How do scripters freeze/drop everyone during IDOC? Is there a way against it?

shootgun

Hello there,

When there is a big IDOC somehow the scripters manage to make other people freeze/drop. This happened to me before and I thought luck or whatever. I just run into a conversation in global chat where many people were reporting that same thing happened to them after IDOCs for big locations.

Is it know how do they do it? Is there a way around it? May be if we can reproduce the problem then the devs can fix it.

Any ideas?

Thanks guys.

creampie

easy anwser same than em event good loaded castle many people more lag like em event all people ins ame screen...they cant do nothing

Acid_Rain

Years ago there was a similar exploit often used in PvP by tryhards w no skill that would crash other players in the middle of fights to kill them. Couple of PvP losers would do this whenever they were abt to die, I’m guessing they had it on a hotkey. It would crash everyone within 2-ish screens of the player using the exploit. I won’t go into detail how this was done but will say its from bad coding of certain items in game.

This game being as old as it is, having so many items created by so many different teams... it’s inevitable the coding of somethings when used in unexpected ways will force a crash. I believe it has to do w null strings and/or stack overflows but thats my speculation not fact, as I’ve never tried to reverse engineer UO.

Often this kind of exploit will crash the exploiter also, however, they know whats coming & will be insta-relogging back in the game the second they initiate the exploit. While honest players are scratching their heads wondering why it got so laggy the exploiter is ingame doing whatever they want (killing players, collecting all house loots, etc,...).

Obviously, Devs take this seriously & immed patch out these exploits when found. Running a debug on the crash can help find the issue but being that this exploit is almost always done in nonspecific small areas, it makes their work exceedingly difficult.

Best advise I can offer is to log out/back into the game as quickly as possible if this exploit is suspected. Sorry for TLDR but I couldn’t answer properly in 3 sentences.

PlayerSkillFTW

Packet pushing. It's been around for decades.

Oreogl

PlayerSkillFTW said:

Packet pushing. It's been around for decades.

This is what I’ve always known it to be.  Pretty sure it may even be a macro option in UOA.

shootgun

PlayerSkillFTW said:

Packet pushing. It's been around for decades.

Oreogl said:

This is what I’ve always known it to be.  Pretty sure it may even be a macro option in UOA.

I am not familiar with the term packet pushing. If you guys know the steps to reproduce this, or the tool used to achieve this, please reach out to @Kyronix .

Thanks a lot

Feigr

I would be surprised if it's "Packet Pushing".  Which you all are using it in a way that sounds ominous.  Literally all online games use the PSH flag to reduce latency and increase security.

I can't say for sure though because this is UO.

Oreogl

Feigr said:

I would be surprised if it's "Packet Pushing".  Which you all are using it in a way that sounds ominous.  Literally all online games use the PSH flag to reduce latency and increase security.

I can't say for sure though because this is UO.

Yeah with the improvement of servers and networking i don’t think it’s really a thing anymore.

maybe if you got and extremely poor connection but that’s more likely the cause of the drop than anyone mashing a macro.

I play on a $200 laptop with a low tier fiber connection and ping in the 50s.  Haven’t had a issue with those types of connections since I PVPed with extremely shoddy internet.

Lord_Frodo

Oreogl said:

PlayerSkillFTW said:

Packet pushing. It's been around for decades.

This is what I’ve always known it to be.  Pretty sure it may even be a macro option in UOA.

It is NOT

Oreogl

Lord_Frodo said:

Oreogl said:

PlayerSkillFTW said:

Packet pushing. It's been around for decades.

This is what I’ve always known it to be.  Pretty sure it may even be a macro option in UOA.

It is NOT

Better look again.

Lord_Frodo

UOA is an APPROVED 3rd party program so I doubt that EA/UO would allow this, maybe you are think of the ILLEGAL UOA

Oreogl

Lord_Frodo said:

UOA is an APPROVED 3rd party program so I doubt that EA/UO would allow this, maybe you are think of the ILLEGAL UOA

I’m not sure why emphasizing words in caps would make your point any more valid.

It took me 5 seconds to find it.  

I have no idea about any “illegal” UOAssist.

Feigr

It's easy to test with Wireshark.  I just don't use UOA.

Oreogl

Feigr said:

It's easy to test with Wireshark.  I just don't use UOA.

It’s all I’ve used since it came out.  it was still fairly necessary until recently when the devs made an excellent push to start making in game macros more functional in CC.  Biggest impact in the game for me, I applaud whoever did that.

Feigr

Yea, all you would need to do is download the free Wireshark and that will capture your packets if you choose that instance from the interface.  It'll be the one with data bouncing up and down as you're playing.  Then you can just check the header of the packet for a PSH flag.  They may also use URG.  It really depends on the application servers too though.

Don't post a copy here though.  It has identifiable information.

Oreogl

Feigr said:

Yea, all you would need to do is download the free Wireshark and that will capture your packets if you choose that instance from the interface.  It'll be the one with data bouncing up and down as you're playing.  Then you can just check the header of the packet for a PSH flag.  They may also use URG.  It really depends on the application servers too though.

Don't post a copy here though.  It has identifiable information.

Thanks for the tip, I may try it out.

Feigr

I'm getting flashbacks to my childhood and being told maybe. LOL That's alright, I didn't feel like trying it out myself either.  I'm just talking bull and trying to get you to do it for me. LOL

Oreogl

Feigr said:

I'm getting flashbacks to my childhood and being told maybe. LOL That's alright, I didn't feel like trying it out myself either.  I'm just talking bull and trying to get you to do it for me. LOL

Lol, I mean I actually might but it hasn’t been a problem.  But yes, it was usually “we’ll see” for me as a kid.  Very non-committal.  

Acid_Rain

PlayerSkillFTW said:

Packet pushing. It's been around for decades.

There's different ways to force a crash. Pushing was 1, especially when a heavy load was present. Not sure if thats the case anymore but def possible. The exploit I mentioned was years ago and not pushing packets. It had to do with bad coding of a specific item. It got patched to fix the exploit.