Anti-Cheat Discussion

[Deadliest 385]

On 12/4/2020 at 8:54 PM, KyoukiDotExe said:

There are real players who would love to play but are blocked because of their countries preventing them to play certain services or visit certain websites they NEED VPNs to function in order to play. It's a very real thing.

China?

 

The most legitimate reason that a player would use a vpn is to fix their routing issue, which does help slightly lower latency and improve consistency. Since there are only two servers EU and NA, players from outside of those countries may need a VPN in order to play at a playable latency.

 

some Australian ISP are pretty shiity, who knows soon NA will shutdown and it's going to become EU only. games f*k

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by Deadliest

[Darkzero3802 611]

3 hours ago, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

preventing people who are willing to play from playing outweighs maybe (because who needs a vpn when you can just reset your router for a different ip) stopping some cheaters from rerolling

 

you dont use anticheats that false ban people even if they also ban cheaters, why would orbit choose to essentially do the same thing here?

A VPN can also be used for something called a DDoS, im quite sure everyone here is well aware of those with how frequent they are.. As for the false ban issue nothing is 100% in life humans arent perfect, however LO can def do a much better job when it comes to policing the servers and preventing cheats. They came in, saw the G1 way wasnt working and kept on using it. If it hasnt worked ever why would it magically start now?

1 hour ago, Deadliest said:

China?

 

The most legitimate reason that a player would use a vpn is to fix their routing issue, which does help slightly lower latency and improve consistency. Since there are only two servers EU and NA, players from outside of those countries may need a VPN in order to play at a playable latency.

 

some Australian ISP are pretty shiity, who knows soon NA will shutdown and it's going to become EU only. games f*k

 

LO has already stated that the 2 servers are going to be merged for a bigger pool of players to fight

[vsb 6171]

23 minutes ago, Darkzero3802 said:

A VPN can also be used for something called a DDoS, im quite sure everyone here is well aware of those with how frequent they are.. As for the false ban issue nothing is 100% in life humans arent perfect, however LO can def do a much better job when it comes to policing the servers and preventing cheats. They came in, saw the G1 way wasnt working and kept on using it. If it hasnt worked ever why would it magically start now?

im pretty sure a ddos attack doesnt involve a vpn

nothing else here actually relates to what i said

[Deadliest 385]

1 hour ago, Darkzero3802 said:

 

LO has already stated that the 2 servers are going to be merged for a bigger pool of players to fight

Bigger pool of players to fight seems like its going to be a temporary population increase, but I don't see the growth of new players coming in. 

 

Even if they unified the servers, the main concern is LO will have multiple district with different locations without any players on it.  NA would probably be dead still and players will be force to play on EU server since it currently has the highest local population of players, making it active 24/7.  Worst players will quit or force to connect to a server outside their country in order to play apb reloaded, there's going to be players with 120-300+ ping,  probably many will use vpn to have decent connection.

 

The other servers will be a waste to run etc Asia or Australia, if there's less players or none it's not going to grow, unless the game somehow magically attracts everyone to play, because the truth is a new player's first impression of apb is going to be dogsh*t experience. 

 

many have forgotten that there was once a Asia player base in 2011 with 700+ population on HAN and G1 Killed it by changing the location to California. I doubt they all come back because of the engine update. 

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by Deadliest

[Darkzero3802 611]

15 hours ago, Deadliest said:

Bigger pool of players to fight seems like its going to be a temporary population increase, but I don't see the growth of new players coming in. 

 

Even if they unified the servers, the main concern is LO will have multiple district with different locations without any players on it.  NA would probably be dead still and players will be force to play on EU server since it currently has the highest local population of players, making it active 24/7.  Worst players will quit or force to connect to a server outside their country in order to play apb reloaded, there's going to be players with 120-300+ ping,  probably many will use vpn to have decent connection.

 

The other servers will be a waste to run etc Asia or Australia, if there's less players or none it's not going to grow, unless the game somehow magically attracts everyone to play, because the truth is a new player's first impression of apb is going to be dogsh*t experience. 

 

many have forgotten that there was once a Asia player base in 2011 with 700+ population on HAN and G1 Killed it by changing the location to California. I doubt they all come back because of the engine update. 

They arent adding any additional servers, just one big server for the remaining pop. And yea we wont see any new players unless afew things happen with the new engine.
1. LO steps up in the fight against cheaters
2. enforcement of the TOS
3. the community actually starts to help others and stops being toxic
4. matchmaking and threat fix to make things not only more accurate but to prevent squash matches
5. actual new content
6. properly balanced weapons

[vsb 6171]

6 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

They arent adding any additional servers, just one big server for the remaining pop.

thats not what theyre doing no, the plan was to have a bunch of regional servers that anyone can connect to so that characters will no longer be "locked" in the server chosen during character creation

[Darkzero3802 611]

On 12/7/2020 at 12:49 AM, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

thats not what theyre doing no, the plan was to have a bunch of regional servers that anyone can connect to so that characters will no longer be "locked" in the server chosen during character creation

That will feed into a bigger server as if I recall right someone in EU can play someone in NA regardless of the region server.

[DatGanja420 2]

Since 2016 to 2020 the change from EAC to BE was the stupidest mistake...i get spawn killed or shot through solid objects...Beginning to move on, their anti cheat is basically "i walk into gunfire" not fair

[GoGreen 2]

On 8/21/2020 at 11:40 PM, Frosi said:

While I want to say that those numbers are indeed impressive I also want to mention that APB has rarely ever had an issue with blatant cheating (Shaw copters) outside of a hand full of time periods such as when a certain cheat went public and for everyone to download. 

 

APB's real issue with cheating lies in the closeting area with people running their cheats on very low settings that still let them compete / consistently beat the top 1% of players through means of narrow FoV aimbots, smooth aim and silent aim. It is this type of cheating that has become more common with the switch to BE again, same goes for basic Triggerbots and Macroing, both have seen a noticable increase and even at the most blatant level of triggerbotting / macroing these players are getting away with what appears no problems at all. I've personally seen multiple dodgy and one extremely blatant example of triggerbotting players that are playing daily and have not been banned under BattlEye even tho they've been going since it was implemented and I am sure there are many many more.

 

If you want to stick with BE moving forward it is this type of cheating that has to be combated as the idea of being a good player and wanting to play on a high level starts to mean less and less, eventually getting back to a point where you simply do not know who is cheating and who isn't anymore, this was the case after FF was made automated. 

God I hate that Term ShawCopters, I see the term ALL the time. But have NEVER seen anything remotely close to "SHAWCOPTER".

If ppl cheat they usually use 1 of 3 guns. A Carbine, A NTEC or a Oscar. Just the facts please......................

 

Merged.

 

Also, this the fault of alot of this is the game itself. I am not claiming to know how or why. But, when large groups of my friends decide to Switch up and Go against each other.

We notice alot of ghost shotting, BOTH teams will swear they sniped someone 3 times or something similar. And they did not get hit at all on their side they NEVER was hit.

Just saying, NOT ALL, but a good majority of the Negativity in this game is stuff like this.

IT leads to hackusating and hating and it really sucks

Also, There are really hacks. Ran into one just a few minutes ago. Trainee with Ntec modded and symbols assigned and wrecks the entire team.

Reroll You say, OF couurse! Reroll with hacks.?

If you are that good then why do you need to reroll in a bronze server?

This is way worse than all they crying of dethreating and EXCUSE of low pop for Golds to play in Silver.

Silver is the meat and potatoes of this game. And they have Zero Home. Crapped on by GOLDS if they got to THEIR server. And accused of being dethreaters if they got to Bronze. Bronze has it even worse. They don't know how to pick a server and wind up in Silver. 

I am so sure those VET GOLDS help and go easy on them.....YEA RIGHT!

All of this has been addressed OVER and OVER before.

BS on Engine upgrade will fix it. Its all an excuse to farm By GoLDs that LO ONLY listens to.

Whic is really dumb, cuz these guys have already bought everything.

Don't you want some NEW Customers that actually spend moeny.

Please stop listening to the Big Fish in the Tiny TINY POND.

 

[Zian 68]

Old conversation, new faces.

