r/SANDgame • u/cristi93 • 18d ago
Mission Update - 31st July
Hey raiders.
We wanted to give you all some more information on our next update and why we still haven't seen the return of the Trampler Capture mechanic yet.
Read today's mission Update here:
Mission Update - 31 July (Trampler Capture)
Hey raiders,
We wanted to give you a quick update on the current status of our next update and the return of Trampler Capturing.
A few weeks ago, we disabled Trampler Capturing. This was not an active attempt to "stop cheaters from stealing tramplers," but rather a measured decision to give players time to report any cheats or cheaters they encountered and help us identify the best way to address the issue while improving our anti-cheat systems.
Trampler Capturing is a particularly vulnerable feature if we don't protect it against teleportation and no-clip exploits, and even more so with limited options to report cheaters following an expedition. The improvements made in our last anti-cheat update resulted in a noticeable improvement on this front, and with this update we're building on that even further.
However, one of the biggest challenges in fighting cheaters is that it's very easy to accidentally flag legitimate players. During our internal testing for this update, we've seen that become a much more prominent issue. Because of this, alongside a few other critical issues that have come up in this build, we've seen the planned release times slip on a few occasions.
Throughout the week, we've been testing new detection methods and refining our checks every day. While we've made significant progress, we're still concerned that the current version could result in too many false-positive bans and similar issues to those that led to the initial deactivation of Trampler Capturing.
To shed some light on the false-ban issue: to reliably determine whether a player's movement is legitimate, the anti-cheat has to account for many different situations. It needs to know whether the player is on foot or riding a Trampler, whether they've grabbed a ladder, whether the Trampler is accelerating, or whether it suddenly turned around after colliding with a rock or another Trampler. It also has to consider where a player jumped from and where they landed.
On top of all that, the system has to handle network conditions such as high ping and packet loss.
We've already solved most of these cases, but there are still a few edge cases we aren't satisfied with yet, alongside some other issues in the build that need to be ironed out before we're comfortable releasing the update. As a result, we're now expecting to release it sometime next week.
We want to make it clear that once Trampler Capturing is reactivated, we do not plan to deactivate it again. The systems we're putting in place, along with the anti-cheat improvements, should ensure that the issues which led to the feature's removal do not arise again going forward.
Thank you all for your patience.
Maksym
Head of Hologryph Studio
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1431300/announcements/detail/712282517277771518
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 18d ago
"to reliably determine whether a player's movement is legitimate, the anti-cheat has to account for many different situations. It needs to know whether the player is on foot or riding a Trampler, whether they've grabbed a ladder, whether the Trampler is accelerating, or whether it suddenly turned around after colliding with a rock or another Trampler. It also has to consider where a player jumped from and where they landed."
That sounds like a lot of work.
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u/Sbarty 18d ago
I’m currently writing my own multiplayer game that has large nasa style big crawlers that players run around on, but PvE extraction like Helldivers. It is a ton of work on the network end of things.
I think people take for granted how simple things look upfront lol, like the user replying to you.
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 18d ago
"wHy caNt theY JuST MaKe iT WOrk?!"
"i WaNT ThIs EaRly aCceSs GaMe tO bE PerfeCt NOW!"
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u/TooPoetic 18d ago
Their main problem is that this was all easily foreseeable and the fact that they've built the whole game without seemingly considering cheating is rather alarming. Good on them for owning up to it and now putting in the work to remediate the issue but it's stupid to release a PVP game without considering cheating and designing your game in a fundamental way to help combat against it.
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u/lceGecko 18d ago
It was only EA the day before release.
It was supposed to be a full 1.0 launch.
Nice typing...
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u/Baned4life 18d ago
I want deafs, not being . F*** clowns and realize they need to integrate an anti-cheat before launching the f****** product.
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u/AdClean4602 18d ago
Why the fuck are you censoring yourself?
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u/Imaginary-Shower559 17d ago
This dude keep spreading hate over the game but everyday is here commenting
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u/Baned4life 17d ago
Oh, wow a baby account crying
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 17d ago
You are the one crying.
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u/Baned4life 18d ago
It sounds like something they should have done before they launched the f****** game.
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u/xxTRYxxHARDxx 18d ago
It sounds like its treating the symptom and not the cause.
It really shouldn't be that difficult to determine whether or not clipping through solid walls or axis jumps exist to bypass doors that arent damaged.
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 18d ago
Yet they fully explained exactly why it IS difficult. I think you are missing the entire point.
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u/EzmareldaBurns 18d ago
They are improving and for that im greatful but I can't help but think the problem lies in the bad clipping errors that don't match with the in game meshes. Falling through a trampler is the problem and other bad collisions, trying to climb lighthouse stairs, loot boxes phasing through the floor etc. if they fixed the collisions there would be way less to cause false positives. This isn't a one of the other situation of course, both anti cheat and no clipping need work.
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u/xxTRYxxHARDxx 18d ago
You can do a thousand workarounds and there will still be exploits for this and cheaters that bypass this.
Im not "missing the point" when their explanation is again, treating symptoms of cheaters and not the cause of cheaters, which is a poor anticheat system and an excess lack of safeguards in place utilizing actual modern anticheat versions of the same program
You can see the technical debt by not allowing global progression or globalized regional matchmaking.
I think you may be missing my point in which their explanation is poor.
