This was going to be a journal, but I got carried away and wrote too much.
I think the majority of people here know that the MAIN problem with ET is that of cheaters. It's a free game and with that you attract a certain amount of people that choose to exploit that game by using hacks or bots.
Looking at the games currently out now and in the pipeline - in my opinion is, and will be, near the top of the list of games I like to play. I enjoy to play ETQW and CoD4 too, however I currently don't think there is a true rival to the experience you get when you play ET, whether it be on a public or in a match.
We have had many suggestions over, say the last year or so, offering ideas of how the game could be improved to re-vitalise it. Whether it be through new maps, more competitions, prize money and also by stopping the number of hackers. We've tried new maps, we have more competitions and we have prize money as well (CDC LANs etc) and yet, the recent confirmation of departure of
Bulld0g from the ET anti-cheat team at CB highlights the fact that it doesn't seem to be working.
Now, if I'm honest, I'm not the most technically minded individual - sure I can edit my config to create pretty pink binds and sure I can make things appear in bold. But anything else and I'm pretty much stuck, so below I have some questions.
The next bit of text below depends entirely of the answers to the questions above. If you remember back to 2006 - Crossfire ran a fund raising appeal to send a team to Quakecon. The appeal was pretty successful with many users donating around 1 Euro each in order to help finance the project.
IF a PunkBuster update for Enemy Territory would stem the flow of cheaters in the game, particularly in ETPro and the competitive side of the game. IF it would be hard for NetCoders to crack and IF the majority of hacks currently being used would no longer work - would anyone be willing to do the same and donate 1 Euro each (or more) to fund another PB Update?
Please note, this is just an idea and doesn't necessarily mean this project would go ahead as I don't know how much this would even cost to fund a PB update. But it seems to me that the main barrier for ET to continue is money and here is an idea to keep ET going.
I think the majority of people here know that the MAIN problem with ET is that of cheaters. It's a free game and with that you attract a certain amount of people that choose to exploit that game by using hacks or bots.
Looking at the games currently out now and in the pipeline - in my opinion is, and will be, near the top of the list of games I like to play. I enjoy to play ETQW and CoD4 too, however I currently don't think there is a true rival to the experience you get when you play ET, whether it be on a public or in a match.
We have had many suggestions over, say the last year or so, offering ideas of how the game could be improved to re-vitalise it. Whether it be through new maps, more competitions, prize money and also by stopping the number of hackers. We've tried new maps, we have more competitions and we have prize money as well (CDC LANs etc) and yet, the recent confirmation of departure of
Bulld0g from the ET anti-cheat team at CB highlights the fact that it doesn't seem to be working.Now, if I'm honest, I'm not the most technically minded individual - sure I can edit my config to create pretty pink binds and sure I can make things appear in bold. But anything else and I'm pretty much stuck, so below I have some questions.
The next bit of text below depends entirely of the answers to the questions above. If you remember back to 2006 - Crossfire ran a fund raising appeal to send a team to Quakecon. The appeal was pretty successful with many users donating around 1 Euro each in order to help finance the project.
IF a PunkBuster update for Enemy Territory would stem the flow of cheaters in the game, particularly in ETPro and the competitive side of the game. IF it would be hard for NetCoders to crack and IF the majority of hacks currently being used would no longer work - would anyone be willing to do the same and donate 1 Euro each (or more) to fund another PB Update?
Please note, this is just an idea and doesn't necessarily mean this project would go ahead as I don't know how much this would even cost to fund a PB update. But it seems to me that the main barrier for ET to continue is money and here is an idea to keep ET going.
The way this could be realised I do not know yet. Though I don't trust in Punkbuster, I put my hopes in programs like the TheSGL uses.
I wouldn't pay a penny for ET. Not anymore at least.
this big thing will it be online, lan or both? (what do you have in mind). i would like to organise my idea ( my comment above) but have no experience in this.
anyway if you ever need some manpower, plz contact me, an unexperienced but motivated guy.
edit: I would pay for ET if my whole team would pay, but then it's not about the game who makes it fun, it's about the players.
ET might not have been finished, but I think I'm ripping it off a bit.
I am a self-professed pirate though, so it's not like I have any ground to stand on.
Say...20 eu. per team is <4 eu. per player, if we had 16 teams, that would be 320 euros, which could be split into 320 euro prize pot or something...
Just as a side note, if you could leave a reply here for those teams that would be interested in something like this, would be nice!
