Want another Half-Life/Counter-Strike representative ? The idea behind Punkbuster is good. Unfortunately, this globe boasts many people to whom the cracking of a security software is a calling of honor.

The best way is just remove them code-wise. No more can you exploit it, no matter how hax0r you were

-Celorfie

All you people who are trying to give counters for it... you are missing the main point of his post, people use it in groups of people who are fighting and I dont know about you but I am unable to see 360 degrees around me.

Yes it does need to be locked from movement.

and on another note, for all those people who think Butterfly should be locked - have a little harder think about how it could then be useful?

I have to say that I am not a great player, I am not good with the single saber so I generally stick with duals (I do not change my yaw speed or sensitivity but I do spin at normal speed), now I use these moves as you have suggested above but I find that 50% of the time someone (usually 2 or 3) does the roll lunge or the blue up swing and take me out, I have lost count of the times I have been killed by single saber users, and I take my hat of too them as I can't seem to land a hit using red stance, so what should I. the enthusiastic but not hardcore gamer do? Use a single saber and not get anywhere (and get frustrated but not annoy people) or use the duals (and their moves) and enjoy myself (and possibly annoy people who scores are much higher than mine).

It seems to me that the skilled players can get more kills with a single saber than I can with duals. So where is the balance problem, I get killed as much as I kill and it does not bother me, I just like to play the game...

PunkBuster works much better when it's built-in, like it works great for Quake 3, SOF2, RTCW, etc. HL/CS never had it built-into the actual game, so it was always a problem.

Punkbuster is a good idea, shame about some of the problems it creates when playing though. It creates a lot of lag, I suppose this can't be avoided, but I know I always prefer playing without punkbuster than with it because of this.

If it's not set up properly it kicks for some real stupid things, short names being the one I hate the most, I got banned from a q3 duel server for an hour just as I was about to play a game with someone, for having a 'short' name.

Really the only great feature of punkbuster, imo, is it's ability to take client-side screenshots, in order to weed out people who wallhack etc. Any semi-decent hacker can find a way around punkbuster anyhow, it's a program completely reliant on constant updates to keep up to date with the latest hacks available. So you are constantly being forced to download updates, else be unable to connect to servers.

For a game that has no real problem with hacks, I've personally never seen any in jk2/jka and I've played pretty constantly for a year and a half, so I don't think it's worth having punkbuster at all.

The biggest advantage to PB is the GUID system.

Banning by IP is next to pointless, and kicking a person they just return immediately.

GUID is based on the cd-key or computer of the person playing, so he/she can't simply change IP and come back.

There are many other advantages, Player Power, Web Tool, cvar checks, tasklists, etc. Punkbuster is pretty much the ultimate administration tool for servers.

This badly needs fixing - I'm losing interest in the game because of this and a bunch of other oversights they can't be bothered fixing.

The spinning kata is the worst, really. You can beat it with a single saber in red stance, but when someone using the yaw speed exploit drops into a crowd of people and activates their script, that's usually 3 or 4 skilless kills. And his encourages other people to do it, such that you get over half the people on the server just running round spamming this move. Which makes for really, really dull games.

Another offender is the butterfly attack with a staff. I've no problem with the fact it does a 1 hit kill, but the damage should ramp correctly so that the user is vulnerable during at least some point in the move - currently, the only safe option is to get outta the way, which again makes for dull games.

Then there's the 1 hit kill backstab with dual sabers. Evidently they didn't learn from the mistake (that they had to fix) in Jedi Outcast. Once again, a bunch of people running round backwards trying to spam this move looks stupid, and detracts from the game.

Hit detection on rolling stabs isn't right. Does more damage if you miss someone than if you hit quite often. I've stabbed people while being at least 40 degrees off target.

And then there's the way hits don't register sometimes. I'd rather see the above fixed than any new content added, but if I could get both, I'd like to see kicking enabled for single and dual saber users - with all those ground attack moves and ways to roll and flip back up, it's a shame hardly anyone ever gets knocked down.

I agree with most of the last post.  However, I disagree in some small degree with the butterfly comment.  As a single saber user, I have tried a lot of ways of countering that staff move and have found that a blue lunge at the exact correct moment will do a lot of damage to the staff user while leaving the single saber user totally untouched.  It's hard to explain the incredibly small window frame when this works.  Basically, it's very near the beginning of the butterfly; after the first hop, the staff user tends to butterfly hop fairly high.  If you blue lunge right during the start of that second or third hop (I'm actually not sure which number it is...I just know it when I see it) you will connect and sort of slide under the butterfly.  I have to admit I've only successfully done this maybe 20% of the time.  I don't think dual saber butterfly does quite the same thing, so I have never really done it to dual saberists; I think they go more horizontal without going too high into the air.  I think the biggest problem with the butterfly is the fact that it is an aggressive forward moving one hit kill which gives a major advantage to dual saberists and staff users when competing with single saber users.  Us single saber users don't have a comparable aggressive move unless you count the normal red stance swing (I actually consider repeatedly swinging in red more luck than skill and sort of boring and lame, but that is more out of the fact that I like doing more than one or two moves over and over and not because it's really cheating or anything).  But if that is supposed to be our agressive one hit kill move (which it isn't always one hit) then the staff and dual sabers also have the sort of one hit swing method.  So we are still short one aggressive move.  (blue lunge is arguably aggressive, but smart dual saberists and staff users turn off one side and can do that too; plus it isn't really aggressive because it does not force the other person to retreat and stay away whereas a well used butterfly can even trap someone up into a corner)

I started reading the piost above, and assume where you are going..

yeh ok lets say your lunge move works, butterfly shouldnt be so hard to counter - The post above yours was very good, when he was speaking about how it has no part where you are completely open which is witnessed in all other kata moves.  locking butterfly is not a good idea, all that needs to be done is make it so those last spin hits once the butterfly has landed do not do so much damage and I notice how when you do a butterfly even at the end you are still moving, I think it would be better if it stood still at the end, allowing for the opponent to actually be able to use a unskilled butterfly to their advantage.

and on another note, Staff users cannot lunge when one side is down can they?

thanks

I use Red Stance (single saber) Special, but needs timing to defend me from staff butterfly, usually works by killing the butterflyer.