Ship vs Ship (SvS) glitch #649: Infinite Ammo
 

Did quite a bit of SvS tonight, investigating stuff from other conversations here. At one point, was on a war sloop with several other level 40s and a full crew of 9. Going up against one particular enemy war sloop was proving to be problematic.

We were able to clear out four other war sloops and a war frigate or two. But any time we encountered that one war sloop, we were dead.

One thing I noticed, was that I would get ammo when they were spotted, but run out of my 125 shots of fury about 2/3rds of the way through the battle, each time. I'd be using thunder in an effort to cut down on fury use, but still run out.

About the 4th time we were sunk, I noticed that all four enemy cannons had a continuous non-stop stream of fury coming out from before the battle started to long after I ran out...all the way until we sunk (and presumably after that.)

.

On a hunch, a crew mate and I left crew and did the PvP skeleton glitch. 40 seconds into the PvP Team challenge, I sent a PvP challenge to a random person on my friends list. (They never saw the challenge, but I put me into a second match.) 30 seconds after the second match exit screen appeared, I pressed exit and was returned.

I then found the same SvS crew I had been in and got back on the boat. Amazing! 125 rounds of fury. (Should have been 0.) Blam-blam-blam. F2. Shift. Ooooh. 125 rounds of fury again.


At that point, we went and (finally) sunk the glitched enemy ship. (Yes, they also had auto-repair and repair-while-sailing and crew-invincibility, etc. But the extra ammo made the difference.) The same boat came at us again, right away...and was sunk. So it then came at us again and crashed the game for the captain of our ship. When I noticed he was offline, I ran for the wheel - of course, far too late.

.


At least now, I know why they lowered the ammo limit from 175 down to 12. On the same day that they changed the "appearance" of the skeleton glitch. Is this proof positive that the cheating is originating from inside Disney? I'm very disappointed...but perhaps you all will have a different take on it. Still, how much good would it do to report any more glitches found, when each supposed "fix" makes it worse?

Very interesting... and disappointing.

So, when are the glitches being fixed?

You know, Edward, I'd hate to think the Disney developers and programmers put these cheats into the game on purpose. SangrelX made an excellent point yesterday about Beta testing not always finding issues. And even when software goes into production, issues are found. I mean honestly, do you believe that the developers said:

"OK, here's what we're going to do. If we go into a PvP, invite another person to PvP, then hit escape, then go to SvS, find a crew, then hit F2, we'll give the people that figure all of this out unlimited ammo to cheat against the people who pay our salaries!"

I don't know about anyone else, but if I found that to be the case, I would no longer be a paid subscriber, nor would I even play on basic access. I believe that certain sets of code create "ghosts" in the machine that cause these issues and that when found, they will review the code to fix it. Have you sent in the steps to Disney to tell them about this?

- They have been using the undead glitch more and more in ship vs ship since they no longer appear to be undead when they do it - its easier to get away with it!

if you wanna make sure they are using that glitch before you do it to them though just to be fair -- look for a RED Notoriety Number beside their name - thats a DEAD Giveaway that they are using that glitch for unlimited ammo

And Rackat-

I dont remember saying that lol - but I probably did - because it is indeed true - Not all bugs and issues are found during beta testing

in fact even in beta testing SOME bugs and issues that people do find are not even reported it depends on the level of honesty in the person that found them

gotta remember its normal people here that find these bugs and those normal people dont always report em


--- Also just to point something out
The average game has cheat codes, and such left in it because they are codes / methods that were used by programmers to constantly test certain things

im not saying that some of these glitches are left in pirates for that reason just pointing an interesting fact

for example:
lets pretend they left the kingshead glitch on purpose

well this could be because the programmers needed a way to run around kingshead without fear of dying

they could want this for many reasons
1. Check to make sure buildings are done correctly - no wall glitches, map holes etc. (missing clip brushes)

2. make sure the enemies spawn in correct locations and function right when approached

and im sure i can think of other reasons but i gotta run out the door to work lol


-----

of course like I said in this game specificly they have no reason to leave so called Cheats (Bugs or Glitches) in public version of the game - because they have the ability to host a Test Verison too seperatly

not sure about the red number we had them last nite in tormenta but not glitch, it seem there alway red after pvp.