I find it interesting that this is still a repetitive problem, despite having been known as an issue and downplayed many times by the previous ownership.

 

Possible solutions:

 

1. Stop allowing VPNs, it is a tool used by many cheaters.

 

2. Find a way to ban their steam account, and get them removed from steam.

 

3. Ban their IP address.

 

4. Seek legal action for making adjustments to your programs without your companies permission.

[Hexerin 1140]

On 1/8/2021 at 3:49 PM, Zian said:

3. Ban their IP address.

Oh look, someone who doesn't have the slightest clue how IP addresses work.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

On 1/9/2021 at 10:49 AM, Zian said:

Old conversation, new faces.

I find it interesting that this is still a repetitive problem, despite having been known as an issue and downplayed many times by the previous ownership.

 

Possible solutions:

 

1. Stop allowing VPNs, it is a tool used by many cheaters.

 

2. Find a way to ban their steam account, and get them removed from steam.

 

3. Ban their IP address.

 

4. Seek legal action for making adjustments to your programs without your companies permission.

I don't think you know what VPNs are.

 

Ah yes, ban someone's entire steam account for hacking on a single game.

 

IP bans do nothing.

[cowhorseman 441]

2 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

I don't think you know what VPNs are.

 

Ah yes, ban someone's entire steam account for hacking on a single game.

 

IP bans do nothing.

so you ever heard of hardware bans

 supposedly if needed game company's can ban the ids of your pc parts or something which means you gotta swap them and shit. idk if it's true just something i heard floating around somewere like a fart in the breeze

[vsb 6171]

58 minutes ago, cowhorseman said:

so you ever heard of hardware bans

 supposedly if needed game company's can ban the ids of your pc parts or something which means you gotta swap them and shit. idk if it's true just something i heard floating around somewere like a fart in the breeze

a 10 second google search will give anyone access to programs that can fake hwids, so while more barriers like this aren't necessarily a bad thing its also not some magical cheater proof solution

[wHisHi 206]

What if they bring back smth that worked, like eac

[StraaZi 34]

SPCT no hacks only skill gap...

why 50% of the gold population move to silver instead of playing on gold. apb do not have cheaters

why people have new accounts and names that are spelled a little differently.apb do not have cheaters

wonder why people stop playing as soon as they get to silver.apb do not have cheaters

wondering why the game does not allow you to play on all servers if you are gold rank..apb do not have cheaters

why is there a lot of drama around cheating.i guess apb does not have cheaters

why are we not allowed to discuss cheating on the forum on what clans and players cheat.apb do not have cheaters

why protect new players against high level players. its a shooter game.apb do not have cheaters

if someone writes in the chat that someone is cheating,10 people write that he is not cheating and starts attacking this person but the person who is the  accused of cheating does not write a word.apb do not have cheaters

why do some in the SPCT team write that it is no cheaters in apb but it is just skill gap.apb do not have cheaters

why are some people not banned for cheating when we all know they are cheating

I wonder why everyone knows who I am but I do not know who anyone is after 10 years in apb.funny that there are new names in the game but no more players.apb do not have cheaters

SPCT no hacks only skill gap

LO fix the game

Edited January 10, 2021 by StraaZi

[Deadliest 385]

8 hours ago, StraaZi said:

if someone writes in the chat that someone is cheating,10 people write that he is not cheating and starts attacking this person but the person who is the  accused of cheating does not write a word.apb do not have cheaters

 

Why bother replying to them. I’m pretty sure everyone has experience that one person who would spam “player’s name is cheating aimbot wall hacks” etc and then later on insulting them on the district chat after beating them. Why bother replying to stupid people. You create more toxicity if you did reply back, because honestly I would have reply F*^*k U.  
 

Though cheating is still a problem but in a small margin. it’s the same result if you called an actual cheater are cheater, they just give you a big F U. Nothing you can do about it, just wait till they get ban.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by Deadliest

[M2bandit 0]

Dang I really hoped BattleEye was going to fix the game.  I haven't played in a long time. 
I saw someone flying in beacon the yesterday, I'm not familiar with beacon or if there's a legit method to do this. 

