SARD Anti-Cheat Update

[MageLO 136]

Hi everyone,

 

Since the launch of New Horizon in August 2024, we've been working hard to roll out SARD Anti-Cheat. It's our next step toward a fairer, more enjoyable APB experience, and SARD has been a committed partner in helping us build something uniquely suited to the challenges of our game.

 

Read more about our plans moving forward in our dedicated news post.

[ninjarrrr 254]

thats a lot of rewording and mental gymnastics to say that the anticheat isn't going to auto ban, or that little orbit doesnt want to ban cheaters as they'd lose their main source of revenue :((

[MACKxBOLAN 430]

@MattScott I do appreciate the update.

 I know this is a bit more complicated than screwing in a light bulb.

This is more like Re-wiring the whole house.

Now I understand the delay. 

 To the average gamer they are just looking at the light bulb, 

and saying it doesn't work. 

I am intrigued at how the outcome will be.  

[koenyboy500 38]

I can respect bold moves.
I have read only the intro and a bit and I must say: I very much see the codes and morals from my own server.
While I think it's the tougher route, one thing is for certain. THANK YOU for just sending information. Anything.
The "We're working on it" is, personally, all I needed to keep my hopes up, for even the highest climbs.

That said, just out of curiosity. How are these 'cheat points' gonna help with laying low on not notifying the cheaters in question that they've been spotted? I would have suspected more of an approach of what Valve has been doing with TF2.

EDIT after reading:
I've got to say, whilst I am not entirely sure how the 'cheat points' system is gonna be used and how effective it is to keep the game clean of cheaters (as it seems like the leniency regarding them has been upped a lot... And especially with the people here shouting that LO is endorsing cheaters... well... ).
What I can say is that thought has been put into this and I can recognise the decision to do this only as having good intents. So I am very much willing to support this.
But I hope that being the first game, whilst being F2P as well, having the reputation of "The first game that doesn't ban outright" is not gonna bite us in da bootocks.
This will be a fine line to work. I trust that Matt has put a lot of thinking into this.

Edited November 12 by koenyboy500
Read up further

[Pedroxin 107]

Aww look who crawled outta the cave to serve us a big fat juicy nothingburger. I applaud the effort tbh, I guess at the very least u gotta try to appear legit when in fact you are running a money laundering front rather than a game company 

[CookiePuss 5378]

2 hours ago, Pedroxin said:

Aww look who crawled outta the cave to serve us a big fat juicy nothingburger. I applaud the effort tbh, I guess at the very least u gotta try to appear legit when in fact you are running a money laundering front rather than a game company 

How does money laundering work?

[BillehBobJoe 9]

Yeah, you guys got a whopping 123 players tonight on NA im sure you'll do gang busters in data collection on them

[Deadliest 385]

What da f**k is cheat points? We rewarding cheaters with points?

Old Broken game + a broken anti cheat, just shut the game down and work for it over the years man.  

 

Edited November 13 by Deadliest

[vsb 6171]

9 hours ago, MageLO said:

Read more about our plans moving forward in our dedicated news post.

same script matt has been repeating for years now

 

a deep “heartfelt” apology, some excuses of technical difficulties, an outline of grand plans for success at some nebulous point in the future, and then he fucks off for 6 months until it’s time for another apology because the last grand plans (who could have seen this coming?!) ran into technical difficulties 

 

it’s played out brother, ask chatgpt for some new material

[Yapopal 167]

I read it without confidence. Please consider unlocking the mission exit button. This will rid the game of a ton of toxic crap that comes from the matchmaking system, low population, and crap optimization.

[Qualeta 15]

Nothing gonna change, you will see 5 cheaters in asylum anyway 

[BlatMan 711]

How are cheaters going to earn points if you can't even detect a player running too fast?

[FranGT 15]

2 hours ago, Qualeta said:

Nothing gonna change, you will see 5 cheaters in asylum anyway 

Only 5?

[Qualeta 15]

16 minutes ago, FranGT said:

Only 5?

forgot to say "at least"

[Deftonez 125]

the more things change the more they stay the same

[Ebola-Chan 59]

Yawn, no real consequences to cheating.

[Queen of Love 452]

Allow ninjaripper, noobs.

 

[Yapopal 167]

15 negative comments and 1 positive one. Matt continues to walk the path of a deaf sleepwalker maximalist smeared with lubricant. The ledge is close.

[VanilleKeks 736]

This post is pretty tone-deaf. The consequences of SARD implementation has been rampant cheating for months, and now you come with the "never ban anyone outright"?

I can get behind your approach if this was a largely populated game, with a respectable ranked and e-sports scene, but I wouldn't say this is what the people wanna hear. 

