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It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

bae.st

451–460 of 474 posts

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Twitter mob should not have that kind of power and if parents don't understand how Minecraft, the most popular game of the last decade+, works by now, they never will. It's appeasing a crowd that cannot and should not be appeased.

You are putting a moral limit on what Microsoft should be able to do with Minecraft, not a technical one. Who's to say your morals are better ?

>Who's to say your morals are better?

The vast majority of dedicated players, common sense, and history.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a huge advocate of free software, but I've never actually seen a _true_ solution to the incentive problem when it comes to developing free software. Sure, there are ways to monetize free software projects, but honestly, if you want to make a lot of money, grow a company, hire developers and grow a huge user base, then closed source only benefits you (unfortunately). I'm not really sure how we can change that, spe…

Money is a social construct. Public goods are traditionally funded by taxes. Dual to taxing someone would be to print new money for everyone except that person. We need to pay ourselves and take ourselves seriously.

Huh!? Is this some sort of Peter Pan solution where we stave off starvation by simply imagining real hard that we're eating a big meal? What on Earth are you attempting to even suggest here?

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting the original creator [0]: "Just pirate it". [0]: https://twitter.com/notch/status/157261795139125248

There is another way to oppose a hostile ecosystem: instead consuming non-blessed copies ignore it.

I agree with this sentiment a lot. I only make the exception here for this game specifically because:

- He has already bought the product

- It works offline and you don't need to ever update

- The game is fun as hell and there's really nothing like it

If this was the case with some other piece of software such as Windows (which funnily enough is also by Microsoft) where I do have alternatives, instead of pirating I just use Linux/Mac/BSD/whatever_else instead. I should note my personal experience with the game has been very pleasant specifically because I choose to play it "pirated"/"offline" even though I've purchased a copy of the game a long time ago, it's just more convenient, safer, and more private. If MineTest or something else ever gets to a state where it's as polished and fun as Minecraft 1.0.0 I'll certainly migrate.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#454

Oh shit, they are moderating chat in a game for children and responding to player reports? Pretty ghoulish, if you ask me. /S Come on, are we really complaining that public chat is moderated now? Is that really where the bar has sunk to?

I would describe messages on a private server as private chat. No-one has any issue with Microsoft moderating Microsoft's servers, they have an issue with Microsoft moderating their servers.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#455
post #187

Modern-day MC is a bit out of my depth but are these bans enforced in a similar mechanism to online-mode checks? (which validates that the username attempting to connect to the server has authenticated against the Mojang login servers?) More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here.

> More importantly could it be possible for a modified client or server to 'spoof' reports against an arbitrary user to 'frame' them? Disturbing possibilities here. Yes, the developers of Nodus have demonstrated this over and over again that they can spoof messages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz5iGzuNnNU

Sort of. (I think you know this but I'm adding context for others unaware of how the system works). The design intent of the chat reporting system is that chat messages are signed by the client with a key associated with the account, so that you can't just conjure up a message of someone saying a slur and send it to microsoft. Someone has to have actually typed something for it to appear in the report. So far I don't think anyone has demonstrated spoofing a message signed by someone else which they didn't actually write (which I think is what OP was asking).

Of course just have the message with no context is not enough to go on in a lot of cases, so they also made a system to try to have a verifiable chain of context to go with the offending message. This is what the system above is exploiting, since it basically allows a malicious actor to have one message appear in the chat reports but another appear to the player (which is also spoofing a message), allowing manipulation of the context of the message and thus a false report that appears legitimate as far as Microsoft can verify.

There's a relatively simple but limiting way to avoid this: just never say anything in chat. It's also possible to mod the client to never sign messages (and the server to strip signatures from message), but this may result in your chats being dropped by some clients and servers (I think it's an option, not sure if the default has changed to on).

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#456
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It removes any and all reason to play online. Might as well play bots.

This is only true if the only value you see in playing video games online comes from talking to other people. Some of us play video games online for the competition, and because human opponents are much more unpredictable and fun than programmed bots.

You've got it backwards. The value I see in other people is talking and communicating. I have zero doubt that a sufficiently advanced bot would pass a video-game opponent turing test long before the original turing test.

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#457

There's a special kind of irony in putting the text of one's blogpost in a noscript tag for the sake of people who disable JS, but then setting a CSS class on body to make it invisible that is only removed by JS.

Wow, I saw the blank page and just closed the tab. These days I rarely even bother to view the source to look for readable content. Too often there's no content at all, just ads, tracking, and JS. I went back to read what they had. It's not often I'm amused and disappointed at the same time! One of these days I'm either going to find or end up writing a CSS blocker.

(To be clear, you're not missing any content by being unable to read it because of the CSS. The noscript text is a long joke that ends with telling you to enable JS. I'm just amused that the joke doesn't work because the author used CSS to hide the body.)

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of order - there are plenty of mods for Bedrock. Foxynotail has some great ones.

No, there are glorified command blocks for Bedrock. No actual mods exist anymore. At the beginning, MCPE had a handful of proper mods, but Microsoft after the acquisition did everything they could to kill those.

Semantics. They still modify the gameplay from vanilla, ergo they fit the definition if a "mod".

Re: It seems that the good times for online Minecraft play are over

#460
post #448
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. In fact, it's very telling. There's also a big difference between "playing a video game" and what this person is doing.

Oh I know who you are now. Sorry about your sand castle.

No, you don't but nice try. You replied "his username sounds familiar" in a subthread I'm not even involved in.
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