Slightly disappointed with the answer, I kind of expected something more...

yodased wrote: »

You guys realize they are not going to tell you that there are doing anything about cheating even if they had the silver bullet, right?

It's counter productive to disclose your defense plan to your attackers.

That being said, if you understand how this base level 'cheat' system works, you will realize there is nothing that they can do to identify every user of this software.

Intelligent people will still be able to get significant boosts over normal non cheating players and will never be caught until the server does more checks and relies less on the client trust connections.

That doesn't appear to be any time soon as that would require quite a lot of re-vamping major systems across multiple platforms.

The best we can hope for is they are now monitoring reports a lot closer are are less forgiving with the ban hammer, which we all know will not be true.

There will be people cheating in this game for the forseeable future.

This is very disappointing

Nifty2g wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

You guys realize they are not going to tell you that there are doing anything about cheating even if they had the silver bullet, right?

It's counter productive to disclose your defense plan to your attackers.

That being said, if you understand how this base level 'cheat' system works, you will realize there is nothing that they can do to identify every user of this software.

Intelligent people will still be able to get significant boosts over normal non cheating players and will never be caught until the server does more checks and relies less on the client trust connections.

That doesn't appear to be any time soon as that would require quite a lot of re-vamping major systems across multiple platforms.

The best we can hope for is they are now monitoring reports a lot closer are are less forgiving with the ban hammer, which we all know will not be true.

There will be people cheating in this game for the forseeable future.

This is very disappointing

And because I'm by default skeptical....you often think

Hmm, well is this software developed by someone who has specific details or was it as results of trial and error?
Is it a leak or was it just great engineering?

Or

Is the development team just so out of touch with the game they develop because they don't play it, that unless the community points out things that we see all the time, nothing happens?

For me, the OP question was a broader question of "Hey ZOS, now being made aware of recent and past "cheats" are you going to take a stance?" If yes, what rules and guidelines will we be made aware of?

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Nifty2g wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

You guys realize they are not going to tell you that there are doing anything about cheating even if they had the silver bullet, right?

It's counter productive to disclose your defense plan to your attackers.

That being said, if you understand how this base level 'cheat' system works, you will realize there is nothing that they can do to identify every user of this software.

Intelligent people will still be able to get significant boosts over normal non cheating players and will never be caught until the server does more checks and relies less on the client trust connections.

That doesn't appear to be any time soon as that would require quite a lot of re-vamping major systems across multiple platforms.

The best we can hope for is they are now monitoring reports a lot closer are are less forgiving with the ban hammer, which we all know will not be true.

There will be people cheating in this game for the forseeable future.

This is very disappointing

And because I'm by default skeptical....you often think

Hmm, well is this software developed by someone who has specific details or was it as results of trial and error?
Is it a leak or was it just great engineering?

Or

Is the development team just so out of touch with the game they develop because they don't play it, that unless the community points out things that we see all the time, nothing happens?

For me, the OP question was a broader question of "Hey ZOS, now being made aware of recent and past "cheats" are you going to take a stance?" If yes, what rules and guidelines will we be made aware of?

No it's just disappointing how far the community will go to cheat even just a little bit if they have to rather than just playing the game for fun, I know this doesn't apply to a lot of people but those who were doing it are still capable of doing it, just with even less help they were getting
I was hoping the update to say we put a block on the program being used, even if there were others and put blocks on those too until there is a way to properly fix it from happening. 43 is a very low number if you consider the possbilities of someone using it to increase your stats or reduce your cost marginally compared to others. Cheating is still cheating, but what can you do at this point.

It's just highly disappointing for the amount of time I've personally put into ESO and how much effort I put in for competitive play for something like hacking to this extent exists. It's a real shame really.

yodased wrote: »

I want to make sure that I am as clear as I possibly can here:

Cheat engine is just a GUI on top of some basic 'hacking' ideas. It's not like this guy made a program that hacks online games and is selling it, its free and its a tool to be used for developers really. It literally is meant and coded to be FOUND by the server lol.

Read this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_address

to learn some about how programs store values for your machine and then read this:

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/using-createremotethread-for-dll-injection-on-windows/

to learn some about what they do when they get the memory locations.

