To GGG: Why I think your OBT intentions are detrimental to the game's future
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I haven't read the entire post, but I wanted to comment on something. Lots of talk about hackers and how GGG plans to deal with them/their consequences. Chris has publicly stated that he is fine with anyone trying to hack the crap out of the game - so long as they tell GGG about it.
I bring this up due to: "Unless the GGG staff has more CEH certifications (or similar qualifications) than I'd imagine, they really don't have the expertise to be doing this in-house. So from their perspective, their options are: * Accept help from the PoE beta testing community, which would mean something similar to OP's original suggestion (with modifications) * Hire specific individual(s) with a hacking background to the GGG staff to come in-person for in-house penetration testing (perhaps on a volunteer basis to save money) * Essentially do nothing." "the premier Action RPG for hardcore gamers." -GGG Happy hunting/fishing Last edited by Wittgenstein on Jan 6, 2013, 2:51:48 PM
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" Your background in the military does not really give you any kind of authority to say how quoting Sun Tzu should or should not apply. Example: Sun Tzu also says: " So does this mean that if we are approaching this whole issue with the mindset of Sun Tzu we should be actively deceiving GGG and that our end goal should be to "crush" them? See that is the thing about bringing in these philosophical works, you cannot just take part of it and apply it to your line of reasoning, you take all of it. It's either or. It is not a war on bots, yes, there is an ongoing effort to detect and reduce the number of bots (or, if you're Blizzard then you just make RMAH and make them make money for you). This does not make it a "war". I can see that you are probably American, you guys like to declare war on things that cannot fight back. Yes, there is a certain degree of antagonism between makers of bots and people who run these sorts of games. But calling it a "war" is making it waaaaay to dramatic. To put a bit of a point on it, bot herders are a bit like a disease on these games, what is essentially a cold or a case of influenza. Would you say that when your body's immune system is fighting the viruses and bacteria that make you sick, it is fighting a "war" on those germs? " Please go back and read what I wrote, I'll wait here. Ok, did you go back and read what I wrote? I assume you didn't so let me make it clear. I said that security testing should be done in the alpha test or in an in-house fashion (preferably both). I go on to talk about how the point of the beta test is to test the game as a whole, that is the whole "package". As I am sure you are aware, security is one of those sorts of things that require a degree of secrecy, thus any security testing and discussion of security related issues should at least be done by a group of testers who are under some form of restrictive NDA. I never said that GGG should do it all alone, my point was always that the beta test we are currently part of is not the optimal place for security testing, there are too many players and there is too great a risk something will leak out into the wild. Security testing should be done in a way that allows GGG more control over the information, and also in a way that allows GGG to feed internal, technical data to the testers (basically stuff that could be considered a "trade secret"). " Again please go back and read my post. What I said was that he should not expect to be thanked for testing, not any more than us non-technical testers should. I then went on to say that he should not expect immunity from punishment if he was found to have been using his hacks for malicious purposes, i.e breaking the rules. " Go back and read his original post please. He says specifically that he thinks that people who have hacked the game and used their hacks to gain an unfair advantage should be given special items and whatnot. He should not expect this. " Guh...I knew I should not have used the cycling example. Ok, so check it, I used cycling as a purely arbitrary example. My point was this, we play games like this (or sports or whatever) to challenge ourselves, that challenge comes from succeeding at that game within the constraints imposed by the rules (in cycling, you are not supposed to dope yourself, it is supposed to be a test of ultimate human endurance and performance). If you start hacking the game to circumvent the constraints imposed by the rules, you are no longer playing the game, you're just dicking around. Rules and laws are by their very nature arbitrary, there is nothing in nature that prevents me from throwing a brick through my neighbors window, murdering him with a hammer and then stealing his TV. The laws of physics allow me to do those things, the universe does not care that I do those things, hell most people will not care I did those things. However, as it happens society decided that it's not very practical to have everyone going around throwing bricks through each others windows and subsequently murdering and robbing each other. So they imposed an arbitrary rule that said "please don't do those things or we'll do bad things to you". That example was a little sensational, I agree, again it was to make a point. Along the same lines, I don't know the rules of American Football, but provided they let me and twelve (or however many players there is on the field at a given time) of my homies show up to the Superbowl game with assault rifles, we could win the game. However they do not allow me and my friends to win the Superbowl by using assault rifles, so I guess if I want one of those fancy rings I'll have to train a lot and actually learn the rules of the game. Closed beta member since: March 19, 2012
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I've been playing alot of online games, in some of them "unfair" actions form hackers and botters were an issue. HOWEVERit wasnt that its so hard to track someone gaining unfair advantage over other players, its the fact developers did not care to do it.
