Possible Game Manipulation

[Archaos]

I know this will probably be dismissed due to lack of video or other substantiating information, but I would urge the Devs to look into any ways that people may be able to manipulate the game to their advantage. I will not mention names as I do not have evidence but needless to say I have heard similar reports and warnings about the same person, which is why I cannot put this down to a one off game glitch or timing mismatch.

After getting the kills twice on a particular raider in the green zone around KPR yesterday I had information that the person had been seen heading that way again, so a few of us gathered to intercept him. He was duly sighted and we gave chase, I was in a fast ship that I knew could match his speed and the others in the group were in heavier ships. He was still within the green zone when I reached the edge of the tag circle but the Attack button still remained greyed out, I was half way between the edge of the outer circle and target and the attack was still not available and then started flashing on and off rapidly as if I was just in range. Immediately the attack button was able to be clicked I initiated the tag and the target also initiated a counter tag. This so far could be put down to a lag issue apart from the fact that many have reported the same issue with the same player, but the other thing that happened that makes it even more suspicious is that the tag counter ran out literally the second we left the green zone. Now that may be a coincidence but its a very strange one considering the circumstances and the difficulty in timing such an operation. Had the tag happened inside the zone then the rest of the team could have joined positionally to trap the person rather than miles away and chasing.

All I ask is that you look at possible ways that this could be achieved and not just dismiss it outright due to lack of evidence as a video would only show exactly what I have described here and provide no other detail.

[Archaos]

1 minute ago, Banished Privateer said:

Coincidence + Server Lag/Delay. The case can be dismissed. Tribunals always need to mention names, Accuser and the accused player + best video or screenshots evidence.

I may have posted in the wrong section, I am not looking for someone to be punished, I am trying to alert the Devs to a possible issue in the game. There have been many reports of the same thing happening with the same player, I have no proof and that is why I do not mention names. We are testers in a game that is in alpha stage and as such it is our duty to bring possible issues to the attention of the Devs. There are many things that people say cannot happen that eventually are proved can happen and all reports of such instances can only help in eventually discovering if there are any flaws that can be exploited. 

So maybe its not a tribunal issue but rather a flaw or vulnerability in the game, but as there is no specific section for that I thought best post it here. And who are you to say whether this should be investigated or not? You had nothing to do with the incident so you should not even be posting here according to the forum rules. I have related the facts as I saw them and it is up to the Devs to decide if they wish to look further into any possible issues.

[Archaos]

1 minute ago, Banished Privateer said:

The issues with a certain player can occur because he has high ping / bad connection. This was discussed with the Devs already, it's a sync problem. 

Players ---> Server ---> You so it's pretty much your enemy player delay/ping + yours combined + server processing times. I believe this can result even in 1-2 seconds delays/lags. Is it a game issue? Yes, for sure. Should be in the Support section.

Its just strange that this has been reported a few times with the same player. I play with quite a low ping of around 38, if the other player had a high ping surely it would affect them in battle too with mistiming of their shots etc. It is amazing that it corrects itself when in battle and his high ping disappears. And you are not talking about 1-2 second delays here, we were two almost identical ships on the same course both with full sails and I could not initiate the tag till I was 50% of the way inside the tag circle, that must have taken at least 15 seconds and then the attack button flashes rapidly for several seconds before being able to tag. It is just too coincidental as well that the only chance he had in the battle was to get me in a 1v1 and that was only going to happen outside the green zone and amazingly the timer runs out just as we drop out of the zone. 

Again I say it is all very well dismissing it as a ping/connection issue, but I still think it is in their interest to look into ways that people could possibly be manipulating the game.

[Nelsons Barrel]

It's heavy desync. Happens a lot, nothing new.

[z4ys]

It's no cheating. Packet loss + bad ping + ping difference + OW time compression do the trick. 

Easiest fix would be reduction of OW time compression, but not many are up to that. So we have to accept sometimes those weird stuff.

Edited May 29, 2018 by z4ys

[Archaos]

Just now, Banished Privateer said:

Consider that OW speeds are like 30-40x higher than battle speeds making the delay between ships much more noticable. We are not talking about the number 15 / 30, don't forget that travelled distance in OW is much higher due to scaled world. 

The increased OW speed does not have much relevance here, two almost identical ships travelling in same direction at full sail with no course alteration, the number of seconds it takes to go from the edge of the tag circle to 50% into it is not just 1 or 2 seconds, in fact it was probably even longer than 15 seconds before the attack button became available, this cannot be just due to a ping difference that would cause a 1 or 2 second delay.

I do not understand why you keep trying to rationalize it away by saying it is a ping/connection issue. I noticed something strange and have reported it to the Devs in case it is a flaw or weakness in the game, what they decide to do with the information is up to them.

[Archaos]

14 minutes ago, z4ys said:

It's no cheating. Packet loss + bad ping + ping difference + OW time compression do the trick. 

Easiest fix would be reduction of OW time compression, but not many are up to that. So we have to accept sometimes those weird stuff.