So once you understand that this program literally intercepts the data being sent from the program to your RAM and then from your RAM to the server, you can see how this is a hard thing to catch.

Sure, you can boost your stats by 400% and get unlimited ultimate, but that will ping the server because you are outside the specs of normalcy.

The issues arise when people don't do that, they test to see what parameters are able to be 'tweaked' without issue, so grab a cheap throwaway account and test test test until you get banned, then turn it down below that ban point on your main and you will be +% higher than anyone else, never being caught.

How to fix:

Server side checks with less trusting of the client. The server has to know the expected answer of the client and the client must show its maths to the server.

This will significantly slow everything down.

@yodased
I hope everyone in the discussion understands what you posted...if not, its great info to read up on.

For me...not saying this applies to others, in what can be viewed as harsher comments from me in this thread and others, ZOS' has the information to address this. While we don't need those details, the concern is really just as basic as this.

"Because its evident that ZOS doesn't play their own game enough to be aware of this, will a new stance be made to change the opportunities of things like this?"

From what we see in their response, the actual answer is in two parts.
1. We are checking more on checks
2. No we haven't changed our stance

So someone like me interprets those responses (paraphrased in my context) as:
-While we are appreciative that our forum community sought to bring this to our attention, we aren't changing our stance therefore you will continue too see "cheaters" but we would like you all to continue reporting such behavior.

Its like the situation where someone reports a crime and the authorities response is....thanks for reporting it, we will make some arrests but largely all we are going to do is put some people in jail and do little to prevent future occurrences.

thats not a good state to be in.

yodased wrote: »

I want to make sure that I am as clear as I possibly can here:

Cheat engine is just a GUI on top of some basic 'hacking' ideas. It's not like this guy made a program that hacks online games and is selling it, its free and its a tool to be used for developers really. It literally is meant and coded to be FOUND by the server lol.

Read this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_address

to learn some about how programs store values for your machine and then read this:

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/using-createremotethread-for-dll-injection-on-windows/

to learn some about what they do when they get the memory locations.

So once you understand that this program literally intercepts the data being sent from the program to your RAM and then from your RAM to the server, you can see how this is a hard thing to catch.

Sure, you can boost your stats by 400% and get unlimited ultimate, but that will ping the server because you are outside the specs of normalcy.

The issues arise when people don't do that, they test to see what parameters are able to be 'tweaked' without issue, so grab a cheap throwaway account and test test test until you get banned, then turn it down below that ban point on your main and you will be +% higher than anyone else, never being caught.

How to fix:

Server side checks with less trusting of the client. The server has to know the expected answer of the client and the client must show its maths to the server.

This will significantly slow everything down.

thanks for this post
its pretty clear and understandable
cheers

Nifty2g wrote: »

Roehamad_Ali wrote: »

Look , fellas , they're not gonna go into detail anymore . They already said they're being vague on purpose . I seriously doubt you're gonna get an answer on perma bans being lifted or what they can or can't do to catch cheaters anymore after that statement . It's a waste of energy to keep shoving the microphone in their face for more clarity .

We do not want information on the perma bans. We want information on this program being used and what is being done about it's uses. Seems like people can still use it from no comments about it

Everyone would like that info , especially the cheaters . Then they would have more info to go on to keep the cheats undetectable .

From what I know as my experience as both a developer and (albeit on a much smaller scale project) being privy to the backend of how PR works, their hands are pretty tied on giving us more specific information.

Consider:

"We have detected some users using a program known as X to alter the game client by doing Y. We have implemented Z on our end to mitigate this."

To someone who is determined to cheat, this seemingly innocuous statement has provided them with three very useful pieces of information, and more if they're good at extrapolating. Getting around this, then, to a determined cheater isn't incredibly difficult.

Meanwhile, if ZOS remains vague, while it is annoying for the regular user, it works best in their favor because it keeps the cheaters on their toes. They don't know if they're being watched, so to speak. Often in "subtle" cases, what will happen is they will observe that user more closely and put their behavior under a magnifying glass for erratic behavior. I have no idea if ZOS is actually doing this, but I sure hope they are!

