PBBans supports Red Orchestra 2

[Das Bose]

Whatever you think of PB/VAC, you can see TWI is trying to do what it can to minimize the cheaters that will most likely pop-up in game.

This!

It's clear TWI intend to go the extra mile to minimise cheating and we should be commending them for that!

The fact they are insisting that PB make changes with regard to the Steam overlay issues and false positive bans is simply the icing on the cake :IS2:

 

[MaydaX]

Wait.... punkbuster? The thing that hates my steam overlay, being used with valve's anti-cheat system? CONTRADICTION!!! I'm getting RO2 on steam this better not screw with me like BF2 does (don't worry, I only play project reality.).

I read that PB in BF2 still kicks for using the steam overlay but it doesn't in newer games like Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor and even Call of Duty 4. I don't see it being a problem for RO2.

It's nice to see you PB guys getting in on the discussion here aswell.

Just a note on that, PBBans members are not part of Even Balance. Even Balance is the company that develops PunkBuster and PBBans is a private anti-cheat community that is not affiliated or endorsed by them.

 

[u-s-e-r]

I read that PB in BF2 still kicks for using the steam overlay but it doesn't in newer games like Bad Company 2, Medal of Honor and even Call of Duty 4. I don't see it being a problem for RO2.

It does so at least in CoD4

 

[Walwolf]

Great news!

 

[IndianScout]

we're around the forums if you have any questions..

Indian

 

[Fedorov]

That should be fine. PB itself doesn't ban for modified configs. It can be setup to enforce a defined range of cvar values. Handy for scanning cheat cvars.

http://www.evenbalance.com/publications/aa-ad/index.htm#monitoring

If anyone is caught with a false positive they can submit a ticket with Even Balance. In many past cases PBBans members have even tried to find the reason a person is triggering a given violation. At least with PB you have a violation name and number (ex GAME HOOK 125003) which helps finding others with the same problem.

Thanks for the answers, I feel much better now.
Nice to have you guys here.

 

[echutter]

As long as I don't get kicked for md5 mismatch, I'm good.

PB for BF2 is kind of a pain in the ***, not to mention it does **** all against cheaters. Doesn't seem like that many people attempt to cheat in the current RO, but I'm sure in Heroes of Stalingrad there will be more people doing it. Hopefully both VAC and PB working should catch the people.

 

[Mike_Nomad]

hmm, sounds good but since RO2 must have steam running & punkbuster and the steam overlay arent really friendly, pb kicks for that so i hope they could do something about that, since i want to have my steam overlay on while gaming to chat with friends and stuff

As an RO & CoD player/Admin, I had the Steam overlay on 24/7 - Since CoD uses PB, I can say I was never penalized by PB for having the Steam overlay running.

For me, PB was quite unintrusive.

 

[Grabbed_by_the_Spetsnaz]

Talk about overkill.

No, overkill is restricting people from online access just because you brought it secondhand *coughTHQcough*

Anyway both Vac and PB have flaws that hackers manage to bypass, but with both in hopefully they fill I in for each other and ban those incompetent 8-year-olds to kingdom come.

 

[blkmgc]

I dont have problems with either (VAC or PB) but i think its foolhardy to introduce an unproven element that has had a history of creating so many problems with so many honest players with the release of a new game. Its really unnecessary in my opinion as i have yet to see a cheat or a series of cheats with VAC running on any server.

Just my unmovable two cents.

 

[ButchCassidy]

HomeFront was all but killed off inside 3 weeks by a huge influx of unchecked players cheating..And VAC was enabled in that game..

My Clans Admins were banning 1 or 2 a night..these guys stood in houses simply firing off aimbots which wiped out the opposition players..They would empty a server within just 10 or 15 mins..Then leave and move onto the next full server they could access...In the first few weeks the Kaos team seemed to have taken a siesta and the cheats just ran riot.
Many players simply stopped playing and never came back to the game.

Now if PB and PBBans had been in place from day one most of the google hacks would have disappeared within the first couple of days..

VAC is ok as long as developers keep updating the VAC team, if not then you'll pretty soon have a disaster on your hands and one from which your game may not recover.

 

[Actin]

Until, boom, you get banned and need to buy the game again, get a new steam account and only for one game when your current steam account has dozens of them. Yay, that must be fun

AFAIK (and I may be wrong) it is all about setting the bar.
multiple cheaters can ruin thousands of people's fun in servers, while a much smaller amount may be forced to buy the game.

It's a bit of balancing, I think the fun is more important.
But that doesn't mean it is al right! I agree that it would suck big time, it's just balancing the options

 

[jackastronaut]

Back before the discovery of Red Orchestra I played COD:World at War multiplayer tactical servers...until one day punkbuster started kicking my *** out of every game for no apparent reason. It started two years ago, and to this day I still can't play it for more than 10 seconds without getting kicked.

 

[fozzer]

Back before the discovery of Red Orchestra I played COD:World at War multiplayer tactical servers...until one day punkbuster started kicking my *** out of every game for no apparent reason. It started two years ago, and to this day I still can't play it for more than 10 seconds without getting kicked.

Just out of interest, what was the exact kick message you received.
Hi all btw

 

[fozzer]

As long as I don't get kicked for md5 mismatch, I'm good.

PB for BF2 is kind of a pain in the ***, not to mention it does **** all against cheaters. .

I dont know how you can say PB does **** all against cheaters in BF2, here is some factual information for you
PBBans has 20,023 BF2 pbguid's on its banlist (and counting) that equates to 20,023 cheaters that can not get a game on a PBBans protected server.
Every one of those 20,023 bans is accompanied by "live" streamed evidence.

