[MUD-Dev] TECH: Trusting Network Clients

[Freeman]

From: Crosbie Fitch
> From: Nicolai Hansen

>> I would never trust any client to keep control of game sensitive
>> things.  It WILL be hacked, and someone WILL give themselves
>> unlimited hitpoints :)
 
> Can we re-examine this dogma before it gets too entrenched?

Too late!
 
> What proportion of players don't want to play by the rules, and
> would cheat given half a chance?

It's a small number, but sufficient.

> If the majority of players are cheaters, does this imply something
> about players in general, or something about the particular game?

IMO, it's not even close to being a majority of the players.  It
doesn't need to be, though.  Just a handful will do.

> If the majority of players aren't cheaters, doesn't this then
> imply that the client is not necessarily in the hands of the
> enemy?  The enemy is not the 'fair player', but the reprobate, the
> bitter, the immature, the cheater, etc.

It doesn't matter if thousands upon thousands of people *don't*
break windows.  As soon as one of them does it, then the window is
broken.  Since there's no way to pre-determine who might be a
window-breaker: if you don't want broken windows then you can't
allow *any* of the players to break windows.  Including the majority
of players who wouldn't have broken the windows anyway.
 
> Is there a way of creating a game (in the holistic sense) such
> that an extreme majority (90%) of players are fully inclined
> towards fair play, despite opportunities to cheat?

I think 90% of the players are fully inclined towards fairplay 90%
of time already.

> Just like the problem of creating a housing estate where an
> extreme majority of its residents are disinclined to vandalise it,
> and even actively seek out and reprimand vandals rather than
> silently tolerate them?

Well now, I think that's a pretty good case-in-point: Even in the
worst neighborhoods I expect that the vast majority of residents
don't vandalize their homes and dislike it when others do.  And
yet...
 
> I'm wondering if all this talk of MMOG community building isn't
> simply a better way of exploiting the players from a profit based
> motive. If a community was truly involved in the game, even to the
> extent that the community owned the game, then I suspect there'd
> be far greater respect for fair play. How much do you think that
> players feel peeved that their work in terms of play and
> socialising (role play, guilding, etc.) is simply being sold back
> to them, i.e. they're not just being sold the infrastructure and
> environment?

The more vested the players are in the gameworld, the greater the
value of griefplay in that world.

If no one much cares about the windows, then you'd have to bust an
awful lot of them in order to really get anyone upset about it.  But
if most of the players feel a sense of ownership, mutual respect,
investment in the world in general, then suddenly busting windows
becomes a whole lot more fun.

I imagine players in that environment will *demand* more strict
controls: "Stop allowing us to break windows".
 
> If you can create a game in which at least 90% of players quickly
> desire, and come to cherish their identity, then you have a game
> in which the client is not in the hands of the enemy. You have a
> game with a manageable amount of cheating. You can harness a tenth
> of the power of all of the clients to fully police them all.

I'd be interesting in hearing more about what sort of implementation
you're talking about here.

I see it as sort of like the airline industry: They don't know who
the terrorists are, so they search *all* the luggage.  If they could
just search the terrorist's luggage and leave everyone else alone,
they'd do that.  But they can't.  And there's no way to make it so
that the good people's luggage keeps an eye out for the bad people's
luggage, because luggage doesn't have eyes.  Ok, so that analogy
broke-down.

But anyway, I don't understand the concept of clients policing other
clients.  Since all of the clients communicate with one another via
the server, why wouldn't you just put the policing on the server?
 
> I find it difficult to believe that of the people who spend so
> much of their time playing a game that it's only a few who believe
> in fair play.

Me too.
 
> The player is not the enemy!

No, the player isn't.  But "Never trust the client" - "The client is
in the hands of the enemy." is the way the Law is phrased.  That
doesn't say, and doesn't mean, that the players are the enemy.  It
means that the enemy has access to everything that the players do.

_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev