What Happens If Battle Eye Is Not Enough?

[VanilleKeks 735]

Hey,

 

Today I want to adress & discuss the way you currently handle the cheaters in APB. First off, I do want to say that I think we are overall improving when it comes to this matter, but as of the last few weeks there's been a breach that is leaking cheaters into the game. I don't think it's reasonable to claim the game is infested with them, but for someone that is new to San Paro it can certainly give that impression. So what is going on then? To keep it simple, there has been a major increase in cheaters recently. I'm specifically referring to the obvious blatant cheaters, stuff you see in every game. Without access to the proper tools I can't make a reasonable statement on the closet cheaters, so I'll keep them irrelevant to this thread. 

 

While it's pretty clear that Battle Eye has improved the situation quite a bit, it isn't perfect, like any anti-cheat for that matter. Now I'm not sure whether what I'm about to say has any confirmed sources, but apparently we are using a 32bit version of BE which is inferior to the standard. I would assume this is a limitation of the engine and I have heard that with the engine upgrade we will get 64bit Battle Eye. Now this could all be bollocks so if it is, please do point it out.

 

The problem I have with your current policies isn't about Battle Eye itself though. The issue is that you seem too reliant on it. At the point of writing this, there is always a blatant cheater in one or multiple fightclubs on citadel. We're talking wallhacks, aimbots, even speedhacks and/or lagswitchers sometimes. Some of these people have reached ranks of over 150, allthough keep in mind there is a large possibility that these are simply bought/stolen accounts. These same cheaters are here for days and some are closing in on weeks now. This is obviously not healthy for the game and to the players it looks like no one cares.

 

- -

 

According to Matt, you prefer to detect the cheat over time instead of straight up banning cheaters which would allow you to prevent more cheaters from entering with the same tools. This is indeed a very solid strategy for the long term and I can imagine that all of the bigger games do this to some degree. The problem is that you don't have the luxury that is a large playerbase. We are only a few people compared to the big fish. Not to mention that the higher up in threat you go, the less players become available for reasonable matchmaking. This means that higher threat players have to consistently face the same cheaters.

 

Now, of course playing against cheaters isn't exclusive to high threat players, but it makes the game essentially unplayable for them. As an example, there have been groups of what seems to be 6-7 blatant cheaters in the action districts over the last week. Reminder, we're talking walls, snaps, speedhacks etc. These players obviously go up in threat fast with their cheats, which means that if high threat players group, they will face the same cheaters over and over again. This forces them to either split into smaller groups or switch districts, neither of which is particularly enjoyable to repeat a couple dozen times a day.

 

Since you're running this "detect the cheat first" strategy, there's nothing we can do. Once the high threat groups are done "taking one for the team" over and over, someone else will play the cheaters and it just keeps going. If we had the population of Fortnite, obviously it wouldn't be as noticeable, but we don't. What you're doing here is a gamble, and a risky one at that. What will happen first? We detect the cheat or the players leave? Is that really a gamble you can afford at this point?

 

- -

 

I don't want to just complain, so here's a proposal that isn't too resource heavy (I'm assuming you guys are busy with Unreal). Get your volunteer GMs to respond to players distress and then record these blatant cheaters atleast. No need to play detective here, you can see that these people are cheating within a minute. Have one or two people in your staff team look at these recordings and then ban the cheaters. I understand you want to detect the cheat but as I said before, I don't think you can afford to play this gamble. You're on a timer Little Orbit, and I'm sure you realize that. At least for a while, consider the short term solution that is banning cheaters before cheat detection. Even if they all reroll instantly, you are showing the players that you're working on it, which should give you more leniency from them.

 

 

Kind Regards,

 

Vanille

 

Edited January 23, 2019 by VanilleKeks

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

PB doesn't work, we want FF.

FF doesn't work, we want BE.

BE doesn't work, we want ?????.

 

When will it end.

[VanilleKeks 735]

9 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

PB doesn't work, we want FF.

FF doesn't work, we want BE.

BE doesn't work, we want ?????.

 

When will it end.

Except that isn't what I said. Come on zombie, I expected you to atleast read the first paragraphs.

Edited January 23, 2019 by VanilleKeks

[vsb 6171]

tl;dr 

 

edit for non-meme response:

orbit has stated several times that they are working on implementing their own server side anticheat measures

 

beyond that, i honestly don’t think there’s much else that can be done - GMs being more aggressive following up reports only works if there aren’t hundreds or thousands of reports popping up every day

 

perhaps it’s feasible for fight club but that would require dedicating at least one GM per fc district to run down the dozens of reports that come up per hour 

 

 

Edited January 23, 2019 by BXNNXD
added stuff

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

27 minutes ago, VanilleKeks said:

Except that isn't what I said. Come on zombie, I expected you to atleast read the first paragraphs.

