Razgriz-Specter
Member
My friend made one himself back in the R6V1 days just to see what the fuss was all about.
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Want an advantage in your online games? Get a Lag Switch
- Thread starter scytheavatar
- Start date
zerokoolpsx
Member
That is cheap. Lag them to get kills. Come on.
The really sad thing is that this would be incredibly easy to detect. All you have to do is ping the default gateway IP (which 99% of the time will be the router). Then, if a lag spike occurs, increase the frequency of the gateway IP pings. If the pings also timeout, show an error notification (such as "lost network connectivity, check your cables"). Log the number of kills that occur while the error is displayed. When the lag spike ends, send a notification to the master game servers about the "lag spike" and the number of kills performed during the spike.
From there, it's simple statistics to catch cheaters and ban them.
From there, it's simple statistics to catch cheaters and ban them.
Razgriz-Specter
Member
whatever it was people were using on Socom Confrontation was the worst thing ever.
They could freeze your system, disconnect you from your Internet, etc.
Now that was crazy.
They could freeze your system, disconnect you from your Internet, etc.
Now that was crazy.
Shmuely Bully
Member
People use them. There are some games where everything is great EXCEPT when you're about to take out one guy and then things freeze until you're dead.
I wouldn't mind these being made illegal: no joke.
I wouldn't mind these being made illegal: no joke.
For some players lag spikes aren't terribly uncommon depending on how much your ISP sucks. It's really not possible to figure out a legit spike versus a non-legit one without actual gameplay accounting heuristics that are non-trivial. Even one false positive ban is unacceptable.
Sword Of Doom
Member
Some people take shit way too Seriously
Sword Of Doom
Member
Incredibly easy huh
I remember the horror and this stupid player who is known for doing this shit and was not even banned by Konami even though a lot of players already reported him/her.
Who said ban?
Just put them in their own lag/latancy hell by flagging them and throwing them I to a high latency pool for x hours.
cr_blah_blah
Member
It's Halo 2 all over again
is this 2006/08?
this isnt wide spread issue anymore
i have very rarely seen this happen since the GOW1/2 days, 90% of the time players who cry and yell LAG SWITCH!!! dont really know the truth.
mostly its just regular bullet lag. bad net code registry and most probable lack of own skill.
plus, reporting/recording gameplay has pretty much nullified lag switching, everyone has a DVR biilt in nowdays, and reported goes along way to.
this isnt wide spread issue anymore
i have very rarely seen this happen since the GOW1/2 days, 90% of the time players who cry and yell LAG SWITCH!!! dont really know the truth.
mostly its just regular bullet lag. bad net code registry and most probable lack of own skill.
plus, reporting/recording gameplay has pretty much nullified lag switching, everyone has a DVR biilt in nowdays, and reported goes along way to.
captainraincoat
Banned
Some people dont know how these work
If you want to see what one looks like from the host perspective see here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE-fkYAslYQ
if you are on the receiving end you will notice your game jumping frames every so often or a slight rubber banding effect...if you view the match replay it becomes really obvious someone is using one
you basically get host and when you see an enemy player hold down the switch..aim your gun and shoot and let go of the switch...the netcode will register the hit and you will get the kill
Black ops 1 was the last game i used to see a fair amount of lag switches in the game but i think they did a number of background stuff with black ops 2 and mw3 which will migrate the host at the first signs of lag in a game...if you held down the switch too long you would lose connection completely
games like BF4 use dedicated servers and the netcode does not work to the advantage of the lagger....the cod series does..it links back to its roots with the Quake engine where people used to lag switch in games of quake 3 arena
This is why dedicated servers are a good thing...weeds out little shits that do this
If you want to see what one looks like from the host perspective see here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE-fkYAslYQ
if you are on the receiving end you will notice your game jumping frames every so often or a slight rubber banding effect...if you view the match replay it becomes really obvious someone is using one
you basically get host and when you see an enemy player hold down the switch..aim your gun and shoot and let go of the switch...the netcode will register the hit and you will get the kill
Black ops 1 was the last game i used to see a fair amount of lag switches in the game but i think they did a number of background stuff with black ops 2 and mw3 which will migrate the host at the first signs of lag in a game...if you held down the switch too long you would lose connection completely
games like BF4 use dedicated servers and the netcode does not work to the advantage of the lagger....the cod series does..it links back to its roots with the Quake engine where people used to lag switch in games of quake 3 arena
This is why dedicated servers are a good thing...weeds out little shits that do this
Freakinchair
Member
Halo 2 Competitive online multi was completely ruined by this shit. The second you hit rank ~40/50 every single match had either someone using a modded console or the forced host was using a lag switch.
I suppose I'm not competitive enough to understand why someone would want to win so badly as to resort to this. You're not winning the game. You're winning some game you made up with your own rules. You're that kid who insisted you were never shot and everyone else was when you played soldier.
Photolysis
Banned
It's not as easy as you'd think, and you'd be surprised at what people can figure out (and what others can do if they follow the right instructions). Use a PC as a router, control the switch on there, bam, gateway checks defeated.
I suggested a similar solution back in the day during Halo 2. Can't speak for any other console/platform, but games on the original Xbox had no way to look at the network topology since it wasn't possible to generate ICMP packets though the API. Maybe later consoles expanded on that, I've no idea. I wouldn't be too surprised if they limited that stuff for security reasons though.
