Game Staff Restructure: Pvp Hacking/cheating

[MonMarty]

The first and easiest process to tackle for my revision is how I want Hacking and Cheating to be handled in-game. We are taking lessons from Lore Staff here, in how Lore Staff does panel reviews, and institute a formal process aimed at building trust with the player base, and increasing transparency. Here is a flowchart of how the new process works, with an explanation below of why it works that way:

Spoiler

Notable Changes

• The panel is reduced to 4 PVP'ers (with one substitute voter) and a "Human Element" who looks less at the actual hacking and more at the player's behavior. This was previously already in place for a short period a while back, but was removed because more and more people tried to have a vote in the process.
• The panel now requires 3 separate pieces of evidence, instead of just the one. In the case of Morbytogan, the single evidence piece was an occurence of fishy conduct, not an actual trend. In lore we believe the motto: "Once is an occurence, Twice is a coincidence, Three times is a trend". This motto implies that if it is happening three times, it's probably a real thing, and less of a coincidence. Each evidence must be voted as factual with at least 4-1 votes.
• After the second evidence, the staff may optionally warn the player of the building case, or may choose not to. It is reasoned here that maybe warning them early will stop them hacking, and thus reduce chances of the case actually being completed.
• After the third evidence, a formal "charge" is delivered to the player. The player can choose to accept punishment and admit to guilt for a reduced punishment, or defend themselves to try and prove innocence, or become hostile and childish, and be banned immediately.
• If the player is able to disprove 2 evidence pieces, the case is dropped and deleted. If they cannot, they are banned anyway, but with a reduced punishment for cooperation. All punishments can further be reduced if the Human Element decides that the player is worthy of punishment reductions.
• All in all, no more Permanent bans.

So a quick summary:

• 3 evidence instead of 1
• No more permanent bans
• All evidence is out in the open
• Warnings may be given early
• Only knowledgeable people on panel
• Reporters on Panel may not vote due bias
• Each case is looked at individually instead of banning based on bureaucracy

Note, this only pertains to PVP hacking and cheating. If someone is flying around with forcefield, and they are clearly not an active member of our community, they will likely still get permabanned. Staff know the difference between a community member and a random pvp troll.

I'll most likely be tackling chat moderation next, as well as general server rules and unbanning a swathe of users who were previously banned for Inappropriate Usernames.

 

[CreeperGirl769]

yes good

 

[iBeSlurping]

uwu

 

[Morbytogan]

Looks like a good improvement. Only issue I have are the appointed voters as some (who I will not name) have a rep for hackusating but this definitely seems like a step forward with a much fairer process and set of punishments

 

[Ninja124r]

i like that there is no perm ban on there

Perm ban should only be used for international terrorists amirite

 

[feiooos]

Kudos for initiative!

I got one question: Is implementing an anti cheat solution (like the sort of badlion client uses) simply not an option? Is it because of what it would cost money and/or server performance -wise?

 

[MDJTHEHERO]

Kudos for initiative!

I got one question: Is implementing an anti cheat solution (like the sort of badlion client uses) simply not an option? Is it because of what it would cost money and/or server performance -wise?

Click to shrink...

Badlion client is a program you have installed onto your computer, big difference in that level of anticheat and server level stuff, so no thats not really doable unless you want to force every single person to be on badlion client in order to log onto the server.

 

[feiooos]

Badlion client is a program you have installed onto your computer, big difference in that level of anticheat and server level stuff, so no thats not really doable unless you want to force every single person to be on badlion client in order to log onto the server.

Click to shrink...

I know the difference. The question still stands.
Considering there's publicly pvp focused factions, these could be asked to use this client and optionally read or use the server implementation of the plug-in for anti-cheating enforcement purpose only.

 

[65jes89]

I don't feel that warning a player is a good idea. If the player actually knows what they're doing, there is a good chance that rather than stopping, they'll adjust their settings to make their cheating less obvious.

Also, I assume there will be scaling bans for repeat offenders? Edit nvm I can't read

 

[poilet66]

Like jes said, how will punishments for repeat offenders scale or is it scenario oriented regarding how blatantly like player hacks and their cooperation with staff?

 

[65jes89]

Like jes said, how will punishments for repeat offenders scale or is it scenario oriented regarding how blatantly like player hacks and their cooperation with staff?

Click to shrink...

Says in the graphic repeat offenders are punished twice as hard, I just can't read.

 

[MonMarty]

If the player actually knows what they're doing, there is a good chance that rather than stopping, they'll adjust their settings to make their cheating less obvious.

Click to shrink...

This is why the Panel can decide about whether they want to warn or not. It's completely optional. They can evaluate whether they think there is a risk for them hiding the hacks better.

 

[MonMarty]

I got one question: Is implementing an anti cheat solution (like the sort of badlion client uses) simply not an option? Is it because of what it would cost money and/or server performance -wise?

Click to shrink...

Anticheat is used like a warning system, not an actual system to ban players. It gives too many false positives, and generally hack clients are always one step ahead.

 

[Alj23]

So you listed all the PVP voters and the one substitute voter in the flowchart, but not the human element. Intentional, or just an accidental omission? Or does the human element simply offer their opinion on player behaviour and not vote?

 

[CnocBride]

So you listed all the PVP voters and the one substitute voter in the flowchart, but not the human element. Intentional, or just an accidental omission? Or does the human element simply offer their opinion on player behaviour and not vote?

Click to shrink...

I have been selected as the Human Element. I do not have a vote but I am there to ask questions about the player (not to influence the decisions), remind the voting members if there are other factors we need to take into account, and to vote for the player's "Human Element", not to judge about whether the evidence submitted was valid.

Recommend if a player may be a re-offender or can be restituted into the community and if a punishment time should be reduced for whatever reason. Also compile case documents for the other voting members to do.

 

[onearmsquid]

Anticheat is used like a warning system, not an actual system to ban players. It gives too many false positives, and generally hack clients are always one step ahead.

Click to shrink...

Can you please have tech update the anti cheat chat as it does not alert staff if someone is using cheats in PvP, we tested this earlier this year.

 

[MyCatBubbles]

i like that there is no perm ban on there

Perm ban should only be used for international terrorists amirite

Click to shrink...

HMMMM

 

[Conflee]

Can you please have tech update the anti cheat chat as it does not alert staff if someone is using cheats in PvP, we tested this earlier this year.

Click to shrink...

Anticheat false-flags so often that it would literally be an endless spam in every staff's chat. Its not useful at all.

 

[65jes89]

Anticheat false-flags so often that it would literally be an endless spam in every staff's chat. Its not useful at all.

Click to shrink...

This isn't really correct for a couple reasons. First, the anti-cheat already spams to all hell, but it goes into a channel which staff can mute if they're not game or are doing something at the time. Second, squid's suggestion was to update the anti-cheat so that it could properly detect various pvp hacks. There's a number associated with every flag the anticheat does indicating how likely the anticheat thinks it is they're actually cheating. Not bothering to improve the anticheat because it would be "spammy" is nonsense.

That said, anticheats are hard to code and most on the market anticheats are either expensive or shitty, so it doesn't really make sense to make a new anticheat a priority now.