I was just posting for the future posts that are going to come in due to this topic in general. Wasn't specifically directing it towards you. Sorry my dood.

[Frosi 722]

Thank you very much for this thread, it definitely addresses some of the concerns the community has in a formal and well-written way and in all honesty there is not a single point I disagree with. 

 

Their approach and long term solution to fixing the cheating situation is definitely valid and could work out extremely well in a game like APB if cheat developers had to constantly figure out a new way to make their cheat work, APB doesn't have a huge player base so the demand for a cheat isn't exactly high meaning that they will eventually either sell for a more expensive price or are discontinued as its not worth the effort to keep it updated and undetected. However, my question with this solution is will it really work out the way it is meant to and if it is really that efficient in the long run as 3.5 is on the horizon and might also require cheat developers to recode parts of their cheat if not everything.

 

I know that I'm not exactly the best person to go into this kind of topic as I've shown my frustration with the cheating situation far too frequently and come over like a broken record, I definitely called innocent people out for cheating in the past and make it sounds like BE really doesn't do anything and I am sorry for that, but it is in their best interest to fix the cheating situation, regardless of how severe it really ends up being.

[VanilleKeks 735]

9 minutes ago, BXNNXD said:

tl;dr 

 

edit for non-meme response:

orbit has stated several times that they are working on implementing their own server side anticheat measures

 

beyond that, i honestly don’t think there’s much else that can be done - GMs being more aggressive following up reports only works if there aren’t hundreds or thousands of reports popping up every day

 

perhaps it’s feasible for fight club but that would require dedicating at least one GM per fc district to run down the dozens of reports that come up per hour 

 

 

Well I know of their plans to improve software solutions, but I would argue that a human based system is equally necessary. It does cost a good amount of resources but improved software based solutions will lower the workload. Hell, I need a fulltime job. I'd sit there the entire day banning blatants for minimum wage. Hit me up Matt.

3 minutes ago, Frosi said:

Thank you very much for this thread, it definitely addresses some of the concerns the community has in a formal and well-written way and in all honesty there is not a single point I disagree with. 

 

Their approach and long term solution to fixing the cheating situation is definitely valid and could work out extremely well in a game like APB if cheat developers had to constantly figure out a new way to make their cheat work, APB doesn't have a huge player base so the demand for a cheat isn't exactly high meaning that they will eventually either sell for a more expensive price or are discontinued as its not worth the effort to keep it updated and undetected. However, my question with this solution is will it really work out the way it is meant to and if it is really that efficient in the long run as 3.5 is on the horizon and might also require cheat developers to recode parts of their cheat if not everything.

 

I know that I'm not exactly the best person to go into this kind of topic as I've shown my frustration with the cheating situation far too frequently and come over like a broken record, I definitely called innocent people out for cheating in the past and make it sounds like BE really doesn't do anything and I am sorry for that, but it is in their best interest to fix the cheating situation, regardless of how severe it really ends up being.

Well, as I said in the last paragraph. I'm proposing a short term solution. If anything this could be a temporary solution that comes in whenever there seems to be an influx of cheaters. Per se, leave most of the stuff to software solutions but when there is a bigger breach like right now, have a small team of staff help out with manual bans until the breach is sealed.

[VanilleKeks 735]

7 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

I was just posting for the future posts that are going to come in due to this topic in general. Wasn't specifically directing it towards you. Sorry my dood.

No problem bro

[Fortune Runner 796]

most reports so far were about hackusations to begin with. *shrugs*

paranoia is bad

[NotTheEnforcer 222]

Shit should start changing for the better and fast coming with the 3.5 update that introduces 64-bit. Unfortunately as it stands, there's incredibly little they can do at the moment. APB itself is so incredibly outdated that there just isn't 2 shits to do with it to make it better until the 64-bit upgrade. Basically everything thats happening right now, you've just gotta live with it. Once 64-bit drops, then start expecting new things and better anticheat.

 

As of right now, there is VERY LITTLE that LO can do.

[mojical 159]

 

44 minutes ago, Frosi said:

Their approach and long term solution to fixing the cheating situation is definitely valid and could work out extremely well in a game like APB if cheat developers had to constantly figure out a new way to make their cheat work, APB doesn't have a huge player base so the demand for a cheat isn't exactly high meaning that they will eventually either sell for a more expensive price or are discontinued as its not worth the effort to keep it updated and undetected. However, my question with this solution is will it really work out the way it is meant to and if it is really that efficient in the long run as 3.5 is on the horizon and might also require cheat developers to recode parts of their cheat if not everything.

