Question:
Ok any1 out there having major PB problems after the upgrade last week?? We experienced it straight away with half the players on 22ndSAS server..being booted constantly! and these are legit players and stupid boots! It has got so bad that if some of our members are on we have to turn PB off...and that means some of our other members and friends wont play...cos they hate cheats!!

Now this problem should be fixed asap...because the general feeling i get is that alot of players are on the verge of saying sod it..and playing a certain other game which has just brought a demo out!!

I am 1 of the lucky few that doesnt seem to be getting kicked but...i must admit...it wont be to much fun playing if most of my buds leave the community...

So please some1 look into this problem and it is a problem...before it seals the coffin that FC is lying in!!

cya all
porksta

Choices:
yes it sucks..and should be fixed
no i love being kicked

 

Porky are the guys running the manual update as recommended here?

Doc SEAL post on NEW PB config

Until it gets updated again that seems to be the best advice at present!

CuZ

I know 1 of our members does...but he still gets kicked every few minutes...

We are running our server without PB at the mo...but that doesnt help us with CB matches!

I will post up on our forum about the manual update!

cya
porky

PB update is constantly kicking players for none cheating reasons. This is making Farcry totally unplayable. I have looked into our PB Logs to see what most of the kicks are for, mainly packet loss. I am one of the people responsible for doing the admin on our server at 22ndSAS and can confirm that this becoming widespread across other servers. Do I want to play a game that means I have to turn PB off and allow cheaters in. NO.
If this is the way that FC appears to be going then for one I shall be buying a copy of BF2 and giving up my beloved FC gaming.

Deleted

The manual update makes no difference to the majority of players.

I'm lucky that it does not affect me, but to play with my mates is immposible because they join then are kicked.

Come on Ubi sort this out otherwise I feel your credibility may suffer.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CuZtds_Lst_Stnd,

Hey DrZux,

I trust you will understand why I edited your post. I think it better that we advertise that fact as little as possible.

Regarding the manual update, first time i tried it I got a crash to desktop inside 5 mins of playing.
Second time I ran it twice before launching FC and was okay for around an hour and a half of play after that.
Whether this helps I don't know, but the complaints since this last release certainly seem justified.
Only thing is AFAIK, it is Evenbalance that is responsible for this not, UBI...

Like ICE has suggested in the past, perhaps everyone who experiences difficulty should complain to them?

Their web ticket system can be found here:

http://www.evenbalance.com/index.php?page=support-farcry.php

Cheers

CuZ

EDIT: I have

cheers cuz...
we know it aint ubi...just u guys have a bit more clout than us poor mortals!!

strangely enuff I heard the PB probs are not happening on the ubi servers (very strange)

but m8...consider the evenbalance link spammed over all the forums i spam!!hehe

in the words of ice...
Greetz(lol)
porky

You need to post the exact word-for-word kick message you receive.

Guys

Hendrick is from Evenbalance, you want resolution give him the details he needs, Zux I don't know if your logs would help?

Hendrik thanks for comming by!

CuZ
(Doc & Alex, TY for this!)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CuZtds_Lst_Stnd,

Hi Hendrick thanks for stopping by.
I will post some of the PB logs reasons issued for kicks but for obvious reasons will leave out the users IP address.
Yes Cuz on hindsight can understand why u edited some of post.

i'll make sure zux or ice get the message...but as zux says i seem to remember most are for the norm...packet loss...etc..only it has increased alot since the upgrade!! so much as i said we switch off our pb most of the time!

thanxs for showing up hendrick...hope u help!

porksta

OK I have took some of our SV_VIOL LOG and posted these for you to look at.

For player integrity I have removed most of the GUID and totally removed the IP address.

This is an extract from the 20th June 2005 until we turned PB off.

If you want a full log report from the PB Logs then let me know.
I can also confirm that Games and Chong are both using upto date versions of PB.

As I stated I do not suffer from the kicks. Thinking it might help Games out I zipped my PB folder and sent it to him but this has had no effect on his problem.

SV VIOL LOG wrote

[06.20.2005 18:46:50] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: [$3C$6P$8$4S$1] $3C$1hapi$3C$1h (slot #1) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [PART OF GUID REMOVEDde4f(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.20.2005 19:13:27] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4Games (slot #1) Losing Key Packets [PART OF GUID REMOVEDb88b(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.20.2005 19:14:28] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4CHoNG (slot #3) Losing Key Packets [PART OF GUID REMOVEDb1a5(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.20.2005 19:15:49] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4Games (slot #1) Losing Key Packets [PART OF GUID REMOVEDb88b(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.20.2005 19:16:54] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4CHoNG (slot #3) Losing Key Packets [PART OF GUID REMOVEDb1a5(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.20.2005 19:18:14] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4Games (slot #1) Losing Key Packets [PART OF GUID REMOVEDb88b(-) IP REMOVED ]

90% of our kicks are for ignoring queries or comfail according to the sv_viol log.
Cheers.

Zux,

Just me fre thinking but do you have logs from before the latest release, perhaps illustrating hte difference in the number of kicks and patterns?

