SARD Anti-Cheat Update

[heyheyheyhey 2]

For quite a while there with BattlEye, I basically saw no cheaters on Jericho. I only ever saw like two people that I was able to confirm triggerbotting, even though it was still possible to code these.

A big reason for this is because AutoIt and AutoHotKey used to be blocked. They're usually what people use for those kinds of cheats.

 

I understand AHK has legitimate uses, but I would rather see these two scripting languages blocked again. Its a simple change that would help a ton.

[MageLO 175]

Attention Players!

If you see the message:

"Your account has been temporarily locked while customer support is making changes to it. (Error code 10023)"
This means your account has been banned by SARD for the use of prohibited third-party applications (TOS violation). We’re aware that the wording of this message is unclear and are working to fix it.

Please keep in mind that these bans have been applied fairly, so there’s no need to reach out to customer support.

Thank you for your understanding!

[Hexerin 1147]

2 minutes ago, MageLO said:

Please keep in mind that these bans have been applied fairly, so there’s no need to reach out to customer support.

Translation: "We believe our AI-driven anticheat is so perfect, that it cannot false ban an account. As such, we will not hear out any appeals for any reason."

 

Shit like this is why people can't take LO seriously.

[BlatMan 718]

28 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Translation: "We believe our AI-driven anticheat is so perfect, that it cannot false ban an account. As such, we will not hear out any appeals for any reason."

 

Shit like this is why people can't take LO seriously.

No shit. They purposely put that message to be vague. They could have shown the generic ban code, or even better, not banned the account at all and instead generate a customer support ticket to look at it. I thought that's what they were going to do since they seem iffy about banning players to begin with.

 

Come on LO, at least be consistent. Then again, I guess random is technically consistent if the result is always random.

[MattScott 15245]

4 hours ago, BlatMan said:

No shit. They purposely put that message to be vague. They could have shown the generic ban code, or even better, not banned the account at all and instead generate a customer support ticket to look at it. I thought that's what they were going to do since they seem iffy about banning players to begin with.

 

Come on LO, at least be consistent. Then again, I guess random is technically consistent if the result is always random.

We had a localization issue which displayed the wrong message when an account was banned. The incorrect message told the player to contact customer support. But the last thing we need is everyone contacting customer support and overloading those folks. This is why Mage worded his post the way he did.

[LilyRain 688]

They worked on SARD for so long they didn't even give it generic-text for the Output Function. They just... had to go to bed after being up for so long.

May your next iteration be more solid.

[Romique 16]

well what can i say, dear LO - every single cheater still here - every big name is here. ok u didnt bann them but uv sayd they will play in SPECIAL Q, so im silver - and still play vs cheaters(i will not gonna name and shame but we all know them) why? why as silver i have to play vs cheater if ur system work? or SARD is not working?

[Darkzero3802 614]

Way back in the day there was a hacker who played who actually broke into the game and got the game code. When they were banned they released these cheats for free for public use. Nothing short of a complete game code redesign will stop this problem. LOs continued half assed anti cheat solutions will not prevent ppl from using these cheats. LO relying on AI to act as the ban hammer is their way of making an excuse not to actually take a stand and do more to prevent said cheats. It is lazy, it is a way not to hire more ppl to keep the game clean and it is a way for them to do less work.

TLDR: These cheats have the game code and LO is too lazy to do whats required.

[MACKxBOLAN 444]

@MattScott When are you going to install sard in NA, Never?

 

[Mitne 725]

On 12/18/2024 at 8:34 PM, Hexerin said:

Translation: "We believe our AI-driven anticheat is so perfect, that it cannot false ban an account. As such, we will not hear out any appeals for any reason."

 

Shit like this is why people can't take LO seriously.

Tbh. taking machine learned on such small pop (350 players overall at all times?) and many of said players are extremely dubious (y'know what I mean) - I wouldn't be suprised AI could as well take bad examples and use them as good ones. I know AI is easily misguided personally by usage of different AI systems for various tasks. It focus on thing or two and then lose track of others.

