"ping hacks"

heavier

ok this is a pretty common exploit that probably started out in TERA for QoL issues related to latency.

I'm not saying that this a particularly easily solved issue or that devs are incompetent for allowing to have taken place.

this is basically how it works as it was developed for TERA

https://github.com/Mister-Kay/ping-compensation

the end experience is that I get flooded with DPS and I'm dead before I have time to meaningfully interact with a player.

I would assume a viscous form of this exploit would be to queue a bunch skill casts and release them all at once, ignoring the need to press a key.

Here is a graphic video that shows what can happen when things get way out of hand. TERA PvP was that of heaven.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8STT97rrMS0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7KZWWLUt-w

Donny_Vito

Honestly not sure whats even going on in those videos.

heavier

yeah I ran into the problem of finding proof of concept on youtube
youtube's algorithm is really convoluted and buries stuff that I know I've seen before and it drives me mad trying to find it again

here's what the proxy does, without any comparison to what unmodified performance is like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IKMaTIHkVQ
it was originally developed as a pve tool, so that lag wouldn't be an issue.

TERA is designed for North Korea network infrastructure which is fairly compact and ping isn't an issue

Gilvoth

i sure hope you are wrong.

many of us have thought this was happening for years, but we have no proof.
is it happening in eso?
even if this was happening in eso how could it be fixed?

heavier

dwemer_paleologist wrote: »

i sure hope you are wrong.

many of us have thought this was happening for years, but we have no proof.
is it happening in eso?
even if this was happening in eso how could it be fixed?

hard to say. I'm sure the first step is detection.

heavier

after experiencing the sensation a few times I thought to myself "ah, not this again"
man I'm an athlete and I've had to accept a lot of people cheat in competition

I've spoken with a domestic pro cyclist who's a friend of mind and it was rampant outside of international competition.

he never partook but he understood it as reality

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ej5k_SxUs

heavier

I think the netcode in this game is subpar and should be improved.
also the use of computational accelerators for the overseeing large scale PvP

I notice that the threading on the server leaves large battles with an aftertaste of panicked CPU worker. refactoring the code to scale with an accelerator would be dandy.

the rest of the world seems unaffected by massive battles so I'm certain it's threadbound. I can get in an epic scale fight in Cyrodiil where everything is choppy and lagged and then leave and do a dungeon while the battle rages on and have fine performance.

also I've noticed instances of really weird order of proc in small scale battles. my actions are completely ignored in order to allow a desynced action that I'm reacting to, to have full effect. yeah the projectile has stun attached to it but I dodge before it lands and my animation doesn't even start because somehow I've already been stunned.

my advice would just be to hire senior engineers from DICE or some other established MMO (kidding)

heavier

there's even random latency spikes

all this bizarre behavior compounds (latency spikes, overworked processor, odd netcode, builds that are so meta they factor in how many times they can spam an instant cast skill) and can create a massive challenge to decipher, especially for someone who would rather focus on gameplay and has no background understanding of what exactly the physical limitations are of the server and what people can do to exploit this, either by playstyle or by hacking.

I wouldn't even say that this an issue in ESO's style of PvE. TERA bosses incorporate a huge component of fast reaction mechanics that can kill you in one shot. it's very orderly and requires coordination to succeed against. ping "tools" came about so that clientside reaction could happen as smoothly as possible in North Americas rather dispersed playerbase. korean TERA servers probably has 99% of population around 50 ms ping. NA TERA players being ingenious added a non malicious method of emulating low ping so that dungeons designed around it could be undertaken.

I couldn't notice any debilitating lags in my history of ESO PvE. PvP is an entirely different story that TES developers would have never considered in their previous programming experiences. Hence the discrepancy in quality.

everyone knows that ESO has lag issues, and when a ping hacker seems to kill me instantly I might mistakenly assume the server just favored their playstyle in that instance.

Thogard

I once played a game where people used anti cheat technology to prevent cheating. So following the logic of this thread, all cheaters in ESO have already been banned.
You’re welcome.

Zelos

If you are worried about a "lag switcher" dont be:) lag switching only works if you are the host of a server like a peer to peer system like call of duty:) what you are dealing with is ZOS servers.

heavier

Zelos wrote: »

If you are worried about a "lag switcher" dont be:) lag switching only works if you are the host of a server like a peer to peer system like call of duty:) what you are dealing with is ZOS servers.

