[Hannover]

Greetings fellow MOHAA players,

I've been thinking of ways to reduce the number of cheaters and team killers in MOHAA and all FPS games. To my knowledge, I have not had the displeasure of playing against a cheater. Yes, I've had the odd fellow who took 2 1/2 MG clips to kill, but for the most part my main trouble is with poor sports who cannot lose without spewing profanity laced vitriol, and those who cannot win without gloating. Additionally, the age-old spectre of team killing is alive and well in MOHAA. I am amazed how often games with friendly fire enabled degenerate into a full-fledged deathmatch. The facade of the FPS avatar seems to bring out the worst in a lot of people.

Poor sports aside, I am sure we can all agree that cheating exists in MOHAA. Many of you guys have documented that you've seen it happen or that certain players have admitted to cheating. This comes as no surprise, as the Quake engines have always been open to various exploits, and I have no doubt that other game engines are vulnerable in varying degrees.

I've read through many forum posts from here and abroad in an effort to find and collate your ideas related to curtailing cheating.

Currently, the only sure way to achieve a game free of cheaters and team killers is to set up your own server, password protect it, and invite only trusted players and/or friends. Most games I play on public servers seem to be devoid of cheaters and team killers, but there is no guarantee that a cheater will not join at some point during play.

As others have stated, it may be next to impossible to prevent cheating in an online FPS of this sort, but it would be nice if developers placed anti-cheating measures a bit higher on their list of requirements higher than say, transitional movies that you skip after the first or second viewing. Ideally, this commitment to anti-cheating measures would be implemented at the beginning of the development life-cycle, not added in an ad hoc fashion.

So what are we to do about cheating and team killing in future games? Let's throw some ideas around. Maybe someone out there will listen. After all, a game relatively devoid of cheaters and team killers could enjoy a much longer life - and reap a larger financial reward - than games with less vigilance.

Here's some of my ideas. I have to admit they may seem a bit draconian, but:

As stated above, developers must take anti cheating measures seriously. Maybe they already do. I dunno.

Adopt the "pay-to-play" model: Charge $20 for the game. This $20 fee buys you the game engine, a single player adventure (maybe), and a multiplayer component. The multiplayer component included in the $20 fee allows only LAN multiplayer and limited bot support so that you could practice on the multiplayer maps. The $20 fee includes a code/voucher to allow you to play for *at least* one month for free. After the free period, you have to start paying $5-$10 or so a month to continue playing online. I know you guys know the routine....Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Warbirds, etc.

Wait, I am not done!

When logging on to play online, everyone will first have to be authenticated by a master server, and then farmed out to various servers across the net. So, you can set up a net server at your house, but players cannot join that server until they are first validated by the master server. Nothing space-age here. The idea is that you *must* have an active, paid account in order to play online. Each time you log on to play, regardless of your screen name, you play with a unique ID that never changes. You'd be able to play from a buddy's house as long as you log on using your proper logon ID and password.

Now that the master server knows who you are at all times, you can be held accountable. If player X is a wart on the ass of progress and starts to kill buddies for no reason, complaints are filed against him in a RTCW fashion. All complaints lodged against player X's account are fed to the master server at varying intervals throught the day, or possibly even at the end of each game. Once complaints reach a certain level, the master server sends a warning via e-mail or in-game message to the offending player. If the player continues to be a jerk, the master server kicks and bans them from the server on which they are team killing.

If the madness continues, the player could face longer bans, or eventual account suspension.

But how do we detect cheaters if it's so easy for clients to cheat? Well, either more of what is going on client-side will have to go server-side (a scary thought), or we'll have to depend on players to file "suspected cheater" reports against players they feel are cheating (another scary thought). I have absolutely no faith that my fellow gamers would not abuse this. I think lots of us here have been accused of cheating by the "guy with 4 kills in the last 30 minutes" - the guy who shot you 4 times with the sniper rifle, or so he claims. With the hatred surrounding a few of the weapons in the game, I can imagine someone spamming "suspected cheater" complaints against you simply because you're killing them with a weapon that in their eyes is "cheap and takes no skill to use."

Maybe developers *can* find a way to detect cheats once they are uncovered, and maybe players trying to use these cheats could be automatically flagged when they try to join a game. Players that attempt to cheat on a server could be moved to spectator mode, while a message is sent to the master server of the attempted cheat (there's one mark against your account, bub!). Additionally, a message could be sent to those who are playing that "player x tried to cheat and has been moved to spectator." Heh.

Didn't someone say there is a client-side anti-cheat untility for Counterstrike?

In addition to its duties of authentication and complaint logging, the master server could also keep track of player stats. A web site could publish these stats. Maybe, just like this message board, you could get promoted to a new rank as you get more kills.

Really, it would be like any FPS stat logger. You'd be able to see players with the best kill-to-death ratio, the players with the most suicides, etc. There are many possibilities here.

I got World War 2 Online for Christmas. It keeps track of stats, but despite all my efforts, I have not developed a liking for this game. The graphics are of dubious quality, and it's not my idea of fun to have to walk 30 minutes to get to the action. 7-8 minutes, maybe, but that's another story.

I know there are many downsides to my ideas. The master server could/would go down. People could abuse complaint filing privileges. It might take developers a long time to incorporate detection methods for newly discovered cheats. It would take time and money to maintain the master server farm. I'm sure you guys will come up with a million other negatives!

The bottom line is that it would be great if cheaters and team killers could be held accountable, but we as gamers cannot do this without cooperation and effort from the developers.

Hannover

[Graverobber]

I personally have never been a fan of the whole pay to play phenomena. I think that with the prices developers are charging for games nowadays, a pay to play feature (especialy for games that aren't massively multiplayer) just isn't worth it.

