Just a thought

[=TAO=OhGod Profile]

So, I don't remember who was on the server the other day, but as seems to be the usual there was one or two shady characters on. Now, in the past I have offered several admins access to B2B's fairly advanced pb and md5 checks which were compiled by the best admins of several very popular RTCW servers.

Nobody wants them

I've even offered certain ECGN admins access to our little area where we collaborate and research. That is something we don't take very lightly as it contains quite the wealth of information.

Again, nothing

I don't really understand why you wouldn't want to catch cheaters, but hey... I'd be remiss in assuming your intentions, whatever they are.


Well, I'd like to PAY you to put them in place. I'll put $50 twds whatever you want, beer money even, to see them properly in place. If I'm wrong about said shady characters, you are out nothing and gain $50. If I am right, you win a slightly cleaner server. Sounds like win-win, right?

I'll ask around the TAO forums and see if anyone else wants to chip in. I'm personally spending more time on this server and have a slightly vested interest in seeing it run well. Does anyone else feel the same way?


Also, do you actually stream from the MBL?

Of course, if the cheaters are your friends then I'll understand you not wanting them to get caught.


Cheers ladies and gentlemen, let me know what you think. And as always, GG's.

-OhGod

[TAO KiKi Profile]

I assumed all of the busier servers ran with similar MD5 Checks as TAO, I am learning this is not the case.

They are so simple to set up, do nothing to hinder the performance of the server, and make the playing field slightly more level, give you the piece of mind that you are doing something about parasitic infestations.

[hedgehog Profile]

that'd be cool dude

VOTE F!:badger::badger::badger::badger::badger::badger::badger::badger:

[SavageParrot Profile]

We already run md5 checks. We have been for years.

So far as I am aware we stream to the MBL and Pbbans as well. I have certainly seen our bans on both lists so I assume this is the case.

With the exception that we don't ban on casual recommendation as B2B does our ban list is at least as comprehensive as B2B. In fact if you'd ever let me see you ban list as I seem to remember I showed you ours I'd be able to see exactly who it is you think you have caught that we haven't but I guess it's easier to keep it intangible so you can hold up up as the worlds greatest ban list .

As for the invite to the cookie jar of power I'd assume that was sent to Donny (Man-At-Arms) but then he never struck me as the scooby doo type so I wouldn't be surprised he declined. Maybe he just thought the flared trousers wouldn't suit him. Either way if you took the usual tone the 'e-headshake' followed by the 'we know so much more than you please let us help you' shuffle, I'd have thought he'd have collapsed from the overwhelming weight of patronisation. He's been doing this a long time. I heard he admined on Pong but maybe that's a malicious rumour. I know there's this very popular rumour that ECGN admins are morons and do nothing to stop hackers but frankly it is bullshit. Man-At-Arms has been doing it for a long time and he's not a fool. We do at least as much as some and a damn side more than most to keep the server clean.

If they were really that fishy then I assume you took a demo. All it takes is a nice demo forwarded to an admin and even if they slip past pb they'll still get banned.

Honstly now that I'm playing Call of Duty mostly I can look at Rtcw and say without a shadow of a doubt that wolf players are the most insanely paranoid and vocal (read whiny) about it players of any game I have ever played.

Aiming in wolf is easy, the bullet spread is absurdly small and it's possible, even easy, to legally make it so you have virtually no crosshair movement as you run. Don't get me started on how easy sniping is. The result is that there is virtually no limit to how good you can get. If you play a lot, and I mean like 10 hours a day, and/or you had tremendously good hand eye coordination to begin with then you could/will be rediculously good. Add to this the one, or maybe 2 at best, dimensional map design that forces all of one team to be channelled through easily blocked and camped choke points and you have a gheyness marathon.

Don't get me wrong I love the game but seeing as about 99% of hack accusations are without merit and pretty often without thought as well (I'll give the travelling admins an exemption because they think we are retards so naturally assume that all players on the server are unscreened and therefore hacking) it's pretty boring having to listen to them. If I spec players at all I do it from demoes now. I have wasted altogether too much of my playing career sitting in spec trying to find the truth of a hack accusation only to find after half an hour of probing the accused that it was your bog standard penis envy on the part of the accuser.

I blame FX. As soon as cal main got hacked that was it. 'If you can hack competions then you can hack anywhere' was the basic premise and it's not entirely without merit. But let me add my theory; the whining is more disruptive than the hacking. So they hack, take a demo send it to an admin or just accept that you KR doesn't matter when you are up against a hack and rejoice in the special feeling of beating a guy that you know to be cheating. It's a game, it's supposed to be fun. If you spend 20 minutes of every hour that you play crying into your milkshake isn't it time to re-evaluate whether or not this is relaxation time or just a continuation of work?

