Exploiting Online Multiplayer
Among the myriad multiplayer games introduced to consoles over the last few years, my all-time favorite has been Call of Duty 4, (Halo 3 being a close 2nd). Since it released 4 years ago during the 2007 holiday season I have logged 28 days of playtime, killed 57 thousand enemies, and experienced numerous thousands of wins and losses. Call of Duty 4 fueled an addiction to online shooters in myself that I have had a hard time breaking. Only great single-player adventures provided by games like Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and Oblivion persuade me from a great online session of gaming. Call of Duty 4’s ingenious and addictive prestige system had me playing for hours every day. I was ranking up every couple games, unlocking guns and perks along the way, only to start over and do it all again 10 more times. While recent Call of Duty iterations have piled on a dauntingly expansive amount of guns, attachments, perks and challenges, Call of Duty 4 had a class system that always seemed just enough to keep you coming back for more. Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer experience was top-notch, and it even eclipsed Halo 3 as the most-played Xbox Live title for many consecutive weeks back in it’s prime. But it did have it’s flaws. Boosting 1v1’s with friends for the luxury of new camouflages for your guns or a few experience points from completed challenges was without a doubt the worst of the bunch. The privilege of having a golden gun, (acquired by achieving the X amount of headshot’s for each weapon class) wasn’t much of an accomplishment after long, because everyone who wasn’t touting a golden gun was accusing others of boosting. Other notable exploits were the leaderboard hacks, where the top 2000 or so players across the score, kills, and wins leaderboards were named variations of “COD4HACKS” or “Worldmodzcom.” There were even glitches that allowed people to get out of the maps boundaries, or acquire perks that would normally take 40 more rank-ups to use. These glitches and exploits were annoying, but not by any means a justification to stop playing the oh-so addictive game. I continued playing regularly, even after the release of Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops (also plagued with exploits.) However, the current multiplayer experience has changed drastically from it’s golden years. Nowadays, upon entering a game, the first thing you’ll usually notice is a neon-colored wall of text scrolling in the upper-right corner, spamming everyone in the game with a message like “JOIN CODMODZ . COM FOR FREE HACKS.” This message is annoying, yes, but it obviously isn’t what has broken the gameplay experience for myself and others. The annoying display up top is an indicator, a warning to some, of cheaters present in the game. The cheaters will often ruin the experience by spawning in areas of the map that give them a tactical and unfair advantage (e.g. on top of otherwise unreachable buildings, or even just right behind your spawn.) They can make the game’s speed 300% of the default, allow semi-automatic weapons shoot as if they were automatic, (making noob-tubes that much more infuriating,) they can teleport to other pre-determined areas of the map at will, often to evade certain-death situations, and to top it off, they often have a constant upper-hand courtesy of a radar that doesn’t ever go away. Rage quitting, whining, and foul language ensues. Other games have fallen prey to online scum as well. Halo 3 and Halo: Reach (among others) are well-known for host-booting, a process that can kick players from the game. The technical term is a DDoS attack, where someone uses a program to flood another person’s internet with thousands of useless packets of information, ultimately resulting in a poor connection (at best) and a complete loss of connection (at worst.) If you think this sounds like a fun thing to do, I would refrain. It is a federal offense and punishment would likely be severe, although, I’m unaware of whether or not the law is enforced to it’s potential. Personally, I would love to see more security in today’s online games. It doesn’t seem like too much hassle to update or patch a game once in a while if your game is exploited, especially to the degree of Call of Duty 4, Call of Duty World at War, etc. I think that developers should put a few more resources towards the security of the games that people enjoy right now, rather that using all resources for releasing their next iteration every November. I know people are selfish by nature, but consumer happiness should be a top priority, or those who have been ignored may not be customers in the future. It’s sad to think that I will probably never play my favorite online game the same way again. But when you can no longer play a game the way it was intended to be played, many people feel there is no choice but to put the disc back in it’s case for good.
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bradtramel posted this