 

I agree about the 3.5 update, pretty sure it will give us at least a period of cheat-free APB like the release of BE did in its day. What LO seems to be doing right now is having GMs manually freeze players who are either blatantly cheating or attempting to troll others by pretending to be cheating, which is also detrimental to new players' impression of the game.  This is more or less a band-aid fix but I expect the serious crackdown against cheaters to happen in tandem with the 3.5 rollout. 

 

However OP has a point about the recent increase of cheaters, it seems they sometimes also advertise their cheat sites in game. I'm not sure if it would make sense to implement a word filter in the chat to make this impossible or difficult, such as the one that already exists for names. 

 

As for cheaters mainly being an issue to high threat players, I disagree there. Cheaters won't have an easy time winning against a full team of top tier players unless the mission is heavily in their favor (such as them defending in Antisocial Networking), especially without using speedhack and/or lagswitch.

 

Also while this might be an unpopular opinion, I'd rather face cheaters than some newbies that just got the game off Steam and are simply going to get frustrated and uninstall. It is solo players, and newer/more casual players, who LO's matchmaking and anticheat needs to protect the most.  Of course I'm not saying that cheaters are beneficial or necessary in any way, quite the opposite. The idea is that the shortcomings of the current matchmaking system exacerbate the cheating problem by allowing cheaters to play even against those least prepared to deal with them. 

 

Edited January 23, 2019 by Lyfeld

[UubeNubeh DaWog 136]

There isn't much to discuss when it comes to the efficiency of anti cheat software in gaming. They're only as good as the cheats they detect, and the ones they dont, go "unnoticed" regardless of what actually happens in the game.

 

Answering your main point: "What if BE is not enough?". Relying on one anti cheat alone is never enough, anti cheat software in general can never keep up with the rate cheats get created or changed, they only die down because cheat makers get bored of the game and no one is interested in even playing the game. You could pick any popular game across all the anti cheats and there will be cheats for it based on its popularity, if there was any game truly that difficult to cheat in it would have become the industry standard a long time ago.

 

Stacking anti cheats is usually the next option, having more hoops to jump through/ different ways to detect cheats can make it more difficult but is still not a closed hole.

 

Theoretically a behavior based anti cheat would be the highest efficiency anti cheat possible, but we're still in the infancy stages of having those sorts of anti cheats developed. We already have our own "behavioral" anti cheats in our mind when we see a player snapping between three targets. Something like that which is automated is definitely possible, when we'll see it in place is another discussion altogether.

 

Having personnel actively monitor districts is only a short term solution. At some point people will just tone down the cheats to the point where a staff member who barely plays the game will be able to understand what is happening and action will stop.  It doesn't hurt to try and help curb the cheating population but its not something that should be given a lot of valuable resources for an extended period of time.

 

Given the nature of the anti cheat industry right now, really the thing to do when an anti cheat is not enough is to "wait for a breakthrough" or "wait for a better one".

[VanilleKeks 735]

7 minutes ago, Lyfeld said:

 

 

I agree about the 3.5 update, pretty sure it will give us at least a period of cheat-free APB like the release of BE did in its day. What LO seems to be doing right now is having GMs manually freeze players who are either blatantly cheating or attempting to troll others by pretending to be cheating, which is also detrimental to new players' impression of the game.  This is more or less a band-aid fix but I expect the serious crackdown against cheaters to happen in tandem with the 3.5 rollout. 

 

However OP has a point about the recent increase of cheaters, it seems they sometimes also advertise their cheat sites in game. I'm not sure if it would make sense to implement a word filter in the chat to make this impossible or difficult, such as the one that already exists for names. 

 

As for cheaters mainly being an issue to high threat players, I disagree there. Cheaters won't have an easy time winning against a full team of top tier players unless the mission is heavily in their favor (such as them defending in Antisocial Networking), especially without using speedhack and/or lagswitch.

 

Also while this might be an unpopular opinion, I'd rather face cheaters than some newbies that just got the game off Steam and are simply going to get frustrated and uninstall. It is solo players, and newer/more casual players, who LO's matchmaking and anticheat needs to protect the most.  Of course I'm not saying that cheaters are beneficial or necessary in any way, quite the opposite. The idea is that the shortcomings of the current matchmaking system exacerbate the cheating problem by allowing cheaters to play even against those least prepared to deal with them. 