Belief is a funny thing. What some people believe does not match what others believe. Do I think there is a second tier of "salary payers" above the pool of "unlimited access subscribers"? Yes, that I believe. Do I think people can "buy" the cheats somewhere? Yes I believe that too...the "glitches" in use are too prevalent to just be accidental.

Months ago, I sent in bug reports about the skeleton glitch. What actually got fixed was not the "disruption" caused on Tortuga/Abassa, but instead, the only good thing about it - the unusual appearance. At the same time, the ammo limit was irrationally chopped - inflating the need for infinite ammo.

Now, I'm asking the question (and asking it again) in the hopes that someone could provide a plausible explanation. I WANT to believe that there is no sinister motivation behind these things I see.

It only takes ONE time being sunk unfairly by an enemy ship, to get really upset about this. When you are sunk unfairly more than ten times as often as you are sunk fairly, the price of "Dr. Zeppers MC" increases. (C'mon - I was only going into SvS yesterday to check on something else!)

I stick with my assumption that the Disney developers aren't smart enough to actually fix these issues. It's been way to long now that these have been known and nothing's been done about them.

Why do people feel the need to cheat? The game is more fun when you don't. I assume people cheat due to short-guy-complex.

I must side with Rackat, this just is not likely the case at all.

If this was the case, they would be in breach of thier very own contract they have with us as end users. Disney would have a huge class action lawsuit brought against them. I for one would want no less than a refund of ALL subscription fees paid, plus i'd want some compensation for my time. Disney would end up settling and not going to court to lose thier shirts.

Unfortunately I think their attempts at solving some of the problems misfired because they failed to understand the problem. We called it the Skeleton or Undead glitch.. they fixed that, but not the "unlimited ammo if you do the glitch" part. Alot on thier plate, and most screaming for new content. Tough decisions.
Although I want more content badly, i'd prefer they fix the "cheat" glitchs first.

Reference to cheat codes in games, etc was made, and I thought I would make a comment on that. Ok, cheat codes, and performing these glitchs are two different things, and are barely comparable except perhaps for an outcome.

If im the progammer and I can program the code /time (ie an admin command), i could put in /superman godmode or some silly thing and make it happen automatically. I wouldnt bother to put in a cheat code for me that was click here tap this, run over there, do a circle.. (ok getting carried away, but I think you get my point).

I had something odd happen last night during SVS. I was hammering repairing the ship when we got sunk! When I reappeared I was about 5 feet up above deck, sideways, and actually and I mean actually looking thru my characters eyes like a real person. Couldnt see my body but I could see everything else. I asked a guild member to look at me and they said i was up in the air sideways. We ported thinking that would fix it but it didnt. Then I tried tp'ing off Avaricia's island to see if that would fix it! But no!! Had to log off and come back on in order to fix that. Never have had that happen. It was weird and disconcerting. It didnt happen to anyone else on board. I am the glitch queen in both of my guilds but still have never seen this happen. When we sunk I had been hammering away and died that way. I don't know if that is what it was or what. Kani of Spartan Elites

You are welcome to believe that guys. I can't accept your assumptions. I've never met a stupid programmer. They get their jobs by being inordinately clever.

All cheat codes don't have manual equivalents? Let's not get the cart too far in front of the horse. Setting a flag for a certain condition (say invulnerability,) for a certain cheat code would be removed in the first code review. But sneaking in a highly dubious reason for having invulnerability (e.g. first minute after re-spawning) means that the code for the cheat can be left in plain sight.

Leaving a dubious excuse for infinite ammo in the first place, means the code to enable that cheat can also be left in plain day. There is no reason for anyone to assume that in a PvP match, they might have more ammo than they have. Running out of ammo is actually expected. It is a cheat to begin with, for someone to have more ammo than they came with (ever.)

