[12:51:06] <[PB-Staff]JAA> 99.99% of q3 users love it

Give in to your anger!  Only your HATRED can destroy me!

 

Hehe...  I gave in to my anger long ago.

"I am the man without kindness... I am, Krazy-Killa!" :angry:

Isn't there another way around it.  Like for instance, the cheaters can just auth with PB?  Or can PB actually detect if they're using a dll that let's them cheat?

I just ran into this yesterday. Our ISP was doing some pretty major changes, and my 'net connection was off and on. I decided I was going to go test gen vs some bots and perhaps test Q3pong out as well.

Q3 wouldn't even load. I had to ctrl/alt/del it to get out. If this is PB's fault, then I'm no longer in the "I don't care" camp.

/me votes "Hate It"

Hed, punkbuster doesn't catch everything. That task alone is damn-near impossible. However, it'll catch the hack-wannabes that found out what r_shownormals does, among many, many other common (and uncommon) exploits.

Pho - your preference in models apparently isn't the same as the mod author's. You could chat with them about custom models that you'd like to see in the game, but that would take time and effort with a dash of persuasion. Otherwise, "Wah!" =P

Quake3 does have problems handling it, and the only way around it is by either fancy config dancing/updating, communication between servers AND clients (if one has a different version, neither can work together), or just to turn it off alltogether. I believe this is because PB was implemented in Quake3 so late...

Once again, I have had NO problems with punkbuster in Enemy Territory.  PB was a part of ET from its first full release, and it has gone silky smooth with the game.

My point? PB and Q3 are fighting, we know this. You guys should write complaints to evenbalance and have them work something out before they completely give up on Quake3  

http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=dl-q3a.php

try grabbing these and follow the instructions on the page. Lemme know if it helps out at all.

Actually, in ET I did have one issue with PB where I had to go download the client updates manually. I went to this site, got the PB updates, put them in the right place and it's been smooth sailing from then on.

only 70%? Pardon the language, but that's a shitload of cheats, considering the number of players that have played quake3 who have tried to cheat (which is a LOT of people, I know).

Just try it. Punkbuster was demanded by a bulk of the community and most of the community (remaining) uses it.

allright Phoenix, this time I'll dig into the meat of your message.

This tremendous demand began to surface in the Quake3 community about... 2 or 3 years ago, towards the peak of Quake3's success when it seemed like players were gaining godly reflexes and intuition overnight, especially in competitive communities like OSP, Rocket Arena 3, (insert CTF mod here - Classic, WFA, TF, etc.) and others. After watching numerous demos, it was very clear that exploits were running rampant. When I helped run a chain of RA3 servers, I checked into players' authenticity and reviewed demos daily, watching out for suspicous activities like tracking through walls and lightning guns following a player exactly, even though they're out of range. Many, many players were frustrated, especially when server and gaming ladder admins began blacklisting players and clans for suspected/proven signs of foul play. Every server eventually enabled 'sv_pure 1', which got rid of a big bulk of problems, such as nosepaks that anyone could make if they knew the slighest bit about modeling (which was a MAJOR problem in Rocket Arena 2, yet it went undetected for a very long time). Then came along the infamous driver hack, which would turn walls transparent for anyone using the driver. What could anyone do about this problem? Sure, we could file complaints to the driver manufacturer and get them to pull it from the web. We could also ban players we catch peering through walls with their "x-ray vision". Many of the cheaters we see are inept players, so they're easy to detect. However, what about the players who are skilled, and can hide their advantage very well? This raised an eyebrow throughout the competitive Quake player community, and everyone who did well was suspected of having some sort of edge other than natural & learned skill. Then came along the variable exploits, such as having an extremely high r_picmip, r_gamma, r_intensity, r_overbrightbits and many others that would make players seem to GLOW, begging to be targeted and shot. What could be done about these people? Abseloutely nothing at the time, so it was acceptable for people to do it, and many people jumped on this fact. Then there came the other variable exploits, like r_shownormals and r_showtris. What could be done about these people? Abselouely nothing, unless they get caught by another player. The list of tweaks possible for Quake 3 could be another 10 sentances and not be done with, such as people who faked their pings to servers by jacking up their cl_maxpackets to a huge amount, just so they could play on a server of their team's choice. What could be done about these exploits? Not much, so it became the norm for people to do them. By this time (the era where a steep drop in Quake 3 popularity began... I'd say sometime in 2001), a good chunk of honorable players vowed never to return to Quake 3 until something was done about these exploits. Ladders were losing players at an incredible rate. Aged clans were disbanding. Quake 3 was turning into a game not based upon skill, but who could have the most tweaked-out config. The players who remained knew that anyone could be a hack or tweaked-out, but they decided to stay for the fun of it. This lasted for a few months, where there was some peace in the Quake 3 community. Then came the boom of the aimbots, which made every good player, new or seasoned a suspect. At this time, another big chunk of the Quake 3 community left because the game was no fun anymore. All of the suspicions hanging in the back of everyone's minds of eachother cheating in one way or another killed much of the game's competitive feeling. Afterwards, most all of the payers that remained were either extremely good and have proven it at LAN parties, tweakers, exploiters, aimbotters, newbies and players who only played out of habit.

Phoenix, this "everybody" that I speak of isn't some fabrication I pulled out of a hat. They were the honest, dedicated players that populated many Quake 3 servers so many years ago and have left Quake 3 because of one or more of the complications I talked about above. Most of them moved onto other games like CS, RTCW, UT, (insert MMORPG), Starcraft and many other games because they were much more fun than what Quake 3 had become. Some quit gaming competely because of this. The few of them that remained active in the Quake 3 community demanded that something be done about the exploits and hacks which had Quake3 in a stanglehold, almost compeltely choking it to death. That something was Punkbuster, which only fairly recently has been implemented into Quake 3. After a few months where the folks at evenbalance were gathering data on what were exploits and different methods of hacking Quake 3, they began purging servers like crazy. Yes, it is true that when PunkBuster first came out and put on servers, aimbots and wallhacks were still as fully functional as ever. Fortunately for the honest players that still played, that period didn't last too long. The banning and blacklisting of many, many illigetimate players followed the months to come, and the Quake3 community cheered. That's why it is a norm to have PunkBuster enabled - it does work to a large extent, much larger than what you're giving it credit for.

This "annoyance" you label PunkBuster is by far more acceptabe to me than the raging inferno Quake 3 players had to deal with a year or more back. It makes me upset that after PunkBuster saved the remnants of Quake 3 community, you spit in its face. I'd suggest to all of you to search for ways to make PunkBuster work for you, whether you're a client or a server admin. The community did request it for a very long time, and now we should put effort into making this gift, by the gaming community, for the gaming community,  work.