The AC 1.1 cheat detection policy and the AC 1.0 cases

[Brahma]

Some background

AC has a big problem with cheats (mainly because of its open source nature). If you enter in the servers, you can find people speedhacking, teleporting, aimboting, and all sort of nasty things.

The blacklist thread exists to report and block the OBVIOUS and ANNOYING cases.
But since the beginnings of the AC 1.0, it has also been used as a POLITICAL tool.
Some clans, mainly w00p and DES, actively "hunted" discrete (non obvious) cheaters and posted them in the blacklist thread with the support of a "core elite".

I came to this community to criticize the blacklist and its low effectiveness to really block obvious cheaters from dynamic ip ranges (a common scenario in Brazil). And facing the lack of support to change the current blacklist system, and also interested in modding the code, I started to code anticheats.

I first coded a speedhack detector, and accused a "known" community member (in that time, oNe|MysTeR) of cheating.
Since the oNe clan was not part of the core elite, suddenly I found myself receiving support from the "nice guys" of the community. These "nice guys" did everything to strike oNe, and I was the fool with torch in hands who was leading these villagers.

I am sorry Mael. You are really important to this community (you as well, mosschops).

Suddenly, everyday, I was receiving demos to watch and analyze (obviously, no demo from the "core elite"). The fact is, quickly I enhanced my tools, I detected many discrete cheaters, I received community support for the majority of them, and at each new blacklist report, a new flame war to prove the hack.

It became very obvious that the cheaters were learning from that incidents and the it was necessary to "hide" the tools. And the "core elite" supported this, as far as I kept showing and explaining the proofs to them. In fact, they were not accepting the proof I found - ignoring the evidence I collected - as far as they were agreed on some guy cheating (emotionally or by "instinct").

The beginning of the end of my "puppet stage" was when A&D_Davitomon was caught cheating... and I refused to blacklist him. He was not detected with my tools (so, I would not waste time proving that), and I was sure that the "core elite", which Davi was part, would strike me if I had gone on to blacklist one of its "nice guys". So, I let this job to DES.

In fact I knew all this was "political" bullshit, and I wasting time... because the discrete cheaters are quite well accepted in the overall community (this is the big source of hypocrisy here), and the main problem was never them, but the OBVIOUS cases.

One day I entered in the bl thread, and ANGRA|Panico and A&D_Shadow were struggling. I watched the demo, and Panico was a cheater for sure.
The "core elite" celebrated. It has been a long standing goal for w00p and DES to see ANGRA out of the game. And without Davi to defend them, this finally became reality.

But part of the community was feeling this was not right. Where was the proof? Well... I presented it to the nice guys, and they said: "This is ok by me Brahma. Keep up the good work". But in fact I felt it was very unfair towards ANGRA.

Hell... I came to the community to help auto kick the obvious cheaters... but I was just removing the discrete ones who were not friends of Drakas or tipper.
Not only this, obviously. The oNe|Wolf's incident proved it. As it's useless to blacklist someone, because they would just continue to play the game.

So, I decided to end this watching/analyzing demos waste of time... But in a last effort I got myself the demos from the TyD tournament for analyzing. The "core elite" was bugging me that Coxa and Sacer were using cheats. Well... I watched the demos and concluded that they were clean in there... but I also concluded that w00p|LiFe and BC|Seperh were aimboting.

This was the end of my "long" friendship with the "community nice guys".

My stats at that moment: I was full of pressure. I was the dev who was building the bridge between the development and the community, reading their requests and passing them to the other devs. I finally started to work on AC-1.1 with the support of flowtron and makke, and I was working on the Central Blacklist and a new Masterserver (one month of work which eihrul turned into dust in a matter of hours, committing a far better thing).

No member of the "core elite" had any interest in information about the Central Blacklist or the new Masterserver... but they started a flamewar about the latest cheat detections. Behind the curtains, in the hidden forum (which the common members of this community had no access to), I struggled for days. There were dozens of posts and graphs and ongoing discussion, which became a big ball of ****.

DrunkenM letf the game.
Drakas revealed himself to have double standards.
And nothing was as before.


My position towards the previous cheats

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1) I do not care if someone cheated or not in the past.

2) I have no power to forbid someone of playing this game, so do not ask me if "Did you unban that guy?" or if "Could you, please, block that guy?"