And how do you define a lag spike? 100% packet loss? What if I drop packet loss to 90%? Or artificially increase latency without terminating the connection? How long does it have to last for? If you use badly chosen metrics, you can easily take out innocent players which is not acceptable. If you want to reduce the false positives, you need a lot of statistical data, which takes time.
Long story short, not as easy as it might seem.
BurnOutBrighter
Banned
Well there's another good reason to use dedicated servers.
BruiserBear
Banned
I have a hard time believing these really work. I play a lot of COD and I rarely see someone noticeably lagging, and it's hard to recall a person who was lagging playing well.
If the host is lag switching, the symptom won't be that the host is lagging around and playing well. The symptom will be that EVERYTHING is not working right.
The whole idea is that the game simulation on client machines is, at regular updates, forced to conform to what the host's simulation is doing. That's how this sort of networking works. If the host decides to switch everyone out for a few seconds to go on a rampage? The host can then go killing people without them able to react (they won't even know they're being killed until after it happens, because the host machine isn't telling the client machines anything about anything that's happening anywhere during the lag switch).
It's pretty simple stuff, really.
MemoryHumanity
Member
Really surprised you're only just hearing about lag switches, OP. Shit's been going on for years.
mugoldeneagle03
Member
Lag switches. RIP Socom.
Oh the bitter sweet memories.....from ps2 subsistence to metal gear online 2. When there weren't any hackers, lag switches, or massive lag mgo was absolutely a blast. To bad that was fucking rare..
"I didn't really understand this product until I bought it for my son. My son loves it, very simple to use. Item is durable and really couldn't be higher quality for the price. Great birthday or Christmas gift for that gamer in your life. Easy to hook up and you just use it when you want to. Very happy"
lol
lol
I'm still bitter about losing capture the flag matches in Halo 2 over this. You knew from five seconds in when you got the standby screen that you were totally fucked. Only to finally be brought back into the game as they're about to score the final flag, and two of them are tea bagging your corpse.
I can't believe this is still a thing. I figured after the Halo 2 fiasco devs got their shit together and implemented anti lagswitching programs. I haven't experienced anything like that since then, not even in CoD. Though it seems to work in CoD going by the video captainraincoat posted.
Tracking it would be simple, though I don't know much about this stuff. One method could be to track how far the host walks on every console. If he grabs the flag, lag switches, then walks 50m to the other base, when he turns off the lag switch on everyone elses console it would read that he walked 50m instantly. Tracking consistency over all consoles can be applied to kills or capturing a position, whatever the goal of the game is. At that point the game should remove his hosting ability for 24 hours with the message "Unstable connection, hosting privileges revoked 24 Hours" so he knows he's being monitored and switching won't work. For the next 2 weeks the console will be flagged as a potential lag switcher, if he does it again within that time his hosting privileges are removed again for 48 hours, 96 hours, a week etc. If he gets a week ban and does it one more time his hosting ability will be removed permanently. And this isn't even that bad of a punishment. The kid can still play the game just he'll never be host again.
Tracking it would be simple, though I don't know much about this stuff. One method could be to track how far the host walks on every console. If he grabs the flag, lag switches, then walks 50m to the other base, when he turns off the lag switch on everyone elses console it would read that he walked 50m instantly. Tracking consistency over all consoles can be applied to kills or capturing a position, whatever the goal of the game is. At that point the game should remove his hosting ability for 24 hours with the message "Unstable connection, hosting privileges revoked 24 Hours" so he knows he's being monitored and switching won't work. For the next 2 weeks the console will be flagged as a potential lag switcher, if he does it again within that time his hosting privileges are removed again for 48 hours, 96 hours, a week etc. If he gets a week ban and does it one more time his hosting ability will be removed permanently. And this isn't even that bad of a punishment. The kid can still play the game just he'll never be host again.
BibiMaghoo
Member
I assume this is how people with a 300 ping top the board in CSGO. When I have 300 ping, the game is unplayable, yet I see this all the time.
Edit: Urgh.
Edit: Urgh.
turnbuckle
Member
Always a fun time running in to a player who is doing obvious lag switching while playing MLB The Show.
"You know you're raising your kid to be an egotistical, entitled shit head"
"Don u ttell me hao too raze my kid"
GiantEnemyGoomba
Member
Ugh, I hated this in Halo 3. It would be fun for Custom Games, but I wish people wouldn't use it in MM.
Just watched a video of someone doing it...
It's disgusting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKsRCR_Mmy0
It's disgusting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKsRCR_Mmy0
Jimnymebob
Member
I played MGO since mid 2010 and I swear lag switches are the devils work.
The only good thing that came from them was the fact that I used to screw with people (and it generally worked) by spinning round in circles as I was running, like the people who used lag switches, mao, and whatever other nonsense ruined that multiplayer, to throw them off guard, then just stand still and shoot them in the skull.
The only good thing that came from them was the fact that I used to screw with people (and it generally worked) by spinning round in circles as I was running, like the people who used lag switches, mao, and whatever other nonsense ruined that multiplayer, to throw them off guard, then just stand still and shoot them in the skull.