cheating

[jet]

seems like ALL of bnet europe is doing it???
i picked this game up from GAME for a fiver over the weekend, finished it on normal single player at lvl 19 on the second day. thought ok, lets give multiplayer a go... signed up to bnet and started playing a warrior. found out i wasn't as good as i thought and went off to do a little reading, read that there was allot of cheating going on that that a scanner is a must for people who want "legit" games. so i went and got one... and about 95% of players out there have 3xobs jewel of zod, gotter / demonspike / GHoW, GPoW and AAoA / KSoH / Windforce setup.
you actually need to have your game called something like "Legits only" to be able to find any legit players at all...

when did it get this bad? i know im starting the game 6 years too late and all but... this is terrible.
is d2 any better? or just as bad?

[Adelina]

its happening on d2 as well , so don't think you can get rid of it, but its more like about 60-70 percent of people cheating now, cheating is crap, stop it, if you can't win the game then quit dont cheat otherwise you are a sh*t player.

[Rhydderch Hael]

It all depends on the crowd you can find.

Select the Battle.net channel "Diablo Retail DSF-1", the little cubbyhole of enthusiasts from the old official Diablo Strategy Forum.

[the Langolier]

>scanner is a must for people who want "legit" games

(nit) Scanners will not give you a legit game. They simply look in memory to see everything about another character (cheaters can STILL join a legit game). In fact, you don't really need a scanner to find legits/cheaters or to play a legit game. Scanners aren't much good for detecting much of anything. They can't detect when someone is using hacks such as God Mode and when someone comes up with tons of hacked gear, you will easily be able to tell they cheat right in the game anyways.

I suggest you get rid of it until you are more experienced with the game, if not completely. If you use it all the time you will eventually become dependant on it, and you will spend half your game-time alt_tab'ing out to "scan" someone. Also, scanners can be faulty - not to mention that the information they present can be misinterpreted. The game itself can create duplicates of items (most often potions). When using a scanner you will find yourself trusting anyone who shows clean, and denying anyone where something very small comes up. Anyways, the gap between cheating and being legit is usually very large, and so differentiating between the two in not difficult at all in a game (with some common sense and experience).

>you actually need to have your game called something like "Legits only" to be able to find any legit players at all...

You can find legits in ANY game. In fact, "legit only" tends to attract cheaters, especially when half of them don't even know what it means. The trick is just to find legits, then play with them. I find that passworded games similiar to "Legits only // legits only" attract more legits than cheaters, just due to the fact that they don't appear in the game list. Some people think they are not better, but agian, you don't know where you will find a new legit, and I know I personally have found many there.

[SteinHerz]

The trick is just to find legits, then play with them.  I find that passworded games similiar to "Legits only // legits only" attract more legits than cheaters, just due to the fact that they don't appear in the game list.

I wouldn't suggest using the "Legit//Legit", "Legits//Only" and similar games once you are higher level with interesting gear because of the fact those games with obvious passwords are ground for item importers, cheaters that call themselves "legit".

I believe the best solution is playing in private games with thrustworthy, close friends, not with the average player that uses tags to express their legit state.

[Az3ar]

It got this bad since the first few monthes of the game.

In my opinion, d1, as a game is still better, but d2, though somewhat less frenzied in cheating, (not 95% of players cheat....) as in diablo 1...

[Ragalorn]

I can attest to what Langolier mentions above, i usually name my games "Legit..." something or other, and you usually get hackers/pk's, cheaters join right away.

I must say thought, that if i had not named my games "Legit...", i would never have met my current group of legits friends/gamers, so its your choice. For every 100 cheaters u get one good person, who makes it all worth it !

[danifilth]

hmmm your right
after joining with bad items the hell mode on battlenet i found very much helpful and nice legit players

cheating sucks

[Lunatorium]

Just on the topic of cheaters, I have played Diablo online for a while and can only say what disgust I feel for it's condition now. Ive always been strictly legit and the state of Diablo at the moment is just sickening. On average, ive found one properly legit player out of every 200 players I meet.

Although im from europe, I mainly concentrate on using the USEAST servers because of the greater numbers of players online at the time I can get on. I have a good few friends on USEAST who are all legits and like myself, get a LOT of abuse. We have players who target our channel and spam abuse, players who actively hunt around open games for legits to autokill and in some cases, they attack us in games using hacking tools to wipe our inventories clean and lower player levels to 1. We even have players dropping spam bots into our channel, players who follow around and harass other legits and other players who have constantly bugged us for months or even years.

