[POLL] Third Party Anti-cheat Software

[abelsgmx.7530]

I agre with this. I have a couple of games running easy anticheat without any problem in game performance. Runing New World without any problem and that is a very demand game. I relly hope Anet implement it in this game

[Mrs Lana.2506]

On 10/24/2020 at 5:49 AM, krz.1327 said:

There already was an anti cheat but it was removed because cheaters whined that they can't cheat anymore and blamed ArenaNet for infringement of privacy.

Never mind the fact that it was intrusive and could scan your computer for programs that weren't affecting guild wars 2 at all. That or the fact it lagged people out. Or gave false positives. What a reductive comment. It wasn't only the cheaters who were complaining. Everyone was affected.

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

It wouldn't happen because Linux and Mac users make up a significant part of the player base. Its one of the reasons the game became so popular compared to other MMOs because the devs always did some testing in Wine (well, the old devs did at least) to make sure it works, so its always stayed very stable on other platforms even though they were never officially supported.

 

Anti-cheat software is usually a rootkit and rarely works outside of Windows. There's a few that work, but then you'd have licensing costs on top of that taking funding away from the game.

 

Cheaters are extremely rare, even in competitive modes, and its not worth it. Most players who are seen as cheating aren't running cheat tools but just exploiting the game "legitimately", like all the farming Necros players keep calling bots who literally just have one skill on autocast.

Edited March 8, 2022 by Hannelore.8153

[FelixWolf.2348]

Absolutely not.

 

I don't use windows, and getting Guild Wars 2 to run nicely on *nix takes a bit of wrangling. Adding anti-cheat would shut out anyone using wine(*nix based operating systems such as linux or mac) to play GW2.

I've dealt with games not having a anti-cheat at one point then suddenly adding it and I get something like easy anti-cheat complaining that it can't properly spy on me from within the compatibility layer, therefore I could no longer play the game I had paid for.

 

Additionally, stuff like punkbuster is considered a privacy invasion as it includes built-in remote desktop(view only). This doesn't work with grabbing just the window, it grabs the entire screen. I do not want others to see my desktop, especially since I multi-task and there is some stuff that I don't want other to see(I.E. browser tabs, second life, NDA source code, etc).

Stuff like Denuvo uses 100% of your disk I/O for some unknown reason, and if your disk happens to be SSD, it'll significantly reduce the life span of it. (I.E. Damaging consumer's hardware)

 

When it comes to anti-cheats, there are only three types:

1. Aggressive, laggy, and intrusive.
2. Light weight, only detects known cheats and basic cheating methods.
3. Built for the game, spot on, non-intrusive and effective anti-cheat.

PB, Denuvo, and EAC both fit 1; VAC would fit 2; 3 don't have names because they are built in.

 

Are there cheaters in WvW? Yes, but they are very rare. Is it frustrating when they cheat in WvW? Of course. I've seen like 3 towers fall because a cheater portal'd in a squad and took it. Can anything be done about? Yes, report them.

Granted, the report mechanism is hit or miss, you have to be able to see the player and click them to report them. Doesn't help that you can't see player names in WvW either.

 

IMO, Anti-cheats are similar to DRM. The more intrusive the implementation, the worse it will effect the end user. Cheaters will get around it one way or another and may end up having a much better experience.

Edited March 8, 2022 by FelixWolf.2348

[kharmin.7683]

What would be the purpose of such software?  How can anyone "cheat" GW2 and win the game?  This is a non-issue and something that is definitely not needed.

[nektar palas.5987]

Absolutely No!

 

this type of "sofftware" dictates what software can run on our pc when we are playing games ( example: Battleye doesn't allow mouse software to run on pc if it is unkown ) , they are taking money from the game developer for no reason (example: PUBG had anticheats sw from the day 1 in alpha stage and it had always big problems with cheaters) and they are giving false feeling that protect the good gamers while the cheaters always find the way to by pass the detection and there is always a high possibillity to create bad performance to good players and make them leave the game while cheaters remain inside the game.

As PUBG player since the alpha stage and when it was a payed game the only useful tool that really helped the game was when they added the death camera and the report system. After this moment the game really cleared, special in hight ranks . PUBG  still has cheaters because people are idiots and they think that nobody will report them or they don't care because they have a lot of money to burn but let me say this.

I was never reported someone without first check the death camera and his/her account status in sites via api and after the report maximum 3 days the cheater has gone if not the next hour(most of the times).

 

So, in conclution why Anet should add 3rd party anti-cheat s/w to gw2?

There is not a single reason.to add something they can do themselves.

 

The gw2 gameclient can collect what s/w we are running when the game starts or on loading of the maps and they can have reports of anything comes from our mouse / keyboard since there is a log system in chat with the time that happened !.

Also if Anet wants to improve the security of the game-client they can add a death camera option or an option to co-operate a keybind with recording s/w (with option to setup what record s/w someone has installed) like PUBG did.

 

and if they want to prevent the abuse of usage from stupid players that first press the report button and after think they can add MAGIC FIND PENALTY or GOLD REMOVE  or BOTH for FALSE REPORTS.

report other players after, if you are not sure dear 3rd anti-cheat demander 😉 

 

p.s. Also, in-case of Linux and Apple OSes that people are using as mentioned and explained well on a previous post, these Anti-cheats will definetely create problems to Anet's dev team, because these anti-cheat s/w always load drivers and these drivers are ALWAYS INCOMPATIBLE with other OSes . The 3rd part anticheat s/w will create UNRESOLVED problems to Anet devs and it will lead to the cancel and remove of the anti-cheats from the client in the future, but meanwhile they will have damaged gw2 !

