Anti-cheat / APB Update Status

[Guest]

Thank you very much

[Vipertechs 5]

5 hours ago, MattScott said:

Hi all,

 

1) Installation issues

There are some ongoing installation issues with the latest patch. These issues seem to be centered around the following three scenarios:

(a) Steam installer not correctly writing registry entries. We are working with Valve on this. It was a problem a long time ago. Hopefully we can get a fix from them soon. We are also starting a work around just in case that doesn't happen quickly.

(b) Players who copied files or didn't use an installer to add the game to their system. This can sometimes happen when players back up one system to another. Again, it appears certain registry entries aren't getting made (despite installing BE over and over). The fix for this is to delete your APB install, and install it from scratch off the download link on our website.

 

We appreciate your support.

Thanks,
Matt

Done several fresh installs using the link from your website, (tried it again after your post here) and this does NOT remedy the out of date BattlEye failures.

 

I haven't yet had a reply to the ticket I raised - presumably they are too busy unbanning known cheaters to deal with a legitimate player's issues.

[Aphadon 26]

5 hours ago, SkittyM said:

Any clues on when the next APB patch will roll out?  Hoping the spawn icons get fixed.

It's on OTW at the moment. I'm waiting for one more small fix to go in, but we're still hoping to patch it live tomorrow morning if all goes well.

[Clandestine 390]

3 hours ago, Salvick said:

Nice one.

 

I'd like to add a humble comment about this, as someone who have been playing ~6-7 years and also I've been a cheater myself on a different game that was also a third-person-shooter back in 2003/2005 lasting years doing what is known as "closet cheater" I can tell it is impossible to determine if someone is using wall-hacks unless you can spectate everyone's name tags/icons through objects to see if the suspect is effectively tracking enemies through the walls, plus the fact that there are methods to by-pass BattleEye which means that the current available cheats that many hackers already coded in the past would only need to bypass BE in order to work, without the need of much more coding or none at all, so I'd put a very special attention in those players flagged f there are any.

 

Regarding trigger-bot and macros those are also hard to tell by just "spectating" but FF and BE should do a good work to flag these so I'd put my trust on it, and last but not least you have the "smooth aimbot" which is when a player does not exactly "snaps" but is smoothly transitioning from one target to another while locking his aim on targets, they set it up like this to avoid triggering flags by FF.

 

The problem is that an experienced players knows how to toggle on and off his hacks to avoid suspicions and they can even assign a key for the auto-aim button which they only tap a few times when engaging so they land enough shots while still making it look natural. To enforce their "closet" techniques they could even refrain of being on top scores so they don't get fingers pointing at them, sounds oddly difficult to determine any of this so I'm just saying what would be possible for them to do but not claiming that anyone in particular is doing so.

 

I'm concerned with the amount of methods to bypass BE that seems to be available out there, I just hope that along with FF and GMs spectating players they manage to spot cheaters when it comes to it, and the fact that it can be a 7 years old player shouldn't make any difference if FF and BE are flagging them, these should stay under the scope more than anyone else even if you can't spot anything on first sight but lately someone else is able to report new suspicious behaviors on a same player.

 

I hope you guys improve the /report function as well since it would be really useful to stealthy send a message specifying what is what we are reporting, such as if it is a griefer, a player insulting other players, or any other of the many possible disruptions of the game the players can do.

 

Regards,

Sal.

 

 

Dislaimer: by no means I'm trying to encourage or advertise anything related to cheating, if this comment or any part is considered a way to support such activities please dismiss the message and let me know to avoid such comments in the future.

I would be very careful with wallhacks. You can get position reports from team, you can hear the door, ladder, sometimes foot steps and often you can have a hunch after playing for years. Unless someone is really tracking enemies thru the walls with high precision. When it comes to wh I'd hackusate myself many times and yet I know that I'm legit.

[gothroach 2]

9 minutes ago, Clandestine said:

I would be very careful with wallhacks. You can get position reports from team, you can hear the door, ladder, sometimes foot steps and often you can have a hunch after playing for years. Unless someone is really tracking enemies thru the walls with high precision. When it comes to wh I'd hackusate myself many times and yet I know that I'm legit.

 

There's a lot of situational and environmental clues in APB that can help put you in the right direction if you pay attention.  Everything you mentioned plus stuff like noticing when pedestrians start running, watching for boxes and crap that people kick around corners while peeking, listening for the environmental sounds (dogs barking in some areas for instance) that are on a trigger, the radar, and a myriad of other stuff I can't think of right now.  Oh, and luck.