[Flaws 1033]

I've barely been following this thread as I didn't realise that its still active but I'd like to elaborate a bit on the current situation we find ourselves in.

 

Easy Anti-Cheat was easily the best thing that had happened to APB in it's entire history. The game had never been more playable until that point. I used to play for hours on end every day and I wouldn't meet any cheaters or I'd see one every 2 weeks or like one a month. It was an absolute blessing considering that cheating is one of the top all-time problems of APB. That period was the best and most playable under LO, especially prior to some of the brainless weapon changes that came to be during that time.

 

We swapped back to Battleye while knowing full well that Battleye is a significantly worse anti-cheat and that it does not meet the requirements of APB. I mean, we had it literally right before changing to EAC and we knew that it didn't work and it still doesn't, we had originally upgraded for a reason. I've heard multiple different versions of the same story of why the switch back happened exactly but thats beside the point.

 

Battleye is extremely slow and seems to lack a lot of the protection that EAC provided. An anti-cheat needs to be much faster in detecting cheaters and BE simply isn't able to keep up. This becomes clear when you notice how long it takes for rage speedhackers and silent aimers to get banned. It can take up to a week which is just astonishingly bad considering that there isn't even a fraction of an attempt to hide their cheats and a single glance by any living human being can tell instantly what is going on. This simply wasn't a thing with EAC. You wouldn't see those certain russian rerolls on EU that play on a brand new trainee account every week with nicknames you cannot possibly even begin to attempt to pronounce who minttk and obliterate everything in their path with just a stock N-TEC 5 and FBW either.

 

The reason an anti-cheat needs to be fast, especially in such an old F2P game is because you cannot permanently stop a person from making a new account and logging in to cheat. IP bans and HWID bans are useless as most of the experienced, dedicated cheaters (both ragers and closets) know how to bypass and spoof all of these detections and head right in. EAC had what APB needed for the most part and we pretty much threw it away and paved way for the old cheaters to come back, who btw started popping up practically instantly on day 1 of being back to BE, going full force. Unfortunately, I cannot name any names but if you play in EU silver districts and pay literally any attention at all, you know them. Now think of how long it takes to detect an experienced closet. Well, we still have a whole bunch playing actively on EU who are going full force on their mains (and even tend to stream it) and don't seem to be bothered by BE in the slightest.

 

All in all, the situation seems to only be going downhill from here. It feels like we're one foot in FFbans territory again but without the false manual banning by corrupt G1 employees and without the forum which documented and advertised every ban with comments on it, that also had ads all over it in order to pretty much profit from APB toxicity and from people with nothing going on in their lives who tried their best to ruin other people's lives through doxxing and other illegal and immoral means. Thanks, whoever the creators of that cesspool were again, I'm sure you made some money off of everyone else's suffering.

 

At the end of the day, I firmly believe that if LO had the option to overpay for whatever services EAC could provide to APB it would have still been a much better business decision long-term instead of switching to an anti-cheat that just doesn't have what it takes for a problematic game such as APB. Of course, I don't know the exact situation or differences in pricing, etc. But I feel like that was a part of our saving grace and we just flushed it down the toilet.

 

TL;DR: EAC > BE

[Zatro 49]

On 1/12/2021 at 8:48 PM, M2bandit said:

Dang I really hoped BattleEye was going to fix the game.  I haven't played in a long time. 
I saw someone flying in beacon the yesterday, I'm not familiar with beacon or if there's a legit method to do this. 

That was an event that featured some special skills like jumping 50+m into the air.
 

[cowhorseman 441]

On 1/10/2021 at 3:05 AM, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA said:

a 10 second google search will give anyone access to programs that can fake hwids, so while more barriers like this aren't necessarily a bad thing its also not some magical cheater proof solution

in truth you can not get rid of cheaters. new programs and tech makes it easier for them to come back. it more or less depends on how willing are they to cheat in a game and ruin peoples fun 

[Darkzero3802 611]

On 1/12/2021 at 10:14 PM, Flaws said:

I've barely been following this thread as I didn't realise that its still active but I'd like to elaborate a bit on the current situation we find ourselves in.

