Online play/Punkbuster - What do YOU think?

[Oceanb0rn]

For about a year I knew a guy on the other side of the country (California here, he's in VA) who was into Quake III, and I got myself a copy of the game (legally of course) so I could play him online. He walked me through all the downloads I would need to update the game. A point release updated the actual Quake III code and included Punkbuster, a third party component which prevents cheating during online play. He said to install it and I did. I also installed the mod he uses (Rocket Arena) and a couple more things. But when I went to play, I kept getting kicked by the Punkbuster system, even though I don't know the first thing about cheating in online games (though I cheat like hell when it's just me, single player, offline, versus the computer). He walked me through via AIM how to update the Punkbuster definitions, thinking I had an old version. I updated what looked like three text files from their site... Still no dice. I didn't get to play a single online game with this guy until I went back East to visit friends, we met and I played the game on his LAN, and of course everything went fine.

Whether you're a gamer who regularly plays online, or if you don't play online for whatever reason, or if you can't... What do you think of games using a super strict cheating countermeasure that blocks as many legitimate players as it does cheaters? Apparently when you run a Punkbuster enabled game, the Punkbuster servers look at what processes are running on your computer... Right? And it looks for small programs that interface with the game and give you an unfair edge. Well, what exactly is it looking for? I run a highly customized system; often the Windows Setup CD I install off of has been tweaked with nLite to remove unwanted components. So I'm not cheating in the game, but my system is not quite like any other, or is going to be different from the norm. Could Punkbuster be seeing that my Windows is totally tricked out and assume there's a cheat in there somewhere? I did strip most unnecessary components out of Windows to make a super streamlined installation on which I played and completed Far Cry (it was unplayable in default Windows XP) but I didn't try to play online. I may have removed Windows' networking abilities to save on performance, though. (I'm not running that build anymore. I probably haven't got it anymore, either.)

Well, as a legitimate user who isn't cheating and who has paid for a game, personally I would rather take my chances with someone cheating than this extra little program that takes up bandwidth and resources (yes, Punkbuster) that punts legitimate users as well as people who don't have the latest cheats (those who do are safe until the Punkbuster team adds their cheat to the Punkbuster definitions). It's just not worth it.

Add to the fact that my friend advises using Cable because ADSL is capped at 128K upstream, which hurts gaming...

 

[DJ-CHRIS]

Make sure you have punkbuster actually enabled

Punkbuster is garbage as well as all of the anti-cheat idea's that the game developers come up with. Their's always going to be cheaters, that will pick on the easiest server. Just make sure you do not have the easiest server and your fine

 

[DoomUK]

Seconded, make sure you have PB enabled...

 

[RangerXero]

Well , PB isnt checking your system , its looking into the game folder and verifying that the pak files are legit and not altered in anyway , its looking for known cheat codes , wich is why it always needs updateing , becouse somone is always writeing new cheat code for the games to by pass anti cheat software .

Your PB update may have failed , theres 2 ways you can update PB , manually and useing there web update program , do some reading on the PB website find out how to do it and give them both a try if one or the other doesnt work .

 

[Oceanb0rn]

We went through everything. Take my word for it, my friend knows his way around Quake 3. He writes his own CFG files, and when I played on his LAN, I was using an 800MHz P3... He had all the textures disabled... It looked like crap but was very playable. Then I played on his AthlonXP 3200+, and it still looked like crap. He has it set for max performance. Anyway, he was having me do commands via the in-game console. We activated PB there, in the CFG files, and via the website. I'm pretty sure we tried all common things to get it working, and it just wouldn't.

 

[Kupo]

http://www.punksbusted.com - Hop on their forums and ask. I know a few of the PB admins and I have to say that wether or not their software works as great as we all hope... they put a LOT of effort into it and have, by far, the best AC out right now (hence game manufacturers including it in updates).

 

[Oceanb0rn]

But is "Best" the right word for an AC like PB? I do see PB going into a lot of programs, and it's disappointing. It's almost like DRM, where you take away some of the control and ownership from the computer owner and give it to a faceless corporation or other entity.

The way I see computer gaming, there are three kinds of gamers out there. The leet, the n00bs, and the cheaters. From the leet point of view, cheaters are a problem. From the n00b seat (where I sit) there's no difference between the leet and the cheaters. No offense intended to any hardcore gamers out there, but when you're getting online with a game for the first time, and someone who's much better kills you before you have a chance to aim, it's pretty bad. One doesn't know if the person is using an aimbot, wallhack, or just plain mad skills. If the three kinds of gamers were to keep to themselves, everything would work out a lot better.

The problem with PB seems to be that it's too liberal with what is a cheat and what isn't. Maybe they're doing something wrong, I don't know... How do you cheat online anyway? If it's like those trainers you get for single player that lock memory values, well, that shouldn't affect an online game because so much is handled on the server. If it modifies the game files directly, that should also come up. Since games usually require you to have the latest version, could a CRC check of the game folder be sufficient?

In any case, it should just work.

I can't recreate the problem as I'm on another computer, this one a laptop. The only "game" game I can get it to play is the first Unreal Tournament, and it has issues. I wouldn't even try playing UT online. Forget about Quake 3. At least until I get my new rig. And I know for a fact we had PB enabled. It was doing something funny like not staying enabled... I'd do the console command to enable it, then do the command over again without the 1 to ask the game the assigned value, and it kept returning 0. Eventually I put the pb_enable 1 or whatever line in the game's CFG file... I know it was still punting me after console returned a value of 1 when I asked... That problem is unlikely to be solved here or on another forum, though, I only use it as a reference to the whole PB experience.

So would the gamers here say they use PB with little or no interaction, or are other people having random and weird problems with it as well?