[Clandestine 390]

12 minutes ago, gothroach said:

 

There's a lot of situational and environmental clues in APB that can help put you in the right direction if you pay attention.  Everything you mentioned plus stuff like noticing when pedestrians start running, watching for boxes and crap that people kick around corners while peeking, listening for the environmental sounds (dogs barking in some areas for instance) that are on a trigger, the radar, and a myriad of other stuff I can't think of right now.  Oh, and luck.

I have psychic moments on good days. If I would spectate myself I'd ban myself.

[CookiePuss 5377]

Lucky is a thing.

Psychic is not. 

[Salvick 248]

1 hour ago, Clandestine said:

I would be very careful with wallhacks. You can get position reports from team, you can hear the door, ladder, sometimes foot steps and often you can have a hunch after playing for years. Unless someone is really tracking enemies thru the walls with high precision. When it comes to wh I'd hackusate myself many times and yet I know that I'm legit.

Exactly what I try to say, those are practically impossible to tell unless you clearly see what the player see to determine if he is effectively tracking his enemies through the walls. Even I do some stuff a very few times that is a mix of luck and experience where I just pretend the enemy could be right in the corner and I come out ready to shot and even shooting and a very few times that work just incredibly well, then I regret the times also I thought someone else could be cheating because how they kill me, but this game makes it very easy to predict some players behaviors when you are used to the map and the different game style some players have.

 

Indeed, when I suspect someone is cheating these suddenly becomes the most predictable ones when I starting to think that they might be wallhacking, so I start doing thins I usually wouldn't do and these odd tactics end up giving good results, or at least I manage to find them and engage besides I might die almost every time.

[Shozonu 14]

Based Matt

7 hours ago, MattScott said:

1) Installation issues

There are some ongoing installation issues with the latest patch. These issues seem to be centered around the following three scenarios:

(a) Steam installer not correctly writing registry entries. We are working with Valve on this. It was a problem a long time ago. Hopefully we can get a fix from them soon. We are also starting a work around just in case that doesn't happen quickly.

I recently got a friend to play APB, but her game crashed while changing districts and now whenever she tries to launch APB, she is prompted with installing Battleye and it always says something like "Battleye has been unsuccessfully installed" and is unable to start the game. Are these issues related to those in the OP? Reinstalling, deleting Battleye and updating, setting Battleye and APB Launcher to run as administrator have already been tried.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Shozonu

[Kevkof 806]

2 hours ago, Aphadon said:

It's on OTW at the moment. I'm waiting for one more small fix to go in, but we're still hoping to patch it live tomorrow morning if all goes well.

Will OTW patchnotes be a thing again? So we know what to test for sure, other than all the usual stuff ofc

[Ketog 1031]

8 hours ago, MattScott said:

Having said that, there are some amazing players in the game who have spent years to master very difficult skills. They know the guns and their various parameters. They know the maps and where people tend to go. They know how to use APB's 3rd person camera to attack behind them which can look like a snap. My point is that to the average FPS player, these players can look like cheating. But APB is not an FPS. We need to make sure we don't punish good players.

 

We appreciate your support.

Thanks,
Matt

This is something that's been so true nowdays , people dethreat so much as soon as they get against someone good they just say it's a hacker , of course if you play against bronzies your whole life you won't see actual good players as legit people .

[shaggybertiny 0]

I have had problems playing.
having about 15 minutes of games, the screen freezes and after a minimum error mark of approximately fatal.
I have asked several friends and something similar happens to them, but not so often.
I was thinking that it could be my PC, but I play other more demanding games and I play them with all normality

this has been doing after the patch

 

Espero y puedes ayudarme : 3

 

Edited June 12, 2018 by shaggybertiny

[killer619 0]

any updates/news on the second unban wave yet for the people who got FF ban'd but are yet to be unblocked.

[TheMessiah 430]

dont want to be insolent but wheres the roadmap in 30 days?and would not it be easier to prefer EAC to battleye?just simple questions..

[ExoticZ 131]

Thanks for the update on the recent patch! 

 

[Hlebka 5]

9 hours ago, SelttikS said:

So we are currently playing a game where no account is banned for hacking. Sounds balanced.

very balanced indeed

[keksz90 0]

Okay, so...

