Author Topic: wut specturr'z playing  (Read 31423 times)

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #60 on: July 21, 2020, 06:10:13 PM »
Gotta give a quick shout out to Mindustry.

It's a game that's sort of a weird hybrid between a tower defense title and Factorio (yes, you read that correctly). One of my friends and I played it a bunch at the beginning of the year and recently revisited it, and both of us had forgotten how much fun it was. Its "overwhelmingly positive" rating on Steam is well-deserved.

I've since learned that in addition to having a low price tag ($6 on Steam) it's open source (under GPLv3) and also has iOS and Android ports available for $1 each. Kinda looks like it might even be just straight up free as well, but the person who makes this definitely deserves the money.

Definitely check it out! I highly recommend it.
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #61 on: August 25, 2020, 10:33:42 PM »
I started playing Destiny 2 again. My plan is to clear the current story content before it gets vaulted, then jump into Beyond Light when it comes out.
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Zephlar

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #62 on: August 26, 2020, 01:19:46 PM »
I started playing Destiny 2 again. My plan is to clear the current story content before it gets vaulted, then jump into Beyond Light when it comes out.

Good luck. Really hate how much money we've dumped into that game at this point. My history with it is long and complicated now. They've essentially fashioned it to where you HAVE to keep playing for your gear to stay relevant. The potential for that game is so good. They just fucked up way too much along the way. In the end it was more Crucible cheaters using wall hacks and aimbot that made me quit aside from the other shit.

Edit: After a quick google search, I see nothing has changed either.

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #63 on: August 26, 2020, 10:29:02 PM »
Yeah, there's a good reason I haven't seriously played PvP since the Quake 3/UT2004 era (and cheating was an issue then as well—creating cheat-proof online games is pretty much impossible). I played a little bit of Overwatch when it came out and it was exactly the same as what you're describing. That, coupled with a bunch of edgelord kids who couldn't muster up a sick burn if they were freezing to death and have the situational awareness of a blind and deaf person in a coma, just made me chalk that experience up as a waste of $40.

Destiny's expansions have been traditionally fairly extensive, especially compared to what most games "offer" these days, so I don't mind throwing some cash at them. It's never just a few new story missions, but rather a big chunk of story coupled with a swath of mechanical changes and feature additions. I don't have any plans to invest in microtransactions, and they seem to have largely stepped away from the most egregious MTX practices since Bungie split with Activision.

I wouldn't say that the grind to get passable seasonal gear is all that bad. The last time I played was season 1 and I managed to bring my light level up to where my friends were in a matter of hours. Kinda seems like it's more about collectables at this point, which I'm fine with. One of the things I miss about WoW is the sheer amount of stuff that you can uncover and collect, so there's a very big box ticked right there.
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Zephlar

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #64 on: August 27, 2020, 09:00:41 AM »
creating cheat-proof online games is pretty much impossible

Can you elaborate on that? I ended up buying a PS4 literally just because I'm such a PVP intensive gamer and got sick and tired of PC cheaters in every game I played. It drives me insane because I would MUCH rather be playing at 144hz you know what I mean? I always wonder why such massive developers like Activision/Infinity Ward and Bungie can't seem to stop cheaters no matter what they do. It took all of like 1 weeks for cheaters to find a way around the Warzone 2 step feature they added to new accounts.

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #65 on: August 27, 2020, 02:02:29 PM »
tl;dr: cheats are impossible to prevent because they exploit data that the server must send to the client in order for the game to work at all. Here's a ramble on the topic:

Whenever you're playing a multiplayer game, the server has to send information to your system in order for it to display the other players and what they're doing. All it takes is for a program to intercept and interpret that data, at which point you can draw information to the screen (radars, etc) and inject inputs into the application to change the player orientation and fire off shots. Some things (particularly wallhacks) tend to require libraries to be injected into the game's address space or require a third-party DirectX/OpenGL/Vulkan DLL to be placed in the game directory in order to function. Those are typically detected fairly easily by standard anti-cheat solutions (pretty sure that's one of the things VAC searches for) so people who do that are usually detected and sanctioned fairly quickly.

Consoles being hack-proof is a pretty huge fallacy, and one that's bitten Sony in particular multiple times. It's fairly simple to jailbreak a PS4, and a jailbroken PS4 is no better than a PC in terms of security. Even without jailbreaking, by routing network traffic through a PC it's easily possible to gain access to information about players that may not even be on your screen. In some ways I'd argue that consoles are worse because they give their players a false sense of security. Let's consider a very common example: radars.

