Is it possible some of the best pilots (more so from renegade squadron) are using lag-switches to cheat in AC?
Possible cheating within Star citizen?
- Thread starter Semphis Rythorn
- Start date
Is it possible some of the best pilots (more so from renegade squadron) are using lag-switches to cheat in AC?
FireEmblem6
Captain
Well, glad we have distanced ourselves from them. Please do not attempt to reproduce this. Cheating benefits this game in no way whatsoever, unless you want to test it officially for CIG, sending them in what you are planning to do and when so they can track it.
ghost53574
Space Marshal
Well latency switching largely depends on the fact that individual users host races. I haven't been on SC in over a year because of personal issues, and the like, but if Robert Industries have their own dedicated servers to host race's with a leader-board to display the global stats then it's likely that they couldn't lag switch in the traditional sense.
If they someone were able to control a couple routers in their MAN they could increase the TTL of each packet to increase the latency but that's somewhat far fetched.
A more likely approach would just to first attack the client and/or then attack the server/s.
If they someone were able to control a couple routers in their MAN they could increase the TTL of each packet to increase the latency but that's somewhat far fetched.
A more likely approach would just to first attack the client and/or then attack the server/s.
DontTouchMyHoHos
Space Marshal
In the development stage of games you need cheaters in order to fix the hacks they bring. If people don't cheat now it will only be worse when game gets launched. Then while game is launched we have to wait for fixes and the economy/ranked boards get screwed, rarely after launches do people do, "roll backs" on a global scale. I say let them cheat and keep cheating. Document them as well and monitor them after launch, then insta-ban.
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WarrenPeace
Space Marshal
regardless of the accuracy of this accusation, I'm totally going to use this as an excuse for why I suck so badly at dogfighting. Not my lack of practice or shaky hand-eye coordination or elevated BAC, nooo.
grrrr hacks
I nrver git kilz cuz dees lags switching too hard!
I'm interested to see what kind of response this gets from CIG. As @ghost53574 mentioned, this should only be possible if they are the host of a ptp game. I've been under the impression that all network traffic is handled by the dedicated servers in AC... and now I'm curious about how big a role PtP connections have. I do remember CR talking about PtP vs Server handling early in development, and how SC would use a hybrid model with both types.
And I have to give props to this 'Mr Serious' character. The production quality on this video is top notch, and he's doing the community a good service bring critical issues to light.
However, I take issue with a few things in his presentation:
1. Calling out an entire Organization for the actions of 1-2 members is not professional. He makes it sound like all of renegades is cheating, but he only really has a problem with 2 individuals.
2. The tone of the video is very negative. Mr SRS makes it sound like his proof is 100% truth, when there are some very simple explanations for what we're seeing. Dsync is still a very real problem in AC. It makes just as much sense that we're seeing a few instances of server dsync, as it does that the players are using a 'lag switch'.
These reasons make the video feel like something much more personal; and like its more of an attack on the Org itself. I don't have a problem with bringing up technical problems with SC, but I don't like accusations thrown around from behind a mask. 'Anonymous' videos were edgy in 2004, but it's played out now.
There's a lot of good discussion going on about this on the SC subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/4ehbe5/cheaters_clogging_the_leaderboards/
I'm going to spend some more time researching the core issue before I get my pitchfork out.
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I dont know how effective it will be to cheat in the game or how likley it is to get caught but i did think about a while back how feseble it would be to make a script that makes the cursor follow the lead pip. it seems like something like that or other aimbots could be possible.
It's obviously early into the game and since there is slot of scrutiny toward this game and calls of making it balance I'm sure CIG will make it work in the end. It's up to the community to discover these holes to fix them before the code is to deep
Other factor: their propaganda game is right. No matter the message the measure of effect by having such a great opener really played off to make this a topic...
Other factor: their propaganda game is right. No matter the message the measure of effect by having such a great opener really played off to make this a topic...