It is a cheat to allow any weapon attack while jumping/off ground. (Not even a flying sergeant.)

It is a cheat to allow invincibility at any time. While re-spawning? Bull-hockey. There is never anything non-glitched nearby re-spawning points.

It is a cheat to allow invisibility at any time.

It is a cheat to modify damage (e.g. inner vs. outer hull) at any time. Damage is damage. Cheater's damage should not be ten times greater than regular player's damage (for 98% of the hits scored.)

Open fire should not exist. 32 times damage is only there for cheaters.

Ramming speed should not exist. That condition should occur on every boat collision (friend or foe) with no "attack" prerequisite.

"Full sail" exists only to allow cheaters to fly around twice as fast with no reasonable limitations in place.

Thunder should be discharged in three separate shots; recombining them in one, enables the triple-damage-thunder glitch. Likewise explosive.

Cutlass sweep, wither and desolation (being non-directional) should not exist. Cannons should not fire in any direction. Realistically, cannons don't turn (5 degrees - maybe.) Broadsides should not hit every enemy in 360 degrees within ten boat lengths.

Healing from NPCs should not exist. Wait, like everyone else.

Tonics should be limited to one per day and be much weaker. At no time should a tonic bring your health above 50%.

Ship salvage should not exist.
Ship repairs at sea should not exist. (What, you cheat so bad you can't find Darby Drydock?)
Quadruple ship repairs quadrupally should not exist.

Abandoning a ship-vs-ship match should forfeit bounty and score to boats that did damage to you (i.e. that caused you to run.) Docking at an island that isn't your team's island should forfeit double your bounty (from your personal gold stash.)


I'm sorry, but you can think what you want. If I were Disney, I'd be really ****ed right now. Not at the game players that love the game, but at the programmer that compromised the game, over and over again.

Should they hire programmers to come in and eliminate these things before it becomes a fiasco? Of course. That would be the easiest approach. Getting it done before 10/31/2008 might be a challenge, but they obviously need to do so before then.

As an aside: I pity the fool that thinks Disney can be challenged in court. Please don't associate my comments with any imaginary legal threat. That just isn't funny at all. The goal of discussing these exploits is to implore Disney to fix them. Well, also to hammer out the details, of what they exactly are.

Why do you keep playing Pirates, Edward?

Well, Edward keeps plays playing because:

a) I do believe tht deep down Edward enjoys the game, hopes for improvements and the overall spirit of being a pirate calls to him. :)

and b) like an ol'geeser sitting on a porch, if he didn't play he couldn't complain LOL :D

You don't want to see those things fixed?

Yes, I do. But I guess I am asking because some posts are leaning toward conspiracy theories.

well - lol he had a long winded post

my comments are random because his post was long and i skim read it

but a few things

1. I have yet to find anywhere selling cheats to this game LOL - I highly doubt you can buy them for it

And I do have membership to several Online MP Cheat Forums
for those who didnt see any posts where this was discussed - I did 7 years worth of security work amongst other things for several games and Anti-cheat softwares (Punkbuster, Punksbusted , didnt do any work with steam/valve though)

So I had to keep up with what was possible and being done on the games we hosted
needless to say people dont often PAY for any cheats because they are usually posted publicly - like in these forums here - some of these glitches can really be called cheats!


2. Disney taking people in court -- Disney is NOT going to waste Time or Money on anyone that they catch using a glitch, cheating, or hacking -- its just not worth the efforts and most cities / states wont even accept a case like this -- Unless the person caught actually caused damage or harm to the physical machines the game is hosted on AKA Crashing the machines, DOS Attacking etc..

