1. Yes, the team looked at Punkbuster many years ago. The number of false postives being reported, the difficulty in getting those errors over turned and the level of access the program required to personal data made it unacceptable
2. All games have cheats, even those with anti cheat software
3. Our game is so different to more modern games that my Nvidia graphics reports 'no games or apps found' when asked to scan for games. I wonder if the anti cheat software would reach the same conclussion?
Report cheats when you come across them.
I think
Easy Anti Cheat is something different as Punkbuster....
The fact the more and more games seem to be using it, perhaps might suggest that it might seem to work in games to curb down the number of players cheating ?
Report cheats when you come across them.
And then what ?
Individual reporting of cheats require individual attention and thus, manpower and resources be invested in handling all of those reports.
Anti-cheat software which instead deals with the issue automatically, much reduces the amount of manpower and resources needed to be invested in dealing with it.
Sure, false positives would indeed require individual attention yet, those false positives would be a FRACTION of the total cheats dealt with by the Anti-Cheat software.
If you tell me that with Punkbuster the amount of false positives was so high that Ultima Online lacked the manpower and resources to deal with them, I do not see how, players reporting suspected Cheats could in any way be a lower number as those false positives but, I would imagine, that they would be a way much larger number as those Punkbuster's false positives...
Therefore, if Ultima Online lacked the manpower and resources to investigate, individually those Punkbuster's false positives, I fail to see "how" Ultima Online could instead have the manpower and resources to investigate players' reports of "suspected" Cheatings fro fellow players....
So, I ask you again, a player reports a suspected Cheat from a fellow player.....
and then what ?
It would be much better with the implementation of a sound and effective Anti-Cheat Software which, I understand, many Game Companies are using for their games to tackle cheating in them, it would at least deal with most cases automatically, and only the false positives, a much lower number as the total cheats dealt with, would then need to be addressed on an individual basis.
That is at least how I see it.