Consider an enemy behind cover. One of the classic strategies for increasing security is to restrict the amount of information that gets sent to the client. In some games, precompiled visibility information is used for this. For example, a map compiler may be able to determine, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there's no way that a player in one room will ever be able to see into another room and will cache that visibility data into the map file. Let's take the following room layout as an example:



Let's assume that player 1 (P1) is in room A, player 2 (P2) is in room C, and player 3 (P3) is in room E. Since the visibility data has already been roughly calculated, the server will easily be able to determine that it's impossible for P1 and P3 to see each other, so P1 will never receive P3's info, and vice-versa. Since P2 can potentially be seen by both players, however, their information will be sent to both P1 and P3.

This system has its limitations, notably in that it only works on a macro scale. If both P1 and P2 were in room A, but P2 was hidden behind a large piece of debris, it's very likely that P1's client would still receive information about P2. If P1 were a cheating bastard and ran a program that could interpret and display that data, they could know which piece of cover P2 was hiding behind, as well as what direction their facing, giving them the opportunity to get the jump on P2 without it being immediately apparent that they're cheating.

Now to close things off on why the PC may very well look worse than it actually is. One of the things that have always separated PC shooters from console shooters has obviously been the control method. The mouse is far more nuanced and precise than controllers can ever hope to be, and there are some players out there that are just freakishly good. I'm far from a top-tier player, but when I'm in my groove I can chain multiple headshots together in a second. When you consider that there are people out there that can consistently pull off tricks that require 16ms of accuracy (speed runners, fighting game players, etc), it's not hard to imagine that there's a lot of people that legitimately do have such a level of precision that normal play to them can look like aimbot behavior to others.

There's also another thing that throws a massive spanner in the works that very few people consider: tick rates. While Destiny 2 on your computer shows every sign of running at a crisp 144hz, its network code most certainly is not. Destiny 2's network tick rate is variable, but on PC it maxes out at 40hz, or 25ms (or locked 30hz on console, to match the framerate). What you're actually seeing on your end is a smoothed out approximation of the other players' movements. If I manage to get a snap headshot and quickly pan my view elsewhere in a tick or two (which is far from impossible) it's going to look like I'm botting, and it's going to look quite a bit different on my screen compared to yours (on yours it'll look like a smooth, casual motion, while on mine it's going to be far twitchier).

The reason for low tick rates is simply to reduce network traffic and ensure that the game remains synchronized between players. While 40hz seems sluggish, it's fairly reasonable when it comes to Internet gaming (I think 60hz is as good as it gets at this time).

I hope that helps clear a few things up.
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Zephlar

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #66 on: August 31, 2020, 11:33:19 AM »
Probably the most laymen explanation I've ever gotten, though I noticed your insinuation that I'm saying people are cheating that aren't because they may be more "twitchy" on PC. I'm pretty skilled on PC I know what's up and I spectate.

I'm aware you can cheat on consoles but why then have I been playing GTA online on both PS4 and PC and NEVER see cheaters like literally ever on GTA online for PS4, but PC you can't go into a lobby without cheaters? For the record, I paid to have my GTA account modded on PC with additional cash. No cheat menu just cash. For the express reason I couldn't grind because of the constant cheaters ruining my ability to complete jobs. Literally the if you can't beat em join em moment I never thought I would have. First and only game I've ever cheated with.

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #67 on: August 31, 2020, 07:25:26 PM »
You're reading way too much into my post. I'm just saying that in general it's more difficult to really know if someone on PC is aimbotting because the tick rate is lower than even a base level 60hz monitor. It's literally impossible for the game to show you exactly what they're seeing and doing. Their movements are going to look smoother and more precise than they would if you were standing over their shoulders watching them. This was far more of an issue when tick rates were 10-20hz, obviously, but even a 120hz monitor is going to run three local ticks for every net tick.

Not sure why you're bringing up GTA, but each game is a different story, and the reason GTA Online is so goddamn awful largely stems from the fact that Rockstar's net code has been consistently crap since at least GTA4.