CrudeSasquatch
Space Marshal
I am entertaining the possibility that the video is a hoax, a joke, a mockery of complaint... Mr SRS is making light about Desynch and launching these accusations as a "Haw Haw" because his good buddies were accused of using "Lag Switches".
Then again, possibly he's an angry dude with a gas mask and a good sense of video editing and a huge chip on his shoulder.
Possibly all the attention leads RSI to double check things that clients and servers are saying to each other, stopping cheating, and adding more latency issues!
Possibly they hire PunkBuster to randomly kick people when they're doing well so that the rest of us can feel like we're contributing!
Possibly Mr SRS is a girl!
The possibilities are endless.
But one thing does remain true, and that's Innocent Until Proven Guilty is, like, a law or something, and at the very least a nice way to live life...
also, Forgiveness, even if they are Guilty, is totally something I heard someone say feels good.
Also,
If you drink enough, you can just assume you're bad at the game and the other guy isn't cheating!
Then again, possibly he's an angry dude with a gas mask and a good sense of video editing and a huge chip on his shoulder.
Possibly all the attention leads RSI to double check things that clients and servers are saying to each other, stopping cheating, and adding more latency issues!
Possibly they hire PunkBuster to randomly kick people when they're doing well so that the rest of us can feel like we're contributing!
Possibly Mr SRS is a girl!
The possibilities are endless.
But one thing does remain true, and that's Innocent Until Proven Guilty is, like, a law or something, and at the very least a nice way to live life...
also, Forgiveness, even if they are Guilty, is totally something I heard someone say feels good.
Also,
If you drink enough, you can just assume you're bad at the game and the other guy isn't cheating!
Bigcracker
Space Marshal
Guy in the video has a agenda in my opinion. I dont know who any of these people are but why get all gas masked and latex up for a cheat video? The amount of editing involved for a cheat video is just crazy. It should of just been sent to CIG saying "hey I think these guys are cheating take a look". Let CIG deal with it, this guy just wants attention. Every game has hackers and script kiddies so we will see how CIG deals with it.
HACK THE PLANET!
HACK THE PLANET!
I was actually thinking about reaching out to CIG and asking them for permission to test it in closed private matches and forward all data, as to not get flagged and banned. I would recommend anyone that wants to do that sort of testing to let cig know of your intent before starting any testing of that sort :) haha always better to be told no than to have your account banned or at the very least get a mark against it.
TLDR: want to see the email spam I received after leaving the group of the person whom made that video?
http://pastebin.com/QfSTLsGz
4k screenshots of the emails for posterity/accuracy.
(Not shown because it's very large)
Disclosure.
1) I know the person that posted that video
2) As many will attest, I've know the core group of [RS] for a long time. Several of whom from BEFORE the drop of the DFM 28 May 2014 (Magnitude, Malogos, Tazius, Golith... I've known rtMoose since 2008-2009 playing GB/MLG COD together). My knowledge of many of their people long predates the split between Test & RS.
So everyone that does NOT regularly fly Arena Commander is informed just how laggy it has been with "desync / warping / teleporting / freezing" in the last few months. The majority of active European, Australian & NZ players have flown very little since Feburary because of how extreme the lag on the server is anytime they get on it.
Here's our own streamer ErikMcKetten reproducing the lag on his stream this afternoon in response to "star citizen is not laggy":
Here's my lag video from March, 11, 2016 (Flying with two RS members on my team (Magnitude and missionAVS) + a fourth non-RS member that dropped into the other team) That warping caused be a few well regarded European pilots that tough it out (Like Savara); is EXTREME and has persisted for months.
People are freezing / warping HUNDREDS of meters at a time when good packets finally sync from the lagging videos. We are both in the USA... With sub 100ms pings to the Austin, Tx servers... Magnify that lag for players that called out (Like Star Wraith) who lives with bad connections in Italy, or Loki (Or the entire org of relatively good combat pilots from Russian known as .dno)
So we're all clear of the character of the person whom made the video in the first place... That person ran a "shadow" org called Black_VI.
