Anti-Cheat Discussion

[Anti-Cheat Discussion]

On 8/4/2021 at 6:00 AM, Bambola said:

For eleven years of playing, no one, not even a single time, accused you of cheating? I find this highly unlikely to be true, regardless of your actual skill set.

Oh I have been accused of cheating a lot over the years. But it was typically by cheaters who were caught in the act. I have also had cheaters whisper me and and ask how was I beating their cheats. Which is easy if you under stand the maps, game play, weapons and actual strategy of the game. It all come down to what I I always whisper to them.

Remember that bots can not do objectives, that is why you lost again.

[Show Us How To Play Now]

On 9/14/2021 at 11:54 AM, Frosi said:

While I can understand the frustration, it is not like this change is only for the worse. Yes, there will be awful matchmaking moments but I wouldn't say its nearly as bad as some people are trying to make it out to be, yes you will sometimes face incredibly talented players but at the same time you can also have those players on your team, sometimes it'll be one-sided in your favor and sometimes in the enemies, its not perfect by any means but its far from unplayable and more often than not you will still play against the same players you would've faced on silver districts, just because they're gold, doesn't mean they're good.

 

On top of that, no threat segregation also means there are 3 to 4 districts to play on at peak times, if one district is stacked with good players, you can now opt into a different district instead to avoid situations in which you feel like you are outclassed more often than not, this also means that there is usually two Financials and one Waterfront districts which allows players to freely level their characters without feeling stuck because people refuse to play Waterfront, this for example is one of the few reasons I've been playing as of late, since it lets me level some of my other characters without having to constantly check https://will.io/apb/ in hopes that a Waterfront district is populated.

 

Jericho has also seen a decent increase in player numbers (although still fairly low) which means that the change is doing what it was intended to do, while it causes some minor issues on Citadel, those issues have workarounds that work at just about any time of day other than the early mornings.

 

In the end, I feel like a lot of people have had their mentality crushed by this change, a lot of players assume every gold they see is one of those golds that wouldn't be the ones they would've seen on Bronze districts and must therefore be gods at the game, this is wrong and almost every single Gold I've gotten as random team mates would've been better suited as a Silver player if Threat was better at judging player skill instead of arbitrary inflation to their MMR by doing objectives or collecting all sorts of passive Score gains which are no indication of player skill let alone how well they're doing.

Thank you, that made me laugh so hard I almost peed myself.

So is "talented" what the cool kids are calling botters and cheats now days? But you are right, there is a 70/40 chance you will also get a "Talented" player on your team also.

 

and yes I said 70/40 on purpose. if you do not get the reference, you do not play enough other games. 

[Anti-Cheat Discussion]

On 6/18/2021 at 7:05 PM, CookiePuss said:

I think you wildly underestimate the amount of hackusating that happens

Nope, I think you are confusing non-hack cheats with hackusations. Of cheaters less than 5% are hacking, the rest are botting, exploiting, greefing, and dethreating.  Try and remember that cheating has many forms and all should be reported not just the occasional hacker. 

 

I have seen a team member block the target, take it and run from the target, shoot his team, ram the teams cars, etc... all to help the enemy. This type of cheating gets reported way more than hackers. Yet the ones doing it will cry that the reporter is hackusating, because they can not understand that there are other ways of cheating other than hacks.

 

Merged.

 

On 6/19/2021 at 7:10 AM, Hexerin said:

Warn/suspend/ban people if they falsely accuse others, like any well moderated game does. Problem solved.

Great idea, but first lean what all cheating in APB is.  In the 11 years I have played APB I have only seen one false accusation, and that was from a teammate too an enemy. Once I pointed out hat it was a OP weapon which you could gamble and buy (if you spent enough real world cash) he realized the enemy was not cheating.   Every other accusation was that the cheaters were doing non-hack cheats with was true.

 

The problem is that most cheats do not know they are cheating, because they have seen so many people cheat that they think it is acceptable. 

[Little Orbit should have just started from scratch.]

On 6/27/2021 at 10:09 AM, Revoluzzer said:

None of those three "features" is dependent on an old engine, though.

I did not mean to imply that it was limited to the old engine.  Again a new modern engine could as I stated here:  "There are a lot of games that come close and use 1 of the three, but none have figured out that is the combination that makes the APB enjoyable." 

[This game HAS to change.]

