[GD-Design] Off-line vs. on-line play and cheating

[Brian H. <bri...@py...>]

Preface:

Probably the #1 problem people complain about with on-line gaming are
potential cheats, hacks and exploiters.  As most people know, the only
way to "prevent" this is to make the server final arbiter on all
important decisions.  

Question:

We're working on a game design that, at its core, is just a vast space
exploration RPG, but which happens to have the ability to connect with
other players at a central server so they can interact, trade, adventure
together, etc.

The thing is, there's nothing inherently multiplayer about the design --
much of the gameplay could be done by hosting a loopback server on a
player's system, just like Quake, etc.  The problem, of course, is the
ability to cheat.  Even more severely is that cheating can affect your
persistent persona, possibly ruining the game for others if you hack
your local character descriptio then connect on-line with an overpowered
character.

So while I intellectually recognize this as a mostly unsolveable
problem, it bothers me somewhat that the game can't be played "safely"
as a single player game while at the same time allowing you to interact
with others when the ability arises.

A classic example is that you want to explore, do some spaceship
upgrades, and perform other non-social activities.  You can do all this
sitting on an airplane if necessary, and in theory won't need a net
connection.  When you do get a chance to login, you "diff" your state
with the server's state, and then continue on your merry way.

Since the universe is procedurally generated from a pre-determined seed,
by definition everything your local server generates will be in sync
with whatever the persistent server generates, so there won't be any
synchronization issues.  The only problems will be when two players
compete for the same resource, and one "claims" the resource off-line.
This is easy enough to solve by simply stating that the first player
on-line gets to take their claim, e.g. you discover and name a mineral
rich planet, now you want to log-in to "lock in" your claim.  Other
issues like this can also be solved the same way.

Instead of chalking this up as impossible because of practical
constraints having to do with cheating, local files being open to
countless attacks, etc. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on the
problem and possibly a look at it from a different direction.  I'm not
sure how Battle.net handles it, but I presume that on-line players can't
bring off-line characters with them.

Brian