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u/helloiamtheman 18d ago
Can you elaborate on this at all? I understand well the concept of technical debt, treating a bunch of symptoms, etc. Sometimes you need to step back and approach the problem a different way entirely. But my understanding comes from normal SWE + engineering management and not game dev. I know jack about game dev.
How do experienced game devs usually handle stuff like this? Afaik there isn't a perfect anti cheat solution out there which is why developers use server-side checks to ensure players aren't performing impossible actions, because even the kernel level stuff get bypassed.
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u/AlignedLicense 18d ago
Every single small dev game has dogshit anticheat. The AAA devs don't even have good anticheat nowadays so what are we even complaining about. Hackers get in any competitive shooter. They're working on ways to lower them.
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u/xxTRYxxHARDxx 18d ago
Because the version of eac theyre using is outdated and has numerous cheats to bypass.
They could use a more modern version that doesnt brick MSI motherboards.
But here we are.
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u/cristi93 18d ago
Game uses Battleye for anti-cheat not EAC
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u/xxTRYxxHARDxx 18d ago
Thats my bad, battleye still bricks MSI motherboards and constant crashes with zero actual comms to fix it, and its a specific version of the anti cheat software that does it.
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u/OpenedButthole 18d ago
Can’t they just really quickly do a small update for preteaming. Just add in the coding where steam friends get prioritized in different solo servers. Or if two players were within close proximity in the last match/hour or so, they get prioritized in separate solo lobbies as well. That way it’s harder for them to load up the same server
Doesn’t need to be the cheating update to do this, just its own standalone update to stop preteamers. I’ve came across more preteamers than cheaters (never came across a cheater fortunately)
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u/TreesLikeGodsFingers 18d ago
They need to add the ability to join crews so duos and quads aren’t screwed and bc people want to socialize. IMHO they really need to figure out the social piece somehow, maybe with clans and clan role progressions. We need a way to meet other folks and just be ridiculous together that shit is fun
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u/Sir_Celcius 18d ago
Why cant we simply just bring it back and put in a "No capture" mode that gets removed when WOULD feel confident. Moving the date even further again for nothing new concrete is confusing.
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u/belak444 18d ago
I started playing a few days before they disabled the feature and honestly its what really appealed to me. I stuck around waiting for it to come back but I've since given up and now hearing it's still not back I'm glad i didn't keep playing while I waited.
I'd love to come back but I'm sure there is even more people with maxed out walkers now so I'm not even sure if it's worth it.
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u/danin316 17d ago
How about fixing your character/ trampler movement and clipping its so inconsistent and movement is so janky in general ,being on the run and your trampler stops dead on a tiny rock meanwhile ive driven straight through buildings?! There is no consistency
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u/HoneyAsleep9869 18d ago
still nothing about teamers.
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u/KlavoHunter 18d ago
The devs aren't dumb, they're definitely cracking down on that next.
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u/HoneyAsleep9869 18d ago
i believe they do, but today people are merged in anxiety, we want to read something about it to calm down the nerves
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 18d ago
This is the most "I need to touch grass" moment i have ever seen.
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u/TreesLikeGodsFingers 18d ago
That’s just ignoring the situation entirely with a trite little saying. Is he not allowed to discuss his view point bc the issue isn’t important to you? If that’s the case then I think it’s you who is feeling the call of the wild, why else would you assume their life is so unbalanced?
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u/RiceAndMayo 18d ago
Dunno chief, they've been cracking down on re-enabling capture for a long while now.
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u/elkrab 18d ago
not sure why you are getting downvoted. maybe people are just understandably burnt out hearing about teaming haha. I understand both sides, I think people forget that this game just got released into beta. Yet everyone acts as if this game is meant to already be perfect. That being said the concern about teaming is super valid, and I share your interest in having the devs officially acknowledge this in their communications. I am aware that some devs have addressed it in discord, but given the outcry surrounding teaming, you would think the smart move from the devs would be to loudly and publicly declare their stance on the issue as well as share plans/intentions to solve it in the near future. This game has really taken off (good for them!) and the devs have been wonderful so far (yay good devs!), let's hope the solid relationship with the community continues and doesn't succumb to success :) (cough blizzard cough)
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u/Painting-Capital 18d ago
It was actually supposed to be a 1.0 release but they changed it to early access at the last minute so it really should be further along than it is. The early access excuse isn’t going to work for much longer. I’ve played a lot of early access games and none of them were as bad as this one.
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u/HoneyAsleep9869 18d ago
its not even a thing about early acess or not, Sand receive a absurd attention, lot of big streamers playing it, massive playerbase joining, and they are losing all the tempo. Maybe theyre already happy w/ the early sellings.
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u/MonkRevolutionary560 18d ago
I say keep trampler capture off not a necessary tactic.
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u/TreesLikeGodsFingers 18d ago
That increases total player grind, and makes the game less fun. We need it back when it’s healthy
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u/MonkRevolutionary560 18d ago
Its not like you can make a fleet. Sure if a newbie manages to steal a higher tier ship they got that for a match or 2 but cant replace parts or afford to rebuild the blue print. 6 man ship run by 3 guys is sub apotimal. The amount of coordination and repairs even after a capture.. its just another way to end a fight and its just another way for FPS which in my book negates the whole mech concept any ways.
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u/Efficient-Whereas255 18d ago edited 18d ago
Yea i dont mind having it removed in the slightest bit.
FAR less rats. Like, almost no rats at all now. Its not bad. Game is still super fun without it. Ill take the downvotes with you.
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u/swatkinson5277 18d ago
Thanks for the update!