I am not computer savvy with regards to ping and connections etc, but can packet loss be manipulated, could someone have the ability to disrupt packets to create such an issue? I have experienced being able to initiate the tag before reaching the circle and sometimes after entering the circle which would be the 1 or 2 seconds down to ping, but I have never experienced before being half way inside the tag circle before being able to tag and I must assume that would require such a huge ping difference that the game would be unplayable for one of the players. The fact that this has also being reported several times with the same player makes it suspicious enough to me that I felt it should be reported.

All I can say is that if it had happened to you, then you too would be suspicious.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Archaos

[z4ys]

16 minutes ago, Archaos said:

I am not computer savvy with regards to ping and connections etc, but can packet loss be manipulated, could someone have the ability to disrupt packets to create such an issue? I have experienced being able to initiate the tag before reaching the circle and sometimes after entering the circle which would be the 1 or 2 seconds down to ping, but I have never experienced before being half way inside the tag circle before being able to tag and I must assume that would require such a huge ping difference that the game would be unplayable for one of the players. The fact that this has also being reported several times with the same player makes it suspicious enough to me that I felt it should be reported.

All I can say is that if it had happened to you, then you too would be suspicious.

I have a ping around 9 to 19ms whenever I attack a West cost US or Asian player I have to be close at the inner circle to be able to press attack. I have not such issues when I attack EU players.

This issue started to occur with the last increase of OW time compression. It's no cheating it's just a side-effects of your impatience to sail in the OW.

[Liq]

1 hour ago, Archaos said:

Had the tag happened inside the zone then the rest of the team could have joined positionally to trap the person rather than miles away and chasing

To me this sounds like the broken part

Dont like the spawn options in reinforcment zones.

[Archaos]

20 minutes ago, Liq said:

To me this sounds like the broken part

Dont like the spawn options in reinforcment zones.

Those are the RoE for the green zone, you dont like them then do not play in the green zone. The issue I am raising is that the RoE for engaging is that I should be able to commence the tag once I reach the outer circle of the target, the fact that I could not till well within the circle is where I have issue. This may be as some say due to ping/packet loss or OW speed compression, but I am just raising the point that it seems awfully suspicious to have it happen with the same person when different people try to tag him. I am a firm believer in the saying that there is no smoke without fire. Maybe eventually when there are enough reports they may look into it.

[seanjo]

I'm guessing the player in question is Sayid, he gets accused of cheating a lot, can't say I've seen any the few times I've battled him.

[Archer11]

Admin explained a few weeks ago, that because of the time-compression in OW and thus the high ship- speeds and packet-delivery the ships often aren't really at exact the location you see them. I have this very often when comparing ships-locations with my boys: "Hehe, I'm ahead of you, loser!" "Watcha talkin' about, you're 2 ship's lenghts behind me..."

As soon as you're in the battle instance, everything's there were it should be, as long as there's no lag...

And concerning a certain player: he may be annoying as hell, as he attacks everything that floats (even low ranks in basic cutters as my 13 year old found out) but cheating? Nah, don't think so.

Think, thread should be moved elsewhere.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Archer11

[Hethwill]

Moved to a more "supportive" place.

Please record video of the situation.

[Archaos]

3 minutes ago, Hethwill said:

Moved to a more "supportive" place.

Please record video of the situation.

As I said a video would not have provided any further evidence to the facts that I have stated here. Most people do not continuously record their gameplay, so expecting video fottage before people will even start to believe what you say is just a cop out to avoid investigating possible issues.

Thankyou for moving the thread to a more appropriate area and can you please remove any posts referring to a player by name as it was not my intention to accuse any player without proof, but to bring to the attention of the Devs a possible problem. I do not know if what happened is possible to manipulate but the occurrence was strange enough to me that I felt I should raise it as an issue.

[HachiRoku]

@Mr Pellew @Liam790 @bifttee 

@NameTBA

We had a 3v3 in open sea. We made 2 lines with equal wind like we do in 1v1s. All six ships were stationary and the 2 sides at max distance. When we tagged all six of us were on top of each other in completely different positions once the battle was loaded. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen tagging wise. This happened on Sunday night. I am not convinced this is a time compression issue and I welcome all of you to test tagging with multiple ships involved. 

[Anolytic]

It is understandable that the impulse is to be suspicious of this. But as the issue seems to about ships' relative position to each other in OW, I can offer my testimony as to how it is a naturally occurring phenomenon due to delays in the communication between multiple clients and the server, and not require any packets manipulation or other hypothetical manipulation. Sailing with two or more alts you can observe this phenomenon very clearly with your own eyes. I can run two clients simultaneously either on 2 computers or on just one computer using sandbox. While attempting to sail side by side, at speed it will occur at various times that one ship is five ship-lengths in front of the other, while at the same time the other client may show the complete reverse order, or show them side by side. This is enough of a positional inaccuracy that on your screen you might appear in the middle of the tag circle, while on the other player's screen you might appear well outside it, and the server, being the only true representation, might have you at a relative position that is closer to the representation of either of your clients, or right in the middle, depending on a lot of factors.