Black_VI was an organization built of many of the top-combat pilots of 2014 to q3-2015 consisting of only their alternate accounts. (Named Black_##). The leader built Black_VI from the top orgs like 1%, OWN, PI and the non-org known as SuperFriends. The purpose of that org was for combat types to be able to play without regard to organizations or alliances, together as just the top-pilots. Pirating, etc.
"The Plan" was for the org to simply never exist until gold-launch. However, so many of the top-pilots excel at the game and group together; Mr.Mal got jealous and attempted to force players to actively play as a real org. (That did not go on well and caused it's demise).
I was in the first wave of people to leave Black_VI, for drama that involves one of our Test Stream Team members ErikMcKetten.
https://www.twitch.tv/erikmcketten
7 days before Black_VI imploded, Mr.Mal started a campaign to come into McKetten's chat and get him banned; filling the chat with abusive messages. (Twitch's TOS makes it the streamer's responsibility to "handle" those situations. Otherwise that streamer will have their account closed just like the trolls posting in chat). Modding half the popular Twitch streams at the time & knowing / knowing of the parties involved; I timed out all the accounts in chat for 10-minutes & deleted everything from chatroll.
I immediately got on the Black_VI teamspeak to determine what was happening as a courtesy. I explained that McKetten had no problem with people talking a little trash in his stream for fun/lol, but Twitch TOS definitely does not allow for what they were saying in chat & it would not be tolerated.
Mr.Mal launched into a 30 minute tirade accusing myself of "playing favorites" and "having no loyalty to him or any friends in Black_VI. During said tirade, he threatened to make so many ALT accounts to get McKetten's account banned that I couldn't possibly ban them all.
I immediately quit Black_VI and we made sure everyone involved was banned from talking in McKetten's channel. Several left the day I left; several days later, Black_VI lost 40 pilots, the majority of whom simply moved from Mr.Mal's teamspeak server to the server RS was on. (That was the time period [RS] picked up the lion's share of combat-pilots and those that didn't began hanging out over there.)
Once I left, the email spam from Mr.Mal began. Always needing to twist things into his benefit. The email chain I started the post with was immediately after my quitting.
It's not just McKetten & BadNewsBarron calling BS in behalf of RS in this case...
http://pastebin.com/QfSTLsGz
4k screenshots of the emails for posterity/accuracy.
(Not shown because it's very large)
Disclosure.
1) I know the person that posted that video
2) As many will attest, I've know the core group of [RS] for a long time. Several of whom from BEFORE the drop of the DFM 28 May 2014 (Magnitude, Malogos, Tazius, Golith... I've known rtMoose since 2008-2009 playing GB/MLG COD together). My knowledge of many of their people long predates the split between Test & RS.
So everyone that does NOT regularly fly Arena Commander is informed just how laggy it has been with "desync / warping / teleporting / freezing" in the last few months. The majority of active European, Australian & NZ players have flown very little since Feburary because of how extreme the lag on the server is anytime they get on it.
Here's our own streamer ErikMcKetten reproducing the lag on his stream this afternoon in response to "star citizen is not laggy":
Here's my lag video from March, 11, 2016 (Flying with two RS members on my team (Magnitude and missionAVS) + a fourth non-RS member that dropped into the other team) That warping caused be a few well regarded European pilots that tough it out (Like Savara); is EXTREME and has persisted for months.
People are freezing / warping HUNDREDS of meters at a time when good packets finally sync from the lagging videos. We are both in the USA... With sub 100ms pings to the Austin, Tx servers... Magnify that lag for players that called out (Like Star Wraith) who lives with bad connections in Italy, or Loki (Or the entire org of relatively good combat pilots from Russian known as .dno)
So we're all clear of the character of the person whom made the video in the first place... That person ran a "shadow" org called Black_VI.