 

Easy Anti-Cheat was easily the best thing that had happened to APB in it's entire history. The game had never been more playable until that point. I used to play for hours on end every day and I wouldn't meet any cheaters or I'd see one every 2 weeks or like one a month. It was an absolute blessing considering that cheating is one of the top all-time problems of APB. That period was the best and most playable under LO, especially prior to some of the brainless weapon changes that came to be during that time.

 

We swapped back to Battleye while knowing full well that Battleye is a significantly worse anti-cheat and that it does not meet the requirements of APB. I mean, we had it literally right before changing to EAC and we knew that it didn't work and it still doesn't, we had originally upgraded for a reason. I've heard multiple different versions of the same story of why the switch back happened exactly but thats beside the point.

 

Battleye is extremely slow and seems to lack a lot of the protection that EAC provided. An anti-cheat needs to be much faster in detecting cheaters and BE simply isn't able to keep up. This becomes clear when you notice how long it takes for rage speedhackers and silent aimers to get banned. It can take up to a week which is just astonishingly bad considering that there isn't even a fraction of an attempt to hide their cheats and a single glance by any living human being can tell instantly what is going on. This simply wasn't a thing with EAC. You wouldn't see those certain russian rerolls on EU that play on a brand new trainee account every week with nicknames you cannot possibly even begin to attempt to pronounce who minttk and obliterate everything in their path with just a stock N-TEC 5 and FBW either.

 

The reason an anti-cheat needs to be fast, especially in such an old F2P game is because you cannot permanently stop a person from making a new account and logging in to cheat. IP bans and HWID bans are useless as most of the experienced, dedicated cheaters (both ragers and closets) know how to bypass and spoof all of these detections and head right in. EAC had what APB needed for the most part and we pretty much threw it away and paved way for the old cheaters to come back, who btw started popping up practically instantly on day 1 of being back to BE, going full force. Unfortunately, I cannot name any names but if you play in EU silver districts and pay literally any attention at all, you know them. Now think of how long it takes to detect an experienced closet. Well, we still have a whole bunch playing actively on EU who are going full force on their mains (and even tend to stream it) and don't seem to be bothered by BE in the slightest.

 

All in all, the situation seems to only be going downhill from here. It feels like we're one foot in FFbans territory again but without the false manual banning by corrupt G1 employees and without the forum which documented and advertised every ban with comments on it, that also had ads all over it in order to pretty much profit from APB toxicity and from people with nothing going on in their lives who tried their best to ruin other people's lives through doxxing and other illegal and immoral means. Thanks, whoever the creators of that cesspool were again, I'm sure you made some money off of everyone else's suffering.

 

At the end of the day, I firmly believe that if LO had the option to overpay for whatever services EAC could provide to APB it would have still been a much better business decision long-term instead of switching to an anti-cheat that just doesn't have what it takes for a problematic game such as APB. Of course, I don't know the exact situation or differences in pricing, etc. But I feel like that was a part of our saving grace and we just flushed it down the toilet.

 

TL;DR: EAC > BE

Pretty much. Day 1 all the cheats and hacks were back and since then LO has done nothing more then make this thread. Day 1 ppl stopped playing and pop decreased because hackers are back, all these weapon changes have done nothing but make the game less populated but thats a diff thread. BE didnt work the 1st time and its still not working now yet LO thinks all is ok. Unless they bring back EAC and listen to whats left of the community the new engine is pointless.

[BlatMan 711]

I'm still wondering where all these cheaters are. EU? Fightclub? Bronze district?

 

[Darkzero3802 611]

3 hours ago, SquirrelFace said:

I'm still wondering where all these cheaters are. EU? Fightclub? Bronze district?

 

All over. If you know the diff between whats within the realm of possibility and not youd easily pick out whose cheating and whose not. Fight club is where you mainly find the closets tho. Those cheaters that try to hide the cheats and dont just make it plainly obv.

[CookiePuss 5379]

3 hours ago, SquirrelFace said:

I'm still wondering where all these cheaters are. EU? Fightclub? Bronze district?

 

Mostly EU.

Often fight club.

Rarely bronze districts.