You can see the overall satistics for the PB enabled games we support here;
[url]http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-overall-ban-statistics.html[/URL]

Theres not really much difference in detection levels between VAC and PB.
What gives PB the edge is what the third party anti cheat streaming services like PBBans provide (MD5 scans / cheat related cvar scans / cheat file matches etc etc) using tools provided by EvenBalance.
RO2:HOS server admins will see how effective streaming is for themselves if they choose to stream their server(s) via PBBans

 

[Kipper]

Some people can't wait to get kicked for having macros. I can't wait to get kicked because my notebook uses OEM proprietary drivers for its video card. That'll be sweet. I mean....I never really wanted to play Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Quake Wars, or Battlefield Bad Company 2 anyway. I'm glad Punkbuster was able to figure out that my video card driver was a method of cheating in game. It made the community a better place.

 

[Fedorov]

we're around the forums if you have any questions..

Indian

I have another question...

Will AIMP2 interfere with PB?

For those who don't know, its a music player similar to Winamp, and it has an option called "topmost" that makes it appear in front of everything else. It generally doesn't show during 3d applications, but it does flicker and react (display song info with mouse hovering over it) with some games (Probably OpenGL, but not sure about that).

There is also a small plugin that connects what you are listening to, to be displayed below the nickname in MSN.

Will there be conflicts here?

 

[REZ]

I'm curious how false positives are handled. If you're put on the ban list incorrectly, do you contact TWI? PBBans? EvenBalance?

Does TWI have anything at all to do with this PB stuff, or will you guys just say 'not our problem, contact PB' sort of thing?

I'm also curious about the legal ramifications of being banned incorrectly. If you pay for a game only to have some 3rd party render your game useless, incorrectly, I smell lawsuit. Is there legal language in the software agreement for HoS that states you might be falsely accused of cheating by a 3rd party and your game will then be rendered useless? Or does that sort of thing fall to the owner of the server; to make it known that your game might be incorrectly banned while playing on their server etc. etc.

Like I said, I'm all for as much protection as can be used to fight cheaters in-game, but I've been doing some reading and there are wayyyyy too many people out there claiming false bans and then saying that EvenBalance makes no real effort to unban you. It's like talking to a brick wall from what I've read. Remember, I've never had any experience with PB, I'm just concerned I'm going to one day be a false-positive statistic.

 

[u-s-e-r]

I'm curious how false positives are handled. If you're put on the ban list incorrectly, do you contact TWI? PBBans? EvenBalance?

Does TWI have anything at all to do with this PB stuff, or will you guys just say 'not our problem, contact PB' sort of thing?

I'm also curious about the legal ramifications of being banned incorrectly. If you pay for a game only to have some 3rd party render your game useless, incorrectly, I smell lawsuit. Is there legal language in the software agreement for HoS that states you might be falsely accused of cheating by a 3rd party and your game will then be rendered useless? Or does that sort of thing fall to the owner of the server; to make it known that your game might be incorrectly banned while playing on their server etc. etc.

Like I said, I'm all for as much protection as can be used to fight cheaters in-game, but I've been doing some reading and there are wayyyyy too many people out there claiming false bans and then saying that EvenBalance makes no real effort to unban you. It's like talking to a brick wall from what I've read. Remember, I've never had any experience with PB, I'm just concerned I'm going to one day be a false-positive statistic.

I'm interested about this as well.

 

[fozzer]

I'm curious how false positives are handled. If you're put on the ban list incorrectly, do you contact TWI? PBBans? EvenBalance?

Does TWI have anything at all to do with this PB stuff, or will you guys just say 'not our problem, contact PB' sort of thing?

I'm also curious about the legal ramifications of being banned incorrectly. If you pay for a game only to have some 3rd party render your game useless, incorrectly, I smell lawsuit. Is there legal language in the software agreement for HoS that states you might be falsely accused of cheating by a 3rd party and your game will then be rendered useless? Or does that sort of thing fall to the owner of the server; to make it known that your game might be incorrectly banned while playing on their server etc. etc.

Like I said, I'm all for as much protection as can be used to fight cheaters in-game, but I've been doing some reading and there are wayyyyy too many people out there claiming false bans and then saying that EvenBalance makes no real effort to unban you. It's like talking to a brick wall from what I've read. Remember, I've never had any experience with PB, I'm just concerned I'm going to one day be a false-positive statistic.

I will try to explain the process as simply as I can and if you have a question after that feel free to post up
If a player raises a cheat/hack violation as a direct result of running PB software then its always EvenBalance who have the last word on violations raised by their own software.
Here is a list of cheat hack violation numbers;
#50000s - Aimbot
#60000s - Wallhack
#70000s - Multihack
#80000s - Gamehack
#90000s - 'Cheat' Video Drivers
#100000s - Speedhack
#110000s - Autofire
#120000s - Game Hook
#130000s - Attempted PunkBuster Hack
If a player raises one of the above and thinks the violation is not valid, the player has to open a troublticket with EvenBalance and explain why;
http://www.evenbalance.com/troubleticket/

If a player raises any other type of cheat violation (MD5 scan / cvar scan/ cheat file match/ pbss/ demo) this is dealt with by PBBans staff.

We have a full appeals process for every type of ban that is issued by PBBans;
http://www.pbbans.com/appeal-ban.html

All the information you need to appeal a ban is contained in the ban link.
Examples;
http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-viewban-d5efd4e6-vb222489.html
http://www.pbbans.com/mbi-viewban-07644940-vb222490.html

Its worth remembering that PB only issues a 2 minute kick (default) to players who raise a cheat/hack violation and its the proactive server admin or anti cheat site that issues the actual ban.