Why no server protection of any kind?

This has been suggested many times but it seems to be one big ignored factor. Why is there no server protection by default with the game?

As it stands right now, I can join any server, open cheat engine, and give myself an infinite stack of fuel and ore and infinite any item, infinite health, infinite energy, and do anything that cheat engine would allow (A memory editing tool) because the server trusts everything the client sends absolutely and totally.

Or, I can use a mod, that makes my character invulnerable, and gives me items no one else has. I can even add a mod that makes musical instruments craftable and no one would know because I could simply say I found the instrument while mining one day.

The servers need to stop trusting clients. Verify everything. No super jump mods/hacks, no infinite health mods/hacks, no invisibility hacks, no custom recipe mods that let you craft items that you normally have to find.

Seriously, this is a problem, there aren't even /ban commands so I can't get rid of bad people. I had someone come into my server earlier who could turn invisible and had some sort of wings and had a gun that shot giant red clouds or shot lava out at me. The server should also detect if the player has installed the proper mods, so you can't join if you don't have the required mods.

One final thing is a server should require a new character or at least store a player's character locally on it's own side, so if you join with a character who has a ton of stuff, you'll be given a server side character with the same looks as yours but a new shipworld and a new inventory with new everything (except your character's actual default appearance) that's stored serverside only (this would allow a player to use the same character on multiple servers without having to make a new character for each server as each one would have seperate inventory).

So why does it seem like the devs want to leave out cheat / mod protection till the last thing? I mean I've posted an idea for server protection, so have many others. Why is it that there doesn't appear to be anything planned for it? I for one think griefer / cheater protection should be a top priority thing. This was somewhat ideas, but all these were posted in the past anyway most likely so it's just a discussion on, why haven't devs added any of this in yet.

 

Or you could just play only with people you trust. Boom problem solved

 

So your idea is to never play with anyone ever again because the game shouldn't have any protection at all. What's the point of a server if all you're going to do is play with one person? Or 2 people. What happens when you find out one of them is cheating and ruining it and you can't stop it because there's no server protection?

 

Server protection isn't a priority for the developers. Also if you don't trust your friends to play fair then I got bad news for you.

 

My idea is to not play this game expecting it to be like an MMO. AT this stage of the game play with people you trust if you don't want unpleasant happenings. Later down the line if it becomes possible to secure the servers, then you can play with the wild unknown. Or wait for someone to make Tshock for Starbound. One of the two.

 

Because it's an early beta.

 

Early beta or not, without multiplayer this game would go nowhere, so it's actually quite an important factor that deserves attention.

I'll wait for the community to come up with some solutions though, which will inevitably happen sooner or later (look at minecraft for example).

It may sound silly, but the ability for players to cheat is something that makes the online gameplay a lot less interesting than it could be. There's not much of a competitive element of gameplay on servers, so you'll rarely see players trade for example (though it still happens from time to time).

Again, this issue might be solved once the clients can download mods from the servers, which will allow servers to customize in such a way that people would need to interact more with each other besides for playing together. That, and moving more stuff over to the server (such as inventory management and/or only being able to join with a fresh char).

 

I have played last night with two of my friends and I had a blast doing it. The multiplayer is fine for its current early state.

 

It's fine for a week or two, after that it becomes less interesting. Updates roll out quickly though, to keep it interesting enough for everybody to try playing it again.

I was more or less talking about long term (several months) replay-ability, but I guess that'll become better later on.

 

Server protection is near pointless until server side profiles and clean character forcing is implemented. The most it would achieve right now is stopping people from giving themselves 9999 health and the like, as it's entirely possible to save edit while not on a server, and then join the server with the inventory modded character.

 

Every time i see a server protection thread it's always about people cheating or giving themselves custom recipes but nobody ever mentions the griefers the people who turn invisible and shoot meteors and destroy pre made spawn worlds that people like to hang out in these are the people destroying multi player not the few people who cheat because in the end the ones who cheat with custom recipes are either builders or people who want to rush the game either way they don't have an impact on other players in the other hand griefers the real issue with MP destroy and kill everything and lag the entire server until it crashes how do people not even see that as an issue?

 

Because that is once again solved by only playing with people you know and trust. It seriously comes down to that.

 

You're joking right?

Did you even try to read his post?

Maybe it's not an issue for YOU, but it surely is a huge issue on public servers in general, sometimes making it impossible for new players to start out because spawn is a deathhole.

 

Exactly. Public servers at this point in time are a risk that you accept to take at this point. Starbound is not an MMO so expecting that kind of security from that start will only lead you to disappointment. The priority of the multiplayer at this point was making sure you could play with your FRIENDS and have a good experience. And in that regard it is a resounding success.

 

I agree multiplayer is a HUGE side of this game, and the most neglected by the developers at this moment.
It's incredible Exploitable, trusting clients (and the plans to still be client-side on the future), be able to crash clients/servers, to a point it can even damage the hardware of players on the area the X exploit is performed....

I understand is Beta, but after see bart saying that at the end the server will still be exploitable:
"There's not much i can do about it, we will add this and that but at the end the game will still be client-side", it's for me like the team is giving up already on this issue and leaving the fixes for Modders create new server software.

I can bet Starbound Servers will see the same fate as Terraria to achieve minimum stability: 3rd party software.
At this moment there is modders who did on 1 week, what certainly we won't see supported officially for months.

 

Who said that? I want a quote... Unless you're making things up?

Did the devs state this anywhere? If they did, I'm done.

 

No that solves nothing and that answer is honestly getting old the point of multi player is to play with multiple people duhh?? Sure you can't trust everyone but there should still be minor protection but that aside lets say you do go to another planet with people you trust away from spawn ok one problem solves but griefers can still spawn meteors on spawn world or any world for that matter and lag the entire server until nobody can play pretty much an in game dos attack. I know the game is beta but honestly the MP is a huge part and it's annoying a lot of server owners who pay good money to run a server when a simple fix can be done by the devs to solve minor issues like invisible players not being able to be detected and stuff like that.

 

And how do you know that fix is simple? I'm pretty sure Bart is not ignoring the issue at hand just because he's lazy >_>

 

I say it's simple because the devs are not idiots and i know for them something like fixing invisible people shouldn't be an issue after they produced such a great game.

And i know they have a lot on their plate but they should release tiny hot fixes for mp just to solve minor grief problems if we can see invisible people we can ban them simple as that.


Idea : Make it so if you are invisible you can't interact with anything destroy anything kill anyone. Make explosions not kill players that aren't flagged for pvp i'm sure that can't be so hard to fix for game devs... What else how about a system that detects projectiles if you shoot to many at a certain time / speed you crash that can easily be done without having to add much security to the game everything else we have already when it comes to kicking and banning people we just need ways to catch the invisible people mainly.

 

You don't need a quote, MMOs are pretty much 100% Server Side, all character data and whatnot are stored on their end, not yours. A game with a single player aspect, especially when it's all stored locally, is not an MMO. Never will be.