Guild Wars 2

I found this on my facebook and thought it might be worth a look for the developers – re: dealing with cheaters and bots.

Its an article from PC Gamer about how Titanfall is dealing with cheaters. I think something could be learned from this.

I think its a great idea… levels the playing field and keeps the cheats to themselves.. let them fight it out against other cheaters! Let them do themselves in while they leave the rest of us alone.

Titanfall’s anticheating measures are now in effect: cheaters will be forced to play with other cheaters in a “Wimbledon of aimbot contests.” http://bit.ly/1eRxhFV

Oh that is AWESOME.

What Anet could do is spin up 1 additional world. Anyone who bots/cheats using 3rd party applications gets insta-transfered over, all future transfers barred/blocked, and thats that.

If they can manage to play with out cheating for 1 full year, then they can pay 10,000 gems for a server transfer into the bottom WvW tier.

Win win for EVERYONE!

Epic Fail.
What constitutes a 3rd party app? Teamspeak? Guess all the major guilds get hit. Overwolf? Guess a large part of all the major guilds get hit. Gamepad software to game with something other than M/KB? Guess all of those people get hit too. Oh, people who use gaming mice with software for keybindings? Guess they’re sent there too. Ventrilo? Same people affected by teamspeak. Fraps, xfire, livestream, any other number of apps? This would affect them too.

Anet has better things to do that screen every app out there to say what is and isnt fine.

it has nothing to do with apps.. if they detect a bot, the account goes to the “quarantine” server automatically. if the person using the bot is stupid enough to do so, thats their loss. It beats a complete ban and will allow them to argue their case with Anet if they were moved wrongfully.

Further, even if they try to get around it by grouping with “non-banned” players.. those players will be forced to the quarantine until the banned player leaves the group. They will then be transfered back to the general pop. This will give people the incentive to not group with cheaters.

I dont know anything about Overwulf but that app isnt Anets problem.

Aidan Savage.2078:

Epic Fail.
What constitutes a 3rd party app? Teamspeak? Guess all the major guilds get hit. Overwolf? Guess a large part of all the major guilds get hit. Gamepad software to game with something other than M/KB? Guess all of those people get hit too. Oh, people who use gaming mice with software for keybindings? Guess they’re sent there too. Ventrilo? Same people affected by teamspeak. Fraps, xfire, livestream, any other number of apps? This would affect them too.

Anet has better things to do that screen every app out there to say what is and isnt fine.

Apps that inject into the clients TCP Stream so that player can teleport from Point A to Point B with a click of a button. Or Fly through the sky at 1300 RNG and increase their skill base to 1800 range so they can 1hit just about anyone….yea…that’s SOO hard to classify as a 3rd party app.

Bring Dhuum back

cheater “honey pot” server…..interesting idea.

My main question is that if is “determined” that the player needs to be transferred to this so called, “cheater server”, why would Anet just not perma-ban the account? It really makes little sense to give a person that violates your ELUA some sort of “grace period”…they just need to be gone from the game.

In the case of Titanfall, it is a instance based multiplayer game and EA does not have the authority to ban Xbox Live accounts (that I’m aware of). They also likely don’t want to loose potential customers this soon in the game’s life, thus they have a reason to try and rehabilitate cheaters (rather than just ban them from the game).

Brother Grimm.5176:

cheater “honey pot” server…..interesting idea.

My main question is that if is “determined” that the player needs to be transferred to this so called, “cheater server”, why would Anet just not perma-ban the account? It really makes little sense to give a person that violates your ELUA some sort of “grace period”…they just need to be gone from the game.

In the case of Titanfall, it is a instance based multiplayer game and EA does not have the authority to ban Xbox Live accounts (that I’m aware of). They also likely don’t want to loose potential customers this soon in the game’s life, thus they have a reason to try and rehabilitate cheaters (rather than just ban them from the game).

Cheaters shouldn’t be banned from their games. I always thought that was a harsh punishment. I mean, common they paid the same amount of money for their game that we did. Why should they be banned just cause they are hacking/cheating the mechanics of the game. If that’s how they want to play, let them.

However, those players should not be allowed to mix with non-cheaters. So how do you deal with them? Move them to a server were 3rd party apps are not against the EULA.

And from that point, either lock them to that server, or have a time-out period where after the time has passed force them to pay a ‘fine’ to get back to the ‘normal’ game. Let them xfer their account back, but with only the stuff they were moved into the cheater server with. That way there are 3 Penalties.

1. Removed from their friends and other populus (They are not allowed to Guest!)

2. There is a fine (I think 120USD is a fair fine) for them to move back to the normal game. And this fine cannot be paid with Gold, and while they are on the Cheater server they cannot xfer gold to gems.

3. Anything they earn on their account, while they spend their time on the cheater server is removed once they pay the fine and xfer back to the ‘real game’

But that is just what I would do :-)

I’m pretty sure any MMO that does not have a zero tolerance policy for cheating/hacking is doomed to failure before release. Instanced multiplayer games are not the same thing, but I have to think the threat of being banned is a strong deterrent for lots of players that might otherwise consider using cheating tools that are available to them.

I’m not talking about “exploits” in the game, I’m talking about 3rd party programs that actively inject data into the game packets to ALTER the game functionality while playing.