However, I admire the way these services handle cheaters, if a serious problem pops up with a certain player, it is swiftly and harshly dealt with. But again I think the whole $10 a month idea just plain isn't worth it for a lot of gamers, especially those on a tighter budget.

The solution will probably have to be better coding by the devs, or frequent updates to discourage cheating and/or countering cheats that have come out for the last version of the game.

Also the client side anti-cheat software for Counterstrike is called PunkBuster, and is also in use with DoD and other HL mods. Id has recently contracted them to add anti-cheating countermeasures to RTCW. However, I've also read threads on this forum about how Punkbuster works, and someone (forgive me I forget the name)who went undercover with a group of hackers who would get around the PB system and crash servers, so even this system has flaws. Punkbuster has recently changed names also but I've forgotten the new company name.

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[Saturation]

hmmm 40 bucks for a game , on top of 10 bucks for every game you play online, so for ppl like myself and others who like to play UT, RTCW et all it will add up.

hence im hoping pay to play is NOT the way forward. Obviously the above is not a perfect example but if this develops then in future it will mean paying to play each game.

[Hannover]

Yeah, $40 for a game plus $10 a month to play online is too much for me. That's why I was suggesting dropping the inital cost of the game to $20. Heck, it could even be less.

Hannover

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Tahoma, Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Saturation:
hmmm 40 bucks for a game , on top of 10 bucks for every game you play online, so for ppl like myself and others who like to play UT, RTCW et all it will add up.

hence im hoping pay to play is NOT the way forward. Obviously the above is not a perfect example but if this develops then in future it will mean paying to play each game. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Graverobber]

Yes Hannover but again what about those of us that are on a tighter budget, should they be denied great games because they would rather spend that $10 on something more important than gaming (Blasphemy! )

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[Wandu]

Pay-per-play is more than a bad idea. Okay, it would bring the devs a lot of money from those true gamers who are wealthy enought to pay for they gaming. From the rest of us, I personal would change to another game or perhaps even stop gaming at all!

Cheaters, they will always be there. Today as I got my first share of MoF:AA I put three rounds from the sniper the a guy's head? Cheater? Nope, a glitch in the engine. Giving him a neck shot finished that encounter. Bad feelings? None. Been there, done that. Let's move on.

Cheaters. Hell yeah, I've been one once. In the times when Quake came out and TeamFortress was the thing to play. Grenade peepers were once considered as a cheat. Even by my even tho I used then later. Bunny hopping? It's a skill. Using 'God-mode'? Yes, that's a cheat. I consider everty 3rd party program, such as a wallhack & auto-aim to be a cheat, but if you can script something, like bunny-hopping, I don't consider it as a cheat 'cause it is done with the game's engine, not with another program.

I've been playing FPS games for about 5 years now. All the way from Quake to now MoH:AA so I have had my good and bad times.
But trust me, what ever we do. We cannot make the cheaters go away. The only way to do it would kill everybody in the world

What a looong post.. bear with me for a second.

Team killers? Hate them. Dispite them. Fram them Yeah, I've been a team killer too. You cannot expect newbie gamers to know what 'Friendly Fire' is. Hell. I've learned the meaning of FF too when I was a newbie. If you get killed by a team mate, just respawn and say that FF is off and this is a team game so please don't make us lose. Those who are neebiews with high enough IQ will understand it. Those with low, well, they won't listen to you. Walking into another players field of fire is quite leathal, even if the player is friendly. He might be hiding from another player, being chased or is chasing someone. Just don't get each others way. That'll make you survive a litle longer.

So, there was my little rant about this subject. Comments, as always, are welcome

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Hey, you! Get you of my sniper's crosshair if you don't want to get killed!

[Manny]

What about disabling friendly fire?!?!

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Death

is only the beginning

[Graverobber]

Yeah that's an option for MP games, and a lot of servers don't enable FF for that reason.

[Manny]

I wonder why people complain about FF if you can turn it off.

To me that all sounds like Big Brother forcing people to do what the elite few who run the thing decide. Such things rarely stop at the few idiots such systems were designed to block. Anytime someone is given any kind of policing abilities on the internet, be it a chat room op or a server op you run into little Napoleons all over the place telling people what to do; and kicking and banning people for no other reason then because they want to. Someone then speaks out against the abuse of power and they are kicked and banned too. There was already someone on a MOHAA server kicking people who were taking their time and sneaking around the Hunt toward the end of matches because the host was bored and wanted the game to end then and there.

Boring and unfair all the way around.

Would be much easier to just have MP set up that if you kill a team member, even by accident, you are charged with one negative kill. Someone is automaticlly kicked the moment they fall to -4 kills or something like that. This would weed out the team killers and also the idiots who don't know how to handle their own grendades or fire bazookas in hallways full of their teammmates.

Perhaps someone can set it up that a player is banned after being kicked three times. But one would have to be careful since there are so many names that are the same even though the players are different, and sometimes players are kicked by group vote for no real justifiable reason. Mob rule may be OK when kicking is relatively harmless, but when it may lead to perminant bands it is probably not the best way to judge something like that.

It IS too bad that friendly fire is so often abused by 10 year old brats (or those whose personalities have never progressed past that point.) Once there is the basic vote to kick in place that will clear up a lot of that.

Maybe that is all that is needed, but it would be nice if the kick lasted for 24 hours or something like that to keep them from going right back in.

Also, not all team killers are malicious. Some are just kids who have not figured it out yet. It is very easy to forget that you too were new at such games once, and even easier for people to turn on those who less capable then themselves, I guess in an effort to feel superior.