PunkBuster coming to Bad Company 2

=7i=R3APeR, on sty 8, 2010 - 08:52 , said:

I'd bet a dollar of donations from every one of your clan mates that you do, regardless of last statement. You'll do what they ask you too, and if you're willing too buck up, so will I, over and atop any donations I make as staff already.

When the time comes, your clan will be like so many with MW2, and I play COD4, was looking forward to it, until it's demise. I actually spoke up, and so did my clan. We wanted to run servers, and could not, due to no server files, and very few bought the game. Some did, sure, but not the masses. No public server files for a new game is it's demise, with anti-cheat!

End of the day, speak with your dollar, not just your voice. If they want your voice, it comes in one direction only.

Let them run that crap on the consoles, and give us PC gamers what we want, with publicly available dedicated servers. Period. Or don't buy the game!

AND DON'T rent a server for it from ANY GSP?

The day you see 0 GSP's renting a server for this game, they might listen, but that's not gonna be the factual situation, is it? I can already guarantee that most of you running BF2 and 2142 servers here will crash them, and move on to the new game, just because it is new, and even with your plight, do so in blind-ness, and not care, really, in the end.

No stand. No rights. No caring. Period!

You will call me on that, but come release day, of the game, and just past it, come post on it, or do what's right, and prove me wrong, to get what needs to be done, done. And post a link to DICE regarding it, not that it will make a lick of difference anyways. Apparently they know best, and locked down server code/files is best for them, even though it won't help at all. Good luck Dice. This is one customer who would have dragged in more, checking out. Not gonna buy the game, not gonna run a server for it, not gonna sell it to my clan, and I'm gonna do the NOT SELL IT to other clans, as well, thanks to the lack of support on the server files!

My take, if DICE read it, or if someone wants to copy it, feel free, maybe someone from DICE would balls up and enter this forum, and try to understand, from an inner pov, for a change, rather than us constantly explaining it to them.....

If gaming keeps up like this, and all game dev's take the approach DICE did, you'll see anti-cheat die, and there will be no reason to game anymore, the simple things like pb alone can't hold them all back! I'd rather quit gaming than bother with just what the likes of DICE want.

DICE are a bunch of mental midgets, if they haven't looked into it that far. Get your head's out of your ass's!

RW

What Dice has done restricting PBBans to no Steaming and client side only. Is only going to put PBBans on the burner again
from the gaming community.On matters that this organization has no control.And the average honest gamers in the end
will just have to suffer.As for what i think of Dice for doing so,the best response is no response, in this case.
Silents is golden!

I expect the majority of BF players will embrace this game, simply because it is a new game in their favourite series. EA/Dice will most likely be content with this fact and will stick to their guns on not releasing the server files.

It's a real shame. I wouldn't want to admin a gameserver where everything is so restricted. I also don't want to purchase the game because I know there will be no streaming to PBBans. No streaming = more cheaters.

A lot of COD players and admins have been waiting for this game after the trainwreck that was MW2. Unfortunately, they aren't going to be impressed with this news. COD admins are not used to such restrictictions.

EA/Dice: Loosen your grip, give the community more control, let us deal with the cheaters!

I will post this here too which is a post I made on EA UK forums:

Quote

I will manage my words but this is completely useless.
Already ranked server are restricted much and are not customizable enough, no custom maps like counter-strike, the only thing I get when I rent a ranked server is a little rectangle to put my banner which doesnt work 75% of the times, all the about same 20 maps and the harassment of server bug (commander hacks, frequent crash by "BACK TO DESKTOP NOW!", name spoofing).

Do you think, Electronic Arts, by restricting the server files, that this will reduce the number of bugs found on your server daemon?
These files could be leaked on the internet (bittorrent network, p2p, etc...) with or without complicity, at this point the restriction is useless.
Punks could find bug like the one found on bf2, with or without leaked server files



How about administratives tools you've never made for bf2, will bf2bc get a (good) admin tool?


All I've seen with bf2 is not enough to get my trust, clearly, in my opinion, DICE's priority is not the branding quality.

will there be a MPI to check the guids of some fishy player?

Speedstar, on sty 10, 2010 - 10:38 , said:

The MPi is fed by data from streaming servers.
No streaming -> no data -> no MPi.

Speedstar, on sty 10, 2010 - 10:38 , said:

No, there will be no guids due to lack of streaming. You can use IP's but that's as far as it goes.

MaydaX, on sty 10, 2010 - 11:03 , said:

Wow Anyone can change their IP at will, thats lame.

