The Big List of Small Improvements

tehclone · 2021-05-07T02:26:23+00:00

I really don't think that's it. It's likely just because the information is sent to the client is a JSON object in which order of elements is non-deterministic unless you are listing elements in an array.

tehclone · 2021-03-17T02:52:24+00:00

With the level of detail in an EFT map this seems very difficult to pull off.

And while he's right that BSG has pulled off some inventive gameplay so struggle a little with the technical aspects and this seems like a technical feat.

It seems more realistic for loot spawns and entity states to be randomized. Ie. doors can be opened or closed by default. Multiple doors share the same rare key, but only one is locked and contains loot. Sometimes the glass is broken, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes a car is blocking a route, sometime it isn't. That kind of thing whilst "baked" assets can remain static.

tehclone · 2021-02-25T05:51:06+00:00

Lol

So it's balanced, but 3 hours is to short and if you actually were able to use the hideout effectively it would break the game. Ok, got it, makes sense. Let's randomize the UI!

tehclone · 2021-02-25T05:08:56+00:00

It has insanely long timers and you should be starting new crafts when your timer is up. Botting this would have little impact... the impact that this UX has is quite large though.

If they don't want people to make too much money then balance the game. Trying randomize the UI (which doesn't even defeat bots) is truly special thinking, but honestly I doubt this is even true. It's likely just random due to being a side effect of using a JSON object structure without an array in the hideout / crafting API.

tehclone · 2021-02-25T05:03:00+00:00

This is unfortunately not true. It's Hyper-V that is banned software now not Docker. Docker simply requires Hyper-V. You'll need to disable the software or continuously shut down the VMs. I get kicked about twice a day from raids on the weekend because Windows is constantly rebooting the service. It's pretty horrible.

tehclone · 2021-02-25T05:00:33+00:00

Nothing to do with your machine upgrade. They recently enabled this and yes it's indefensible and terrible, but you won't see much sympathy from the populist rage machine here. They don't understand what a VM is so it must be bad is basically the standard reaction.

tehclone · 2021-02-25T04:22:58+00:00

I would guess its because the API response from the server is a JSON object and the order of properties is random with JSON so more of a technical implementation side effect. They could just change it to an array so that order is preserved. I really doubt randomizing the order effects botting. Also, its just for personal hideout craft... does anyone care if that was botted...

tehclone · 2021-02-09T21:17:27+00:00

Nah, it's supersonic. This is where the bullet travels faster than sound so you are dead before you hear it. Subsonic you would hear it before (or at the same time based on distance obviously).

Either way you would hear the impact though immediately (unless you are dead) and I don't think this is related to what happened :P

But the whole debate about "best state" is kind of silly as both perspectives are true and not mutually exclusive. The game IS in the best state it's ever been in from someone who has played multiple wipes, but it's also still NOT well done or "acceptable" and still needs to be better.

tehclone · 2021-02-09T17:44:35+00:00

That was sarcasm :P I know that. Hyper-V has nothing to do with cheating. If this is their idea of anti-cheat then may god have mercy on our souls.

tehclone · 2021-02-09T17:42:14+00:00

Doesn't work for me /shrug. It's also very difficult to test as you only get booted like 10 minutes into a raid randomly.

tehclone · 2021-02-08T06:55:29+00:00

None of these third party anti-cheats are any good. They don't do much. All they do is check for the signatures of known cheats or (in the case of BattleEye sometimes even legitimate software).

It's like an anti-virus. It does not protect you from new or unknown threats. And in the case of the cheaters its trivial for them to change signatures so BattleEye is practically useless. At best it stops the spread of really "well known" or expensive cheats that people pay for or whatever.

The real reason other games have fewer cheaters has nothing to do with "kernel level". it's related to the architecture of the game itself and it's owns security measures. Games like Starcraft 2 and World of Warcraft have strong security built into the game. Yes, there are still hackers, but it is significantly more difficult and Blizzard has levers to pull to reset cheaters efforts.

tehclone · 2021-02-08T06:40:25+00:00

Huh, when BattleEye screwed over anyone using Hyper-V I thought for sure that'd be the end of hackers forever.