Disney would simply Ban the user most likely via IP which is very easy to bypass

also - Who in the world would really wanna do it that badly - I can go into details as to why its a waste of time in this game to try much but its against Policy of these forums so thats end of that conversation


3. Cheat codes / Glitches / bugs whatever you call em - I agree with your post they are indeed things that they know are in game - its right in front of their faces where the code is and how that code works

But whats not there is like another user said "Ghosts in the machine" as he put it
was pretty close to accurate - the definition of that term has changed over history but basically kept the same meaning

Ghosts in the Machine (Random segments of code comming togather to create what could be called the human pyschie (spelling?) which can act on its own free will) basically AI - the definition given in the movie I, Robot is the current defintion of that term in The Programming World

In this game - these segements come togather to create effects that were not meant to be there!! such as invincibility

but disney didnt do this on purpose - its just random mistakes when a user does certain actions the code doesnt work togather properly

I could give more to support this but im not typing that much!

That's what I keep trying to convince myself, but keep failing at. Your "invincibility" example was off, by the way. When a pirate (or mob) re-spawns, it is invincible for a variable amount of time. So, you gave yet another excellent example of where the bug is "right in front." All it then takes, to cheat, is to activate that code. Adding a series of movements to activate it (which can then be simulated when someone types in "/godmode" etc.) can then be spread out over several object's properties. Could that be there for testing purposes? Maybe. Unit-testing code is normally restricted to test servers. Again, I can't convince myself that even one of those "mistakes" would make it through, let alone hundreds that all happen to come together nicely.

Well, whatever. I see more people using the infinite ammo glitch now. For the first time, I've seen French crews using it, not Spanish. So, here is progress, of a sort.

I'm pretty sure this is all it is. Remember that this is a business by one of the leaders in the communications industry. While individual programmers may 'play around' a little (like their characters playing guitars) any actual cheating endangers their business.

Programming a game like this is difficult. We don't know what sort of conflicts are in the program, and obviously the programmers don't either. Fix one thing and that may cause another problem. And this program is certainly proprietary so they only have a handful of programmers that can work on it. As Zeppers said, its a tough decision on where to put your energy.

I'm betting the undead/unlimited-ammo glitch will go away fast. It IS discouraging to get sunk that way.

I didnt give an example of how it worked - so lol it couldnt have been off

in fact what you said - is actually what im thinking happens as well - its a code glitch when user does that bug - the game is tricked into creating unlimited health on their character

and let me clarify what I stated about Developers leaving cheat codes in their games

This applied to both Multiplayer Games and Single Player Games
Cheat codes are often left in games as easter eggs or goodies to be found by the gamers - this is for Single Player Games YES

However in MP Games - Most Companies dont create 2 diff versions of their games 1 for testing and 1 totally clean no testing ability for public use its a waste of time and effort

so they put a switch in -- sv_cheats 1 or 0 (must be called on execution of the server exe this particular switch is a Q3 Engine Example )

this would enable cheats in a MP game (but the server itself has to be run with the switch set to on in order for them to work)

again these are examples of the methods just about every large developing company uses

Disney themselves - im not sure about because there is 2 versions of the Game Client -- a Test Version can be Downloaded - and The Public Normal Version can be Downloaded

So how they are implementing any "Unit testing Code" as you said Edward
I couldnt honestly tell you - but you can bet they do have them

Erm, not too fine a point on it, but you said "In this game - these segements come togather to create effects that were not meant to be there!! such as invincibility" My comment there, was that "invincibility" is an actual game element in normal game mode - any time your pirate lands in jail, it is momentarily invincible. So, to some extent, the code (defective or proper) is there in plain sight. (The object property is probably called "invincibility" in their actual source code. Does it allow unreasonable time durations? Yup. The highly disruptive Kingshead glitch would not exist if there were a five minute timer.)

But that is the least of the SvS glitches. Auto-repair is the worst. Repair-while-sailing is perhaps second. Invincibility is the super-nasty one, but I never see more than one boat on any given server with it (so it is relatively rare.) Invisibility is another particularly nasty one. Infinite ammo, to me, is the bottom of that list.