3) I will not watch demos anymore;

4) I will not discuss the past incidents;

What will happen in the AC1.1

[SELECT ALL] Code:

1) The server's closed bins will have anticheat implemented, but no autokick.. the server will discretely disrupt the benefits of the cheaters;

2) If a new cheat appears that the server does not detect, we will release an update;

3) The blacklist thread shall only be used for the OBVIOUS cases - this means you need to provide the demo and the specific scenes (time-index) the person is cheating. Do not waste your time with the discrete ones - expect the server to auto block them.

[Panda]

First of all, thanks for clarification and all your hard work. I think the whole situation is not very nice, but I hope it clears up in 1.1.

The blacklist thread must be used just to the OBVIOUS cases (it means you need to provide the demo and the specific scenes the guy is cheating...). Do not waste your time with the discrete ones... expect the server to auto block them.

So you will autoblock the non-obvious cheats but will keep the obvious cheats? Or did I understand that wrong and you mean we should only report non-blocked obvious cheaters?

[Brahma]

APanda... please!!!
We will block all cheats we can block... but if appear some really new annoying one, like far gib (which the server do not block yet), then create a blacklist entry to block the jerk in all possible servers.

[MathiasB]

Damn, my new cheat is already caught!! :(

[ech0]

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[kitty]

well i can understand both of the sides. on the one hand its hard to trust a not known suddently appearing "dev" wich gets the full authority to decide who is guilty and who not. on the other hand its clear that you shouldnt present your anticheat code because it will get abused by people. in my honest opinion it would be easier for all if we build up a 3-man-comitte with brahma, some other good coder and a well known community member. so that not only 1 person is the "bad man" and the discussion would end if he is right or not. 3 people would know the background and the accuracy and how it works of the anti cheat and the community can/have to trust in the commitee that they decided truthly and right. and as experience shows it will not end up with that we have an auto cheat detect in the masterserver, stupid hacker allways will try to get trough it so the problem will not get solved by it 100% (excuse my english, im in bad mood atm, hard to do 3 things at 1 time :P )

[tempest]

I can't understand why there's such a war going on between different free ladders. Dear ladder owners, how does it matter to you how many players you have in your rankings. Sure, none at all would be kinda sad. But, after all, the more entries you have, the higher is the load on your servers. And you get nothing from it, right?
Please try to be a little less serious about things like clan wars (that's just a word, they are about a game and not meant to be a real war between players)

[ElCrema]

<@Drakas> If I continue to suck up to the community elite, especially be thrown around by {TyD} guys (pwnage who has exerted crazy pressure and has no respect for me, abusing my services; Brett who along with pwnage wanted to blackmail me using M|A clan)

Do not use M|A to defend your clan's position of harboring a cheater. Neither myself or anyone else in M|A did ever blackmail you. I am not a kid Drakas nor M|A is a puppet to be influenced by others.
For those who are wondering what Drakas is implying: After the episode with life (THE CHEATER) and some load of crap that thensi posted in w00p site our clan discussed about it and decided not play in woop servers anymore and remove ourselves from hi-skill and we would inform the community of our decision through this forum. Before do all this I decided to have a word with Drakas about it and we settled things (Ill only say that at times he did agree that life cheated). Now he as every right to change his mind again, if he wants to play along side with a cheater...
Good luck to w00p in gaining the respect of this community back, its not gonna be easy...

[Mael]

Brahma, I can't speak for mosschops but I don't think there was any need for you to apologize. Frankly, I took an attitude with you publicly that was less than commendable. If you really feel the need to apologize then I'm more than happy to accept as well as offer my own.

ech0: I don't think it was necessary to post that here(Or anywhere for that matter). If Drakas wants to say something then he will, on his own terms in his own way. Argument by proxy is not appropriate.

If anyone has any further comments on specifics I recommend they take their discussion elsewhere. I smell a shitstorm coming.

[Brett]

@Drakas : having so bad blacklist and map rotation is what I call a self-destruct, I didn't push anyone to boycott your servers/ladder, just explained them how much it is poor/lame in my opinion.

[Matasar]

I dont care about ladders at all, ladders ruins gameplay and has always been.
What i hope is a situation with 6 VERY good players that are respected to clear cases that arent obvious.
A system will never catch everyone. There will always be needed with manual judgement i think.
There will always be misfires but by watching suspected player you will finally get him (if hes cheating) cuz i dont think you can hide a cheat very long, there will be some day they make a mistake of some kind and reveal what they are using and if that dont turn up in weeks/month then at least I am pretty sure hes clean.

