that player Y is in position A, when in reality player Y is in position B, so player X casts an AoE (or some other type of) spell on the wrong spot.

I'm not saying there will be such vulnerabilities and by all means I hope there is not, but if there is I hope that it's either well hidden or not desired.

I think the reason a lot of games get hacked is because they post big articles like "OMG WE UPDATED OUR SECURITY ITS LEET, HACK FREE BABY!". I think if PoE focuses on security, but does NOT focus on releasing details about security it will be a smaller target for the "I have something to prove" faction of hackers.

The dupe in closed bnet in diablo 2 didnt used any hacks to do nor it was a client-side generated item.

Programming has always been an interest of mine because it is ever evolving.... However i have never taken any classes or even know where to start. But who are most hackers? Programmers working for companies or solo freelance computer geeks???

Also for a game like PoE you think it would actually draw a large hacking crowed since its FTP???

Also a question regarding Diablo 2, is there a way to make a duped item or hacked item hidden from their rust storms?? Also how are the people making double rune words, aswell as transferring items over to new ladders.

:D noob is programming is interested in your smarts!
-tole

Most hackers I know do it for fun and for the challenge of it.

Though it seems alot of the extremely talented do it for the $$$.

And yeah that is one of the draw backs to free games. Hackers have no problem creating account after account till they get it right.

And the people who use the hacks created have no fear if their account is hacked.

And then the other problem, which is the hackers that don't wanna stay banned... don't stay banned. There's pretty much no way to stop someone from getting back on if they really want to. So, hopefully this stays pretty legit. Currently in beta there's not even many scams, let alone hackers. So I think we'll be fine :).

well i mean couldn't they have a back log looking for anomalies in certain fields like game times, occurring, items or something along that matter?

-tole