Stopping exploiters from reading data, how far is too far?

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#1

I’ll start this off by saying I’m a freak when it comes to exploiters having access to things I don’t want them to. I think you’ll come to learn that on your own though when you read through the rest of this thread.

I’m currently developing a PvP game where I’ve been able to recreate my own serversided humanoid health system. Let me explain more in-detail.

Starting with ESPs. These scripts are found in almost every exploit, essentially they give you an edge in PvP games because they allow you to see how far away a player is, their hitbox, their health, their user, etc.

Because I didn’t want exploiters to have this edge, I created a simple table which keeps track of player health. Instead of doing Humanoid:TakeDamage(15) to apply damage, I just subtract their overall health from a table and if they go below zero, I cause them to die by breaking joints etc.

With this setup, exploiters can’t see other players health. I’ve developed a few other things to stop exploiters from being able to read my game easily such as storing Team information on the server.

Exploiters would have to be advanced to determine who’s on what team and what their health is. I genuinely think they’d be turned away by the fact that it isn’t even worth it.

Downsides I originally encountered was players didn’t know their own health, but I fixed this by just firing their client telling them this information. Essentially hiding their info from everyone except themselves.

Is this going too far?

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#2

I’d say that this is fine as long as you view it necessary for your game and it isn’t taking too much time away from your actual game development

#3

Security measures tend to hurt the experience for normal players. So it becomes a trade-off. How much of your game’s performance are you willing to sacrifice in the name of stopping exploiters? The best choice will change depending on what the game is and what its individual needs are.

In my opinion a smooth player experience far outweighs security concerns. Some security measures are justified to prevent total mayhem, and again that depends on the game.