One of the main tenets of writing net code is to trust the client as little as possible, but Rockstar doesn't seem to be aware of that. If I were to join a Quake (as in, 1995 Quake) with mods enabled, the server would pretty much boot me right away. GTA Online has weaker mod protection than Quake does, and the server trusts the client far more. From what I've read, if your client tells the server that you have X weapon, it'll just believe you.

In addition to this, the game seems to completely fail to validate any of the game's files on the PC version. There is absolutely no reason why the mod menu should even work in GTA Online, but it does. If Rockstar gave even the slightest fuck about security instead of just blindly trusting the platform to do it, it would autokick anyone running a modified client, and they sure as hell wouldn't let anyone modify the amount of cash they have in their account.

The main reason it's not as bad on consoles isn't that it isn't possible (it is) or that people simply don't do it (they do), but it's because the application data is encrypted. No easy cheat menus there, so it's far harder for casual players to cheat. The second is because consoles can be hardware banned, and used game stores explicitly check for those before allowing trade-ins because burner Xbox 360s were such a common thing back in the day. Rockstar pretty much leans on the platform itself for almost all of their client-side security, so I'll bet a jailbroken console could theoretically have a cheat menu injected in and used without being detected.

Let me just emphasize that this problem was already solved in 1995 and earlier. I could tell my Quake client that I was invulnerable but the server would pay me no mind, since it controlled everything that happened in the game world. In Max Payne 3, all that it took for people to become invulnerable was for them to tell the server "hey, by the way, I'm invulnerable," and the server would just believe them. Their net code is shit and, as long as they keep raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in shark cash card sales, it's always going to be shit.
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Zephlar

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #68 on: September 01, 2020, 05:40:54 PM »
You're reading way too much into my post.

Kinda my MO. Ban yet plz?

Not sure why you're bringing up GTA, but each game is a different story, and the reason GTA Online is so goddamn awful largely stems from the fact that Rockstar's net code has been consistently crap since at least GTA4.

One of the main tenets of writing net code is to trust the client as little as possible, but Rockstar doesn't seem to be aware of that. If I were to join a Quake (as in, 1995 Quake) with mods enabled, the server would pretty much boot me right away. GTA Online has weaker mod protection than Quake does, and the server trusts the client far more. From what I've read, if your client tells the server that you have X weapon, it'll just believe you.

In addition to this, the game seems to completely fail to validate any of the game's files on the PC version. There is absolutely no reason why the mod menu should even work in GTA Online, but it does. If Rockstar gave even the slightest fuck about security instead of just blindly trusting the platform to do it, it would autokick anyone running a modified client, and they sure as hell wouldn't let anyone modify the amount of cash they have in their account.

Because I felt like this was a perfect example of what I believe, that  PC is absolutely 1000x worse than consoles in terms of cheating. I got what you were saying about why console is just as vulnerable, but the fact of the matter is consoles just don't have cheaters even remotely comparable to PC gaming. All my experiences with cheating on PC almost never translates to consoles. Glitches are one thing but flat out cheating is barely a comparison. PC is just awful.

The fact other players in GTA Online PC can literally boot me out of a lobby if they want is insane to me. You kind of already expressed what I assumed that Rockstar seems to give little to no shits about their security. It's the wild west out there on PC for GTA and I did not, and still don't have the slightest bit of guilt for having erroneous funds added to my account. It felt like a well deserved fuck you to Rockstar. Then I went and paid for a console copy anyway because I wanted that legitimate experience, which I have now. I can actually grind with my friends and have a good time. Nobody is invincible and safe from karma on console. It's just a far superior experience on PS4. I could say the same for Battlefield 1, which I was super upset about quitting on PC. I really loved that game. I have so many videos of spectating cheaters on that game and the funny thing is DICE/EA won't even accept video proof I discovered. Origin overlay reporting is the only recourse.

Anyway, I do appreciate your well articulated explanation. It's just incredibly frustrating as someone who plays FPS genre games more than anything. In all my years on console when I finally moved to PC in 2012 it was a whole new realm of cheating I hadn't experienced, and it kills me to pay money for these games only to have some jackass 13 year old spend $15 on moms credit card to ruin my experience and make me feel like I've wasted my $60 that I work hard for. Know what I mean?

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #69 on: September 02, 2020, 09:22:07 AM »
Kinda my MO. Ban yet plz?

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Because I felt like this was a perfect example of what I believe, that  PC is absolutely 1000x worse than consoles in terms of cheating.