CuZ

Coming right up Cuz

SV VIOL LOG wrote
[1dbbe2137f97c77fcb4f48d1d3b20150(-) 82.176.192.177:1358]
[06.15.2005 02:19:40] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: $4(ELITE)$3TI$1GE$4R (slot #15) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID 64eb(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 02:36:39] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: DRAEKO (CAN) (slot #12) Losing Key Packets [MASKED GUID c4db(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 02:37:20] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: $2Gen. $4Fugde (slot #8) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID fba8(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 19:17:08] VIOLATION (BADNAME) #111: $9£e$5B°n$9£a$5Brµte$7$9£e$5Trµ (slot #1) Bad Name (Extended ASCII Characters) [MASKED GUID bfa3(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 19:31:21] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: DarkSense (slot #5) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID 88c8(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 19:32:33] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #133: $6[22ndSAS]$4DrZux (slot #10) PB INIT FAILURE [MASKED GUID ed1e(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 19:33:12] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: $4A$1B$4C $0BASTARD (slot #7) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID 313a(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 19:37:15] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: $4A$1B$4C $0BASTARD (slot #7) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID 313a(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 19:39:18] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $2$4The $4Repairer (slot #5) Losing Key Packets [MASKED GUID 02d6(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 23:47:45] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4Shaggy (slot #5) Losing Key Packets [MASKED GUID de91(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 23:50:58] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: $6[22ndSAS]$4PoRkY (slot #3) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID 519d(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 23:51:41] VIOLATION (COMFAIL) #101: $6[22ndSAS]$4Shaggy (slot #5) General PB Client Authentication Failure - Reinstall PB if problem persists [MASKED GUID de91(-) IP REMOVED ]
[06.15.2005 23:56:36] VIOLATION (IGNORING QUERIES) #9003: $6[22ndSAS]$4Shaggy (slot #5) Losing Key Packets [MASKED GUID de91(-) IP REMOVED ]

Although there seems to be no visual difference between the two post, what makes this unique is that myself and Porky are both listed as being kicked, this is normal for me as I at least suffer at least to PB kicks a day.
To expand on my previous point, what we have know noticed since update is that players are being continually kicked, as in Join Game / KICK / Leave Game etc.

If it had just happened to public players on our server we may never have noticed as when they are kicked they usually go to another server. But it became noticable when clan players who dont normally even get a PB kick are being constantly booted.

Also another difference in the logs is before the update it was normally for COMFAIL since the Update it seems to be for IGNORING QUERIES.

theres also 1 thing ive noticed aswell...it is now seeming to kick huge amounts from a game at 1 go...the 1st night there was atleast half of the players kicked at the same time...leaving the game interesting as most the 1s left were on the attacking team!

before people were kicked randomly...and never so many at 1 go!

I dunno if zux can pull up that thursday night...we were playing mango if thats any help zux and it wasnt that late.
hope you can help
porks

First of all I have to say that updating punkbuster manually doesn't really help anything. If you have problem updating the punkbuster, it is shown in log clearly that there was problem _updating_ punkbuster.

After getting message about failing update of punkbuster, I updated it manually. I am 100% sure that both server and client side are new updated versions.

It just seems that default answer for all punkbuster problems is always 'update manually'.

This issue about loosing key packets has been around for about 8 months now. I have reported it at least 5 times to evenbalance and always they say that I must update it manually. After that conversation usually leads to nothing constructive. Usually evenbalance just looses interest and closes the ticket due to inactivity.

Now with new punkbuster, issue has gotten worse than ever. I have runned statistics on our servers and it clearly shows that unneccessary punkbuster kicks have raised 350%. Quite dramatic I would say because at same time number of players connecting has dropped to 25%.

Now that is is almost public knowledge
Deleted... Grim, like I said to Zux, certain things are better not broadcast...
I would say that punkbuster is just totally useless piece of malware.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: CuZtds_Lst_Stnd,

I think a lot of the problems stem to the fact that PB was an afterthought rather than built into the game at the start.

As for pulling up the log relevant to that night porky, there is no point as the above posting from the 20th will read the same.

Guys,
Frustrations with PB imo have been valid and we to date have not had satisfactory resolution.

However for the first time to my knowledge we have Evenbalance representation on the forum prepared to listen to your specific complaints.

Please use this opportunity constructively as Zux is trying to.
(BTW my understanding is the same as yours, all games in which PB is trouble free it was in the baseline designs where as it only appeared in FC at 1.1)

Grimphyre, you are far better placed than most to cite deficiencies in PB to FC integration or operation, please do so.
General complaining about previous lack of support wont get our currrent problems resolved!

Cheers
CuZ

Sorry about broadcasting that. I am just just getting little heated up because we are supposed to play this game in ladders and I am really feeling frustrated, unsupported and sure that within next 3 months we will see more cheating in farcry than ever. Unless somebody at evenbalance and ubi starts to take this stuff more seriously.

I have been very cooled down for last 8 months. I have been trying to give evenbalance everything i can dig from my logs. I have tried to create theories why this all happens. I have experimented with programs that artifically creates packet loss between client and server. I have mailed to ubisoft, evenbalance and crytek many times.

Within this 8 monts I have managed to push through 3 commercial software projects from scratch to production. I really can't understand what is wrong in development workflow of ubi/crytek/evenbalance. But something is really wrong in there and should be changed.

quote:

Originally posted by Grimphyre:
Unless somebody at evenbalance and ubi starts to take this stuff more seriously.

I understand your frustration m8, and from discussions with Doc I'm aware of the considerable time you and others have put into this. But...

Evenbalance are here. I think that is a huge step in the right direction.

You have an open forum to raise issues for them to address. Post a thread on your findings and I will make sure Hendrik is aware of it. If some of that data is "Sensitive" we can pass it through PM or email.

Discussions UBI/CRY/EB working practises, no matter how valid will not help resolve the communities problems.

Please use this opportunity!

Tnx

CuZ

Ok. I take a deep breath and try to chill down. I don't want to spoil this