Denied Just add PAC already

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So far the only arguments I’ve seen have been “but people are going to make anime characters” which is funny because if you’ve played any gmod server in the last 10 years you’d probably know that’s not the case- we’ve given a solid argument against that, and why it wouldn’t necessarily be much of an issue. Then we were told that people could use it to crash the server, we’ve given a good reason as to why that wouldn’t happen either. I don’t understand why people think that there needs to only be base HL2 models that are 20 years old and other base rebel models that are probably older, and read 30 lines of text to get a description. I don’t know why everyone always immediately goes to extremes, and assumes implementing pac would mean that the entire server will turn into women with cat ears and a tail with an AK47, like there’s no in between.
 
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I will be writing a pac application purely so I can fly around with the pac camera and metagame my enemies
This here shows me you really don’t know how pac works, there’s literally a camera that flies around you that shows what you’re looking at, everyone can see it. Metagame would be impossible with pac
 

Chiptune

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Well, I won't lie. I've seen servers where people do in fact make PACs so incredibly cringe I've had to powerwash my brain afterward. Know what these servers didn't have? An application process for PAC. It literally solves that issue which is the thing that comes up the most when people are worried about PAC.
 

Rabid

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PAC's being safe in the moment of it being authorised doesn't change the fact that a good number of people in this community are ill-adjusted teenagers who'll happily spend years acting like everything is fine before one day deciding "I Do Not Like Ronplay" and doing whatever they can to cause shit before they're banned.

Applications aren't a hard counter to people like that, and Nebulous.cloud has its fair share of them.

This here shows me you really don’t know how pac works, there’s literally a camera that flies around you that shows what you’re looking at, everyone can see it. Metagame would be impossible with pac

Not entirely true. It is incredibly easy to unhook the camera and use it to look through walls and other stuff, or even fly it around the map.

I played on a server mid-late last year using PAC and that was probably the most common exploit that was impossible to prove. Literally a slightly worse noclip.
 
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Chiptune

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PAC's being safe in the moment of it being authorised doesn't change the fact that a good number of people in this community are ill-adjusted teenagers who'll happily spend years acting like everything is fine before one day deciding "I Do Not Like Ronplay" and doing whatever they can to cause shit before they're banned.

Applications aren't a hard counter to people like that, and Nebulous.cloud has its fair share of them.



Not entirely true. It is incredibly easy to unhook the camera and use it to look through walls and other stuff, or even fly it around the map.

I played on a server mid-late last year using PAC and that was probably the most common exploit that was impossible to prove. Literally a slightly worse noclip.
That's a good point. Well, both of them are.

Some people would definitely be petty enough to fake an application and abuse the flag afterward... but with a size limit, here is what would happen. They lie. They get the flag. They make a PAC whose only way of being a nuisance is through looking stupid, since they cannot really make it too heavy on purpose or crash the server with it without hacking. They get found out by the many admins noclipping around or via report, they get banned.

It would actually be far more destructive for a griefer to get their hands on a weapon or fake a CP app to get a weapon for free, and then use it to cause damage. Genuinely the worst a PAC will do is slightly annoy or look unsightly. If guns can be abused in a more destructive way than PAC can, should gun scripts be removed? Should we only RP the existence and usage of guns through text?

The PAC camera exploit is a genuine issue though, but it cannot be used very effectively. Most maps will unload past certain walls, and you won't see players through them. You'd need to actually be close enough to use it, which would make it fairly obvious that you're exploiting using it. Regardless, I believe that the risk of it pales in comparison to what PAC can bring to the experience for people willing to use it, but that's just my opinion.
 

Señor Jaggles

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Okay but why is the argument of performance for lower end devices being dodged in favour of the "just get a better machine" thing.

People who play this game are not expected to have high end computers, and I'm not talking for myself, I have a powerful one, but many do not and the performance in this map is bad enough already.
 

Chiptune

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Okay but why is the argument of performance for lower end devices being dodged in favour of the "just get a better machine" thing.

