The Hacker Project - a free online game

*chuckles* Why am I not surprised that you disagree with me, MasterShake? There are a few possibilities: A) You're a very argumentative person, and any time you see my name you go into a white-hot rage and feel the need to disagree. B) It just so happens that we are polar opposites on every issue known to man. C) You are using every bug, exploit, and workaround I can possibly think of, and are actually defending your own best interests while attacking the interests of the rest of the game (and yes, that includes me).

The talk about IP change was essentially a typo on my part, which was fixed long before you even looked at this thread - it's a moot point. The fact that you're doing it in bulk IS the issue - not because it records IPs, but because the passwords are changing as well. Doing anything en masse costs AP - that was the reason for AP in the first place. Still, you can install ~40 of them every day (including the cost of upload) - that means you can reset an additional 40 passwords every day - within a week you could be resetting every secret server password in the game. Let's be conservative in our estimates, shall we? Only 5 people have access to each server. That means that every time you spend 0 AP resetting the password, you cost 5 people 30 AP, or 150 AP total. Every day you can cost an additional 6000 AP just so people can keep playing the game. Seeing the issue yet? It's more an a diversion, it's a bug. Remote password change was implemented before the AP system, and with all our other gripes I'm sure it fell between the cracks.

And installing a sniffer on yourself isn't actually a unique idea - it was discussed (and posted) nearly a week ago on the SGP forums in the "currently legal exploits section." Changing a password costs 30AP, but this gets you around that cost - nearly the textbook definition of a bug, wouldn't you say? (of course you won't. It was a rhetorical question.)

Thank you Tiak, that's correct. I did mention changing passwords as often as changing IP, but I've typed IP change so much it's become a force of habit. Fortunately, people aren't resetting IPs on public and secret servers every day, but it's still a nuisance that they're changing passwords daily without penalty. It doesn't make sense that it's free to do to others, but costs 30 to do it to yourself.

As I remember, the original point of the remote pass change was for inactive player accounts. While I see how resetting public/secret passwords could be useful in covering up your trail, not only is it rather pointless with IP change, but it seems like an abuse of the AP system when you can reset a password every day for a one-time cost of 27AP (which also tracks everyone's connections).

Now I know it costs AP to install a sniffer daemon, but not very much - I think that the remote password change should cost AP... at LEAST as much as it costs to reset your own password. As it is, someone could install sniffer daemons on his/herself and reset their password for free. There are those who are just resetting IP passwords in bulk - and it costs them nothing, and they can do it day after day. Thoughts?

EDIT: changed IP to password in a few places.

Thanks for thinking up new ideas termul, but I don't think this would fix the issue - most players who abuse the way IP change is always have an IP change queued up, so the time it takes is somewhat irrelevant.

Nope, afaik encryption has always been useless.

Agreed

Allowing us to choose hpd or AP would make me much more inclined to vote.

Elaborate please.

*claws at Raistlin's throat* No I'm not!

I know Shake isn't the only one - hell, with the current system, everyone should be disinfecting virii. It's half less than as expensive as installing them, and gives you more money. And yes, the system could be worse than it is now.

Thank you for being thoughtful about this instead of just spewing knee-jerk reactions that suit your own best interests Maybe the solution is in somehow allowing people to speed up processes? 53 hours for a disinfect is too long. 240 hours for a delete process is way too long.

It's not just disinfects that are being abused, though I do see that most often - smart players switch IP with long deletes or even when hacking a powerful opponent because there's no repercussions. Some players with limited bandwidth even switch IP when uploading virii so the process won't be stopped. It's not just disinfects/virus break that's being abused - it's the very core of the game. Nothing has ANY repercussions because no one can ever find you. Without the ability to track an opponent, the game really is pointless.

MasterShake, I heard that you quit.

Since you're commonly recognized as one of the top exploiters of this "feature," I'm not surprised that the IP change/disinfecting of my virii coincides with your return to the forums. Oh well.

With the option, it just turns into a "who starts the disinfect first." The fact is that they can't be protected by encryption or hide, so why waste AP?

No, siremi is what keeps IP change available. What's the point in a game where your software doesn't matter? It invalidates the entire point of this game. The way SGP got ahead was banding together - instead of complaining, maybe you should try to do the same thing?
 
It's not.
1 - the top players don't "fear" people getting away. This is a game. When an unrealistic, unbalancing "feature" is widely exploited, players who care about the game try to do something about it. 2 - What's the point of a game about hacking where you can't exact revenge when people screw with you? To enlist my help, I'm going to use *drumroll* the dictionary. What exactly, is justice? "the administering of deserved punishment or reward" Oh! Like when someone tries to take something from you, and you stop them? Nice. MS, I'd love to live in a world of your kind of justice - whoever fires the first bullet gets away with the murder.