If it was up to me I'd making hacking legal on the server. Then I'd post a link to a place to download the hack and let everyone get on with it. I don't like hackers, I'm pretty sure I've banned enough to prove it, but wolfers are too jaded to ever believe that anyone they don't know by first name and who kills them is not hacking so why not make the playing field as level as possible? After all if everyone is hacking then at least it's fair again, or if you choose to be old school and play clean to massage your ego it would make each and every kill satisfying in the extreme. At least it would bring back the fun.

*Incidentally I woke up early to add some pages to my book. Instead I wrote this. Isn't procrastination great?

[MAN-AT-ARMS]

We stream to Pbbans only now. I dropped PsB-MBL a few months ago due to the fact their system frequently lagged out the server and updates were so infrequent or nonexistent.

Aside from that, PsB only has about 5 or so 1.41 servers that stream to it now...4 of which are empty 99.9% of the time. Hardly what I would call a collaboration.

That being said, I tend to look at this whole hacker thing from a different perspective. I believe that the number of people hacking at RTCW is miniscule because 1) the game is so old and the community is small (compared to other online games) and 2) the players now tend to be the die-harders who play for fun, not the competition. Do you really believe after all this time someone using hacks can get any kind of satisfaction in beating up on non-cheaters? I would think it would be rather boring after this amount of time. Every game has it's 'virtuoso' players and this one is no different. Most player's skill level plateaus after a relatively short time and that lack of improvement tends to make them look at these 'virtuoso' as suspect, because they themselves never reach that level of skill. It's a fact of life, no matter how good you are at something in life, there's always gonna be someone out there better, whether you want to believe it or not.

[=TAO=OhGod Profile]

Do you really believe after all this time someone using hacks can get any kind of satisfaction in beating up on non-cheaters?

Yes, without a doubt. We still have people like w4rfrog coming back after all, and he isn't even clever.


Look guys, I'm not trying to come off all high and mighty. You know I lubs you, parrot. All I've been trying to do is spread some of the knowledge that we have gained.

As for that collaboration, I was not referring to PsB. We have a group of admins from a bunch of different server that cooperate to make sure cheaters stay banned. There really isn't much activity there anymore as the rtcw population has dwindled, but at its height access was offered. Even now it serves as a decent reference, and when something does pop up it makes its way there.

With the exception that we don't ban on casual recommendation as B2B

All it takes is a nice demo forwarded to an admin

waaaait a minute.

And for the record, there was only one TAO admin that banned people without more than suspicion, and yes we're still dealing with the fallout from that to some degree



So, shop talk aside, are you saying you have no interest in even scanning over our lil checks or anything?

[hedgehog Profile]

i cant read that much but it looked good, maybe add some pictures and stuff

[SavageParrot Profile]

Honestly if the ban is older than a year or so I really can't see the point in constantly re-inforcing it. People make mistakes and in most cases they come back and are fine. Sure there are the die hard hackers but I'd rather ban a guy for hacking now than just re-banning a guy for something he did a long time ago. Back in the day when the server was always full sure it was a one strike and you're gone policy but the game's old and the player base is not what it used to be.

So if some guy comes back after a year or a couple on the ban list and he seems legit, keeps his mouth shut and plays I can't see the point of banning again. There was a time I would have beaten him with the banstick and then laughed in his face but what's the point? We have maybe a year or so more before this is gone (woot rtcw2!) so why not just try to have fun and forgive people for past transgressions? Life's too short to be obsessing about catching everybody who has ever hacked anywhere at any time.

If they are hacking now that's a different story

And you can send me whatever you like, it's savageparrot@gmail.com or savageparrot@hotmail.com if you want msn. I can't guarantee I'll read it but I can try

[Wolfy2 Profile]

yea i don't think hacking is much of a problem anymore for the reasons that MAA stated..

i'll take the 50 bucks though..

[TAO KiKi Profile]

Well, if your already running the md5 checks, thats awesome. Even if your not streaming.
Do you manually update from the MBL since your not streaming?
Also, it might be a good idea to compare the MD5 checks that your running with the ones that OhGod and his crew have come up with to see if either check list is lacking checks for newer hacks.

[SavageParrot Profile]

We still stream to pbbans just not the mbl any more But yeah we'll add any new bans from the mbl anyway.

[MAN-AT-ARMS]

Yes we do MD5 checks, yes we stream, bans from this and every other streaming server on pbbans are automatically added to our local ban list without any action needed to be taken on our part.