Better Cheating Policy

I think people find it frustrating that so much evidence is required for regulars. I’ve heard that for the ban of the player named Avetis, lots of time was spent gathering evidence, editing it and then reviewing it when he was quite clearly cheating. It seems like this system right now is rather inefficient since there are so many people who may be possibly using ghost clients in the community. I’m not sure if this has been considered but it may be worth trying to partner with a client side anti-cheat for example I mean Lunarclient etc. Something like this could be used so that only people running the lunar client could join the ctf match server for instance. Doing this for every game mode would possibly make it harder to get newer players but for the competitive side where people should not be cheating and shouldn’t mind having to use lunarclient as many do so already, this could be quite effective.

 

Yes I agree but I was mentioning maybe just even for the ctf_match servers as these are a prime spot for cheaters. Can see how it would be too pricey though.

 

I haven’t read your full post but 1/3 of the community?? It really isn’t that high at all I think you are just accusing the wrong people to be honest.

 

Bit of math here,

Currently there are 8 full official teams, so 8 × 25 = 200 players playing competitively. Im going to add another 50 as an estimate for the regulars like me who are not on a team but still play sweaty in casual, or who just play for ****s and giggles.

So, 250 ish active regulars right now.
250 × (1/3)% = 82.5 players supposedly cheating??

If it really is 82 then I am horribly and genuinely worried for the tourney and how it represents CTF as a community. However, I dont think that it really is that high at all. Im going to go out on a hunch here and say its more likely to be a 1/10th of the active regulars are cheating.

250 × (1/10)% = 25 players cheating. To me that seems more likely to be an accurate representation of the number of players actually using something.

I don't want to be that guy but Sporty has a really good argument here that you might be over estimating/falsely accusing legitimate players that are actually good. As @SoCool21 said, this is why it's really difficult for actual cheaters to get banned because one half of the community think's they cheat, the other half then doesn't. So the mod's are then held up on a wall by their throat being forced to pick which side they think is right, and whether they should pick the morally correct side for justice, or ignore it to try and maintain the trust they have within the community.

If I had to bring something new to the table it'd be that I think the community is being way too disrespectful to our moderators and staff, making it even harder for them to do their job effectively and confidently.
Not sure if @chickenputty agrees here but I feel like it's safe to say that the overall majority of staff that have resigned, did so because they were tired of the bull**** that gets thrown their way by the regulars for making minor mistakes, and that they were fed up with being pinned against a wall by the playerbase because they felt a ban was injust/unfair.

 

I’d honestly still say that’s a lot higher that it is. Considering only about a few regular players get banned for hacking each year I really hope it’s not that high. I think as well on brawl it’s quite easy to think some people are hacking due to delayed hits like sometimes I get sketchy hits and I’m really not that great at pvp anymore. However there are definitely some people that hide there hacks through these “delayed hits” specifically 1 or 2 eu players.

 

a 5 second gif haha
might be because i didnt have a mod friend

 

You completely missed the point. The protocol should not be loosened to the point where moderators should issue bans to someone who they think is cheating and you know that's not what he meant. The protocol should be loosened to where other servers are that are succeeding in removing cheaters. Implementing a screen share system to those who ARE CAPABLE AND KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING can be a huge factor in getting rid of the people who do cheat on brawl. This has been a constant complaint and honestly I haven't seen you do anything about it but brush it off. Constantly moderators will side with their friends even if they have suspicion they are cheating because they're entitled to not losing their friendships or whatever. It's a policy and moderation issue. Also allowing clients with developed anti cheats and partnering with them such as lunar can also be an easy fix in ridding the cheaters and forcing them to use the client on the MATCH SERVER. Also yes I do realize lunar can be bypassed but it is also very accurate and by far better than the current anti-cheat. This would completely fixed what SoCool said above the "backlash" it has on the community for banning a player, because it's an actual anti-cheat. Personally I'd rather hear people whine and moan about their friends getting screen shared and caught using a client than people whining and moaning about someone getting wrongly or correctly banned without enough evidence.

 

**** even if we did a trial run with doing screenshares for just even a month i think more than half of the entire server would be more than happy. If it doesnt work, fine, then switch back to what we have now. But if it does end up being successful and gets a good response then keep it.

 

While gathering Intel on regular players we wish to respect is highly respectable; gaining as much evidence to find innocent until proven guilty. Choosing to take on complex accusations with screen shares may be our best alternative.

Now, I fully respect brawl's dedication to not take this route, but as we come to recognize how vulnerable this topic has become to seeing servers developing custom clients just to securely grow a community. Perhaps screen sharing for the use for only complex accusations can be the best we've got for now.

I did see the small comment on the bypasses of screen shares and do acknowledge it, sure does also violate privacy, but subjected with valid reason and evidence built suspicion, a complex accusation should come to be solved with a complex solution. No matter the damage.

Making this call will for sure follow with a tough policy, if Brawl so chooses to take this additional measure, but I only see this strengthening staff credibility if these actions are taken appropriately.

 

Screensharing, while I do think it would be beneficial, I don't think it would make a significant difference. Ultimately, there are other ways to detect hacked clients without screen sharing, and 9/10 times the staff get it right. The false bans are actually pretty low, which is due to the amount of evidence moderators have to collect and the test that moderators have to pass in order to actually ban players. Players are always given the benefit of the doubt, kind of an "innocent until proven guilty" type thing. Now there are some "big fish" who are or have been protected by staff in the past. I won't name any names, but the amount is really small. You can't stop people from having friends and having a bias towards those friends, it really isn't possible.

I get the point you're trying to make here, it is for sure frustrating and it's important to let the staff know when you're frustrated with something. But, this thread really doesn't say more than "be better at moderating", which is probably why it'll get blown off. I'm almost certain that screensharing won't be added and the policy around banning players is about as good as it can be.

In my opinion, one of the reasons it takes so long for evidence to be collected is that it has to be done in complete secret. If people see a mod or a jmod watching someone and call them out on it, it completely derails what they were doing. From experience it was almost like people didn't want to see these regulars get banned, but then turn around and complain about there being hacking regulars.

Kinda went off on a few tangents there, but I'll sum it up:
1. Screensharing probably won't be added
2. The system around banning players is about as good as it can be and the staff are always working to improve it.
3. The amount of hacking regulars is extremely low, maybe a handful of people if that. There's maybe one or two are protected by staff members.
4. There's a trend of staff members watching regs, getting harassed for watching said regs, and then the community complaining that there are hacking regs.

Alright I think I said everything I wanted to without leaking anything. If anything here does count as leaking Im sure a staff member will remove it.

 

The problem here though isn't that our current system isn't effective. It is effective. The problem is that it isn't efficient. There is no reason why it should take 3 months to be confident about a ban when an alternate solution would provide the same confidence in less than 3 minutes.

Cheating regulars shouldn't be able to get away with this **** long enough to team hop 3 times before they finally get banned.

For context, back in 2017 I ran a little experiment on an alt to see just how long it'd take before I got caught using an autoclicker. I never did, I gave up after 3 months because nothing had given me confidence that people let alone staff were going to act on it. I stopped because at that point I was just cheating for no cause.

If someone can alt 3 months with an autoclicker set at 17cps and not get any attention, I can only imagine how long a blatant regular could go.