Tasos on New Darkfall Sales and Cheating

There's a new update from Tasos today on the official forums. First some tidbits about new account sales and support requests.

The shop will be open today again for a limited number of copies. This will happen at 3PM GMT.

For the mentally challenged, 3PM GMT = 11AM EST.

Second, having to do with support requests: If you see your support request priority is low, it doesn't mean that we’ve classified as low, it actually means it was handled immediately. Requests are currently prioritized by order received. New requests have a lower priority than older ones.

OK. Here's the good bits about cheating and exploiting:

Concerning cheating and exploiting: We’re banning some people almost every day but the problem is minimal to say the least. We’ve also been working on addressing the issue at the source as time permits.

Most of the people getting banned are confused by claims they cannot be detected because we have a small team and won’t dedicate resources. Trolling posts on this and other forums and videos on Youtube attempt to create the false impression that cheating is rampant. The logic behind this is: everyone is doing it, and so should you. This couldn’t be further from the truth however.

Most of the people posting about cheating in Darkfall aren't even playing the game and are doing so to create an impression. The only way to really know what’s happening in the game is to ask a few players you know for a fact are playing how many times they’ve seen people using exploits since we started banning for it.

We also get reports by players in the game about other players exploiting. In most cases the players reported hadn't been exploiting, in others a lot of people are reporting the same one person, or repeating what others are saying.

The only reason we are addressing this matter is to protect Darkfall players from getting banned by using these programs. We permanently ban all accounts using exploits. It's sad to have to ban someone who just bought the game, but we don't warn, inform, hesitate, or explain. We do this to protect the game and the players. The fact is that if you're using third party programs to exploit, it’s just a matter of time before you’re banned.

Thanks for reading,
The Darkfall Team

This is the interesting part. Especially where he tries to understate the problem as mostly a lot of noise produced by forum trolls and youtube videos.

Personally I have to admit there were only two or three times I ever suspected someone of speedhacking. The first occassion was the day I started playing at the goblin spawn, and for all intesive purposes just could have been lag. The few other times have usually been fights with Alfar and may just be something strange with their sprint animations. It doesn't help that my PC specs aren't the best (E6600, 7950GT and only 2GB DDR2) - my FPS does stutter occasionally.

The only time I really felt someone was speedhacking was at a wilderness bank with a guildmate when I spotted some alfar coming towards us in the distance on foot. I was naked harvesting some steedgrass and my guildmate was geared so I said just run I'll keep them busy. I turned around to put my sickle and herbs in the bank and before I even finished putting 4 or 5 items in the bank they were already right on top of me! They killed me standing at the bank and immediately set off after my guildmate who had a head start on them and somehow managed to catch him as well.

There was one other occasion where I felt someone was using a map/radar hack. Three of us were at a Ciel Fey spawn. I don't remember the exact details but one of my guildmates hid in the nook of one of those big trees in the elf lands with the giant roots you can hide under. It was located on an island in the middle of a lake near the spawn we were at. He was on the island resting while we were on the mainland shore and spotted the enemy approaching. Two of us stood and fought on the mainland while he stayed hidden the entire time. After we were killed 2v6 they immediately went straight for him. We all thought it was fishy, especially when he showed me afterwards. If you were on the shore of the lake looking at the island and ran 360 degrees around it, the angle of view where you could have possibly spotted him was probably less than 20 degrees. Not to mention the fact that he is a Mirdain, sitting in the nook of a tree root in tall grass at a significant distance.

I have to admit that these occurances all occured prior to Tasos announcing their 1 strike and you're out policy with respect to illegal third party programs. Whatever that's worth, it does lend some validity to Tasos' statement.

On a broader level I wholly support their stance and hope that what they're doing to combat cheating is effective.

For the record, EB as a guild has not and does not use nor condone the use of third party cheats. There's no glory in victory if it was done with hacks. This mentality is a carry over from the our old UO days where even using pots in a duel was considered an admission of being a newb.

If you see us in Darkfall, you can rest assured of two things:

1) A fair fight, within the boundaries and ruleset of the game.
2) Dying.

Related Posts:
Mike Darga's Game Design Blog: Make Cheating a Part of Your Game