Yeah, but that's like saying that all computers are insecure because Windows 95 was a sign of its time. It's a cherry picked example of how bad things can be if the developer doesn't give a shit. As I implied, Rockstar wrote their netcode with console security in mind. Take away that OS-level security (PC, as well as the entirety of the 6th and 7th console generations) and the game turns into an even more broken mess. I suspect that a lot of the people writing this code are either being told to do impossible things (more likely) or know less about writing net code than I do (far, far less likely).

When I say "impossible" things, well…some of the modern "convenience" features developers have been implementing can make it possible for someone to cheat without it looking like they're cheating. Recall that because games have started using client-side hit detection (WHY IS THAT A THING?!?!) simply simulating a high ping is enough to make the system completely freak out, let alone the relative ease of crafting an aimbot that says "oh yeah, I hit that target. Honest." All you need to do to trigger a high ping is seed a torrent or start a Steam game update. That should give you enough latency to trick the hit detection system but it'll be sporadic enough that you probably won't get kicked for having too high of a ping.

And yeah, players with consistently high pings was their "solution" to that issue. Band-aid fixes for the win, right?

This is kind of a tangent upon a tangent, but would you believe that aimbots really weren't that good back in the day? Sure, it would aim for center-of-mass, but their operation made botting verrrry obvious to server operators (it would keep your movement vectors the same and change your aiming vector, essentially giving you analog twin stick movement with keyboard/mouse). More importantly, Quake and UT's weapons simply didn't work with rockets. Nobody in their right mind would aim a rocket at someone's center of mass, and because of the game's frantic pace even aimbotting low pingers wouldn't be able to get perfect railgun shots against a juking player.

Bring back arena FPS! Bring back dedicated servers with operators that give a shit! Server communities! Clans! QuakeSpy (okay, maybe not that)! Fucking real mods that anyone can write that actually change the gameplay! ROCKET JUMPS!! Screw this DLC-riddled matchmaking garbage.

Goddamnit, I'm an FPS boomer, aren't I?
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vladgd

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #70 on: September 02, 2020, 08:39:38 PM »
Bring back arena FPS!

While I do 100% back this up, I think it's more the current video-game audience more than game developers. I swear every so often (usually ID tbh) an arena fps is released, and is pretty much dead on arrival.

Sometimes its the developer just failing "cough" unreal tournament 3 "cough". Other examples of stuff that is just good, like quake live, just never got popular enough for current mainstream appeal. I know they tried again with quake heroes? champions? or whatever, but that never gained traction. Another example is lawbreakers, wasn't that kind of a spin on an arena fps? Even with the Cliffster behind it, I didn't hear anything about that game other than it was A really good, and B it's a damn shame because there's no people to play with.

Not common, but there are games that get put out there...and nobody plays them. I think the inherent nature of "you're on your own son, no team mates to carry you a W" is so unattractive to most people who play games now a days, it's a good way to kill your game outright. Imo it's a primary reason you don't see many people playing rts or fighting games anymore, no team no buy. AND I DO KNOW YOU CAN PLAY TEAM DEATHMATCH IN ARENA GAMES...just no, ffa deathmatch is where it's at. You want to play on a team? play CTF or something (nothing wrong with that, ctf can be fun).

ut2k4 remaster plz...

Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #71 on: September 03, 2020, 10:24:50 AM »
Much of the end of my post yesterday was fueled by anxiety-related insomnia, so I was only semi-serious and should have probably slapped a disclaimer tag on it. I managed to get significantly more sleep last night (a whopping 90 minutes, give or take a quarter-hour) so <<insert fatigue disclaimer here>>.

Most of those were just spins on the formula. Quake Champions and Lawbreakers (and some other stuff like Overwatch) are hero shooters, so they don't feature some of the things that I like, such as map control and the true need for, ahem, "advancing in the opposite direction" when you're outgunned. Those games just feel like two teams slamming head first into one another until one side edges out the other, rather than the delicate game of chess, or more accurately cat-and-mouse, that FFA deathmatch games bring to the table.

In the case of both Quake Champions and Lawbreakers, there were a bunch of other issues going on with them that caused them to be received like sour milk. In addition to questionable balance choices, Quake Champions had worse netcode than Quake III (which came out in 1999). Lawbreakers had a troubled development cycle, which forced it into a situation where it was forced to directly compete with Overwatch. NerdSlayer has a half hour breakdown on the numerous things that went wrong with that project.