People who play this game are not expected to have high end computers, and I'm not talking for myself, I have a powerful one, but many do not and the performance in this map is bad enough already.
That wasn't said by me, and I heavily disagree that you should have a monster PC for a game this old. My proposed solution aside from the PAC size limit that would ensure no heavy PACs can be loaded at all is that whoever runs into issues should disable PAC, or limit its activation range.

Essentially, there are three ways you could limit PAC lag that you, as a player, have direct control over without needing any flag.
A. You disable PAC entirely, there is a button to do it in your PAC settings
B. You reduce the radius, which ensures only people very close to you have their PAC appear, once again heavily reducing CPU usage
C. You activate a very handy option that makes it so that you can press E (or another keybind you set) on someone with a PAC to show it, and you can press it again to hide it. Everyone is hidden by default, so you can peek at PACs if you're curious about them, or only activate the ones you like/the ones you feel are less CPU-heavy for you.
 

Chiptune

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(As a side note, I hope the new map will be less laggy... I've played on sstrp servers with more than twenty NPC bugs running around at the same time, 30 players with PAC on, and practically no lag despite Source engine, so I feel like this is mainly a map issue)
 

Chiptune

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To be fair they also ignored my response when they claimed to know why the server had issues yesterday.
I'm not staff and lack the necessary knowledge to answer that question to be honest, I also wasn't there when there were any issues. I'm assuming the OP didn't reply to it for that reason also, but can't speak for them. However, I can confidently say that if you use the limit feature on PAC, the only way to crash a server using it is to hack. If you can do that, you can crash a server without PAC access. If the issue was something else, well then I can't say. Helix is pretty well optimized for PAC, so there shouldn't be any issues so long as it's limited unless someone hacks.
 

alex

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I'm assuming the OP didn't reply to it for that reason also, but can't speak for them.
That would be an incorrect assumption.

This was the response after a staff member posted that it was due to an exploit/cheater.
Yeah I can explain it easily actually, since there's no pac size limit (Due to it being admin use only), someone put a big one in and it crashed people. If you guys actually knew how PAC worked instead of claiming you do you'd know that you can easily prevent this by adding a size limit, but nobody bothered to read the thread or consider my idea, instead they went straight to lying about PAC
 
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That would be an incorrect assumption.

This was the response after a staff member posted that it was due to an exploit/cheater.
So what, it wasn't over pac like the other guy claimed it was? I don't know, That was just my base guess as that's how most people 'use pac to crash servers', no idea why you're continuing to press it as an issue
 

alex

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So what, it wasn't over pac like the other guy claimed it was? I don't know, That was just my base guess as that's how most people 'use pac to crash servers', no idea why you're continuing to press it as an issue
It was literally what @Uranio told you it was and you said he was lying, that's why I'm pressing this issue.
 
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Chiptune

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I think a head staff would have reason to worry about crash-causing issues. But PAC is far from the most problematic addon performance-wise in the hands of an experienced server developper and on a stable schema like Helix.
 

PilotBland

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Okay but why is the argument of performance for lower end devices being dodged in favour of the "just get a better machine" thing.

People who play this game are not expected to have high end computers, and I'm not talking for myself, I have a powerful one, but many do not and the performance in this map is bad enough already.
i need a 4090ti to type on the type server
 
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Ond

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I think a head staff would have reason to worry about crash-causing issues. But PAC is far from the most problematic addon performance-wise in the hands of an experienced server developper and on a stable schema like Helix.
is PAC really that essential to your gaming experience
 
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Chiptune

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is PAC really that essential to your gaming experience
I would not benefit much from it. I only play CP and CP models have decent bodygroups already, that should absolutely just be free for everyone to change at will. That doesn't mean i won't argue for PAC to be usable through a strict, controlled method, because it's a great inclusion especially for rebel players. There is virtually no reason you would NOT want more customization for your character, within reason.

I wouldn't say it's essential to the experience but it only brings positives to my experience. I have never been disappointed by it, my experience has never been harmed by it and if it has, it was due to bad management of it. That is the reason I am advocating for it. I've done thousands of PACs, so it pains me to see so much misinformation spread about the way it works, or the way it impacts servers. HL2RPs are no exception, in fact I would say these have the most successful PAC instances I've seen specifically because of how wary people are of it, leading to less extravagant PAC usage.
 
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