Many things in life cannot be proven 100% yet we take chances on the assumptions that they are true given a certain amount of evidence (sometimes flimsy, sometimes a huge mountain of it), so why is it different on this game? Why exactly does it seem like a person has to give themselves up to get caught? If we did that in real life then governments wouldn't be suspicious of one another all the time, ban companies from being in the country, catching spies etc. that never tell their motive, the list goes on even if the proof is say, 50-70% there.
It's just something that always intrigued me is all. I just always thought it kinda dumb that pretty much everyone who cheated either gave themselves up or didn't do a good job of hiding the AC or something. Even if one were to tell Ender that ACs still exist from known cheaters and that people are still using them he doesn't seem to believe it much anymore. He just does his thing and says shit is suspicious or not then nothing happens. It just seems without the entire give yourself up aspect, nobody ever gets caught :/
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The majority of cheaters have been caught by Ender checking, not by giving themselves up. You're welcome to give some names to Ender if you think anyone in particular is cheating. I gave him two this week that he's checked out already.
As for not wanting "100% (or near) proof", I'm not even sure where to start - that's the standard for pretty much everything and everywhere that bans people? Are you suggesting we should start banning people on a hunch, just because they might be cheating? I've never heard of a game or website that bans people because there is a "50-70%" chance they are cheating, even coming up with a number like that seems insane to me.
Your governments/countries comparison is an odd one, governments don't pluck people out of the street in case they are spies, nor ban companies from operating based on some 50% guess they're fraudulent or something. If there is proof of cheating/spying/scamming, that's 100% proof. Anything less than 100% is not proof, it's a guess, and probably a bad one. I've criticized the handling of cheaters many times but I certainly don't want to encourage randomly banning players based on literal guesses.
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Good question. There's never "100%" evidence, but I made a conscious decision a long time ago to require myself to convince myself beyond a reasonable doubt (whatever that even means - it does not require "confession" though, as Fishwick said, this actually hasn't been a major source of "catching" players) before taking action against cheaters.
My rationale for this is that I've played games in the past where admins banned people with little reason and it really turned me off of the game (why invest your time in something you could unfairly be removed from?). This does mean that the occasional stealthy cheater could go without punishment, but this is the lesser of two bad options - the alternative option of banning people on whims/hunches is worse IMO.
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obviously mr moderator and mr admin have not done much research on cheating in online games and how to combat it. or maybe they dont care. the fact is that most online games both the small browser types and the big commercial games do in fact rely on player reports and suspicious activity reported by other players because there is no way to gather concrete 100% proof. especially not from smart cheaters. just admit it.
cheaters that dont get caught are very smart and they mix it up and they vary their activity so that a pattern does not show up in data. the only way to get concrete 100% proof is from seeing a difinitive pattern in a games data. smart cheaters will not allow that to happen while not so smart ones do allow their clicker to run for long periods of time because they dont know.
no accusations about anything but since the user base is so small in this game it really seems like admin does not much care if there are cheaters because if they are banned then there wont be many players left. their might be other motivations but no need bringing that up now. the fact of the matter is that online game cheating is rampant (just like cheating in sports and probably everything else that human beings do). the only way for game admin that care to keep it under control is to ban suspicious activity reported by other game players. its a fact that humans will go to any length and will do anything to win. so why would it be any different here. cheating to win is human nature. thats fact not fiction
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The above post is misinformed about how to detect cheating, but if I dissected it and showed where you were wrong, it would further aid cheaters by giving insight into what I look for and how players have been caught in the past.
Stopping cheating is a difficult problem. I care about it and do my best with the resources/time I have available. Suggesting that I intentionally overlook cheating to increase game activity is insulting (please be kind and extend me good faith) and illogical (if this were clearly happening and known to players, it would arguably decrease activity). My hope is that my fair, open, and honest approach I take with this game, taking the time to answer player questions on the forum, etc. is sufficient evidence of a clear desire to do the "right thing". As always though, if you have specific evidence indicating that certain players are worth taking a closer look at, please contact me privately.
I agree that cheating is human nature, but refuse to run (or play) a game where the admin bans players based solely on player accusations. That is an extremely short-sighted approach. Accusations/tips are incredibly useful signals that I've gotten a lot of value from over the years, but it's just that - one of many signals that are used as input to my final decisions.
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ITs a lot more efficient for game owners to ban cheaters in waves then to single them out right when you catch it anyways. Makes it harder to figure out what got detected and prevents them just fixing the one thing and going right back to cheating.
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FWIW, I actually take action immediately (with rare exception) once I have convinced myself of cheating. Removing the feedback loop by introducing some delay could be worthwhile though.
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I wasnt singling out your current method because I didnt know it was just referencing what other games do in general usually.
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