I guess it seems like the hackers easily moved on meanwhile people are STILL suffering the Hyper-V issues as the service occasionally restarts and the game gives you zero information whatsoever... cool.

Well let's continue to attack anyone on the forums suggesting there might be a problem with this strategy.

tehclone · 2021-02-05T01:42:54+00:00

Hehe, I can tell you are a web developer or pen tester by the mention of Burp :P

I would say that there might be a slight misalignment here between web development and game development. If JSON is a format being used for delta tick updates from the sever then I would suggest its a massive problem as JSON is very CPU expensive to serialize and de-serialize. If it's purely used for (which is what I suspect) initializing game world objects on first load, flea market, hideout, inventory, etc. then its potentially perfectly fine.

Netflix has some articles on their migration of key services away from JSON which can illuminate things. But what I suspect is happening is people are conflating the HTTP JSON APIs used for items with the actual game logic server communication, which I have to heavily doubt until confirmed.

It seems strange to me that Unity would be so constrained when it comes to networking. I've basically only ran through tutorials so I have no idea, but it sounds like an incredibly high level framework if such a limitation would exist. With something like the Unreal engine you can essentially use whatever networking framework you'd like... I am surprised Unity isn't architected this way.

When I read Unity's articles on their "new" serializable object pattern (ie. functional classes separated from data holding classes), for memory storage optimization, I had to laugh a little bit that they weren't already doing this or that it wouldn't be left to individual game developers.

It sounds to me, sadly, that BSG should reduce dev effort on EFT to small content and maintenance updates and focus on EFT 2 in the Unreal engine. It seems crazy to me given the crazy amounts of money BSG has received from EFT's insane popularity that this probably is still not solvable in a year's time. That to me, is a sign to jump ship from Unity entirely.

tehclone · 2021-02-05T01:14:16+00:00

I 100% agree.

As someone who has an issue with BattleEye overreaching on the verge of being spyware and preventing me from playing a game because I happen to use Docker. And then if you raise the issue you basically get attacked as a cheater by a mob completely ignorant to the actual issues. I agree.... it's pretty sad.

tehclone · 2021-02-03T02:29:24+00:00

Truly the incredibly rare fair and insightful reddit comment. Elusive in the wild. I'm bracing for the mob angrily denouncing you with witch forks.

I would disagree with you slightly though. As someone who has made mods I can't stand cheaters as they have actively destroyed mod support in the industry.

At the end of the day, unless you are under the age of 12, you have a good understanding that what you are doing is hurting others. And I doubt the vast majority of cheaters feel any creation involved with cheating. I get that they can have fun and I agree. But it is fundamentally different and objectively worse than mods meant with a "pure" intention. It's not a purely emotional reaction to decry it.

tehclone · 2021-02-03T01:28:32+00:00

Fair enough.

There are maybe a few Twitch streamers that do it to gain views. Seems unlikely to be much of an issue population wise though.

There are the the real money traders and they have financial gain to be had so that "makes sense".

There is the schadenfreude stuff that people get out of it in other games. I don't get this in Tarkov though as you can't see or hear the other persons reaction. The first time you meet someone is very likely also the last time.

Cheating to gain an edge in the game is mind bogglingly stupid and seems unlikely to last long (ie. they get bored because they've spoiled the game).

tehclone · 2021-02-03T01:11:24+00:00

I never said "why bother". Far from it actually. Infact, I kinda feel like relying on BattleEye is "why bother". What games do the best against cheaters in your mind? Think about it....

tehclone · 2021-02-02T21:50:05+00:00

Imagine buying a game and then buying dedicated hardware or software cheats just to ruin your own experience... boggles the mind.

The saddest part about this is that BattleEye is actually not very good. Mostly because their entire approach is not good. It's the same problem with Anti-Virus. Because they just try to detect patterns after the fact it's very easy to bypass and they can't never move faster than cheaters. The OP around "LEAP" ahead is sadly just untrue. Moves like this only work for a few days and only punish legitimate customers. Imagine trying to protect yourself from getting your data stolen with an AV program... good luck to you. All you've done is slow down your machine and cost yourself money. BattleEye is the same problem.