Edited Sunday at 02:20 PM by Mitne

[Yapopal 183]

On 1/13/2025 at 5:19 PM, Romique said:

well what can i say, dear LO - every single cheater still here - every big name is here. ok u didnt bann them but uv sayd they will play in SPECIAL Q, so im silver - and still play vs cheaters(i will not gonna name and shame but we all know them) why? why as silver i have to play vs cheater if ur system work? or SARD is not working?

 

On 12/19/2024 at 3:53 AM, MattScott said:

We had a localization issue which displayed the wrong message when an account was banned. The incorrect message told the player to contact customer support. But the last thing we need is everyone contacting customer support and overloading those folks. This is why Mage worded his post the way he did.

Matt, pay attention to the point of view of this community member. This is the point of view formed by the players who just come into play. They don't know about the Flavs configs, the mouse settings, the stretched screen, and other fraudulent client modifications that YOU HAVE ALLOWED. These modifications are essentially cheating.

[Ardita 85]

1 hour ago, Yapopal said:

Matt, pay attention to the point of view of this community member. This is the point of view formed by the players who just come into play. They don't know about the Flavs configs, the mouse settings, the stretched screen, and other fraudulent client modifications that YOU HAVE ALLOWED. These modifications are essentially cheating.

"They work with SARD as their Priority #1" they said.

 

You wont hear anything from them till next Christmas I am afraid :C

[Talla 87]

On 1/27/2025 at 3:42 AM, Yapopal said:

Matt, pay attention to the point of view of this community member. This is the point of view formed by the players who just come into play. They don't know about the Flavs configs, the mouse settings, the stretched screen, and other fraudulent client modifications that YOU HAVE ALLOWED. These modifications are essentially cheating.

Client modification is a subject that needs to be presented and discussed in further detail.

I think there is a support page presenting the stance of LO on the matter, lemme search for it...

 

Only the downloads on this page are approved:

https://www.gamersfirst.com/download

Edited yesterday at 12:07 AM by Talla

[Bruhd101 25]

On 12/11/2024 at 8:45 PM, Darkzero3802 said:

Exactly. Its harder to get green then gold and to dethreat that far requires dedicated match throwing. To dethreat that far is nothing short of ruining gameplay for others.

The thing is, I could have agreed, but I had one teammate who was actually trying to help but usually ended up like a 0-1-20 target practice. Well, that was when I last played the game, when every low-level gold was just blatantly cheating and withstanding a 2v1 where both enemies shot at the said person (I mean it might be worse than before with sard)

the person was totally 99% new to shooters in general and just had a horrid wifi and pc combined 

Edited Tuesday at 12:17 AM by Bruhd101

[LilyRain 688]

On 1/26/2025 at 6:19 PM, Mitne said:

Tbh. taking machine learned on such small pop (350 players overall at all times?) and many of said players are extremely dubious (y'know what I mean) - I wouldn't be suprised AI could as well take bad examples and use them as good ones. I know AI is easily misguided personally by usage of different AI systems for various tasks. It focus on thing or two and then lose track of others.

Exactly this.

 

I am afraid APB is now being used by the Devs to jump on the latest trends rather than making the best of what APB can be first (if at all).

[CookiePuss 5383]

Oh sweet we have some AI experts here. 

[Nagletz 223]

3 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Oh sweet we have some AI experts here. 

I believe people at SARD not really an experts in AI development either (yeah, small Armenian company, it sounds unrealistic, no offence), let alone LO, lol. However, they have all they need to become ones, they have enough data on APB at least. The question is, how long will it take? We had cheating problem for more than a decade now, no wonder we're so tired of hearing (broken) promises.

[MACKxBOLAN 444]

1 hour ago, Nagletz said:

so tired of hearing (broken) promises.

One thing to make a promise, and you show up late with something that doesn't work, 

ie EAC, BE ect. 

 Its another thing to blatantly lie about sard being on in NA, and or the Server side of it being on and active. 

Then Matt ducks out as usual for months.

I think its just better to find other entertainment. 