Alright, let me try again; currently, one player is disinfecting around 12 of my fileshare virii, worth a total of around 216K HPD. Those processes alone use 24K CPU and 960 megs of RAM. Is this a new or lower player? Obviously not. Fix the stupid bug already. It's not a feature, it's a flaw. It doesn't protect low players, it protects the guerilla tactics of medium-high players (and now that most of SGP is using it as well, the high players). These medium and high players can abuse the advantages of IP change with 50x as many processes running as the true low players (who can't afford to change IP anyways). For the life of me, I can't understand why you think this is a good thing.

ADD:
And before you say "But the AP cost balances it!" the total for this little skirmish is 1200AP - less than one day's AP - for over 200K HPD. Nice, isn't it? I wish I always got returns like that on my virii.

We have more than those two options - you're just not willing to consider them. There is option #3, which is what this entire thread has been about - "changing ip's kills certain process's." You're convinced that this protects the "lower" players. Please, give me a profile of the "lower" players? What does their computer look like? How much money do they donate, and how many hours per day do they play? Feel free to leave it the way it is; I'm convinced that's what's going to happen anyways. But, for as long as this game manages to retain my interest (the time is decreasing quickly as issues such as this are labeled features. This is worse than Microsoft - "Those blue screens ensure that people reboot their computer, which is good for it!"), I'll argue for what I see as the good of the game.

If people can't always hide by changing their IP, will processes get shut down? Definitely. It's that balance that attracted me to this game in the first place - the fact that everything had a counter. Right now, I've legitimately gotten myself into a position of power - I worked hard for it. Regardless of the fact that I've played by every rule, the rules are constantly changing (and I believe they will KEEP changing until either the top 6 quit, or everyone else catches up). Every game has winners, and every game has losers. If everyone is a winner, then they're all losers too - we all started and fought on an equal playing field. I started later than anyone else in the top 10, and later than most in the top 30. I personally have excel spreadsheets that tell me, to the credit, where I'll be in 3 days, a week, and a month. Guess what? I'm almost exactly where I predicted I would be a month ago. How many of the "lower" players have the same predictive capabilities? How many of them have an exact plan that says where their research will be in a week, how many servers will be infected, and what's the best AP/hpd ratio? I'd warrant a guess that none of them do - that's why they're lower players. Is it a coincidence that I am where I am? No. Has IP change hurt me? A bit, but not much. IMO, is it a oversight that defeats the ENTIRE purpose of this game? Yes. Who will play a hacking game where you always get away with murder? Leave the game the way it is, and find out.

GAH! You realize that it's been nearly two weeks since I traced a remote disinfect trail back to a legit IP? That hasn't stopped. No offense intended, but I think you're the only person who doesn't acknowledge this as an issue. Do you actually play this game or just code it? I understand why you wouldn't play the game, it does make sense... but ultimately, you make money on this game because we're happy to be here and spend that money. If the unanimous cry is "this is a problem!" why are you so hesitant to fix it? The happier we are, the more money you get.

Couple of thoughts: first off, I don't think deleter should go up in speed exponentially - nothing else in the game does. I also think it should be capped by the version of what it's deleting; this doesn't make any sense in real life, but it does in game. Deleting a v.2 file with a v5 deleter would be instant, or close to it. For deletes to be (somewhat) fair, the target should have at least a small chance of stopping it. A formula similar to ap cost for installing virii could be used. Max deleter version = target file version + target file size / 10000 (.1*gigs)

This is a step in the right direction, but you do realize that means that a version .v47 password crack can overload the current highest highest protect version (3.742). What you're saying is essentially that you'd like people do do 8x as much research on defense as protection. Combine that with it costing AP to research and it's effectively impossible to defend yourself. That may have been your point though.

As a general rule, those with cpu/mem enough to OC more than 25x have the software that they don't have to, but as it stands I'll be able to crack passwords until the versions are ~25.

ADD:
On a related note, why can't we overload protections or other files? Since the cpu/mem cost increases much faster than it would if you researched it, it all balances out.

no nos - it isn't easier. I just posted that it'll take 213 hours, didn't I? It goes 10x faster ONLY for your delete processes on your own gateway. Everywhere else, it's the same speed. I don't know if there really is a solution to this actually. If delete is researchable, I'd research it to v10+ and then I could delete anyone's stuff almost instantly. it'd be a nightmare. On the other hand, delete lengths are out of hand on large files. Pretty much everything I have is 1 gig+... it takes forever to clear, even with 10x speed.

Also, instead of calling your threads "idea" or "revamp" - why not say what the topic is actually about? Like "Research Delete" or "I want gold features"