 

With the size of the game you should have just slam-dunked these bozos with aggressive SARD settings. Even if 25% of the player base gets banned that's not even 200 cases which you could manually review over some weeks.

 

As a step two I support this entire blogpost, but there is a missing step one which should be immediate and harsh action with a dash of cleanup afterwards. 

Edited November 14 by VanilleKeks

[Kast2 29]

I don't know, as much as I appreciate the effort behind this for a game with only 400 players online it all sounds too “complicated", time consuming and needing a lot of work.

I'm still of the opinion that it was fine when there was FairFight, it wasn't perfect but when I played back in the day it was fine, certainly 100x times better than what we had with EAC and BattlEye.

[Westford 167]

I think @VanilleKeks has a point, concerning NO real ramifications
for using 3rd part tools.

On one point, the solution would be to ban the offender
to insure fair game play.

 

APB has followed this Mantra for a some time..

Just like any other gaming company.

The other argument is to segregate the offenders to match up
with other offenders, assuming that all have reached the “Cheat Point”
threshold.

Citadel, may very well survive this approach, as their population’s
high point, on any given day is around 350 players.
Probably less time to wait for a “K” up mission to start.

Jericho will have a problem, as their population on a good day
is around  120.

I hope Jericho's population decline is not because of players using 3rd party tools......

Smaller pool of players to create segregation pools based on “Cheat Points”

A legit player, or even a segregated player will probably have to wait longer
for a district match up in Jericho.

 

Penalties:
Penalties for using 3rd party tools to gain an advantage.

A) Perma ban..
     Lose character and Inventory.
     with a possible unban 2 or 3 years later.
     (the unban is not a guarantee)
     (Goal of the cheater is to test the efficacy of 3rd party tools,
      and to forward all ill-gotten gains to the primary account -     Non-cheating account)
      (alt accounts are throw aways)
     
    Pros:
       Clean district for a very short window of time for competitive game play.
       (window of time has been around 3-10 days)

      Cons:
        Banned player starts new account with anon email of 20+
        waiting to start up.  
        (need to direct proceeds to Primary (non-cheating) account.)
        (money, weapons, etc)
        Report discrepancies to “Tool Maker” for updates.


As Matt Scott has explained.. “Rinse & Repeat”

B) Segregation:
           Players using 3rd party tools to gain advantage
           earn “Cheat Points” to create a segregation pool for match up.

   Might be effective depending on what server.
   Server with a larger player base might work.

   Question:
    If players using 3rd party tools to gain an advantage will only be
   segregated and not banned, or at the very least, lose some inventory,
   does that not “promote” the concept of….

   “When in Rome”..

    I mean, everyone could use 3rd party tools with no concerns of being banned.
    Would that not bring us back to competitive game play ?
    Albeit with the help of some 3rd party tools ?

    (this discussion should be interesting .. haha)

C) Inventory Loss:
     Player achieves a certain threshold of “Cheat Points”
     Segregation and the following potential losses.

    Let’s use a Cheat Point score to 100.

    1) 25-50
        Segregation

    2) 50-75
        Segregation
        Loss of money & 2-3 inventory items
        (player receives email of Cheat Point notoriety)
        (they have 20+ email accounts, will they ever see the email ?)

    3) 75-100
        Segregation
        Loss of money & most of their inventory items

Maintains a threshold of 75-100 for a period of time.
Bank Wipe..

 

Also, let us keep track of who they are trading with.
Co- Conspirators…  or maybe the Primary account.

 

 

Yeah, no punishment…
I dunno, maybe we should all just jump in the pool.

 

 

Edited November 15 by Westford

[iRawwwN 282]

how about just having some more frequent admins to /kick some people

 

or are u afraid of retaliation to the servers

[DaDzi 2]

tell me please. when i use the report on player function in the game. does anyone consider it or is it a dummy? i saw how player ZaTixX after the murder quickly started aiming and shooting at my partner who was standing behind the wall but i am not sure that my report will be investigated by anyone

[TheMessiah 430]

What i got from the blog is dat theres not gonna be permanent ban accounts at all-all cheaters will get cheat points and they will be isolated from the rest of the community till they get rid of the points(stop cheating)and then will be able to play vs the rest once again
The big problem i see with this is dat the trust inside the community about the fairness of the game will still be under doubt.Many players will still think dat most of the good players against them are cheating,simply because everyone already knows dat cheaters are allowed to play the game and they bounce back and forth-here and there..

Edited November 15 by TheMessiah

[CookiePuss 5378]

What I dont get is why would anyone keep playng when shadow banned? Even if its a false shadow ban, I'd stop.
And before anyone says how would I know Im shadow banned, if there is no noticeable difference, then what's the point?