Guild Wars 2

There is this impression amongst the general population that Anet does next to nothing to control hackers and trolls in WvW (true or not is irrelevant for this post).

The result is that players are more apt to send false reports, making it even harder for devs to deal with the real offenders. Here’s the reasoning with an example:

A player fights a warrior who suddenly at low health goes into mist form and escapes. Our player knows warriors don’t have the mist form skill and finds this fishy…

1. In one (theoretical) extreme — where the impression is that hackers and trolls are caught and dealt with instantly and severely — our player does not immediately assume it’s hacking. He first looks up traits, runes, sigils to see what the could have caused this mist form… and discovers the rune of vampirism. No false report sent and the player learns something.
2. In the other extreme, where the impression is that hackers and trolls are never dealt with, our player instantly assumes it was hacking and submits a report to Anet. If he sees it again, that triggers another false report. You see this all the time, where people post about hackers when it turns out the player was just uninformed.

The closer you are to (1), the fewer false reports devs have to deal with and the easier it is to catch true hackers/trolls. And the closer you are to (2), the more reports devs have to deal with, and the harder it is to catch real hackers/trolls.

Conclusion: Right now, we are very close to (2). What would help is a surge of dev investigators for a period of time, putting player impressions of the system closer to (1), thus making it easier for devs to stay close to (1) even when the surge has ended.

Thoughts?

a lot of times its near impossible to catch people, as they are in large groups and you have no idea who is exploiting. If im high up on a cliff firing an ac on a zerg down below where they are out of range. But yet their aoe attacks from their eles can hit me? If Im standing way back obstructed by terrain but yet again their aoe can still reach that far back, yea I call BS. But how in the heck do I know which one is using that view hack, it annoys me to no end and I wish more would be done, but honestly I dont know what can be done in these situations, I see it everyday.

Lord Kuru.3685:

There is this impression amongst the general population that Anet does next to nothing to control hackers and trolls in WvW (true or not is irrelevant for this post).

The result is that players are more apt to send false reports, making it even harder for devs to deal with the real offenders. Here’s the reasoning with an example:

A player fights a warrior who suddenly at low health goes into mist form and escapes. Our player knows warriors don’t have the mist form skill and finds this fishy…

1. In one (theoretical) extreme — where the impression is that hackers and trolls are caught and dealt with instantly and severely — our player does not immediately assume it’s hacking. He first looks up traits, runes, sigils to see what the could have caused this mist form… and discovers the rune of vampirism. No false report sent and the player learns something.
2. In the other extreme, where the impression is that hackers and trolls are never dealt with, our player instantly assumes it was hacking and submits a report to Anet. If he sees it again, that triggers another false report. You see this all the time, where people post about hackers when it turns out the player was just uninformed.

The closer you are to (1), the fewer false reports devs have to deal with and the easier it is to catch true hackers/trolls. And the closer you are to (2), the more reports devs have to deal with, and the harder it is to catch real hackers/trolls.

Conclusion: Right now, we are very close to (2). What would help is a surge of dev investigators for a period of time, putting player impressions of the system closer to (1), thus making it easier for devs to stay close to (1) even when the surge has ended.

Thoughts?

Nailed it IMO. Good analysis of the hidden costs.

Also a good example of the many issues stemming from ANet’s inexplicable lack of communication with players about WVW.

In EOTM more ppl are flying above then ppl on the ground. Hackers are very common this days, yesterday I seen one, did not even care, not worth the hastle to record it, put it on youtube, open another browser, login, post a ticket and then… total ignorance from anet. Me to do all that work, just to be ignored? nahhh. I can be ignored without that too.
Plus the way I seen it work, a dev must be online and present at the spot to verify. Was a post few weeks ago where a dev said there is only 6 devs equipped with ban hammers, and they use it only after they verify in real time. Well I;m sorry, in case you dont have a personal dev at your disposal (I misplaced my) all your tickets, work and goodwill… will go to waste.

Anet collects so called metrics from the game. Should be easy to verify if ppl is flying or moving unexpectedly.

Zoom hacking and fly hacking is becoming very popular on T1 NA, just watch some of the pug-mangers guilds, (not posting the guilds name as such but sounds like Tea, Double U, Ell, on JQ) you will see them places ACs next to portal, and ACn’ the whole back wall of a tower, up there stairs in to lords room, with no line of sight, Its kinda getting old now, Anet wont look in to it, but they have the time to fill the gem store, and take people money for outfits…

well ive been latelly playing with fov(wich i start to find lame), but Anet stated theres nothing against that, players improving their gameplay, excelent to hit with AOE skills and siege on the other side of the wall….