Reporting Issues

SWBF2 Server admins who had an account with us had access to this "Report an Issue" page. If you were not an SWBF2 contributing server admin, then it's likely you never even saw this page. There was a text field and ongoing comments that was our version of a "support" section for our contributing admin only.

Any Flaws with the system here?

Initially, for about 6 years, the whole system with the "statistics.csv" file and SWBF2 server admins uploading worked great. Of course that is excepting for the issues with the Black Bag Ops Server Manager. No real issues for our own system here at the website though. However, with time comes new players and new admins with new attitudes. A close knit community depends on honor, integrity, and credibility to remain close knit. Some bad behavior started creeping into the online SWBF2 community eventually.

New Chores

For instance, the "statistics.csv" file would verify "no bots" but servers can be changed after they're set up. With an auto-upload to your own server leaderboards here at the website, this sometimes created a situation where an admin could inflate their server and player statistics. An admin could set up the server leaderboards with "no bots" on our website here, then turning on maximum bots for the actual online server and just start crushing the numbers against the SWBF2 community. This was an obvious red flag and correctable because we could roll server stats back for the SWBF2 community numbers as a whole if needed.

This was one example of how our "fun" service contribution for the SWBF2 community started becoming a "chore". Another example of a new "chore" was when all of a sudden we had to start putting in file checks for the "statistics.csv" file uploads. Some SWBF2 (Classic) Server admins were editing their "statistic.csv" files for inflated statistics before uploading them here to the website.

While the statistics.csv file itself would show no obvious indication of tampering while viewing the file, these tampered files always produced an error on our end when importing them to our system. The file wouldn't sort right because it never loaded right. It became an obvious flag for a tampered file. These files were removed from the leaderboards as well.

As mentioned, what started out for us as a fun leaderboard service "project" for an absolutely fantastic online SWBF2 community became something to keep an eye on, something to be managed, and eventually a "chore" for something that was supposed to be fun for us here. Because SOME players and SWBF2 server admins were trying to exploit the system here, we HAD to put in place checks for rankings, player statistics, and then mod maps.

SWBF2 chat hacking tools started popping up online and SWBF2 players could type in global chat to the server for everyone to see but the SWBF2 chat log wouldn't indicate who made the chat IF the log showed the in game chat at all.

Chat hacking was only one way the SWBF2 game could be hacked in multiplayer and soon several tools that made hacking the SWBF2 server online started surfacing. These tools allowed you to take control of the SWBF2 (Classic) server away from the admin of that server. You could protect your SWBF2 private server with firewall rulesets and a close monitoring of traffic. A diligent admin could deal with a public server, and some communities did this. However, when playing online becomes more work than fun, you can't expect many communities will maintain the process for long.