[Apollo{TyD}]

Well Brahma, to be honest you haven't made the best start in the community.

I took notice of you for the first time (and I think the most people have in the same way) at the point of time the community started to boil over. Maybe some people don't remember anymore the past discussion shaked everything herer to its very foundations. Suddenly any aspect ot this game was raised in question (e.g. nr of server slots, the maprotation, competing ladders, the way the development goes aso)....

To that time you started to discuss the blacklisting thingy. You maybe remember that we both
doesn't share the same opinion much often to that time. Mainly cause it sounded in my ears like "I know much better how to do it" - or in other words: the effort I and several other people have showed for more than a year, to hunt all cheaters and offenders and to keep the weak community building together has been useless.

Maybe it has been a matter of bad timing. Maybe also some kind of misunderstanding.
Whatever - In one point you are definitely right: The game, the comminity (or the last standing rest of it) has a big problem with cheaters. In my opinion it's now much more annoying than in 0.93 times.

Therefore it is obvious that it is the right decision to work on a mechanism to catch and eliminate hackers. Every good game is using such a detection tool (e.g. punkbuster) so every serious gamer should be able to deal with this concept. Also the decision to exclude the mechanism out of the open source part is the right decision. Otherwise we could give up immediately. It marks also a serious-minded turning point on the developer's side.

Well, I (still) think it isn't the task of any developer to watch demos or doing something else to catch actively a cheater. They (you) should do it for fine-tuning your toolset. In the moment it becomes a regular part of AC, it does the dirty work for you and everyone else. This seems to me much more stressless as to discuss every single ban.

And the community should acceppt that there are many people out there, who are cheating. Some people are doing in an obvious manner (flying around you aso) - for these people you dont need any complex analyzing. But there are obvious also people (the "pro" cheater) who are doing it much more descrete (with aimbots), always telling you how skilled they are. We have to bite this bullet now. A hard lesson, but a necessary one.

At least I won't comment Drakas "remote talking" much. Only one thing - this behavior reminds me to that of another guy who troubled us with his clan and servers a year before and which has been demonized also by Drakas. What a coincidence and something to think about...

Nevertheless - Mael is right, when he said that If anyone has any further comments on specifics that they should take their discussion elsewhere. I recommend the same.

[ärkefiende]

Good decision, Brahma. People should not decide whether it´s a cheat or not. The machine should do it ;)

[Brahma]

Ty for your post Apollo.

And sorry for the way I entered in the community. You are very right that in my arrogant "propositions" I were not considering the past efforts you (all) did to take care of the cheaters. And also I was not aware of the community problems, neither I was understanding the complex relations of the people in that.

And unfortunately, when I was starting to understand it, you and clown left.
But I am happy you are back, and I have another chance to restart.

EDIT: Ah! About the cheat detection/blocking, we will start with very tolerant values, and test it against clean clients and cheats. So, we will be sure no skilled people will be disrupted by them (remember: the methods are not deterministic, but stochastic!).

[Zarjio]

A question for you though, Brahama: what is going to happen with the 'discrete' cheaters?
Removing all of the obvious cheaters is excellent, and I look forward to being able to go on servers and not see fools ruining everyone else's game. Thank you very much for that! But what of the people who, playing at the 'highest level' of AC, use subtle cheats? I realize you cannot watch every demo, and some things are nearly impossible to detect under any kind of system, but how do you propose we deal with these problems?

[Apollo{TyD}]

A question for you though, Brahama: what is going to happen with the 'discrete' cheaters?
... But what of the people who, playing at the 'highest level' of AC, use subtle cheats? I realize you cannot watch every demo, and some things are nearly impossible to detect under any kind of system, but how do you propose we deal with these problems?

You have answered the question somehow by yourself. Everyone can watch demos and try to analyze it. This something we have also done before Brahma offered his service. Maybe we find a community solution to do so. If Brahma have an idea how to detect such "skilled cheaters" with a code within AC I'm sure he will try it out.