ET still represents more than 70% of the community on this site i think, looking at some polls
but the other games are growing, thats right
One - Wich in a possible/imposible - way , Disables all programs linked to ET, Splatterladder launcher, xfire.com , hlsw
e.g. you are running mousedrivers , graphicdrivers , w:et and some punkbuster processes at least to play w:et ... so now you have a lot of processes which you can hook / implent your hack in I guess... eventhough this could be complete bullshit because i have no idea how it works ;)
Imo a new mod with proper ac will work much better then a pb update mainly couse i think it can be developed better since you have someone who knows how those things work and what can be done about it. Now lets just hope it can get a similar gameplay as etpro has.
gameplay is the same, more or less... the netcode differs :<
in a good or bad way?
Of course, I dont know the financial aspects of PB support but I would have thought contributions to PB would be fairly high for a single, dwindling W:ET community.
Theres also the psychological impact for the W:ET community if fund raising for a new PB update fails.
I think a change of attitude towards previous and current cheaters entering competitions is all that is required.
lately I've got some problems with replying to correct comment ;(
Engrich skillZ^!
Tbh, i'm highly dissapointed by the whole ETpro team. First of all you have the arrogance of these gamedevs who think they invented the wheel, fire and the orignal rtcw gameplay. Guess what: they didnt. Just look at ETQW, they said the game had been betatested by their devs every day. So how the fuck didnt they notice the spawntimes were always exactly the same? Cause maybe they dont have a clue?
If you need more examples of the ETpro arrogance you should browse their forums. A lot of ETplayers tried to start a constructive discussion (dersaidin and ogr being the most notable). All their suggestions were either laughed at or the whole discussion was evaded, devs ignored the original question talking down on people.
I think ETpro did a lot of good things for ET, fixing ETmain to the beauty that ET is today. On the other side they also monopolized ET by keeping ETpro a closed project. Even if you code new features in ETmain (which should make implementing them in ETpro easier) they still wont add them:
1. they dont want to spend time on ETpro anymore, afaik only reya1p is still active in the etpro team, and I think he's currently bussy with ETQW. Besides he wasnt planning on adding anything, only fixing bugs (hi spread being fps depended and spawning with luger or nade)
2. they keep insisting their views / ideology of ETpro is the better one, players who play the game every day and prolly wast 10x more time playing the game can't possibly have a decent oppinion
ET has the potential to stay a big game, but this potential is underminded by ETpro. Games like Starcraft and Quake3 (yeah I always use those as an example) weren't realeased as perfect games. Their gameplay develloped and gamedevs, either professional companies like Blizzard or amateur gamedevs like arqon, kept on develloping the game as the gameplay evolved and became more complicated. The devellopment never ended.
Right now ET is at a dead end. The 'new' mods dont build on the old ET legacy, they try to make new games (removing screenshake, bright blue enemies = just go play quake if you want an aimonly game).
Somehow I'm also dissapointed in CDC trying to boost all these other games like CoD4 and ETQW. Give ET a chance. Allow more teams to play ET at lan instead of supporting
a) A shitgame aka ETQW, just play the game for +10 hours and you will see its just a crappy mix of gameplay elements but its far from the sheer beauty of ET / RTCW gameplay.
b) Cod4 which is the second best sponsored FPS atm, next to CS
There was a poll on xfire why ppl visited this site. An overwhelming majority voted ET. Its nice xfire covers CoD, just remember we are part of this community because of ET.
Its time we stopped thinking about ET like we think about other games like CoD, CS, WC, SC, etc. ET is a free game and its community is built upon xfire.be and people loving the game. ETpro, ID, splashdamage: they dont give a shit. Do I think we can do anything about PB, etpro etc: no. If theres a future for ET, it will be us, the community who will have to take destiny into our own hands.
Like hentai said: organize our own cups. Kick suspicious people. Ff players want to show off with quote's in their profile about how many ppl call them a cheater, fine. If people love to play with busted players, fine. If you think its 'funny' to track people while you are afk, fine. But plz , can we just kick those retards?
ps: a key system and a login inside the game would be nice. We should register at a website with a strong database of bans, ips, etc.
idTech4 is basicly a very much updated idTech3 engine, if developers want to include movement like in Quake 3 they can do so, however they do not do so because there is only a minority of hardcore players who prefer movement in games like Quake 3 and W:ET over movement in games such as ET:QW (already too fast for most of the players), CS and Battlefield.
You dont learn do you?
which requires teamplay,aim,experience and brain at once like ET... and i also guess there is no game with such a perfect gameplay like ET.
In my opinion the best thing is to recode the whole game..
make ET 2.. better quali.. maybe fixing some bug.. but the rest should be like ET.. movement,aim....
and then with a key !
i guess no one would make that :P so we need an other solution..
What about if someone just recodes ET so a key is needed ?
The key can be bought somewhere.. and the money u earn there should be used for smth like a new anti cheat tool? price money ,....
And there should also be a option for gameservers so u can only play there with a valid key.
