When are we going to address the hacking?

[Jack Bower]

Hacking in this game is so prevalent and so easily available.

 

People try to do servers and turn loot respawn off, and people can just load over characters with full invs of contraband, load it all into a duffle bag and drop it into the forest. This is directly related to how the backup system on servers work.

 

Another problem is the fact servers do not have a way to disable people from loading backups. Some people in the PZ community would call this a /feature./ However I believe it is a pretty glaring flaw that hurts the online community.

 

People don't want to play multiplayer if it involves getting randomly killed and deleted by a hacker with 10 in all stats and after you shoot him a few times he disappears into the forest and loads his backup before returning to try again.

 

Server creators deserve to have a right to keep these people off their servers.

 

A VAC ban is one thing, but in reality - what we need is a more secure system that some thirteen year old kid with notepad can't change with simple instructions.

 

For the multiplayer experience to be complete, it requires a way to stop someone from taking a box of ammo. Saving their file. Unboxing the ammo, reboxing it. Placing it into a cupboard, loading previous save. Repeating the process you can essentially dupe infinite bullets, afterwards you would take said bullets and you would go level your aiming to 10. (Using Hydrocraft that means just going afk at a firing target for 3 hours.) Afterwards, you save your file. You now have 10 shooting and plenty of ammo. Commence your griefing rampage, if anyone kills you. Just load your save.

The previous example is -incredibly- common in PZ. These people are all over multiplayer and they prey on legitimate community members who are just trying to enjoy the game. If we want to make the multiplayer experience proper, we need to fix the hackers or else when the multiplayer animation patch drops these people are going to be racking up bodies left and right of people who don't use backups and if those people decided to quit and not come back to the game I wouldn't necessarily blame them.

[Beard]

As a server administrator I can answer your questions how they are currently handled on public servers.
Players who reload their saves are regularly permanently banned across several public servers, therefore there aren't many that do it anymore that aren't banned or that haven't gotten tired of cheating. I cannot speak for smaller servers but it is very easy to find a cheater if an admin has a look at the game logs.

As for the future of multiplayer, server-sided saves are being implemented, meaning you will no longer be able to reload saves as you can currently, so it will no longer be an issue. As for any other hacks, it will probably be handled as with any other game with admins having to look for the cheaters, not every MP game has an amazing anticheat system built in. Though I do not know whether that will be something worth looking into or if the nature of the game would make it impossibly difficult to implement one.