Why does Tractor still zone us?

[GlobalVariable]

And can simply be unobfuscated using the same process by which it was obfuscated.

If it were that easy to undo, the programmer would bother doing it - I'm not talking about the company using obfuscation to protect its IP. At best only makes it a time consuming process to reverse engineer code so the idea is to make it annoying for a company that replaces you.

My brother did it to all his code when he realized the company he was working at was trying to save money by having him train what would be his replacement. Companies that don't have good version record/backup practices are particularly vulnerable. I usually see it in code from lower paid programmers out of india or china but this sort of thing does happen, not frequently heard of happening in large well known companies, but it happens.

[Byrth]

Completely unrealistic to change the players XYZ. POS bots have been doing this since 2004. If a bedroom programmer can do it in two hours, an SE programmer should be able to do it, and make it look pretty in the same amount of time.

This isn't going to open up the door for exploits. If people want to POS hack across a zone and get themselves banned - changing the Tractor system isn't going to change this. The server will know where the client should end up, if they end up somewhere different than expected, ban 'em.

This is exactly how I think about it.

If you're worried about it being abused:
1) They would have to be dead.
2) When you cast Tractor, the server obviously saves a location that the spell was cast from. People can only be moved to that point and they can't move while dead, so if they POS hack anywhere else it should definitely raise some eyebrows.

The reason that SE doesn't instantban for POS hacking basically comes down to bad internet connections. If you have a shitty internet connection, sometimes you lag and your position doesn't get reported to the server for a few seconds/up to a minute or two. You can still run around in game, though. So when your position gets updated, it looks (for all intents and purposes) to the server like you warped (or POS hacked) from one place to another.

Because people can't move while dead, even if they lag they shouldn't do anything that appears to be POS hacking. SE could change the way Tractor works and be much more strict with the way the server handles POS hacking dead characters with no ill effects on gameplay.

[Arcon]

The reason that SE doesn't instantban for POS hacking basically comes down to bad internet connections. If you have a shitty internet connection, sometimes you lag and your position doesn't get reported to the server for a few seconds/up to a minute or two. You can still run around in game, though. So when your position gets updated, it looks (for all intents and purposes) to the server like you warped (or POS hacked) from one place to another.

There are ways to work around that though, at least partially. You can check if the distance from the previous point to the current point is less than or equal to than the maximum distance you could have traveled in the time since the server last received an update. If it is, it's still possible that it was hacking, however if it's bigger it definitely is hacking.

[Byrth]

There are ways to work around that though, at least partially. You can check if the distance from the previous point to the current point is less than or equal to than the maximum distance you could have traveled in the time since the server last received an update. If it is, it's still possible that it was hacking, however if it's bigger it definitely is hacking.

Their autobanner checks for movement speed, iirc, which would also catch POS hacking. If you're going faster than flee, you can end up talking to GMs. Still, because movement speed is necessarily zero while dead, it should be easy to distinguish between legitimate Tractors and a dead character POS hacking. Basically, there's no reason that they couldn't implement this.

Just going to drop this here:
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/%28_%29-side

[Invader]

Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm still hoping for some more indepth information on why this is not happening. Camate?

[wildsprite]

I think it can be answered pretty easily, in order to fix this, they would have to remove the original tractor spell and give us a new one in its place, because its code is bad, this might not be a feasible idea, but that would not stop them from creating a replacement spell, they would just need to name it something else

[Invader]

I disagree wildsprite; it can be fixed and would probably take more work creating an entirely new spell than modifying an existing one. It needs a new entry in w/e spell database they have, which means filling out the element and adding it into the DATs, translating the name into English, German, and French (from Japanese) and all the server-side code of handling a new spell ID. They should just fix Tractor and its easy to do, idk why they say its hard. Hence the request for more information.

[wildsprite]

while I might agree with you under normal circumstances, the devs have said that the original spell was tied to spaghetti code and would be most difficult to fix, therefore adding a new spell rather than modifying the original would just be less complicated, when this game was originally coded they didn't do much documentation to allow for easier solutions and tractor was among that code

[GlobalVariable]

I think the problem is exactly that; they don't know which noodle in the spaghetti code because its so far back none of the current team would have worked on that sections, and so decided it would take to long.

[Raxiaz]

That's a ****ty excuse, and after FFXIV's poor reception, I'm really not surprised by SE. They need to stop cutting corners and actually take the time to develop a good game, something they haven't done since FFX, personally.