 

You do have a point, perhaps I exaggerated this entire high threat point of mine. I want to point out though, that it's not so much about winning or losing. I have beaten cheaters in the past, but the real problem is that it's just not enjoyable to play such a mission, whether you win or lose. Sure, if you roll some cheaters it does feel great to know that you were better, but once you're up against them for the fifth time in a row, not so much.

2 minutes ago, UubeNubeh DaWog said:

 

Having personnel actively monitor districts is only a short term solution. At some point people will just tone down the cheats to the point where a staff member who barely plays the game will be able to understand what is happening and action will stop.  It doesn't hurt to try and help curb the cheating population but its not something that should be given a lot of valuable resources for an extended period of time.

Yeah, I did point out that it was a short term solution. As I said above it can be a temporary band-aid fix for when the problem is larger than usual.

Edited January 23, 2019 by VanilleKeks

[Darkzero3802 611]

1 hour ago, BXNNXD said:

tl;dr 

 

edit for non-meme response:

orbit has stated several times that they are working on implementing their own server side anticheat measures

 

beyond that, i honestly don’t think there’s much else that can be done - GMs being more aggressive following up reports only works if there aren’t hundreds or thousands of reports popping up every day

 

perhaps it’s feasible for fight club but that would require dedicating at least one GM per fc district to run down the dozens of reports that come up per hour 

 

 

Is one GM per fc really such a big thing when the pop is so small fc only runs afew hrs day on Jericho if at all? And thats only one of the fc dist the other remains dead.

[PitterPatter 139]

To me it seems like APB has already ran its course and they're just trying to minimize spending until they actually get the game updated hoping for a surge of players from the engine upgrade. It's a great game, but it lacks population and a twitch presence which are two important things for a pvp game these days. Few days ago I ran into a whole group of ex APB players in R6:Siege with my group of ex APB players. We're all still around and gaming just APB isnt as addicting and fun as it used to be. It just lacks that hype factor that makes you want to keep coming back for more.

 

The biggest streamer to try out APB was summit and when he tried it out he was griefed to death. If you think twitch presence isnt important go check out sea of thieves ever since summit started playing it again. I think the problem is us, the people that have been around since day 1. We saw summit streaming and decided to snipe him so we could get opposed against him again and again thus ruining any chance we had at bringing in a massive playerbase.  What the viewers saw was "yeah if summit is getting stomped on I wouldnt stand a chance so why bother". What we saw was "Oh here's my chance to be relevant for a couple hours".

 

Even if they add a new gun, vehicle, outfit, game mode it's just not enough to grab anyone's attention. The only thing I can see getting peoples attention is the engine upgrade and for how long will it keep their attention? The game has been up and running for too long and unless they figure out how to make it so new players can actually stand a chance against seasoned veterans (looking at you 255 silvers) I dont think the game will go anywhere even with the engine upgrade. High skill cap games like this with a small population dont do well at all in today's gaming world. 

 

 

[vsb 6171]

30 minutes ago, Darkzero3802 said:

Is one GM per fc really such a big thing when the pop is so small fc only runs afew hrs day on Jericho if at all? And thats only one of the fc dist the other remains dead.

sure right now it might be possible to dedicate a specific gm per district, but what happens if/when the pop increases?

 

how many GMs can orbit afford to allocate specifically? 2? 4? 6?

 

what happens when there’s no easily identifiable cheaters? does the gm leave? does he stay “just in case”?

[Gateron 267]

3 hours ago, VanilleKeks said:

No problem bro

Ignore his posts that dude only farms forum posts. Last time i played against you you had a random low rank blatant wall hacker with aim bot. BE will be enough for most cheats. But knowing APB cheaters they are a pest and some of them probably will go so far to develop their own or pay huge amount of money to make a private cheat that will never get detected. Believe me this is gonna happen seeing the same cheaters go blatant for YEARS and getting banned every 1-2 years and having a huge ego.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Gateron said:

Ignore his posts that dude only farms forum posts. Last time i played against you you had a random low rank blatant wall hacker with aim bot. BE will be enough for most cheats. But knowing APB cheaters they are a pest and some of them probably will go so far to develop their own or pay huge amount of money to make a private cheat that will never get detected. Believe me this is gonna happen seeing the same cheaters go blatant for YEARS and getting banned every 1-2 years and having a huge ego.

Yeah, same, agree with you.

Well atleast some others i knew are gone finally since BE, since FF, im happy for that, not all of them sadly but with the right time LO will do much as possible for make this game playable again.