Edited March 9, 2022 by nektar palas.5987

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

17 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

What would be the purpose of such software?  How can anyone "cheat" GW2 and win the game?  This is a non-issue and something that is definitely not needed.

You're glowing in the dark again.

[dusanyu.4057]

pardon my language but hell no anti cheat software demands too much root level access to the system and would stop people who use translation layers like WINE from playing

[kharmin.7683]

6 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

You're glowing in the dark again.

Sorry, I'm not understanding this response.  And, it didn't answer my questions.  What would be the need for such software?  How can people "cheat" GW2?

[JustTrogdor.7892]

24 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Sorry, I'm not understanding this response.  And, it didn't answer my questions.  What would be the need for such software?  How can people "cheat" GW2?

While not such of a huge impact on  PvE, people using cheats do certainly affect PvP and WvW.  There have been people using certain cheats to teleport or increase speed for example which gives them an advantage in player verses player environments.   Here is an interesting BBC news article from a time when Anet publicly banned a cheater. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32654414

Quote

Over the past three weeks many players of the popular multi-player game Guild Wars 2 have been complaining about the activities of a character called DarkSide. About four million copies of the game have been sold.

Via a series of exploits the character was able to teleport, deal massive damage, survive co-ordinated attacks by other players and dominate player-versus-player combat.

To spur Guild Wars' creator ArenaNet to react, players gathered videos of DarkSide's antics and posted them on YouTube.

The videos helped ArenaNet's security head Chris Cleary identify the player behind DarkSide, he said in a forum post explaining what action it had taken. Mr Cleary took over the account to carry out the punishment.

 

[Khisanth.2948]

On 3/8/2022 at 5:57 AM, FelixWolf.2348 said:

Absolutely not.

 

I don't use windows, and getting Guild Wars 2 to run nicely on *nix takes a bit of wrangling. Adding anti-cheat would shut out anyone using wine(*nix based operating systems such as linux or mac) to play GW2.

I've dealt with games not having a anti-cheat at one point then suddenly adding it and I get something like easy anti-cheat complaining that it can't properly spy on me from within the compatibility layer, therefore I could no longer play the game I had paid for.

 

Additionally, stuff like punkbuster is considered a privacy invasion as it includes built-in remote desktop(view only). This doesn't work with grabbing just the window, it grabs the entire screen. I do not want others to see my desktop, especially since I multi-task and there is some stuff that I don't want other to see(I.E. browser tabs, second life, NDA source code, etc).

Stuff like Denuvo uses 100% of your disk I/O for some unknown reason, and if your disk happens to be SSD, it'll significantly reduce the life span of it. (I.E. Damaging consumer's hardware)

 

When it comes to anti-cheats, there are only three types:

1. Aggressive, laggy, and intrusive.
2. Light weight, only detects known cheats and basic cheating methods.
3. Built for the game, spot on, non-intrusive and effective anti-cheat.

PB, Denuvo, and EAC both fit 1; VAC would fit 2; 3 don't have names because they are built in.

 

Are there cheaters in WvW? Yes, but they are very rare. Is it frustrating when they cheat in WvW? Of course. I've seen like 3 towers fall because a cheater portal'd in a squad and took it. Can anything be done about? Yes, report them.

Granted, the report mechanism is hit or miss, you have to be able to see the player and click them to report them. Doesn't help that you can't see player names in WvW either.

 

IMO, Anti-cheats are similar to DRM. The more intrusive the implementation, the worse it will effect the end user. Cheaters will get around it one way or another and may end up having a much better experience.

There is a 4th if we are talking about anti-cheat in general rather than restricting to client side solutions.

That option is to do all the analysis on the server side. That avoids all the issues. The biggest problem is that it would be a significant project to under take.

[mythical.6315]

On 3/8/2022 at 4:10 AM, kharmin.7683 said:

What would be the purpose of such software?  How can anyone "cheat" GW2 and win the game?  This is a non-issue and something that is definitely not needed.

Ask the players using the software to clip underneath the map to gather from nodes. Ask the players who used the software to map complete DS in minutes with brand new characters before the map completion restrictions. 

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, mythical.6315 said:

Ask the players using the software to clip underneath the map to gather from nodes. Ask the players who used the software to map complete DS in minutes with brand new characters before the map completion restrictions. 

Ok, so how do they win the game?  How does doing this make them win and me lose?  How do these actions adversely affect my game play?

[JustTrogdor.7892]

1 hour ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Ok, so how do they win the game?  How does doing this make them win and me lose?  How do these actions adversely affect my game play?

Sigh...  It doesn't matter because using those cheats are against ToS be it in PvE, PvP or WvW.    Every online game has rules against using such exploits for a reason.  But as far as PvE, unchecked exploits and hacks can affect the in game economy.  Additionally when someone is doing normal game play, say out harvesting nodes, and sees a bunch of players teleporting to the nodes it looks really bad for the game.   Also those that can for example teleport to nodes all over maps and harvest in minutes what takes a normal player a significant amount of time then the cheater is indeed given a bigger advantage over the non-cheater.  It may not always be a head to head contest, or something to win or lose as you like to put it, but people don't like playing games where other people are cheating and are given an unfair advantage.  That's why again every online game has rules against such things because cheats are detrimental to the game and the players.    I think you actually know these things but for some reason you just want to argue about it. 

Edited March 9, 2022 by JustTrogdor.7892

[mythical.6315]

3 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Ok, so how do they win the game?  How does doing this make them win and me lose?  How do these actions adversely affect my game play?

Are you seriously asking that?  You’re coming off as someone supportive of those that do that.