Does any of this stop me from playing the game as it was INTENDED to be played?

NO! :) Im a 100% legit player who is more than proud to be part of the ever shrinking minority of people who have the brains to play this game properly

In reply to the thread starter, dont feel intimidated by the overwhelming majority of hackers, find a decent group of people you can trust and stick with them :)

This is still one of my all time favourite games and always will be :)

Long Live Legits!!!!!! Cheats are scum, simple as that

[Yogi_Baar]

they attack us in games using hacking tools to wipe our inventories clean and lower player levels to 1.

Are you sure about this one? AFAIK they cannot "hack" :wacko: your char, they can only modify their own chars.

[Harlequin]

Actually a memory process editor like Doomgazes's can modify any of the players in the game. Sucks when a looser decides to "upgrade" your character as a favor to you. Keep a backup for just such an occasion.

This thread was started a year ago! It's impossible to find legit players it seems. Most that are legit, including the ones I've seen in Diablo DSF-1, refuse to play with anyone that isn't endorsed by someone they know (their words, not mine). Of course, without getting into those games, it's impossible to be endorsed by anyone. This game is basically dead, and the "legits" like this are finishing the game off.

[Lord_Olf]

Hail Harlequin,

sorry if I have to disagree with your last statement. The legits, in my humble opinion, are not finishing the game off. I have been having a hell of a time with a fellow lurker, and it was maybe two weeks ago that we met.
Do not be daunted; the "nice guys" are out there...

Take care,
Lord_Olf

[Harlequin]

I still enjoy the game. It's the first computer game I ever had and after years of playing it and other games it is now the only one installed on my comp. I go for console mostly. The problem is the game gets boring quick alone. I have a hard time getting through a Laz run anymore.

I was also referring to certain legits, not all of them. I suppose they have a reason for not trusting many people.

[LemmingofGlory]

Actually a memory process editor like Doomgazes's can modify any of the players in the game.

Many trainers show you other playerstats; that's simply because the computers communicate that data to each other. Some trainers then take the next idiotic step and tell you that you can edit those players. Well, no, you can't. You can edit the information they send you and make your computer think erroneous information about other players. You can edit your own information, so that (1) it changes your character on your PC (2) when you communicate with the other computers, they recognize the changes as well. But editing something in your computer's memory does not change files on another computer's hard drive.

Trainers take advantage of your client's ability to lie outrageously to other clients. Well, hey, that's how autokill works: "You take 1000000 damage." But you can't LIE about just anything that floats into your skull. You can't tell Diablo "You are deleted from the hard drive." and Diablo magically disappears from the other player's HDD. You can only lie about things the other computer is designed to receive information about. As far as I know, it's NOT designed to receive information about charstats on ITS harddrive. Why would it? It doesn't need your PC to know what clvl a character on ITS harddrive is. So, I'm gonna give your claim a big, fat NO.

If Diablo is retarded and allows another client to dictate a characterstat on ITS harddrive, then I'm pretty damn surprised no other trainer has ever exploited that before. But for the time being, I'm not going to believe it. If you CAN lie about information the other client isn't even designed to receive, Diablo's missing some pretty crucial paranoia checks. If a trainer CAN access another player's harddrive and alter files it finds, anyone in-game with someone using that program has a huge security issue on their hands -- a way, way bigger security problem than losing a few 66kb charfiles.

Most that are legit, including the ones I've seen in Diablo DSF-1, refuse to play with anyone that isn't endorsed by someone they know (their words, not mine). Of course, without getting into those games, it's impossible to be endorsed by anyone.

If someone doesn't want to game with you until they get to know you, make friends with them. You certainly can do that in-channel.

-Lemmy

[Harlequin]

You've just explained why it can happen. No, you can't modify files on another hard drive, but you can modify the information sent to another client within the game. So a cheater "fixes" up another character, which at the time is loaded in memory, then during the next save process Diablo overwrites the save information on the legit's harddrive to match the character information in memory. Messed up character. I've had it happen on several occasions, even with people I thought were trustworthy, hence the reason for keeping a backup.

[LemmingofGlory]

No, you can't modify files on another hard drive, but you can modify the information sent to another client within the game. So a cheater "fixes" up another character, which at the time is loaded in memory, then during the next save process Diablo overwrites the save information on the legit's harddrive to match the character information in memory.

Here's what we know:
(1) A cheater modifies a character, and if that data is HIS chardata it's updated and sent to the other clients.
(2) If that data is NOT his chardata, there's no normal Diablo process that sends it off to the other clients. How do we know this? Various other trainers exist which allow for memory modification of other players, and absolutely nothing happens to other players.