[z4ys]

1 hour ago, HachiRoku said:

@Mr Pellew @Liam790 @bifttee 

@NameTBA

We had a 3v3 in open sea. We made 2 lines with equal wind like we do in 1v1s. All six ships were stationary and the 2 sides at max distance. When we tagged all six of us were on top of each other in completely different positions once the battle was loaded. It was the strangest thing I have ever seen tagging wise. This happened on Sunday night. I am not convinced this is a time compression issue and I welcome all of you to test tagging with multiple ships involved. 

Might be something different. We had very strict position from OW to instance. I am not convinced that they are still that strict. I believe only attacker to defender spawn somewhat relative to OW. Are more player in that circle they spawn randomly around the attacker and defender.

[Ink]

Captains, please capture a video or provide some clear screenshots with the problem

[Archaos]

11 minutes ago, Ink said:

Captains, please capture a video or provide some clear screenshots with the problem

The problem is you would basically have to be recording all the time to get this evidence. Is it not possible to set up a test with people with wildly different ping to see if the problem can be recreated.

I can see what people say regarding differing positions for ships in OW but surely if the positions are so out of sync that the tag does not become available till 50% inside the tag circle then the distance when they appear in the instance will be the same as if they were at maximum tag range rather than at a range that matches the relative positions when the tag completes i.e. When the tag completed I was in the instance at a distance I would have expected to be rather than at extreme range.

[Sir Texas Sir]

5 hours ago, Archaos said:

I am not computer savvy with regards to ping and connections etc, but can packet loss be manipulated, could someone have the ability to disrupt packets to create such an issue? I have experienced being able to initiate the tag before reaching the circle and sometimes after entering the circle which would be the 1 or 2 seconds down to ping, but I have never experienced before being half way inside the tag circle before being able to tag and I must assume that would require such a huge ping difference that the game would be unplayable for one of the players. The fact that this has also being reported several times with the same player makes it suspicious enough to me that I felt it should be reported.

All I can say is that if it had happened to you, then you too would be suspicious.

Your kinda talking about something call a lag switch which blows my mind how many folks don't understand how they work and blame things in game on them.  They can only be used at lan parties or where you host the game on your own computer.  Using @rediii example below the only way you can do such is like this.

Server - Client - Clinet

The guy that is running the server and you can go through could do a lag switch between him and the other client to cause a lag in game.  It was very  quick to find out if a host was doing something shady like this cause they would rack up top scores fast over all the other players.  Though with this game cause the server does every thing between the clients there is no way to do so.  

5 hours ago, rediii said:

only serverside is reality the rest is only what you see

Client - Server - Client

As a US player with 130-140 ping I notice that the tag and joins are off just a bit some times.  For me it's like maybe 1/4 sec delay from where it should be some times.  I know our SEA/AUS guys say it's more like a 1/2 second for them.  So for me roughly about a ship length difference at times of what I should be.  This is why when we tag some one we try to be pretty much right on top of them (well not in the small circle) when we tag cause it can put you further back than you want to be if you don't.

[William Death]

My theory:

Sail two accounts side by side on the same computer. You can see the “issue” clearly: the separate game clients will almost always show the ships in slightly different positions relative to one another. I don’t think there is a “fix” for this, or even that it is an issue. Sometimes your ship will be 1-2 seconds delayed from its actual position, even on a good rig with high FPS and low ping.

I’ve seen the tag circles fail to represent area available to tag numerous times.  

I think this is the same reason why join circles aren’t always accurate, sometimes you can go right up to the line, just outside the line, or sometimes you have to be well inside the line to get the “join” button to appear. 

I STRONGLY doubt there is an exploit here, most likely I think it’s simply a bit of lag somewhere. The fact that the tag activated just as you left the green zone is bad luck on your end and good luck (I’m assuming) for the enemy.

I had a special somewhat  similar occurrence recently as I made the dash down the “Channel of Death” between La Tortue and Port-de-Paix: despite several tags by the Prussians, I managed to outrun each one, and make it to port, just in the nick of time. One of their tags went all the way to 0s while I was still in the circle but I wasn’t pulled.

[EdWatchmaker]

Captains and Devs greetings,

I don't know if this could be done or even if I'm on the right track. My suggestion would be for the Devs to get the involved captains together, as they may have stumbled on to something, give them identical ships and set up the situation to be tested, see what happens. See if it can be repeated. That way we can find out if it is a repeatable flaw in the game or just a quirk. In any case the players will have fun with the resulting battle at no expense to themselves and the Devs will find out something.

Real life time is short and I have to go.

Fair sailing all.   

[Aster]

Its just lag when your coming at someone head on you get the opposite effect and are able to start the tag a ways outside the tag circle. The flashing is you being on the edge of the circle. The faster the ships are the more profound the effect is.

On the subject of tagging a "Contact tag" feature is needed. If two ships are coming at each other and one tries to tag they will simply sail right through each other.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Aster

[Raf Van Boom]

Latency?

[Wind]

You will never know what is happening behind the scenes. We can only guess. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by Wind