Lighting exploitable?

I'm still going down my list of questions, and here's a group of them that I couldn't readily find an answer to...

I see that in some of the videos an avatar is running around in dark tunnels where there is otherwise no light sources (no glowing mushrooms, no torches, etc.). He has to rely on a light source he's providing via spell/item/whatever.

With the extreme contrast between what is lit by his/her light source and what is unlit, it appears as though the area would be absolutely pitch-black and "impossible" to see anything. And, naturally, that would make sense, right? But that raises some questions:

1. Is this actually the case? If you're indoors (or underground) and there's no light source, is it truly pitch-black? (Haven't played the game yet, myself, so I haven't had the opportunity to test it)
2. If the answer to the above question is true, then wouldn't that be an awesome way to setup an ambush (or otherwise hide from other players for whatever PvP reason)?
3. If the answer to the above questions are both true, then what would stop a player from modifying his/her local client to be able to "see in the dark" and otherwise gain an advantage over non-hacking players?

I apologize if this has been covered elsewhere - I just hadn't found the answers in my searches here.

Thanks!

 

It isn't perfectly pitch black, though it is incredibly dark and difficult to see without a light source (though some locations even a light source doesn't really help any).

Currently the ambush idea is a good one, but with the way PvP is structured, it could be a REALLY long wait as only those who are flagged for PvP would be targetable.

You also have to deal with the nameplate above the head of the player (unless they are stealthed... which has short duration for a long term hiding spot).

Really love the ideas though.

 

Though I would love to see this if they ever implement an underground Shardfall scene.

 

Thanks, @Moiseyev Trueden. I forgot about the nameplates, so that mostly invalidates my concern of exploiting client-side lighting hacks. But only mostly. I would imagine such hacks could still provide some significant advantages?

 

Oh we can ALWAYS find a way to hack something. Although having most calculations done server side make it a lot less likely. Depending on how much stuff is client managed we could very easily run into some of the issues ArcheAge ran into if we aren't careful. Even in the given situation, if you know someone is coming and targetable, you can select the person and target them prior to name plate actually populating above the head. One of the ideas that @Baron Drocis Fondorlatos (I think it was his) had was making the nameplate visibility be tied to light ranges (specifically to set up a situation like the one you mentioned).

 

Well, that brings up some of my questions/thoughts on sneaking/stealth, which I was going to hold for another discussion (once I found the appropriate place to ask it). But since this is my thread, I might as well hijack it, right?

Generally speaking, if your client "knows" of a player's existence (even if nametag isn't visible due to unlit or sneaking), then that player needs to show up on some sort of minimap or otherwise be shown to other players. The reason is simple: a malicious player could "always" hack/modify his client to make it painfully obvious to him/her that there is a hidden/invisible player nearby (even to the extreme of making them glow neon purple with a beam of light shooting into the sky, along with some sort of 3rd-party minimap representation), so long as the client is aware of the hidden/invisible player. In other words, it should be all or nothing - if the player is hidden or otherwise not supposed to be seen by an onlooker, the onlooker's client should NOT even be able to load the hidden character ... that is unless there is some other mechanic at play here that would otherwise make such knowledge of a hidden player's existence moot (generally speaking, I think that knowing where a hidden enemy is when you're not supposed to would be an extreme advantage!).

Obviously such actions (modifying client files in any way) is likely bannable, and I don't encourage it in any way. I'm just trying to understand what the Devs stance is on this subject, and what they might be doing to mitigate these sorts of exploits.

 

I'm also going to second this last part he says, If a player is supposed to be invisible, they need to not be sent to the client at all.

Here's a fun bit of theorycrafting for you:
Many years ago, there existed had a special variant of the ATI catalyst drivers back when lots of 3rd party versions were made. This driver package would, when the drivers were called to load a texture into memory, would refuse to load a certain specific texture(or folder if you supplied examples), instead replacing it with neon pink. This gave the benefit of removing a "cloak" texture from a game, and instead making them show up brightly. Or for "fake" walls with an invisible layer overpainting. With the added benefit of being -entirely- legal due to that most game's TOS at the time, because it does not in any way modify the client game files which most covered. While portalarium's TOS goes a bit further and tries to encompass the experience itself, i will point out it is rediculously hard to detect, let alone prove, driver-level cheats, and while they are less common, are still a valid concern.

The hacking/assist/etc game is cat and mouse, and it's usually a waste of staff time in games to police players and catch/punish those who violate it. So it's usually better to try to avoid using systems that make it easily exploitable in the first place.

 

Bingo.

 

Above ground it is not pitch black, but at least on my display, where there are no lights underground it is, indeed, pitch black. This makes it difficult as a ghost to find one's way back to an ankh to resurrect.

There is a spell, Night Vision, that lets a living avatar see in the dark, by the way. No need for hacks of any kind. The nameplate would, as previously mentioned in this thread, thwart attempts to hide. You would have to use a stealth spell to become invisible.