So, in order for any trainer to DO what you claim, clients would need to accept anyone's chardata from another client (rather than just that client's chardata). Seeing how terribly dangerous this is, not to mention useless and unnecessary, do you think Blizz went ahead and programmed that in? Do you think Blizz went to all the trouble of throwing in, "If client2 tells me my clvl is X, set clvl to X." ? Does that sound like a useful sort of communication to have defined within the game code?

Since your claim is essentially that "Blizzard added something that the game doesn't even use and allows you to get screwed over," I'm not going to believe you until you can prove it to me. Until such a time, I'm going to operate on the assumption that you're wrong and anything unfortunate that happened to your characters is something you managed to do. For instance, I think it's far more likely your "messed up" characters were the result of misuse of a backup program (e.g. DiabloSaver).

-Lemmy

[[vL]Kp]

There is one way in which foreign clients can cause your base statistics to be modified as part of normal gameplay; I have not researched whether they could invoke this arbitrarily, or whether they need certain additional circumstances. Also, with regard to the sending of foreign character data: it sounds rather silly to support it at all, as Lemming suggested.

To extend on his statement, I just checked through the character-data-received handler. The index into which the data is stored is derived from the sending player's ID, which is computed from his IP address. In short, he'd need to convince your system that it had received the data from itself to even begin. It gets better. Not only would this be a very difficult task on account of getting the sequence numbers right (and relying on the client to even process self-sent datagrams, which is a bit unlikely except as a possible accident of insufficient checking), but the receipt handler explicitly ignores data sent from the local ID#. In short, it is impossible to overwrite the local character using a character-data-properties command.

If anyone would like to suggest other commands which might be useful in remotely hacking character data, please feel free to suggest it so I can check the code and debunk it. Also, DiabloSaver does have a habit of screwing up characters when you try to modify them with it. As a very minor counterpoint to Lemming's challenge of Blizzard adding useless things, I'd like to point out how many half-finished features Diablo has in it. So, there *are* quite a few things that are in the game that you can't use on account of them being turned off (such as Incinerators, Reality Weavers, Undead Balrogs, The Mangler, etc.)

[Jarulf]

Just a short comment and sort of "agree" post. As allready sorted out, it is not possible for another client to to change your own character's (client's) data. However, if my memory is not completely off, in initial versions of the game (really initial, first few montsh), the host could actually control other peoples clients in that clients would accept info about its own character from the host of a game. Basically the host would run the game and keep track of all characters. It is possible it oul worked for when the host left the game and updated info to a new host I really don't remember the details, but I think back then, it was possible. For obvious reasons, Blizzard changed and fixed this.

[skana]

hmm.


Im a firm beilver in pubbies. other than an idiot crashing you,(and himself) I have never had my char "modified" Exporting is another thing. I have had people screw my diablo up
when ive been in channel tho,(had to reinstall). Maybe it was just a malfunction on my part. Ive managed to get to LVL50 and most of my games are pubbies.


I believe that if more legits played public we could make the cheaters lives not only difficult ,but have a lot of fun as well. theres nothing like a nice mk or killing a trainer brat with your naked mage.Eventually they will get tired of cheating. The same philosophy that works in dsf-1 will transfer over to the D1 world as well.



regards.

[Selby]

I agree with the "can't happen" people on this one. Diablo doesn't accept your character data from the network connection, so even if some moron does set your character to a really messed up state, he has to convince the game that you yourself did it. Since you are a good non-cheater and not running any routines that have modified this section of memory, there is no way this can happen. All he does is modify how his client sees your character (until your client updates his, like when you die or change armor ;-) ). As far as character data is concerned, all a person can do is make the game run the way they want it to on their own system, they can't force it down anyone else's throat. Now information about your character that IS received, like attack damage, can be modified and sent via modified clients and therefore you get autokill, etc. This is why townkill doesn't work anymore. Blizzard put an exception to attack spells that says you cannot be harmed in town. Just because Joe_Trainer_User has modified his client to ignore that rule doesn't mean your client ignores that rule, and such the client knows that when you have been "attacked" by 100000 damage in town, it knows that it must be an illegal operation and doesn't do anything to you except report that some idiot is trying to perform illegal operations on you =)

And I can't remember a time when you DIDN'T play private games with people you knew to get away from cheating, and I started playing back in early 1998. This is hardly a new situation.