[Undead]

panico/wolf doesnt hack.
end

but i hacker since 1984

[ViperX07]

"core elite"

This sounds so totalitarian. Please refrain from using this term as it implies that the rest of us are not good enough for the honor. I understand that the term refers to the "trusted" elite players of the game but it sounds a little weird. lol

Back on topic:

Thank you for your hard work to make the game better. The problem is, that cheaters will also keep cheating and that like bacteria, they will evolve to become resistant to the newest forms of blocking them. The solution is really non-existent when it comes to these losers. We just need to figure out new ways to deal with them.

[iOD|Habluka]

I've been doing a lot of thinking, but it has only brought me back to a question. Is it really possible to have a program that can truly distinguish between a person using a discreet aimbot and somebody who is actually incredibly good at AC?

I know that there are people that would be caught justly with an anti-cheat system that detects their aimbots, but wouldn't it also detect an amazingly good player who is just incredibly accurate?

Something that would be helpful in resolving many questions about the detection of various hacks is a brief explanation of how the actual detection works.

[Mael]

I know that there are people that would be caught justly with an anti-cheat system that detects their aimbots, but wouldn't it also detect an amazingly good player who is just incredibly accurate?

A high accuracy isn't what reveals an aimbot. It might lead you in the right direction but it can't prove anything.

Something that would be helpful in resolving many questions about the detection of various hacks is a brief explanation of how the actual detection works.

That isn't going to happen.

[Alien]

People should not decide whether it´s a cheat or not. The machine should do it ;)

I agree and disagree too. In public part of game it should really be only machine , but if you organize tournament, couches with codes should have certain unpredictable power without explanation. Then the cheater with perfect codes can be defeated. Therefore now we don't need blacklist :), but good machine and in tournament good admins. You cannot complaint to machine and in tournament you subscribe rules during entry, so your complaint is useless.

About Davimonton, he used script for sniper riffle, presented as "pro" tool. If someone in AC thinks that it is OK, he is probably blind by politic.

I welcome the Brahma's decision to care more about coding and less about clan's politic and community fights. :)

[JMM]

The problem is, that cheaters will also keep cheating and that like bacteria, they will evolve to become resistant to the newest forms of blocking them. The solution is really non-existent when it comes to these losers. We just need to figure out new ways to deal with them.

Methylated spirits/pure alcohol.

[Matasar]

Some day ago when i was playing (and i played alot lately) i found myself to hold back on my aim and not shoot all the bullets i could shot when i was doing good.
It feels like people are speccing you all the time consider the past of cheatblames of me. (well and current blames as many seems upset)
But finding yourself not shooting when you can give a nice kill is kinda fucked up.
Or when you run in a corridor you get one shot in your back and you do a 180 degree turn and press fire to shot before you even start turning.
So you twist and just happend to kill a 10hp guy on your first bullet within 50ms i guess.
Then you think omfg what will ppl think about that kill ?

What i mean is that holding back sometimes as i dont know who checks demos and how good players they are.
If you put a sucky player with no andrealine style to hes gameplay to judge me then he would most likely blame me for cheating instantly cuz of the wierd stuff i make.
With a strange set of headphones (they dont have to be good, just odd i guess) then you can hear a crouch from you base to the other base. Not to mention pickups, you can follow a player running around on the map using pickups and crouch and jump and be VERY ready when he comes to the door.
Some stuff you do in this game is made by brain itself after long playing, like you go in one direction to get flag and all sudden it feels like a good time to check base for Enemy and you go back and find someone that just about to get flag and you kill him.
And you think OMG how can i explain that if they ask, well i cant its just a sense/timing to go check your base.
Maybe there havent been any battle for a period and then you know they are close, i dont know what you think those times but you just go check base.
And it will look like you knew where he was (to others)

I mean with this post is that it feels kinda fucked up playing when you yourself tries to hold back just to not get accused by players that maybe may not be on your level but very respected for their words anyway.
Also do the players that judge other players have a top FPS rate with really good mouse and everything else in the computer set to becomes as smooth as possible for the game ?
If you dont then you cant judge a fast kill, or others aim cuz you dont even know how a good setup works with aim and fighting recoil.
To be honest o dont even notice that there are any recoil on the SMG, only if i stand close to a wall and press fire and dont move mouse i can see it obvious as gun will end up in roof.
But in a fight i dont notice it, i dont think about it or do anything in my mind about it.
Its like the brain and hand controll it by itself..

It may be a game but its more learning the physics of the gameengine to me.
Manual detection of cheat HAS to be made of really good player, not just good players but very good players else it will be bad decisions made sometimes.