On 7/23/2021 at 3:33 AM, Aroa Croft said:

My point of view, from the outside, is that you have a community problem and not a gaming problem. You need a control figure or, failing that, veterans of the game who know how to handle the situation with these people. You are making the developers dizzy, seriously, I repeat, make that figure or pull true veterans of the game, not gms / players but experienced players who are respected and valued

Right there is the problem, most vets have quit the game.  Since you can no longer point out the cheaters the best you can do is beat them then do a district text "Remember people, bots can not do objectives for you" The cheaters quit after you beat them 1 or 2 more times and the server dies.  

 

It is actually easy to beat cheats as the game is not about killing it is about doing the objectives. The problem is the once you beat a few of them they all DC and the server dies. Bringing vets will not help as we played the same 2 (and 1/2) maps for ten years and nothing has been added.   Even the new engine will not add a new map, it will only make the game prettier, but I remember back playing RTW-CB with the weather on, and that was beautiful. 

[Is it possible to turn APB into a community-developed game?]

On 7/27/2021 at 1:31 PM, PotatoeGirl said:

You give this community too much credits. With all the cheaters this game has, the first thing that will happen after code is shared will be private servers popping all over the place. 

See you are saying that likes a bad thing. If APB did become abandon ware then yes you will see a lot of servers, but they will all have restrictions. Especially on weapons' and mods. 

What you will not see more than once is cheaters, as whomever is hosting the server will be swinging the ban hammer liberally.  Also if a cheater were to try and host a server that allowed cheating, it would die from lack of players in a week.

 

The problem right now is that LO is afraid of banning cheaters. However if it was your server, you would ban them as fast as you saw them. For the non-hack cheaters, three (3) strikes and your out and on a public ban list.  LO may want to spare the feeling of cheaters, I say not only broadcast it on district chat like the used to but have a page of shame again. And on a private server, you could.

 

The main thing is having access to the assets, remapping to modern skins would take very little time. There is nothing wrong with the current animations so those could easily be tweaked if necessary.  the rest of the code. well instead of keeping it in unreal I would  look at making it a TC in the dew drop engine. But that's just me. If they did  APB as abandon ware you have access to everything.

[Little Orbit should have just started from scratch.]

On 5/23/2021 at 3:34 PM, TheDogCatcher said:

 I maintain that the biggest problem that APB faces and always has faced is one of image, it has always been seen by the wider gaming public (rightly or wrongly) as a pay to win game that is riddled with cheats, I personally dispute the pay to win claims but I don't think anyone can seriously say that this game doesn't have a problem with people cheating, it's a free to play game and all free to play games have this problem to one degree or another and again rightly or wrongly APB has historically always been seen as one of the worst.

 

This is the biggest hurdle that anyone running this game has to overcome - cleaning up it's image, a new engine will do nothing to fix this issue, you can have all the new content you like but if this game is seen as a hackers paradise you are never going to get your players back.

 

When LO first aquired APB one of the first things they did was unban all previously banned players, in my opinion (and I doubt I'm alone here) this was monumentally bad optics, then we had the utter farce of them switching anti - cheat provders every few weeks, this only served to make them look even worse, I think by this point they have lost the trust of gamers to get this most important aspect right. We can argue all day about whether the bans dished out by G1 were deserved or not but I don't think anyone can dispute the fact that a good proportion of them must have been justified, anyway it's not even about that it's about public perception and this game is still percieved as a hackers paradise run by devs who really aren't in control of the situation.

 

Without trust you are building your house on a foundation of sand and with this in mind I strongly believe that APB is way beyond salvation at this point.

and there you have it.

 

as to upgrading to U4/5 , as some one said, APB 2 would not feel like APB.  Would it be better or worse, that is the real question .   Keep in mind that what makes APB the game it is, is the customization, the single hit table (no X-dmg to body parts). and the individual ready ques. It is these 3 items that sets APB apart.  There are a lot of games that come close and use 1 of the three, but none have figured out that is the combination that makes the APB enjoyable.   

 

Could APB 2 be made using a modern engine.  Technically (legal issues aside) APB 2 could be made in 3 years, from scratch.  2 years if the reuse the existing models as a base..

Could LO make APB 2?  No, they do not have the capability to create a game. There is a big difference between recoding an existing game and actually creating assets for a new one.  

 

[Anti-Cheat Discussion]

The bottom line is, the only way to ever stop the cheaters is to have GMs (with the power to temp ban) in game and have the /report system tag them as soon as it is submitted so that the GM can instantly jump to and observe the /reported player.