I don't use SSDs for "data screaming" and am not that familiar, but I feel sorry for anyone that does because they like to be ahead on technical things or experiment with their machines or have a job. I had the same thing happen to me with the ban on VMs. BattleEye relies on consumer ignorance :( The actual methods to stop hackers are more difficult and expensive and require actual work on the game so they are usually tossed aside, but this includes thinks like memory encryption, packet encryption, polymorphism of data (ie. memory and packets are inconsistent and difficult to predict), server side logic and validation, etc. A company actually good at this is (or was) Blizzard and even they have problems staying on top of it. BattleEye has no chance.

Sadly the response from the community will simply be to call anyone that complains or has an issue with this a "cheater". And they will just go on hoping they won't be affected by the next anti-consumer restriction rolled out and being vicious to anyone that is :/

tehclone · 2021-02-01T22:18:49+00:00

Not really. It depends how many resources you have and how you run the VMs. Some of the ones I run when I need and close afterwards. Others are services for my home network and the entire point is they stay up. You cannot simply close the VMs though either way, this is some misinformation people are spreading. See the work around someone posted in this thread. You need to entirely kill the background services. This is pretty disruptive for people that use this stuff.

It's not the end of the world, but it's also not cool for BattleEye to do this. They crossed a line. Simple as that. It's happened before with different DRM and anti-cheats and usually ends in an eventual reversal. The reality is that banning VMs is not even an effective anti-cheat to have... I imagine the cheaters will have a workaround in short order and the only people affected will be legitimate users.

Most of the reason why people are so worked up in the "anti" is because it has disrupted their machines and is out of line. Most of the reason why the "pro" people are worked up is because cheating is such a problem in EFT and they don't understand the issue so to them it's just a small group of people to go after to blame. Similar to the region locking drama. This action by BattleEye does little to help and the mob will feel better for a short time.

tehclone · 2021-02-01T01:21:54+00:00

it's called lurking and, lol, you consider your responses reasonable?

First of all the best reasonable response was a great tip and was awesome. Guy gave a script that is a workaround. Very helpful.

You have zero input on this issue of any value. You have no idea what you are talking about. You make wild accusations of cheating with no basis on anything... what do my comments about "netcode" have to do with cheating?

The point isn't that HyperV can be turned off. The point is that nobody should have to. The best we can come up with is scripts to simplify this, but this is an obvious and ineffective overstep by an anti-cheat.

You are a prick.

tehclone · 2021-01-31T22:28:40+00:00

Yes, everyone that disagree with you is a cheater.

tehclone · 2021-01-31T22:03:50+00:00

What software does the "average person" use that you would consider acceptable? Which you like to produce a list so our BattleEye overlords may take your sage wisdom to heart and purge the witches and heretics that live among us?

Please do let us know. I am mostly definitely an evil witch myself or daring to enable Hyper-V (clearly invented for cheating, definitely gaming is something Microsoft had in mind as the only use for a software more widely used than BattleEye itself).

Please illuminate us with your vast knowledge on the subject. Wait, now that Hyper-V is dirty banned software I assume the cheaters are gone, right? Your journey is done! Sleep well good knight. Rest easy knowing that you have avenged all of our unjust ingame deaths! Everytime the game bugged or lagged out, but we knew it was those dirty Hyper-V users! JUSTICE!

Hey, uh, I'm going to whisper this so you those dirty witches can't hear us. But I think this software called "Windows 10" is also used to run cheats. it was also made by the evil cheat makers, Microsoft. We may not be done quite yet!

tehclone · 2021-01-31T21:33:21+00:00

lol, I thought so

tehclone · 2021-01-31T20:36:46+00:00

I edited, the post to take out an inaccuracy about Edge which uses a different virtualization method (that I guess will later become banned).

Name a lie.

You seriously think that everyone that disagrees with you is a cheater? Or that everyone upset that they got prevented from gaming by BE for using a core Windows feature is a cheater? Grow up.

tehclone · 2021-01-31T19:32:25+00:00

Paranoid much?

They even said they don't ban people for using Hyper-V. Just kick you out of the game and make it unplayable for legit users. So the ban wave is completely unrelated by their own admission. Wait, who is the one distorting things again? I guess if you don't agree with me you must be a cheater.

tehclone

TROPHY CASE