The thingy with acc & shit is too izi to fake..
everything nice... BUT
who codes it?
who do u wanna lead the whole thing and manage YOUR money..
i guess everyone would say
paying pb suxx...
pb makes a new update.. and a hack is dedecting "oh wait the md5 hash of a pb file changed".. and won´t run... and then netcoders make a new hack.. and when the next pb update is otu the hax won´t work.. how do u bust someome then?
btw: how about the license of ET?
r we allowd to recode it and pack the source so no one can view how we made it , crack it make exploits,... ?
btw2: who pays pb?
i mean if u make a game like cod4.. which company pays pb?
HOWEVER, I don't know how an external key system would fit into the picture. What if you bought a key for an external program, so that if you don't have the key, you get kicked from properly configured servers!
maybe u can bring the owner of this license to make such a thing..
:D
et and the community is just too fucked up to be saved
enjoy the last hours of et and avoid playing cheaters and retards
When a community is so fucked as the ET community and you got so many people ruining the fun I dont see any way out of it :/
Imo.
That way as soon as it is detected the hacker/s that gets initially busted doesn't run off to post on some forum "ZOMG I GOT BUSTED JUST THEN!!!1!1!!!" and then all the lame fucks know about it and wait it out for a new undetected cheat to get created.
But you need to pay to be able to register and on the new league website you have to agree to some rule that you may be banned for cheating, or no reason at all if the admin want to.
That way, if we have admins we can trust we can play without cheaters.
What do you guys think?
If we had admins that we could trust in a league that you payed to enter they could ban those "suspicius" people.
Ofcourse there is a chance that a clean player gets banned even if he's innocent then, so my plan isnt perfect.
ET is still the best team game available, and it'd be great if we could save it. However, even tho no other game comes even close to ET, we didn't get any big tournaments and couldn't convince big MGCs to pick up a team up to this day, so it's highly unlikely that we ever will. Nowadays, even playing ET is not even as fun as it used to be because of the immense number of cheaters you come across.
Perhaps we could eliminate them by using strict rules, where banning would be easier than it is in CB now and it wouldn't require any additional evidence in obvious situation (check malczik's case or many others). Paying for playing might also reduce the amount of cheaters, but I don't think that many players would like to pay to play a free game, so this isn't really going to help.
Unless someone shows up and decides to put lots of money in ET, I don't think we can make it any bigger :c It's not gonna die any soon, but it won't get any more popular either. That's a real shame of course, because it's way way better than CoD4, CS and all other games that get some real support.
no torunament,no prize money,.. no big clans
*edit* is there any game besides et that has been that popular without big tournaments n stuff? ofc a game dies after some time if there are no updates and promotion, especially if its a freeware game that never got accepted as a topgame
or 1 Euro! =)
What you need to do is have a registration that is important, you need to have the stigma attached that if you get banned you lose this registration and can never come back. Cheaters in RTCW never came back because a new CDKey cost them the price of a new game.
To replicate this in ET you'd need to buy entry to the competition and know that defeat will cost you that amount of money. Meaning it has to be a significant amount of money, in a one time purchase for example. 30 Euro gets you 3 seasons or something like that. Most cheaters would hopefully not risk just blindly losing 30 euros. Even with that inplace you still need an electronic way of verifying that its you that is playing a system that you login your IP just before the match and then it shows up on the server.
Its all possible, we've got a swanky new bracket system coming online for CDC that cud be used for this aswell and as ever I'll throw whatever is needed at it. However its a huge administration workload, finding an experienced and reliable team who are hungry enough to do this wont be easy.
But the then again those who cant pay for the game online?
It's a teamgame. So it isn't a problem.
to fake such an account isn´t rly hard..
for 10€ @paypal u can get a complete new id..
creditcard number, phone,name,zip,... what ever u need.
the only think which maybe would help is , that some guys maybe think "hey if i get busted i loose money"... but tbh, if someone pays 100€ for a bot ... 30 euro for 3 months are not much for him?
and what do u wanna bust without pb update? After some time nC will release a perfect bot.. where u will never see smth @pbss .. so u can´t rly bust someone ? SO why should someone stop cheating?
AND
What about pracc´s ?
A solution for praccs would be maye a bot who only let guys in the channel with an auth which is registered at this player-registration. but that still won´t change that
u won´t bust smth without pb update
a cheater won´t be afraid to loose 30 euros if he pays a bot
a cheater isn´t banned for lifetime cause he can fake everyrhing
without pb.. or smth changed@code the cheats will be better & better cause no one stop them codeing / make update / what ever.
Without an anti-cheat tool most of these solutions are senseless.
Smth like joining steam would be nice :o
@edit:
besides that... it won´t change that ET is gonan die.. look @kot´s comment
we had that in the past with an amateur series and teams dropped like hell...
