7 replies to this topic

[Jay]

Recently, I have been seeing an increasing number of people on Office masking their ping. In Source games, ping masking is adding a non-numeric character (such as a +) in front of your cl_cmdrate convar (so +66 instead of 66). This causes the server to interpret the player's ping as the lowest possible (5 milliseconds)*. This means that people can play on the server even if their ping exceeds the limit. If somebody has an actual ping of, say, 500 and is masking it, they can take advantage of CSS's lag compensation and shoot a player where they were a half-second ago. This is how people end up being "shot around corners". My suggestion would be implementing countermeasures in a SM script.

Example:


*You CANNOT have a ping of 5 normally unless you are the host of a listen server. Think of it this way: 100-tick server = 1 game-state update every 10 ms. To have a ping of 5 ms, you would have to be communicating with the server twice as fast as the server is running. Generally, a ping of 15 or less is considered fishy (15ms = game-state update rate of a 66-tick server).

[DarkShadow]

you clearly have never heard of sv_mincmdrate, please stop making issues out of nothing.

[Scroll_Lock88]

Internet shooters are serious business, as are spaceships

[wondergod]

Actually its quite possible, when I used to live near the server(a city over) I would get sub 10 pings all day long. Seeing how the server is in the Tri-state area anyone in CT, NYC, NJ, Eastern PA, and parts of Delaware share a good possibility of having sub 10 pings.

[Jay]

you clearly have never heard of sv_mincmdrate, please stop making issues out of nothing.

Yesterday, I played for a half-hour with my normally ~45ms ping masked to 5ms. It clearly works.

[DarkShadow]

you clearly don't understand how the internet works, just because your scoreboard ping says 5, it gives you no benefit ingame over anybody else.

if this were a real issue, I'm sure I would have fixed it back in oh... 2003 or so when I first put up a SRCDS beta server.

[mr.lively]

based on the screenshot, the people masking their pings seem to being doing pretty sh*tty. so i dont think its a real issue...

[Jay]

you clearly don't understand how the internet works, just because your scoreboard ping says 5, it gives you no benefit ingame over anybody else.

if this were a real issue, I'm sure I would have fixed it back in oh... 2003 or so when I first put up a SRCDS beta server.

The benefit has nothing to do with increasing the speed of your actual connection with the server--it comes from being able to shoot people after said people have actually taken cover/moved well away, because of how lag compensation works. Masking one's ping simply allows one to exploit this by having a massive actual ping whilst not being auto-kicked. People with a masked ping should be assumed to be using this exploit or attempting to be leet by looking like they are.

Off-topic: We need an AFK autokicker. Getting rolled because of 3 AFKs blocking movement is plain silly.