UT4 was the closest to what I'd consider a classic FPS, and it did have some solid momentum behind it, but Epic decided that they wanted to rake in Fortnite bucks (and later throw an absolute temper tantrum because they weren't given special treatment in the mobile space) instead of doing anything with that. Naturally, it's hard to gauge exactly how much momentum it had simply because it never made it beyond the alpha stage, but it was enough that it's a common point of criticism against Epic.

So yeah, I wouldn't really say that there are all that many games out there that really fit that mold. Most people who crave that sort of thing still play Quake III, but even if it were more inviting to newbies, a game that can be run on a Pentium II with a Voodoo² is kind of a hard sell in 2020. Beyond that, there are a handful of obscure/open-source offerings (like Nexuiz), but since those don't have any real backing or marketing pushes they tend to foster their own hardcore communities.

Honestly, I'd say that even QuakeWorld/Quake II fit into that "semi-niche" category when they were at peak relevance. In-game server browsers weren't a thing until Q3A/UT99, so joining an Internet Quake deathmatch game would involve someone having to 1) know to get QuakeSpy/GameSpy, 2) know that most of the community was using the QuakeWorld client instead of the vanilla DOS/Win/Mac/GLQuake client, and 3) be able to set up all of those components to talk to one another. Quake II only removed step 2, since the benefits of QuakeWorld were rolled into the main game by that point. There's a good reason that the classic deathmatch style didn't really explode the way it did until Q3A/UT99/HL.
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #72 on: September 12, 2020, 03:45:56 PM »
I played through Outer Wilds (not to be confused with The Outer Worlds) recently. Damn good game.
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #73 on: September 29, 2020, 07:14:11 PM »
Hyrule Warriors grinding.

With Age of Calamity having been announced, I've decided to throw myself back into this. I ended up clearing the Master Quest Adventure Map with a friend, and I'm currently working on clearing the Master Quest Wind Waker map (currently 47% complete).

The Master Quest maps are so goddamn tedious (they're literally the standard and Wind Waker adventure maps with a couple modifiers added in, but there's a lot of extra unlockables inside so you kinda have to do them). I'm going to be so happy when I can put them behind me and get to the more interesting maps. I will say that the Wind Waker maps are a huge improvement over the original. There's a higher percentage of fun and more unique challenges (KO challenges, rupee challenges, etc) and there are far fewer total tiles to deal with.
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Spectere

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Re: wut specturr'z playing
« Reply #74 on: December 03, 2020, 03:46:14 PM »
Wow, haven't updated this thread in a while.

Age of Calamity is a thing now, obviously. It improves the gameplay in Hyrule Warriors tremendously, making it feel more like a Zelda game with Warriors elements than a Warriors game with a Zelda skin. The controls are infinitely better, with items and abilities being chorded actions (L + A/B/X/Y for rods and heals, R + A/B/X/Y for Sheikah Slate abilities) rather than using a clunky left/right inventory scrolling system. While that aspect of HW:DE was a notable downgrade from the Wii U version, the HW:AoC system is easily an upgrade compared to both.

It also brings in the flurry rush option from BotW, except it's way harder to cheese it. Timing is very precise, making it feel extra satisfying when you manage to nail it.

I haven't beaten the story mode yet and I refuse to read anything until I have, so I'm not sure how much longevity the game has. Even if it's all variants of the same basic gameplay, HW:DE has a ridiculous amount of checkboxes to tick. I have *checks Switch profile* 195 hours on HW:DE (god only knows how much I've poured into the Wii U version) and I feel like I could easily squeeze another 200 hours out of it.

One major issue that HW:AoC suffers from, however, is the framerate, especially when playing docked. It's kinda hard to hit flurry rushes when the game seemingly skips over its entire timing window on occasion. Honestly, I'd probably be further along in the campaign if it weren't for that. It actually becomes tiring to play it in long stretches when compared to HW:DE (which can maintain 30fps). HW:AoC is far more consistent in handheld mode (only noticeably dipping during weak point smashes and special attacks) due to how much the graphical detail is cranked down. Honestly, if there were a way to force handheld graphics in docked mode without jailbreaking I'd do that in a heartbeat.
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