Black_VI was an organization built of many of the top-combat pilots of 2014 to q3-2015 consisting of only their alternate accounts. (Named Black_##). The leader built Black_VI from the top orgs like 1%, OWN, PI and the non-org known as SuperFriends. The purpose of that org was for combat types to be able to play without regard to organizations or alliances, together as just the top-pilots. Pirating, etc.
"The Plan" was for the org to simply never exist until gold-launch. However, so many of the top-pilots excel at the game and group together; Mr.Mal got jealous and attempted to force players to actively play as a real org. (That did not go on well and caused it's demise).
I was in the first wave of people to leave Black_VI, for drama that involves one of our Test Stream Team members ErikMcKetten.
https://www.twitch.tv/erikmcketten
7 days before Black_VI imploded, Mr.Mal started a campaign to come into McKetten's chat and get him banned; filling the chat with abusive messages. (Twitch's TOS makes it the streamer's responsibility to "handle" those situations. Otherwise that streamer will have their account closed just like the trolls posting in chat). Modding half the popular Twitch streams at the time & knowing / knowing of the parties involved; I timed out all the accounts in chat for 10-minutes & deleted everything from chatroll.
I immediately got on the Black_VI teamspeak to determine what was happening as a courtesy. I explained that McKetten had no problem with people talking a little trash in his stream for fun/lol, but Twitch TOS definitely does not allow for what they were saying in chat & it would not be tolerated.
Mr.Mal launched into a 30 minute tirade accusing myself of "playing favorites" and "having no loyalty to him or any friends in Black_VI. During said tirade, he threatened to make so many ALT accounts to get McKetten's account banned that I couldn't possibly ban them all.
I immediately quit Black_VI and we made sure everyone involved was banned from talking in McKetten's channel. Several left the day I left; several days later, Black_VI lost 40 pilots, the majority of whom simply moved from Mr.Mal's teamspeak server to the server RS was on. (That was the time period [RS] picked up the lion's share of combat-pilots and those that didn't began hanging out over there.)
Once I left, the email spam from Mr.Mal began. Always needing to twist things into his benefit. The email chain I started the post with was immediately after my quitting.
It's not just McKetten & BadNewsBarron calling BS in behalf of RS in this case...
I would tend to agree with this. If they are indeed able to do what people are saying there is a much much bigger problem the least of which is people cheating in AC.
Star CItizen + CryEngine and virtually ever other game engine in-use for FPS games is Client Side Authenticated.
This means that each client is in their own universe and is responsible for the authentication of anything that player does; which is passed on to the server, which parses timestamps & passes results to all other clients.
Lets step through the process of two players in a traditional CSA game fighting each other.
Client A and B fight each other in CQB. Both easily rack up "plenty" of points of damage in the same short-order!
Both clients can easily "kill" each other several times over.
Client A has a lower ping and has the kill registered first
The server decided client B got the kill. How???
Because the server is simply waiting a very brief period of time to sort out the player's timestamps during the fight. The server is simply parsing all of the data to compare the timestamps the clients are sending.
Client A's "kill" was received by the server 39,900ms from the start of the match in Client A's universe
Client B's "kill" was received by the server 39,200ms from the start of the match in Client B's universe
There is no "real world" beyond what the server decides. It's not fair to reward simply whom gets the data in FIRST, so there is a momentary window where updates are allowed & the server gives the opportunity for more updates from other involved Clients come in (Note again, Clients are responsible for their own damage, hits, etc. The server is simply parsing information & timestamps, then updating all Clients on what has transpired)
The above is why two people fight; Both "kill" each other, there seems like a very brief moment of "nothing happening", then everyone is update & someone wins a fight.
Every client operates as it's own universe. The server's job is to simply update every client's universe to the general status of the game.
Clients themselves tell the server what damage & kills are done, and those are timestamped. All the server does, is legitimize theEARLIEST timestamp (it does NOT "register" the "first one received", NEITHER does it "calculate on it's side what happens".