As for hacking itself its usually effect of hacked player, trying to get one of illegal tools/ money rather than games security itself. If there is will to properly punish for doing something prohibited its not hard to do it. It cant be hard to track down items with weird properties. Its not hard to check player that is reported by other players for suspicious behaviour. Any sort of actions that are damaging other players experience is usualy vocaly reported, and can be investigated/ punished. Thing is companies simply dont do it. I have runes, potions and total disregard of public safety. Last edited by pod11 on Jan 6, 2013, 5:08:19 PM
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Off topic but -
"See that is the thing about bringing in these philosophical works, you cannot just take part of it and apply it to your line of reasoning, you take all of it. It's either or." That is not true, or at least I do not think it is. Philosophy is not religion, which is why you most certainly can pick and choose. It's how the picking and choosing is done that determines it's validity or lack there of. I can agree with an Aristotelian explanation of causation without also adopting Aristotelian conceptions regarding the superiority of a particular sex - as an example. You obviously cannot pick certain premises out of a larger argument, discard the ones that you don't like, and keep the conclusion. But that isn't what was being done. "the premier Action RPG for hardcore gamers."
-GGG Happy hunting/fishing |
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" This question in irrelevant as its entirely based on the false presumption that a hack proof game can be made. You act as if there is a choice here. Theres not. Your logic here is fundamentally flawed because the entire premise it i based upon is not realistic. I understand your argument but it has no place in the real world and this philosophy of allowing rampant cheating in OB would destroy the game. |
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One must be careful.
Invoking 'The Art of War' designates a foe. This is not welcome: beta testers who treat devs as the enemy. What we call 'exploit' The devs might view as 'feature.' Please keep this in mind. Warhammer 40k Inquisitor: where shotgunning is not only not nerfed, it is deeply encouraged.
Dogma > Souls, but they're masterworks all. You can't go wrong. I was right about PoE2 needing to be a separate, new game. It was really obvious. |
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" In that case, drew, go ahead and hack the crap out of the game. Be sure to tell GGG about it after. "The topic was whether the word "war" applied. I think I'm more qualified than you there. " So biblical literalism is the only true Christianity, and "liberal" Christians are posers. Or... maybe a book on an extremely board topic, such as war, covers many different situations, with some parts of the book not applicable to every situation. I need to admit, the part that drew quoted seemed out of place to me. The "ultimate excellence" described there simply isn't realistic — preventing bots from influencing PoE is not going to be something we can belt out in the next two weeks and then sit contented for years. [edit: It's been a long time since I've read the Art of War, but if I remember correctly there were entire sections on the importance of espionage — that is, having someone sympathetic on the opponent's team who's feeding you information. Seems like that would have been far more quoteworthy.] However, railing against his opinion mostly because you disagree with his quotation of Sun Tzu is affectation at best and sophistry at worst. " No, if we wanted to do that we'd declare war on the French. " Quoted for irony, emphasis added. Answer: unless it's a truly chronic illness, it's just a battle. " I did read it. BUT I didn't look up the meaning of "alpha test," I just sort of guessed what it was. I looked it up just now, and guess what? I was right. Alpha testing against bots is, bar none, one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. A huge part of the network security process has to deal with angles of attack, and you simply won't get many from within the confines of the GGG offices. Additionally, the game goes through pretty significant changes throughout beta, which in turn greatly changes the attack surface. Wrong type of attack, against a target that won't exist in the future — that type of test means nothing. The NDA agreement idea thing isn't bad though; it's a reasonable prerequisite for that whole permission thing I was talking about earlier. Kind of a moot point, considering Chris said it's open season as long as you let him know, but I'd do NDAs if I was in charge. " This is a small independent company that asks people to donate money in exchange for closed beta keys. Beta testers are a resource that is free and abnormally dedicated. In terms of possible collateral damage (hey, another war term!), the number of players will only increase over time (especially once OBT is officially closed for hard launch). GGG would be daft not to use this community's enthusiasm to their advantage. " There's a world of difference between breaking the rules and having malicious intent. Nevertheless, this is still a far more reasonable outlook that displayed in, say, your post I quoted. " In this little microcosm, we are society and GGG is the government. I think it might be very practical, under certain circumstances which should be regulated, for people to be hacking PoE to the utmost of their ability. And to expect to be rewarded, even if only with kudos. I see you're a very law-and-order person. Those types and white-hats rarely get along. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jan 6, 2013, 7:18:07 PM
