on gameguard, drm and botting.

[iamlegion]

First i would like to introduce myself a bit.

I'm 34 years old and have been playing quite a few mmo's through my days starting with Ultima online and then some.
I'm currently studying for a degree in game design at the university of sk?vde in sweden which is considered one of the better game dev educations in europe.

I would like to discuss a bit about gameguard, drm and botting.

As one can see here

nProtect GameGuard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NProtect_GameGuard

gameguard is not a very good app as it blocks a lot of programs which many many people use daily and even while they are playing. I might for example be downloading something from my ftp or uploading something to my website while playing with filezilla but that wont work as gameguard doesnt like it. Also it stops certain drivers from working properly like razer mouse drivers and so on.

So what is the purpose to use gameguard? Well most probably know but it's to stop memory hacking, botting and so on.
The thing is that this will not prevent that from happening. If some dev wants to develop a bot and are good enough at it they will. And when gameguard get's updated they will update their bot and they are botting again.

So i really fail to see the reason why spending resources on gameguard when all it does is making the botters have a little bit of harder time but at the same time give a whole lot of people big problems.

It's a bit like drm (digital rights management) or as i like to call it digital restrictions management, ie copyprotection etc.
Why spend tons of money on a system that doesnt really work? And also a cracked game without drm very very often works better than the original. nyerks, botter etc will always be there and they will not go away. But i guess the industry fails to understand this simple concept and yells COPYPROTECTION!!! When they instead should focus on not having drm, and instead focus on providing other types of incentives to their gamers to buy their games by for example downloadable content etc etc.

A very good example of this is EA and spore. Spore had a totally dumb drm system which only let you install the game 3 times... like HELLO!?!?! i format my comp like every 4 months or such and the game might be corrupted by some fluke etc so i have to reinstall it again. After those 3 times you had to call support to get a new key or something and i know for a fact that EA support totally sucks. That's the reason i never bought spore.

So to ncsoft i say, stop punishing your players with crappy software that doesnt really do what it's supposed to do, and instead provide an incentive to not bot, or an incentive for players who report possible bots. Perhaps some type of rare item could be given to those who actually caught a bot, or some xp gain or some cool armor that looks really nice but is crap to use, players do like to dress up their characters so they look nice and so on.

Ofcourse there would also has to be some type of limit so people just dont report every person they see.

[Abedeus]

Theer is a thread like this, where more than 4/5 of people want GG to be removed.

Frankly, I'm considering disabling that piece of crap. I get 30% more FPS and that's on Maximum settings. Before, in CB, I disabled the GG because it crashed with blue screen of death on Windows 7 and I couldn't play otherwise.

[iamlegion]

Originally Posted by Abedeus

Theer is a thread like this, where more than 4/5 of people want GG to be removed.

Frankly, I'm considering disabling that piece of crap. I get 30% more FPS and that's on Maximum settings. Before, in CB, I disabled the GG because it crashed with blue screen of death on Windows 7 and I couldn't play otherwise.

yep i read the thread, i wanted to start a new one though with perhaps a bit more logical and less whiny tone to it. Maybe i succeded or perhaps i did not :P

[Varjo]

Yes, I have to agree on all points. I liked to surf around while crafting or doing workorders. That was in Cain ofc. Now with fresh install of windows ang 1.5 version, I cannot do that anymore. Why blocking browser?

GG has definitely raised more than few problems while ppl wanting to bot propably dont have much trouble bypassing it. We'll, I have to swallow it and do something else while doing work orders from nowon...

[scarr]

Originally Posted by Abedeus

Frankly, I'm considering disabling that piece of crap. I get 30% more FPS and that's on Maximum settings. Before, in CB, I disabled the GG because it crashed with blue screen of death on Windows 7 and I couldn't play otherwise.

Seriously? No exageration? You gained 30% more FPS as soon as you disabled game guard? Did the startup time go down as well?

[Liseda]

Originally Posted by Silverveign

win7 x64 practically disables GG for you. When you load the game just alt tab back out and close the gg process. Enjoy the full use of your computer again.

