March 2019
Sup,
Just had an idea regarding playing games without cheaters. The fundamental idea is to introduce a barrier to filter out cheaters by means of grouping players by a particular metric. That metric would be something like time invested in the game, games played or money spent.
So as an example players would be separated by in game hours and games played, thus potentially filtering a cheater that just created an new account to ruin other player's gaming experience. That being said it will not eliminate cheaters, it would just mean that you are less likely to encounter a cheater, the separation should not be used to very granular level but just as a barrier of entry. So a gamer that has spent the hours or invested in the game can still be paired with other games that have also spent the hours.
Just an idea I thought might of helped, although I have no idea if that is totally doable, the basis was that I value my account and a cheater probably wouldn't value theirs. So a barrier made sense to me, even if the cheaters made it past the barrier they account can still be banned, just means its less likely to ruin a long supporting player's game. On the other hand all the newer accounts would be faced with a lot of cheaters?
My apologies if there is something like this already or has already been implemented.
What are your thoughts?
March 2019
This sounds interesting, tho' i guess at expense of non-cheating new players.
March 2019
March 2019
@Tensai_Zoo wrote:This sounds interesting, tho' i guess at expense of non-cheating new players.
As interesting as it is, I don't think it is a good idea to place all the new players with all the cheaters. Imagine someone trying the game for the first time, and having to play against cheaters game after game. They would quit and never return. This would stop the game from gaining new players.
I believe a much better method is to introduce a cost to the game, for example, $10 USD. But then compensate us by giving us in-game cash worth $10 USD. In essence, the game is free for the regular player. But cheaters would have to "buy" a new account every single time they get banned. This would discourage some cheaters. The higher the price is, the fewer the number of cheaters there will be.
Right now as a free game, there is no consequence for getting caught cheating.
March 2019
As bad as it may sound and the experience might be horrid, I still think its not too bad to grind out of "new account" status, provided that it is made apparent that the account will change after X condition, be it hours and games played or by dropping cash "buying something in game". I'm also assuming that there would be a easy way to report a player of cheating in game. Thus weeding out all the cheaters earlier, granted they can start over and create another account.
The idea of the $10 cost for a game doesn't sound bad but might not get as much attention as it did if costs were involved, hell I wasn't into BR's but the execution of APEX made me come back for more. But yeah maybe a middle ground being that the game stays free, however if you do spend cash in game your account then is moved out of the "new account" category and join up with the rest of the diligent community.
March 2019 - last edited March 2019
Why do you think cheaters would have a small number of hours played??
That would only happen if there was an efficient and effective reporting and banning system.. which does not yet exist... and when it does exist, cheating will not be as much of a problem.
Here is an idea for a game without cheaters...
Prevent x-ray by hiding information from clients by using server-side player-to-player visibility checks (like world of tanks), and prevent aimbot by giving everyone aimbot. Voila, these cheats are useless.
March 2019
Well once a cheater does get caught and account banned, the newly created account would have small number of hours. Then they have to start off with other potential cheaters, and go through the early hours again, hoping to not get caught again. The barrier doesn't stop cheating at all, it just lessens the chances of a dedicated player encountering them in matches because the queue filters the newly created accounts out of their queue. But I agree, an effective banning system would rid the game of cheaters.
With regards to your idea, I haven't played world of tanks and wouldn't know how it works but it does sound interesting to prevent a client from knowing where a player is, however doesn't that only limit the cheaters to see in their field of view or render range? Lastly I think one of the core parts of this game is actually aiming and the ability to track an enemy, granting aimbot to players by default would change the meta to who can loot the best ranged weapon or who has high ground.
March 2019 - last edited March 2019
"I haven't played world of tanks and wouldn't know how it works but it does sound interesting to prevent a client from knowing where a player is, however doesn't that only limit the cheaters to see in their field of view or render range?"
World of tanks does visibility checks between the tank "eye" and 7 points on enemy tanks, to determine if a tank is visible or occluded by world geometry. Meaning, if you are completely occluded by obstacles, then enemy client's would not even be told about your world position by the server. There is also "minimum distance" where clients are always told about enemy tanks, even if they are occluded.
In APEX, because of the speed at which players move relative to each other, this minimum "full information" distance would probably need to be somewhere around 100m, because you wouldn't want to quickly run into a building, see nobody there, and then have a person "pop in" when the server-round-trip latency finally told you he was there. Which means it would prevent xray cheats from working across the map, but it wouldn't stop them from working in close-quarters combat situations.
There would be some additional server workload, but it seems tractable...
World of Tanks has 15v15 battles, which means it's potentially checking 7 points per tank against 15 enemy tanks, so worst case it's doing (7 * 15 * 2) = 210 ray intersection tests per frame. However, in the common case it can skip most of the checks, because as soon as a tank is visible to any member of the enemy team, it's visible to all of them. Which means in practice it probably does closer to (1.5 * 30) = 45 ray intersection checks.
In APEX, there are 60 independent players, and there is no "team vision". If the number of points checked was reduced to 4 (head, shoulder, shoulder, feet), this would be worst-case (4 * 57) = 228 checks per frame. This could optimized by omitting checks for players too close or too far from each other, and would benefit from the natural benefit of players dying throughout the match.. however, it would be increased server computational load relative to today's design. I tend to think this math work is cheaper than actually sending out the data to every client, but I have not tested anything like this.
"Lastly I think one of the core parts of this game is actually aiming and the ability to track an enemy, granting aimbot to players by default would change the meta to who can loot the best ranged weapon or who has high ground."
We *already* have combat between players of even aiming skill, and the meta is not be that simplistic. It is a strategic tactical combat game.
When aiming skill is near equal, combat between players is about strategic decisions to use cover, teammates, heals, relative weapon strengths, legend abilities, and positional strategy to try to make sure that you're efficiently applying more damage than you're receiving...This includes shooting at people who are not shooting at you, rotating damage between teammates, using third party attacks, shoot-and-run, engaging at a range efficient for your weapon but not your enemies'.
In fact, this is ALREADY the game today between players of equal aim skill. (and consider that console already has aim-assist in APEX, Fortnite, and other games). Strategic tactical gameplay is also what you will see in skill-based-matchmaking queues if they are ever available, because players will have more similar aiming capabilites.
Personally, I'd rather play a game where everyone has access to strategic tactical gameplay, rather than most of the player base insta-losing to people with better aim.
That said, in a game where everyone has auto-aim, it's a problem to have weapons tuned like like the wingman, which basically win at all engagement ranges if aimed correctly. This is one of the reasons players consider the wingmanso OP, because anyone who can aim (either cheat aimbot or human aimbot) can insta-win 1v1s with it.
Weapons have to have more of a rock-paper-scissors balance, where sniper guns have an advantage at longer ranges, pistols and shotguns have an advantage in short-range high mobility situations, and automatic weapons are mid range weapons which "lose" straight up at long range vs snipers or short range vs shotguns and pistols, but are the most flexible and can deal great damage if you can shoot while not being shot at.
March 2019
March 2019
All rules and regulations and laws are basically at the expense of the law abiding