[Shorty]

In regards to w00p taking LiFe back,

The issue is not whether Drakas took LiFe back or not, it is where we believe that Life is clean and you don't.

I will not be posting in this topic again, as it will just start a flame war, and we as a community, do not need that.

[MorganKell]

I <3 Brahma for so many reasons it's hard to list them all. Of course I don't <3 him for just as many but it's a shimmy. Instead of giving up on watching demos, I think you should still take a look at the ones that could be potentially serious. I understand all that you went though getting the short end of the stick, but you can't just give up. You are the hacksta masta, keep at it, and keep trying to catch hacks no matter what people say.

As for wallhack... FIND a way to detect it. :D. There is no reason cheating fuks should get to piggy back themselves off of actual skills with glorious wins that we know are bs. Don't think you have to put yourself totally into this game, let the game come to you. You're helping to rid AC of cheats. Take it as a challenge. As for keeping the evidence secret... that only ended up hurting you in my opinion. People thought you were just using the power of being a blacklist mod and randomly banning peeps. I know I did. Show us the evidence from now on, serious hackers are going to continue beating the system until they're finally caught anyways, and the non-serious ones aren't even going to bother with getting around the demos. Besides, adjusting hacks to a demo would probably take some solid programming skills which not a lot of people have.

All I saying is this, show us the evidence and we will support you. You've done a decent enough job so far, and shouldn't let any of the dramatics get you down.

Shimmy Shimmy. I'd prefer not to be warned or have my comment edited, so whoever has been doing that to other shimmies... I'd appreciate it if you let this forum remain free of corporate tinkering in all but the most extreme cases. Thank you very much.

-edit- I forgot to add this for Viper :: core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite, core elite.

:D

[DrauL]

KELL FOR GOD!!!
VOTE F1 OR DIE BY MY BOOMSTICK!

[XFA]

Yep... atm the cheating is alot worse then .93

[Lumpaz]

wouldn't it also detect an amazingly good player who is just incredibly accurate?

Well, that would be a cheater. ;-P

Something that would be helpful in resolving many questions about the detection of various hacks is a brief explanation of how the actual detection works.

Hell no. The less people know about it, the more efficient the detection will be.

Just face it: AC now is plagued with cheaters, idiotic ones and "pro" ones alike. Not that I don't like to play the game, but I'll certainly like it even more when I won't have to face those "amazingly good players" that are so "incredibly accurate" any more (underline "incredibly") (obvious cheaters are comparatively less annoying because they usually get kicked out pretty fast).
So what is there to fear here? I for one can't wait to see the anti-cheat system up and working, as any honest player should. I think we can all trust Brahma's ideas and implementation, it's certainly smart enough (and tested enough) that it won't consider you a cheater if you're particularly accurate or get a few lucky shots. And if some fine-tuning is needed, I'm sure we can trust Brahma with that too.

[Matasar]

wouldn't it also detect an amazingly good player who is just incredibly accurate?

Well, that would be a cheater. ;-P

Something that would be helpful in resolving many questions about the detection of various hacks is a brief explanation of how the actual detection works.

Hell no. The less people know about it, the more efficient the detection will be.

Just face it: AC now is plagued with cheaters, idiotic ones and "pro" ones alike. Not that I don't like to play the game, but I'll certainly like it even more when I won't have to face those "amazingly good players" that are so "incredibly accurate" any more (underline "incredibly") (obvious cheaters are comparatively less annoying because they usually get kicked out pretty fast).
So what is there to fear here? I for one can't wait to see the anti-cheat system up and working, as any honest player should. I think we can all trust Brahma's ideas and implementation, it's certainly smart enough (and tested enough) that it won't consider you a cheater if you're particularly accurate or get a few lucky shots. And if some fine-tuning is needed, I'm sure we can trust Brahma with that too.

Whats wrong with being accurate ?
The more you play (and if hardware allow) then you can become very accurate.
Accurate isnt for luckers, alot of good players are very accurate and i think most of them will play 1.1 just fine.

[Brahma]

Brahma is staring to all people that used the word "accuracy" in their posts
Please... do not discuss about accuracy and cheats...
Accuracy IS NOT directly correlated to aimbot... This issue is far more complex.

Listen to Mael:

A high accuracy isn't what reveals an aimbot. It might lead you in the right direction but it can't prove anything.