Or google fyyre and just disable it period. (It's what I had to do for my machine at the office.)

Yeah, hooray for win7 x64!

[Abedeus]

Originally Posted by scarr

Seriously? No exageration? You gained 30% more FPS as soon as you disabled game guard? Did the startup time go down as well?

Well, maybe not 30% per se, but look here:

Without GameGuard, constant 50-60 FPS at Maximum 1680x1050 and even with x2-4AA. Except for the main cities, like Sanctum, obviously.


With GameGuard, I had to set my PC to Medium everything, no vertical sync, no AA and I still rarely have 55+ FPS.

[Zorb]

ncsoft doesn't care what you think or i think or thousands of others..they've told us already its not being removed..they were polite about it...

our only choice now is to not support this product by not purchasing it.

time to move on.

[Linren]

If some of these people that vote for Gameguard to be removed all together, I would like to see them offer actual solutions.

Are you going to make a free security program better than GG and give it to NCsoft for free? If so, then I bet they are willing.

Are you going to pay for the cost to remove GG from their games and also pay the settlement fee for NCsoft? I am sure they would be delighted to do it if that was the case.

Even if NCsoft just decide to not use any security software, Aion will turn into a cheat fest filled with bots and hacks even more.

Even if a new security software is installed, people will still attempt to circumvent it, which make this whole thing again pointless except NCsoft would have spent a lot more money just to end up with the same problems.

Lets not forget an independent / commercial software are still largely excluded by other software such as Anti-virus detection list, so now you end up with another GG under a different name and maybe slightly different programming.

I do agree maybe GG should be removed if they can't solve its issues, but at the same time, I see nothing constructive going on. I know I can't offer them a very good solution nor come up with a half-decent one, which is why I simply wait and see.

[Kvinna]

Please do not post ways to disable Gameguard.

[BlackArtist]

Even if NCsoft just decide to not use any security software, Aion will turn into a cheat fest filled with bots and hacks even more

but the bots get around GG, they always have done, just look at Lineage II.

if the GM's remain active in-game, check logs of those char reported via petitions (I take it Aion has some form of petition system) that should be enough to stop bots. If the bot users know that GM's are taking the issues seriously they just won't bot.

Lineage II is a classic example, before a major update, there is usually a ban hammer, which results in two things, 1) The greedy botters who take their chances usually get caught and banned, 2) The EXP botters stop botting until its safe(ish) to resume. The point is, GM interaction is better than any external software.

BTW I have no gripe with GG, never had any issues with it, but then I do realise its a redundant piece of kit.

[Landar486]

maybe we should be yelling at the people at gameguard instead of ncsoft?
after all, all they're doing is using a flawed product on a great one. i mean, as soon as a lot of people see the word gameguard, it turns them off before even looking at the game.

...not very good for profits.

so yell at the gameguard company. ...but also yell at ncsoft, but a little less.

[Silverveign]

Originally Posted by kvinna

Please do not post ways to disable Gameguard.

Is using task manager that is built in to your OS some how bad?

I don't mean to sound rude but disabling GG is a good thing and should be posted on the front page of the site. (With a color coded walk through and animations and stuff.)

[Frode789]

Originally Posted by Liseda

Yeah, hooray for win7 x64!

Yupp I just love the sight when my CPU goes down from 100% load to 40%

[Zorb]

They've made their decision, this was posted by Ayase earlier today:

"I believe we've been clear when letting you know how adamant we are to make Aion as good as we can. We have had and still have a couple of issues with GameGuard, but our work to improve the way this software functions in Aion and to eliminate problems never stops. We are currently working to push out updates to hopefully resolve some of the issues we've seen some of you guys are having

Our entire team is very aware of what many of you think of GameGuard, and I hope that you understand we do what we can to improve the situation, because we don't want anyone to be obstructed from playing Aion the way it's meant to be played.

We're constantly reading and monitoring the community for concerns and are always taking them in, of that you can be assured."
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this was posted in the big thread..i would of posted it in my thread but for some reason, they closed it.