[Y2Venom 219]

There is no 100% solution to cheating. There will always be a way to get around it. The actual problem with cheating is the acceptance of it within clans and on the servers. Players covering for other players they know who are cheating.

 

The other problem is lack of communication between players due to language barrier. This lack of communication doesn't allow positivity to grow and instead attracts negativity.Not only does it attract negativity but it allows negativity to spread. Hence creating a toxic environment. Once the environment is like that, this allows an in for toxic player's who will then exploit the game where they can. Simply because they know they will get away with it at a moderation level or their chances at getting away with it are higher, but they also know they will get away with it a community level. The worse part is , Toxicity is contagious.

 

Here is the thing, this actually happens in real life also. Poorer communities attract more drug dealers, thieves, murder is higher simply due to the fact that "community" has broken down and the police are too busy trying to police everything.   Good communities are normally policed by the police and the community itself. At this moment in time, there is hardly a community out there. There are just bands of groups in it for themselves. A lot of players are more concerned by Percs or Runners, yet will turn a blind eye to their clan mate who cheats or dethreats, whilst steamrolling any new players that come into the game. Who will probably never come back.

 

 

 

[WhiskeyTangoFoxX 280]

9 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

Is one GM per fc really such a big thing when the pop is so small fc only runs afew hrs day on Jericho if at all? And thats only one of the fc dist the other remains dead.

It absolutely is. Let's do some math to show.

 

At any given time, there are at least 4 (6 if we count Nekrova but I will not for this demonstration) instances of FC at any given time, 1 of each on Jericho and on Citadel. if you want to have full, gap-free coverage you will need at least 3 GMs working 8-hour shifts on 4 districts minimum, 4x3 = 12. Now realistically, considering that GMs are volunteers, we'll say they can only dedicate 4 hours every day (still in fairytale land here obviously) which means we need 24 GMs for a barebones skeleton crew of 24/7 supervision.

 

Sure, you could cut out one of the FCs, and sure you could cut out downtime when FCs are basically dead. It's still a far larger scale than you are suggesting.

[Cr0 328]

It was nice to read your post because in my opinion you actually understand the real problem.

Yes, what we have is exactly what you describe: The higher threat you become the more often/likely you'll face these blatants (and other not so blatant, but I respect that the topic is not dealing with this).

So this leads to a couple of typical things once fed up with this.

a) People either completely stop or mostly stop playing / Just hang in social, apb forums, discord, watch apb streams, not really playing. The developer makes no money from such players.

b) The cheater loop: People start cheating themselves to be able to beat cheaters/continue enjoying the game, thereby becoming cheaters themselves, giving birth to new ones for the same reason.

c) People start doing stupid stuff like de-threating, rolling new accounts staying low rank on purpose, trolling etc.

 

You can't completely stop cheating in games. The best situation you can get is one where a server and client side anti cheat together with GMs etc make the cheaters that are playing, not able to cheat very much or for as long. That's the best it can get, would be good enough and it's doable.

Edited January 23, 2019 by SilverCrow

[PACwoMAN 37]

Well there’s only one way. We needed cheaters to catch other cheaters. How? - the guy who had flagged as a cheater should get a match against the cheater that working with the devs (like SPCT member). Only for blatants. 

Because with the cheats you can definitely see how the cheater tracking you through a wall or aiming at you and “hold” you as a target via Aimbot. 

 

Look at the pro gamers, championships: all they watching demos with the cheat turned on so they know that someone is cheating actually.

[NotTheEnforcer 222]

10 minutes ago, PACwoMAN said:

Well there’s only one way. We needed cheaters to catch other cheaters. How? - the guy who had flagged as a cheater should get a match against the cheater that working with the devs (like SPCT member). Only for blatants. 

Because with the cheats you can definitely see how the cheater tracking you through a wall or aiming at you and “hold” you as a target via Aimbot. 

 

Look at the pro gamers, championships: all they watching demos with the cheat turned on so they know that someone is cheating actually.

Funny thing is, a lot of cheaters are cocky and dumb enough to go full-blatant especially while against another cheater, just so they can win. It's like a showdown of the cheats pretty much. In the end they both get banned though lmao

[Unreal 20]

None Anti-cheat can't be bypassed. Nothing is perfect keep that in mind.

[MACKxBOLAN 427]

He's right, But based on the number of rerolls i see pouring out of double B. The anticheat must be banning. The only bans we have heard of are behavioral chat and troll types, that the player tells us about via reroll character ect. 

  I'd like to see a Ban board, A monthly or bi-monthly report; excluding names.

So we as a community can see our anti-cheat's working.

 

   

 

d