Did you mean a literal bet, or were you just being figurative? I don't like to bet, but I think it is pretty easy to say that the skeleton/infinite-ammo glitch won't be fixed by 10/31/2008. I guess stakes could be a couple thousand in-game gold pieces?

I do agree that new content vs. glitch disabling is a tough choice. In light of the PLETHORA of new content announced now, it is very understandable that they have not focused on glitches. So much new stuff, it makes more sense for me to just shut up and try to let this thread die quietly.

Ok i see which section you were talking about - I meant that in a general way - not specificly for invincibility that was just the example used

there are many many more bugs in the game caused by users actions and code improperly working togather that create effects other then Invincibility

and your 100% Correct invincibility is indeed part of the code for this game and it also has a timer thats supposed to turn it off after a set duration

I have a pretty good idea of How the Kingshead Glitch works and causes the game to do what its doing but it would take a very long typed post - so its not worth the effort in typing it

but point being there are soo many darn bugs in this game causing issues for players - that disney needs to get em fixed - They need to split their teams up a bit and have some fixing source code issues and some doing new weapon, quest, and item coding etc..

Get their best Python Devs into fixing the bugs and glitches , and get their best at panda to work on weapons, quests, and items

I hate this glitch!

I thought I heard it all before reading this tread. I think people really need to stop whining about the game. We all know the game is glitchy as all gettup and thats not going to change anytime soon. If you don't want to use the glitches then most likely your going to lose in sVs.

what happened to u in svs is quite simple when you were fixing ship and u sunk first thing that happens is you let go, then if you turn and jump or do anything out of the ordinary,
once you respawn you are however you were

for example if i turn right as i sink and rotate the view down and jump when the ship respawns i will be in the air and look like im on my belly

and believe me theres plenty of wierd combos to this bug ive even came back running backwards forwards i know seems crazy but true

and if this happens theres a way to fix it get as close to a drive ship or cannon shift spot and get on and let go you will be right again

but if u tp or go somewhere it will stay the same its hard sometimes just to get back on the ship like this because forward might be left all messed up but if you find a place to shift onto something and exit all is good and this is quite handy when you have a nice score and dont wanna loose it.

druid -

this thread is about the auto-repair while sailing glitch?

LOL - did u post in the wrong thread?

I agree with most of what as been stated here. And I strongly agree with Edward. Those glitches/cheats are unfair and are put there by Disney. In my case and experience... when I encounter those situations I strive to defeat those cheaters with the means I have and try to outplay them without the use of those glitches/cheats... and I have. The way I see it it has become part of the challenge and that great satisfaction of victory once you managed to sink/kill/defeat those cheaters, even if they destroy my efforts 1000 times.

No company puts glitches in on purpose. Yes - they will put in back-door areas and sometimes easter-eggs... but no company actually WANTS to put in bugs which hamper the game...

As they have mentioned, they do know of many of the glitches we've ben posting, and getting them out takes time... its not a three day thing. I would like to see almost all of them gone - but you got this push of players want new stuff now-now-now, and you got players wanting fixes-fixes-fixes... everyone can't have it all. :D

Your right. Sometimes people in the test server don't even THINK of doing that stuff, so when they put it in the people discover. They wouldn't put it in there on purpose.

i was privateering (svs) i was on my war sloop and there was a ship (war sloop) battling me i kept firing but everytime my broadside got reloaded it went to full health it kept sinking me and there was only one cannoneer but it fired 3 bolts on my ship and taking nearly half of my ships health! so i ported and took out my war galleon it also sank it after a while i took out my war frigate the cannoneerer launched a non stop stream of fury i finally gave up i knew they were cheating i tried getting close to their ship to report them but they killed me before i got close enough when my ship sank they would normally type "MUHAHAHHAHAHA" this got me so furious so when i sailed straight to it i typed "wat are you guys laughing at your faces yeah your right it is funny" in before time when i got to at least red health i pressed enter they heard it the good part... the stuff people will do to win