For the last decade, MMOs have been ruined by rampant botting and cheating. In games like WoW, bots go around and collect resources such and herbs and ore. There are pvp exploits and programs designed to use key abilities for you when a spell is cast on you (breaking CC). How does VR plan to deal with this? Could be a gamebreaker for a startup company like this. (Not trying to doom and gloom but create a healthy discussion).
I hope that VR has a very harsh policy with botters and hand out perma-bans instead of just 24-48 hours. It ruins the game/economy.
Mod Edit: Double post copied into original post and then removed, please use the edit function instead of creating a new post right under the original as it is against the forum guidelines to double post.
I know that there will not be macros available that allow you to easily run a 6 man bot group type of deal. It has been said that duoing (2 accts one comp) will be possible but not easily done. You won't be able to do like you can now in many games, the ability to hit one button and have it run a script of sorts.
Another thing is that it looks like there will not be a global marketplace, but rather local markets. This should help with bots and selling a bit.
I am sure the devs are working on stopping or slowing the bot/gold sellers issues...hopefully we will hear more later.
I am sure that anything that happens which is breaking the way the game is meant to be played will be dealt with quickly by VR. Everything I've read has shown that this team is very passionate about their creation and will do what is necessary to keep it in the right state. :-)
~~~ <()> ~~~
Valor and virtue ride with me, my blade defends the helpless,
my might upholds the weak, my words speak only truth,
my wrath undoes the wicked!
<~ Vaultarn Stormborn ~>
We have discussed topic this numerous times and each time in ends in a lot of back and forth of personal opinion, so please keep in mind that it is both the players and our responsibility to handle this, there are many different ways and it is a bit too early for us to be discussing this in an official capacity, but once we get the game to a launch state we will have security measures and other protocols in place to prevent and catch things like this but we will also rely heavily on the community to report cheaters and botters. We are creating the game well aware of these people and will do our best to defend against it.
Any previous experiences players may have had with cheating in other games cannot be fairly compared to Pantheon as our game has not released to the public yet, so please keep that in mind when posting your thoughts.
It doesn't matter what the game is, if you don't have some form of anti-cheat there are enough people out there who will disect your game to their advantage. Way back in the early EQ days this had a lot of problems, which for example included people changing their hp regen client side to allow insane regen, you could also enable the /zone command which was only supposed to be for GM's. PVP servers had issues with players clicking off buffs because the client handled things like root/snare/etc and the server did nothing to enforce that.
So what does this mean:
a) Don't trust the client, period. The client is there to show the world and let them interact with it, majority of logic should be server side or at least affirmed on the server.
b) Lack of an anti-cheat is going to make your lives as devs/support/etc harder and likely more frustration from players (more commonly in PVP, but PVE servers are not immune).
image said:It doesn't matter what the game is, if you don't have some form of anti-cheat there are enough people out there who will disect your game to their advantage. Way back in the early EQ days this had a lot of problems, which for example included people changing their hp regen client side to allow insane regen, you could also enable the /zone command which was only supposed to be for GM's. PVP servers had issues with players clicking off buffs because the client handled things like root/snare/etc and the server did nothing to enforce that.
So what does this mean:
a) Don't trust the client, period. The client is there to show the world and let them interact with it, majority of logic should be server side or at least affirmed on the server.
b) Lack of an anti-cheat is going to make your lives as devs/support/etc harder and likely more frustration from players (more commonly in PVP, but PVE servers are not immune).
While that sounds good in theory, an anti-cheat is basically a small speed hump for cheaters, the people who make the programs will code their way around it so it will need to be updated constantly and then once it is, they will code around it again, it is an ongoing cat and mouse for every game with every anti-cheat.
I was able to find the thread that we discussed this in great detail so I will go ahead and close this one down and I will copy my post below but please continue the conversation over in that thread if you folks have any more to add but a lot of it has already been covered: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/3253/anti-cheat-precautions
My Quote:
"It is tough on the Devs too, the more secure and thorough the anti-cheat needs to be, the more intrusive it needs to be and then there is all kinds of privacy issues which a lot of companies do not want to risk breaching, therefore, they tolerate some cheats more than others, not because they want too but because it could hurt them quite badly if they went after them too hard.
It really does suck, I would prefer a more intrusive method via installing software on my PC to allow the game to be more thorough in detecting cheating software but many do not want that but still cry foul over hacks and cheaters and so the vicious circle continues, usually with some half-measures to stop the obvious hacks/cheaters while the more complicated and technical ones go undetected unless physically seen in-game."