TERA isn't p2p tho and that's what OP is referencing

Metemsycosis

Despite using basic English I don't understand what anyone here is saying and i am sorry for that.

heavier

Metemsycosis wrote: »

Despite using basic English I don't understand what anyone here is saying and i am sorry for that.

it's alright the OP isn't particularly clear

people are hacking so they cast very quickly
it's not a unique problem to ESO

almost every videogame has exploiters

heavier

Zelos wrote: »

If you are worried about a "lag switcher" dont be:) lag switching only works if you are the host of a server like a peer to peer system like call of duty:) what you are dealing with is ZOS servers.

I actually think centralized servers would be more prone to this kind of exploit

ddos would be worse on p2p games? imo not entirely sure

Asmael

heavier wrote: »

Zelos wrote: »

If you are worried about a "lag switcher" dont be:) lag switching only works if you are the host of a server like a peer to peer system like call of duty:) what you are dealing with is ZOS servers.

TERA isn't p2p tho and that's what OP is referencing

Correct me if I am wrong, but from reading the comments on those vids, TERA devs made game file with client-sided trust checks available to players, which ended up in people making 3rd party software to remove the delay between abilities, correct? Pretty horrible way to attempt to fix desyncs if you ask me.

If so, by definition it's not a lag switch in TERA (nor ESO for that matters), since you are not actively taking control / hosting a game, but modifying variables that should have been server-sided, which is a large part of what happened with Cheat Engine in ESO.

If that reassures you, you can't break the cooldown between abilities in ESO since that part is on the server side. On the less reassuring side: you can hide to your opponent's client that your are casting abilities. While the end result looks extremely similar, they are extremely different in how they execute it. Latency spikes in ESO are more due to the downright horrible network infrastructure and extremely silly things such as this feature, literally DDOS'ing their own servers at every refresh.

heavier

Asmael wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

Zelos wrote: »

If you are worried about a "lag switcher" dont be:) lag switching only works if you are the host of a server like a peer to peer system like call of duty:) what you are dealing with is ZOS servers.

TERA isn't p2p tho and that's what OP is referencing

Correct me if I am wrong, but from reading the comments on those vids, TERA devs made game file with client-sided trust checks available to players, which ended up in people making 3rd party software to remove the delay between abilities, correct? Pretty horrible way to attempt to fix desyncs if you ask me.

If so, by definition it's not a lag switch in TERA (nor ESO for that matters), since you are not actively taking control / hosting a game, but modifying variables that should have been server-sided, which is a large part of what happened with Cheat Engine in ESO.

If that reassures you, you can't break the cooldown between abilities in ESO since that part is on the server side. On the less reassuring side: you can hide to your opponent's client that your are casting abilities. While the end result looks extremely similar, they are extremely different in how they execute it. Latency spikes in ESO are more due to the downright horrible network infrastructure and extremely silly things such as this feature, literally DDOS'ing their own servers at every refresh.

interesting, you're right
what it does is maybe send another skill before waiting confirmation from the server that the first skill was received
in TERA I think the rate you could cast was locked to a roundtrip response

the result being that the stuff does an accordion type deal and seems to proc all at once.

TBois

Either way we would need some proof for zos to prioritize addressing any assumed (at this point) cheating

heavier

TBois wrote: »

Either way we would need some proof for zos to prioritize addressing any assumed (at this point) cheating

it's hard to see if you're not looking for it or playing the game
I hopped on youtube the other day and watched a guy play CS:GO's new battle royale with hidden cheats

he live streams it and has hundreds of thousands of views and is really clearly a cheat

people still defend phoon even if he cheated because he did with style

TBois

heavier wrote: »

TBois wrote: »

Either way we would need some proof for zos to prioritize addressing any assumed (at this point) cheating

it's hard to see if you're not looking for it or playing the game
I hopped on youtube the other day and watched a guy play CS:GO's new battle royale with hidden cheats

he live streams it and has hundreds of thousands of views and is really clearly a cheat

people still defend phoon even if he cheated because he did with style

Yes what y'all are talking about would be hard to see in this game, but zos would still want some type of proof that it would be worth spending resources on.

heavier

hackers aren't particularly keen on keeping one game as their primary target
they should accept any proof from any (recent) game frankly as enough evidence to ditch the existing paradigm

I bet they contracted devs that weren't currently employed by any other company to throw together ESO netcode lul

ik it's a sin to hate on devs, but u gotta realize ur facing a moving thinking group of people

gotta adapt your strategy. I'm sure the fact these guys are novices could work out to our advantage decently because they're not entirely cemented in the current anticheat meta of practical ignorance.

