http://www.joystiq.com/2010/09/03/call-of-duty-black-ops-multiplayer-takes-aim-at-cheaters/...Treyarch is less worried about carving off and isolating one particular group of players: cheaters. Watching the team at Infinity Ward struggle with Modern Warfare 2's bizarre glitches and griefers, Vonderhaar said, "There's a whole layer where those exploits come from that you have to move down deeper into the code so that they're not as forefront." Some of what cheaters exploit is actually some of the "same tools that game designers use to help balance the game," we learned. It's left high-level and gets exposed. Part of Treyarch's strategy is simple: "push those things deeper and put them behind the wall, and that will take care of a lot of [the glitches] right away."
Another tool in the Treyarch anti-cheating toolbox: The new Theater mode. Combining the game's reporting structure with the ubiquitous game-saving structure gives Treyarch -- and specifically Treyarch's new full-time employee tasked with looking at the reports -- the ability to investigate purported cheating through the eyes of the cheater. If it's a bug, the team can learn how to reproduce it and, as a result, fix it. If a player is abusing a bug, then they can also take punitive measures. The end result of both courses of action should be the same: a more reliable experience for those of you who don't cheat.
In fact, Theater "started as a bug tool," Vonderhaar said. A funny bug was being sent around the office -- specifically, a guy's face was "stretched out and distorted"– and the team loved it and thought, "We have to share this with people. This is too good. We cannot hold this as a bug tool. This is something we can give to people to use." And so they did!
The Theater provides players with six slots to store clips and screenshots to share with friends. While Vonderhaar said, "I'm sure the business people are kicking around various ideas" for more slots, "the six slots you see on the floor, that's what comes with the game." Curiously, the stations we saw at the event listed 18 slots in some areas and just the six in others.
Sounds awesome to me, a way to see exactly what the cheaters did, no more having to catch them in the act!
September 04, 2010, 03:41:19 PM