With server side authentication; the server itself simulates the entire world and what happens in it. The large issue in this model is that pings win. Always, and every client's universe is subject to everything the server calculates at all times. This leads to extreme latency felt by all players doing all things (even basic movement). Classic examples of how laggy this is, is to play World of Tanks at peak hours (Even your movements are server-side. You're simply passing commands to it), or gun-play in Battlefield: Bad Company, and Battlefield 2.
With client side authentication; because you are allowing each individual client to run it's own universe, you eliminate almost all of the perceived latency until it get's into unreasonable levels. (Generally accepted as when a client has to extrapolate after a network packet beyond 6 frames @ 60fps. (Depending on the game / type, 7-9 frames of extrapolation is when you begin to experience "lag" issues and warping begins to appear in games)
But in Star Citizen, the servers are dropping WELL under 20 ticks/second (greatly increasing the amount of time between clients being given data = Now clients may begin rendering MANY frames with no working network data). For accuracy-reasons, game engines will by default only render so many frames between good network packets. (That is the freezing you see) When good packets resume, your client teleports (tho generally not dramatically in most games) the location of where people are.
__________________________________
The teleporting leads to another nasty effect. Your target's position directly impacts the auto-aim (called ESP in star citizen to avoid #Rage). It can become very difficult to get your gunsight on & keep it on a target that is routenely teleporting in motion. Not simply because "it moved", but because the auto-aim changes the requested input/output of the control you are attempting to give.
(On a personal level, I'm a great combat pilot and admittedly the world's worst at fighting the desync. Props to the players that can do it!)
__________________________________
This spawns into why Star Citizen, fundamentally, has "desync/rubberbanding/warping/teleporting" and other games (even with bad networking) generally do not. Yes, the game runs poorly, yes the servers are very slow (2ghz clocked Xeons are not fast in this kind of workloads...) and the networking for CryEngine we're still using is historically abysmal. All of those can be delt with. More-so relevant in recent months (and in q2-2015's warping issues)
Traditionally, once your ping rises above ###ms or so many missing/bad network packets in a game engine, the server will drop you for lagging.
In Star Citizen:
1) They only have one server (Google Cloud Compute in Austin, Tx); this poses a ping problem for a large amount of backers!
2) They can't DISCLUDE people from playing!
So instead of timing people out of matches, they are allowed to continue.
The desync is pretty bad these days, people warping all over the place indeed. I probably do the same to other players since I rarely get hit
edit: just watched some of the video, thats not the behaviour I see when desynched so I dunno
edit: just watched some of the video, thats not the behaviour I see when desynched so I dunno
CrudeSasquatch
Space Marshal
I layman termed things for my drunk friends... (for myself)
There's be 2 kinds of desynch...
good ping, bad ping.
Good ping sees people sling shotting all over, as their client updates and the guy on the other end has done a bunch of stuff that took it's sweet time registering
Bad ping sees people stopping and waiting to die
So.... that's what I learned today.
@Toysrme: Sorry there's an internet witch hunt for you fella's (or your friends)/
I was really hoping that video was a friendly joke directed at people complaining about how well you and friends at that org do. It sucks it was actually made to discredit. I honestly thought it was a joke that had gotten out of hand.
There's be 2 kinds of desynch...
good ping, bad ping.
Good ping sees people sling shotting all over, as their client updates and the guy on the other end has done a bunch of stuff that took it's sweet time registering
Bad ping sees people stopping and waiting to die
So.... that's what I learned today.
@Toysrme: Sorry there's an internet witch hunt for you fella's (or your friends)/
I was really hoping that video was a friendly joke directed at people complaining about how well you and friends at that org do. It sucks it was actually made to discredit. I honestly thought it was a joke that had gotten out of hand.
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This is a great story @Toysrme ! Thanks for sharing :) I went through about 3 popcorns and a six pack on that one!
That really puts all the pieces together for this puzzle. I'm glad someone with real inside knowledge was around to share!
The more I looked into this, the more I saw how much it was simply crafted as a smear campaign. Luckily, there have been a lot of people saw through the BS.