TheRed, on sty 10, 2010 - 03:49 , said:

I better set you straight before this becomes nasty.

The no guids reference is to our Master Player Index only and not the game itself. I have to say that cause someone is bound to read that the wrong way

Although a disapointment and questionable judgment on their part, it "is what it is" at this point. With a few months remaining untill its 'hopeful' release date, I dont expect any changes in the near future.

Unless the Beta is an absolute abortion, we will be adding at least one BadCo2 server reguardless. I understood and supported the complaints w/ MW2, and we passed on it. That said, I wont cheat my clan the chance for a new game and interaction w/ new ppl based on lack of PBbans support alone. I think the graphics look great, and a distructable enviroment that adds an element to online gaming I've yet to experience. We all stream to PBbans, yet still have cheats that make it past the safegaurds. Nothing is perfect unfortunatly.

We will continue our monthly donation to PBbans while running 2142 servers, but being forced into a new direction for BC2 wont be the end of the world for anyone. If anything, how will it be different than we have now? Black pb_ss for obvious cheaters? (that no one cares to fix the root causes of). Cheats/Padders that change keys and/or GUIDs, just as fast as local bans are applied? People w/ mulitple Pbbans still finding their way onto our servers? PB alone very well may not be the answer for BC2. That said, from my experience ALL anticheat systems have their inherent deficiencies.

In the end, when the tools provided to catch cheats are ineffective and/or flawed, its the server admin that must decide between fair and foul. Such will be the case w/ BC2, just as it has been more often then not in 2142.

Hello,

There will be probably a log saved, but it's not save for pbbans to use it as anyone can fake it.
About the streaming, if pbbans need access to streaming, at least tell then your real needs, not just what you were used to.
Tell then to provide something for pbbans. Ask evenbalance too, they would help. The punkbuster at server would do some help without the need to check the server locally.

Just ask then for an method or API or whatever enough to pbbans stream the needed information.

Harder than what you used to, but enough for community.

I am sure some GSP who already stream to pbbans on other games would help with the testing.

Like i said, it's harder, but better than no streaming.

I am not here to criticize anyone, just to make a point they would be open to listen the community as they already said.

GSP's can't release the server files to us for private testing. That would be in breach of their contracts with DICE/EA and as such, they would lose their right to host servers for the game, and the revenue it would create for them. That simply WILL NOT HAPPEN.

The punkbuster side of things we already have full access too. It's the server files to run a local test server and actually be able to see what's going on up close and personal, for debugging purposes that are needed.

MaydaX asked. No response. That was over a month ago. Very unlikely that a response will be given beyond what's already on twitter.

I too, wish they would respond in a manner positive towards the anti-cheat communities out there. But it is not likely, given they're more concerned with protecting the ranking system than actually slowing the cheating community down from ruining the game before it has a chance to be a success.

RW

i find it hard to believe that the rank system will not be compromised, no matter what they do.

{insert ostrichHeadinSand.jpg}

HSMagnet, on sty 11, 2010 - 09:17 , said:

That was their own fault from the beginning. They never checked the stats coming into the master stats server. All they had to do was send the numbers of the events such as kills, deaths, ect and have the master stats server apply the point values. Add to that all the point values was located in a plain text file in every unranked server.

I remember BF2 at the beginning had the unlock URL the game used that never even checked if you actually had an unlock available. Lots of people unlocked all the weapons. It was patched ofc.

All they will doing is pissing of customers. IWNet was supposed to stop cheating and piracy yet it is becoming the most hacked cod game ever and is played by almost 7000 pirates.

Instead of restricting files they should have found ways to secure them from being tampered. They could have md5 summed the files and sent that to the stats server with the data, if it didn't match a known version the stats get disregarded. Lots of way it could have been done.

For anyone interested, this is how the magic happens and how server files are used

http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/3504/hubdev.png

MaydaX, on sty 11, 2010 - 02:17 , said:

Is it a custom made pbucon client? I used to do a master ban list for pbucon but the protocol wasn't documented

Not the news I was hoping to hear. I will be keeping an eye on this as the game rolls closer to release.
Our clan is already in the works of moving to BFBC2 from 2142. I already have everything in motion and players are ready to play a new BF game.

Another feature that will not be included in BC2: The dev console

Quote

http://twitter.com/pekhe/status/7757917357

Quote

http://twitter.com/repi/status/7759212810

BF MW2 anyone

MaydaX, on sty 14, 2010 - 03:39 , said:

What happened to "caring" about the PC community.
Guess that went out the door as a New Year resolution.