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" How exactly do you know this? I also used to be a soldier and if some bureaucratic idiocy clears up I'll hopefully be again soon. On top of this I do know several people who're deployed in Afghanistan right now and several more who have been down there. " Well no not quite, the whole point of the Art of War was General Sun Tzu writing a guide to the generals who'd come after him on how to fight a way. Sun Tzu never meant to write a guide on how to live your life in general or how to conduct business. Applying the lessons taught in the Art of War on how to effectively help a company security test their game is like trying to apply the lessons of the bible to differential algebra. " Well bots and the sorts of cheats OP described are two different things, bots aren't so much a 'hack', I mean it's still blatantly cheating, but it's not really hack. There isn't really any big voyage of discovery you can do by programming bots, and most certainly not one that should be in any way rewarded. Now, if the OP has made map hacks, brightness and zoom hack like he claims, then yeah. Send them to GGG, maybe in conjunction with a job application. He should not expect to be rewarded with a special in-game item though. " I admit this is true. Though as it happens only reason I'm debating it now, is because you are ,and I do like an interesting (if admittedly pointless by now) debate. " I see what you did there, but really, let's not get into a discussing about how that just isn't true. " Again, I see what you did there, but it is not as clever as you thought it was. I flatly refuse to get into a semantic argument here, though let me say this you can 'fight' without it being a 'war'. I would not describe a drunken brawl in a bar as a 'bar war', would I? " Against bots, sure. It'd be much better to buy one of the commercial solutions I'm sure are available by now. That said, I am not sure if you are aware, but GGG are conducting two different tests now the alpha and the beta. Alpha testers are (an actual alpha tester can correct me here if needed) under a much more restrictive NDA and I imagine the testing is much more 'hardcore' and technical. It just makes more sense to have security testing (finding exploits against the game itself, maphacks etc) done by a team under a highly restrictive NDA so you have more legal recourse if it does end up leaking out from the alpha test. Testing against bots is a more tricky matter, you can only really do it if you've got access to server logs and the server software, which none of us do and probably never well. " Again an actual alpha tester will have to correct me here, but I do think the current alpha test consists of at least between 50 - 100 people, that is more than enough people to effectively test for exploits against the client and from what I hear elsewhere in this thread, some of them already are doing this. There is no need for that sort of testing to happen extensively in the Open Beta, it is just going to end up leaking and propagating out to people who wont be using it to test. " No, I told him that in his specific examples about how the game should have these 'features' built in (two two examples from the leagues) he was wrong, and he should not be allowed to use his zoom and brightness hacks to gain a competitive advantage. It is a real possibility that that is not what I said, but it is what I meant. " and " I am not blind to the fact that in beta test and in alpha test and hell even when it goes live, testing like this should be tolerated. That is not what I am saying, my argument was always that as OP seemed to see it, these sorts of hacks should be tolerated or the game should be redesigned in impossible ways to give everyone the same advantage. His logic seemed to be that because he could maphack, he should be allowed to, and that furthermore everyone else should be allowed to as well. On top of this he seemed to indicate that this should be tolerated as long as the game allowed for it, so basically forever because it's impossible to not allow a maphack for someone persistent enough. " No argument there, it does sound like we sort of agree but use different words to describe it. " I'm really not, I'm a 'fairness' kinda person. I dislike people who cheat at these sorts of games. I mean, yes it is possible to cheat. But we all agrees to not do so, so we should not be cheating. I rather like white-hats, grey and black-hats too, they tend to be interesting people. Closed beta member since: March 19, 2012
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Quite simple: don't try to cheat. GGG has the ability to monitor their work, you think they'd be foolish enough not to? Unless you work for them, you shouldn't be trying to "push the envelope" unless you are willing to lose your accounts.
It's people like you that ruin online games, damn lazy fools that are always looking for an edge over someone else by cheating. | |
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You're making it sound as ban is the only reply one would get for mailing a self-discovered exploit to GGG in hopes of it being patched, which is imo hardly the case with them.
Code. Frag. | gplus.to/mystrdat | twitch.tv/mystrdat
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