Sorry guys for my ignorance, but am I still allowed to use shaders? Like removing muzzleflash/blood/bullet impacts? I got my pack from Dopefish's stream but am afraid to login with using it, just in case I'd get banned.

 

[swft 356]

6 minutes ago, keksz90 said:

Okay, so...

Sorry guys for my ignorance, but am I still allowed to use shaders? Like removing muzzleflash/blood/bullet impacts? I got my pack from Dopefish's stream but am afraid to login with using it, just in case I'd get banned.

 

 

BattlEye is not detecting file changes for shaders and removal of muzzle flash, blood, explosions and bullets. These are probably disallowed changes in the ToS, but BattlEye is not banning for those right now (but could be flagging).

[Chinook 144]

30 minutes ago, keksz90 said:

Okay, so...

Sorry guys for my ignorance, but am I still allowed to use shaders? Like removing muzzleflash/blood/bullet impacts? I got my pack from Dopefish's stream but am afraid to login with using it, just in case I'd get banned.

 

Quote

8. Will GamersFirst approve the use of shader configs?     (Edited out Advanced Launcher from the question, since it has later been approved)

No. This is a super slippery slope.

Source: https://apbreloaded.gamersfirst.com/2018/05/two-week-update-q-notes-from-my-stream.html

 

So basically you can use whatever changes are possible to achieve through use of Advanced Launcher, but not change/edit the shaders themselves.

If you decide to go poking around shader files anyway, you do it on your own risk since it may later get you in trouble (banned) with battleye as they keep turning more of it's features on over time.

Edited June 12, 2018 by Chinook

[Spy 152]

13 hours ago, MattScott said:

Having said that, there are some amazing players in the game who have spent years to master very difficult skills. They know the guns and their various parameters. They know the maps and where people tend to go. They know how to use APB's 3rd person camera to attack behind them which can look like a snap. My point is that to the average FPS player, these players can look like cheating. But APB is not an FPS. We need to make sure we don't punish good players.

@MattScott, what you say is true but also keep in mind when you're analyzing the data that 2 major cheat providing websites already have a cheat up and running (last weekend) with a BE bypass and I've also seen private footage of 1 private cheat already. Experienced cheaters also know how to play the camera, have map knowledge and not to mention the environment. It's not the first time that data is analyzed based on cheaters wityhout the AC knowing this (hello FF). This manipulates the threshold in a negative way and is hardly reducing the expert closet cheaters and that puts us back to square one.

 

Any word on the GM Volunteer Program progress? Moving to second gear would be nice and would definitely help in catching those pesky closets.

 

 

Edited June 12, 2018 by Spy
typo

[hack 96]

12 hours ago, Fubukigata said:

Finally a CEO with more than 30 iq, seriously thank you @MattScott

 

How about implenting a CRISP staff to apply sanctions about trash talking and hackusating ? It's been toxic over 8 years :x

 

"quoting the whole thing"

 

 

bro its the Internet, Ignore people completely or use the /ignore function.

[Keshi 436]

16 hours ago, MattScott said:

Anti-cheat will never be perfect. It takes iteration and constant tuning. Little Orbit is firm in our commitment to leverage solid client-side and server-side systems to help us identify and eliminate as many players using unfair advantages as possible, so the rest of us can enjoy the game. We have put our money where our mouth is, and this process will be ongoing.

 

Having said that, there are some amazing players in the game who have spent years to master very difficult skills. They know the guns and their various parameters. They know the maps and where people tend to go. They know how to use APB's 3rd person camera to attack behind them which can look like a snap. My point is that to the average FPS player, these players can look like cheating. But APB is not an FPS. We need to make sure we don't punish good players.

 

We appreciate your support.

Thanks,
Matt

There u have it boys. There you have it

[Keshi 436]

3 hours ago, hack said:

bro its the Internet, Ignore people completely or use the /ignore function.

Bro my ignorelist is full and i aint wanna buy an extender

[El-Neko 30]

3 minutes ago, Keshi said:

Bro my ignorelist is full and i aint wanna buy an extender

You should really clean out that ignore list then... Since lets be honest here most of those people you have is gone or inactive at this point.

[sijws 4]

12 minutes ago, El-Neko said:

You should really clean out that ignore list then... Since lets be honest here most of those people you have is gone or inactive at this point.

b-b-but what if one of them came back and he had to see a single toxic message from one of them? He would have to log off the computer for the rest of the week, he'd be so upset