Unfortunately it's on top of the Star Citizen sub-reddit still, and a good deal of that community has bought into it; hook line and sinker. I'm kinda impressed that TEST saw through the bullshit so quickly! I was watching some of ErikMcKetten's stream today and he was making lots of jokes about how ridiculous the whole thing was :D his wrap-up on the situation was something like: "anyone who's play the game at all knows what desync is."
Kudos to you TEST, for being so level headed and not buying into the drama!
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You have it half right.
There is also another system that is utilised by most FPS and other fast paced multiplayer games out there. That is client AND server side authentication and that is what Star Citizen will be using.
For educational purposes the three methods are actually called Fully Authoritative Server model, Semi-authoritative Server model(What I'm about to describe next) and Client Authoritative model
In the Semi-Authoritative server model, because as you said you might have latency issues by using a fully authoritative server affecting gameplay (like teleporting) due to low server ticks or bad connection, what happens is that it merges the other two modes. So you have the client side simulation and input done and rendered. All the input information is transferred to the server which then validates it against its own simulation and sends the simulation to the client. This data sent overrides all the client information and is dominant. This is what you see on your client side and this happens for all players.
An example of this:
Player is moving forward by pressing W. Client translates the input to movement, renders and simulates the movement, sends input to server together with location info and a bunch of other stuff.
Server receives the input, validates it and finds it valid, then does its own simulation and sends the results to the client, the results of both simulations are roughly the same, and this is interpolated visually so it seems that everything is going as they should.
Player changes vector by pressing D. Client translates the input to movement, simulates and renders the movement, sends input to server.
The connection is off due to lagswitch bitchery so server does not get the info and player does not get a response.
Other players see the player still moving forward, someone shoots and hits the player.
Player goes behind enemy and shoots, he sees enemy blow up and is a happy douchebag. Turns lagswitch off.
Connection is resumed, server sends its "RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH" simulation results.
Suddenly the douchebag that was happy he killed someone, sees his own ship blow up. The others see him blow up. Everyone laughs while the kiddy hacker rages in chat.
This is the simplest way I can explain this model.
long time friend of; not an org i am in.
people can believe what they wish. RS itself has backlash that many agree is not unjustified. SC is filled with people that hate all manner of things with a passion. top on that list are the arrogant pvp groups that are aggressive, obviously skilled and post results like RS.
they get what they deserve with that.
however... calling out Malogos is something many have taken issue with. i certainly have! he is, legitimately, the hardest pilot I've ever fought against 1v1 to kill at any point in SC's history (going back to the 28 May 2014 release of the DFM to gold-ticket backers).
the guy is just insane. his ability to aim quickly & accurately and much higher off-axis angles than any other mouse player I've encountered in nearly 2 years is just difficult to fight against consistently. combine that with intimate knowledge of how the combat operates (and how to min/max his positional, maneuvering & general strength against quicker joystick players attempting to kill him)... I kill him, but it's not an even trade. (and i'm damn good when I want to be...). Complaint to him about "meta" and he'll drop down to bulldogs and win... Complain about gimbal+mouse and he'll fly fixed... (he's not a 1 trick pony as it were)
Couple weeks ago I did a 1v1 with him live on stream. He got one kill right out of the gate, but even in a new, freshly spun-up freeflight server we began crashing out (You can hear people discussing desync and issues in the background lol!); we couldn't finish another complete kill (Hence this video only contains one kill and He got it)
Star Wraith... he is one of the laggy europeans. i find him impossible to fight against when we've tried to do 1v1's. the game crashes too much & when it doesn't it's a desynced nightmare going both ways. the server eventually derps it for longer and longer periods and eventually one of us just kills the other. i want to see what happens when CIG spins up a server in Belgium one day (the european google cloud compute place). that'll tell if he's really REALLY as good as his performance is, or if he's just a solid player overly benefiting from whatever string & can internet is going to his village in Italy.
eventually; i want to 1v1 the top euro pilots on their server like they play on ours. best of 5 on each. then see whom really benefits from server position.