TBois

heavier wrote: »

hackers aren't particularly keen on keeping one game as their primary target
they should accept any proof from any (recent) game frankly as enough evidence to ditch the existing paradigm

I bet they contracted devs that weren't currently employed by any other company to throw together ESO netcode lul

ik it's a sin to hate on devs, but u gotta realize ur facing a moving thinking group of people

gotta adapt your strategy. I'm sure the fact these guys are novices could work out to our advantage decently because they're not entirely cemented in the current anticheat meta of practical ignorance.

They should but that hasn't been how they have acted in the past. It took extremely blatant cheating for them to address cheat engine. So I encourage anyone who is concerned about this, like I am, to make sure you can record any cheater that might kill you using this.

heavier

TBois wrote: »

heavier wrote: »

hackers aren't particularly keen on keeping one game as their primary target
they should accept any proof from any (recent) game frankly as enough evidence to ditch the existing paradigm

I bet they contracted devs that weren't currently employed by any other company to throw together ESO netcode lul

ik it's a sin to hate on devs, but u gotta realize ur facing a moving thinking group of people

gotta adapt your strategy. I'm sure the fact these guys are novices could work out to our advantage decently because they're not entirely cemented in the current anticheat meta of practical ignorance.

They should but that hasn't been how they have acted in the past. It took extremely blatant cheating for them to address cheat engine. So I encourage anyone who is concerned about this, like I am, to make sure you can record any cheater that might kill you using this.

"snitches get stitches"
a less confrontational approach (cheaters have come to thrive on confrontation) would just be to install cheats and make a demo of their capabilities, then come up with a solution that makes it so people no longer feel the need to cheat.

combat is frustrating which is probably a cause for people to sink so low as to cheat.

Betty_Booms

I just realised. You are a horse

Zelos

After reverse engineering and decompiling and decrypting, this "ping compensation tool" I have found that it is not a lag switch. Lag switching to be effective is usually done by the host of a match on p2p. With that being said it can still work on games like ESO but very ineffectively(The reasons being as there is already enough lag:) )
So what happens when you fire a arrow in ESO? You press a button your character fires the arrow it comes out and if they didnt dodge or anything then it hits them and it hurts them, now a little bit more goes on in the background if its a muultiplier game.

When online you are connected to a game server and that server is connected to other clients, so when you do something it sends packets of information to the server and the server tells everyone else. So you shoot a arrow and tell the server to execute the scripts of a arrow sound, trajectory, animation, etc... so you tell the server all that so that the server can tell everyone too; they can hear it and see it as well. This is were lag switchings gets intreseting there are 2 types of online games.

Client Sided
Server Sided

Now as far as I can tell ESO is Server sided meaning that when you press MB1 to attack the SERVER simulates that attack sees where it goes and if it hits someone deals damage blah blah blah.

In a Client sided game The person that started the attack is in charge of simulating it, they follow where it goes they find if it hits a player and most importantly they decide WHAT and HOW much damage its going to do,(AKA Damage hacking, killing people across maps by light attacking etc...)

Now normally these methods work very well the internets pretty fast so when you do a action the receiving player/s see and hear it pretty quickly. These models dont work well in high latency situations, and even more so in a artificially high latency situation which causes the good old fashion, Lag. Lag happens because your messages of info arent getting to the server they arent reaching other players they are all getting hung up the server isnt processing fast enough. YOu can simulate this with a simple corded connection to your computer. Cut open the wire ether cable in half find a red wire and cut it in half. pull back the rubber casing until you find the actually copper inside and twist them together. Done you now have a lag switch(make sure the other wires on fine though) So when you untie the copper wire you cut while in a game, your connection will lag severely and if left unconnected for too long it will disconnect you.

What would it look like in game for lagging?
Well lets say 2 nightblades in medium armor are attacking standing still
Nightblade 1 does a incap on number 2, number 2s connection is lagging and slowing down, but he roll dodges on his screen. So the messages sent to the server are not getting processed saying I rolled because I artificially cut my connection to induce lag. So My messages arent getting through to the server that I rolled but nightblade 1 isnt lagging, so his message was processed and ready to be received by me but Im lagging so its waiting for a stable connection before sending them. When I reconnect now and stop the lag I still get hit by the incap across a tower maybe and my roll didnt work because it never even made it too the server in the first place and the other nightblades did and was just sitting and waiting to be sent out to me. The server operates on a first come first serve bias. So artificially creating lag in ESO isnt going to help you. It will destroy you. It may look like you lagged on their screen but this is a lock on based MMO so if you are in range and attack you WILL STILL GET HIT AFTER YOUR LAG IS DONE. The server is just waiting to send them too you while you arent even sending your requests for the roll dodge in the first place. The opponents incap gets to you first before your request to the server of a roll dodge does. So lag switching in a game like this or any MMORPG is pointless and works against you:)