[Westford 173]

If we take a quick look at the last 6+ months, Aug 2024 when New Horizon was announced.

 

I thought this was a great update by Little Orbit, new contacts and what not.

Everyone saw the population increase.

YEAH !!!!

 

My thoughts are that if they had implemented SARD months prior to the New Horizon release,

it might have retained that population boost.

c’est la vie

It is what it is

 

And then the SARD anti-cheat forthcoming, with the announcement that "Noone" will be banned,

instead Cheat Points will be assigned and subsequent high profile cheaters will be segregated.

 

Ooof

 

A "gut punch" to the legitimate players wanting fair competitive gameplay,

and much "rejoicing" amongst those player who might rely on 3rd party tools.

 

The message was clear...

No Cheater will be banned.

 

And the Cheater population blossomed.

I imagine there were Legit players that just "threw in the towel" and started to use 3rd party tools,

cause....

They want to play on a level playing field.

"When in Rome"

 

I thought I saw a forum post here, where Matt Scott had posted on Discord,

that after reviewing the SARD analytics, he was shocked, or maybe even horrified at the number of cheaters

actually present on either Server.

 

 

Ok, so I had to rummage through my closet to find my Tin Foil Hat before posting my thoughts.

 

What if....

The number of cheaters is so bad, that by banning them out right would significantly lower the

population to a dismal amount ?

 

EU might survive much more so than NA.

 

I would hate to think that this is the dilemma that Little Orbit faces.

I mean, you have to remove the bad actors that compromise fair gamplay,

but at what cost ?

 

25%+ or more of the population ?

 

If this is the challenge that they are facing, I do not envy them.

They definitely got themselves stuck between the proverbial "rock and a hard place"

 

Anyways, I hope they figure this stuff out,

and it would be nice to see some monthly SARD stats by Server/Faction/Rank

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Edited Tuesday at 09:56 PM by Westford

[Ardita 85]

11 hours ago, Westford said:

What if....

The number of cheaters is so bad, that by banning them out right would significantly lower the

population to a dismal amount ?

 

EU might survive much more so than NA.

 

I would hate to think that this is the dilemma that Little Orbit faces.

I mean, you have to remove the bad actors that compromise fair gamplay,

but at what cost ?

 

25%+ or more of the population ?

This might be one of the issues that they're facing... However, the result could be that people would come back and play the game instead of throwing the towel and leave it for good..

 

Old game and the cheating issue been such a big problem for so long that people won't believe all the promises they made. Funny part is, they don't seem to understand it though, or simply deny the fact that people stopped believe in them. lol

[BlatMan 718]

On 1/27/2025 at 3:42 AM, Yapopal said:

 

Matt, pay attention to the point of view of this community member. This is the point of view formed by the players who just come into play. They don't know about the Flavs configs, the mouse settings, the stretched screen, and other fraudulent client modifications that YOU HAVE ALLOWED. These modifications are essentially cheating.

I've been around since 2011 or so. I've seen it all. I remember the email Gamerfirst sent mentioning APB Reloaded that originally got my interest, after they sold off WarRock.

 

I've seen most versions of Flaw's config. I agree it's cheating, but I also understand why its needed. APB runs like crap by default. That's something Little Orbit kinda fixed with the 64 bit update, but it's still bad, and unacceptable for what little the game is doing.

 

By mouse settings, do you mean the mouse fix that multiplies your mouse input by 2? It's a workaround for APB's broken mouse input. Without going into detail, APB ignores slow mouse movement. This can help mitigate that at really low fps, but for most players it's snake oil.

 

There seems to be a high correlation with cheaters and stretched res, but playing at low resolution isn't cheating. If anything, it's giving yourself a major handicap since it removes some horizontal field of view.

[MACKxBOLAN 444]

I'm Done. How Dare You steal me from the good western server to that muck pit you call east na. 

so i gotta play knowns at 100ms

Matt abandons NA with hackers everywhere, screw your missions and East

and your cross district patootie pile. LO just made an Enemy.