Just my $.02. I do wish they could be more specific, but in this case, I understand why they aren't.

Cuyler wrote: »

This is exactly what everyone I talk to and myself would like to know. Can they still use Cheat Engine or not.

@Cuyler the only one answer on this question can be only one
at the moment

try yourself and figure out
(on PTS for example, to not be banned)



until any official statements about yes/no on your question

yodased wrote: »

@cuyler yes 100% cheat engine or any other memory scanner/modifier will still work with this game. It will continue to work with this game forever, until they change their server-side checks.

You don't need ZOS to tell you that, anyone who creates software can tell you that.

So I imagine the only thing they have to go on is reports from players and people that adjust the values so rediculous their anti cheat detector thingy (for lack of a technical term) picks up some inconsistencies .

Roehamad_Ali wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

@cuyler yes 100% cheat engine or any other memory scanner/modifier will still work with this game. It will continue to work with this game forever, until they change their server-side checks.

You don't need ZOS to tell you that, anyone who creates software can tell you that.

So I imagine the only thing they have to go on is reports from players and people that adjust the values so rediculous their anti cheat detector thingy (for lack of a technical term) picks up some inconsistencies .

Exactly, they rely on reports so they can then go into the server log and check for values. Once a human looks at it, its pretty clear to see a person plot points trends a % over the populous and they are cheating, but to try and grab that data without specific inputs and queries is nigh improbable.

I do have an actual solution to this problem though and its actually really simple:

Require the launcher to be used to start the game and be open during the game, the launcher will act as intrusion detection and monitor processes from the game with a trust matrix built in. If they see a process running in the windows system, do not allow the exe to run. If the exe is running and the process is started, close the exe

This would have to fix the memory leak on the launcher, but this would 100% close the loop of cheat engine specifically.

It wouldn't stop memory hacking, but if you are writing machine code to hack ESO, you deserve to hack ESO.

yodased wrote: »

@newblacksmurf

It's a broken record. I have been involved in this game since april 2014. There are other. smarter guys and gals that have been here longer also talking about it.

I have mentioned cheat engine, by name, at least 20 times in the last 2.5 years, both in direct conversation with green text as well as here in the forum.

The end result is the same:

the server does not check the client enough so there never can be a way to stop memory hacks.

I'm sure that ZOS hates the fact that there server architecture isn't set up in a way that they can monitor network activity on a granular level, but it is what it is.

Tell you what though, I played for a year on PS4 and I never once thought "How the *** did I just die"? I was on PC this week again since I missed my awesome guildies and I have had over 10 moments of 0.o thats ***, no way that is legit

take that for what its worth, but you don't have 3-4 dizzy swings, two executioners and a ferocious leap hitting you in < 3 seconds on console.

@yodased
I think we share a very similar perspective
I have not provided any details on how this stuff works and that is far outside of my talent but I've been around since early 2013in the PC closed BETA phases and guess what.....as you describe.

Heck it may have been your post along with others with very detailed feedback on server changes and security.
This was prompted by two main things back then
-BOTs
-Server lag in PvP as well as due to what addons could pull and after ZOS changes what they couldn't pull

But on console- Xbox One, when I made the copy over, I recall in the first week playing in PvP where ppl had what seemed to be unlimited ultimate casting abilities. I was like...how the heck are ppl cheating like this on console, that is why i left PC

Then I had ppl literally show me they could do it.....I paused and then asked....O K can I do this without using an exploit.
They said yes and showed me.

Seems as many kept saying, the server side checks were not happening so for some weird reason, the ultimate would pop on the screen and then cast...but no recognize that it was cast server side the the ultimate still existed.

And I mean in an extreme measure where we were doing a Craglorn dungeon with 3 ppl at VR6 or so and cast an ultimate 5 times letting it hit, expire and casted another before it registered server side.

So with 3 ppl, that 15 ultimate's over 1-2 minutes.
I was killed like that many times in PvP and its one reason why I don't even play PvP at all. There are other reasons too but since ZOS doesn't seem keen on quality, why should we face frustrations.

Now this has sense been "fixed" so to speak for Templars ultimate but it existed in console beta and then went to live and existed for months.