It would be a solution in my opinion. Its a difference to make a new guid and some new email+nick to fake some kind of new account than really faking some real infos like name , adress etc which you would have at the ESL. Its just that I see all the people talking about registration and paying for playing and thats exactly what the ESL leagues look like.
Maybe there is another chance to get another try at it?
keep ET alive! :]
coz this:
is very true!
did i miss smth or didnt et die some time ago already?
But first mousespread should be removed before ET can be saved IMO.
Unfortunately I don't think we'll ever see ET without mousespread. It is such a dumb concept, but noone seems to listen :<
I don't see why people should invest time, effort and money into a scheme which will most likely lengthen the games life expectancy but will eventually bring the game to its end (from a competitive point of view).
With the amount of publicity/attention that new game releases are receiving, it would simply be a waste.
PB is a pile of shit, the only people who get caught are the people dumb enough to not update their hacks regularly and if PB does get updated, all of the people that get busted simply get a new GUID and go under a new name and within a week all of the hack makers have made their hacks undetectable again.
Talk about a vicious cycle.
:<
And remember what Sun Tzu said:
"It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you."
"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles"
2. This anti cheating software also may need a PAID key, so if you would like to play using it, you must buy the key. All the profits will go to the organisation creating this software. And, if somebody will cheat - he will have to buy another one. Simple and efficient, isn't it? The price don't have to be high, the donations can be collected as well.
even if something like that would happen how you know that they arent just gonna earn twice the money by keep selling bots ;D ?
you won't get that much money, even if you do and if pb gives another update, it's won't last long til the cheats are updated again etc.
there are several other possiblities though
- JUST STOP PLAYING WITH CHEATERS. i mean hey, what does a pb-update help? Some new guys might be busted (they can get a new guid/nick np), and still their mates will play with them. just have a look at junky, who got busted like a thousand times. or kenta, there are still retards who play with them (also the amount of retards got smaller tbh). that's one of the biggest problems in this community tbh.
- the SGL-AC thingy has never been given a real chance, though it sounded quite promising. It should be given a try, but i guess most ppl are too lazy to register and then there's the linux-"excuse".
what i mean is the ESL . Ofc "esl sucks" , "esl dont cares about et" etc. but actually we should consider the fact that most of you guys here want to have some registraion system for players so they can't easily recreate an guid,account,nickname ... now think about what the ESL has with their trusted levels...
second big argument is the premium account system. Many people here mention that you should pay for being able to play.. here you go its what you want + ESL is what some MGC also look at because it gives you some prestige (imo) in comparison to win 20 1day cups which homepages disappear after 2weeks .. if you have an ESL Major Series and maybe again an Amateur Series if we apply for it and show them that we'r worth another try.
Consider the fact that not everyhing has to be created .. maybe just used...
but you can be sure IF someone gets busted playing on high skill level e.g. there in some amateur series where you need to have premium + trusted lvl 1,2,3 what ever , that people who get busted dont come back that soon because you cant fake an identity as easy as an etpro guid ;)
However, I think maybe bringing a new anti-cheat program into ET would be better, rather than punkbuster... I'm pretty sure it was TosspoT who mentioned bringing something in like the MOH:AA anti-cheat system, that sounded good, then theres the "banners" of sponsors while connecting, but I can't see any of this happening...
I may get flamed for all that, or just have retarded replies, seeing as I hacked once, but I don't care... I learnt my lesson and now I've been clean since then... Also I'm not expecting to be allowed to play in any cups or ladders if a new rule set to keep cheaters/ex-cheaters out comes along, just aslong as I can continue to play ET.
This also seems the proper system to use to support Punkbuster, as many registered accounts on that system will most likely get them more interested in keeping the game secure.
More information about this system can be found here: http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=registry.php
acc registration is no real way... u can izi create a new one
key.. would be nice... but u can also izi buy a new one
AND
without a new update of pb or some anti cheat tool u won´t bust anything anyway.. so no one needs to rebuy his acc/key
the only real solution is a new anti-cheat tool.. which needs to get updated as much as possible.. not like punkbuster.. every 3 month a update. and that also doesn´t mean u can bust someone then. as i said. if the hack is checking the pb files on the pc and dedected that smth is changed it maybe won´t start.. and then no one would hack. So... uff -.-
I would do anything to stop cheaters, tbh i keep telling myself to buy a guide that teachs how to write in source code then make a mod myself, get it up to scratch with etpro then finish it off.
find somepeople who will fund a website and set some account up that you need to pay for the league?
2 wtf are u talking about
3 wtf.
So, I think the only hope is in etace or some similar project
but wtf happened to Bio and telenet and all those cool servers? everything seems empty at night apart from the tard servers:(