Potential next project: trolling cheaters

[Feralidragon]

Well, after NW3 I am planning to do something much more soft, something that would just take a few minutes to do most likely, but that could probably be useful to server admins.
One of the biggest problems of UT is cheating, there are tons of cheaters and although they get banned, they just don't quit and keep getting around bans.

Today, as I was heading up to lunch, an idea came to my mind: instead of banning cheaters, why not welcoming them instead? Controversial?
Allow me to explain:
- if admins keep banning the cheaters, many of them will keep coming back just for the proud rush of getting around the ban and then trolling some more.

However, what if a plugin for ACE or ACE Manager is made to turn the game against the cheaters instead? Have you ever thought in trolling the cheaters themselves as they try to troll the legit players?

I was thinking in the following: every time ACE detects a cheater, something in a mutator could be activated for that player in specific, in which every single time he tried to damage a player (no matter how), he would get headshoted instead and the frag would go to the player he tried to kill.
And imho, there's nothing more hilarious than cheating a cheater, making the game itself "malfunction" for that player alone.
Bonus laughs would go if the cheater started calling others cheaters as well.
From there, cheaters may as well give a "FUUUUUUUUuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" and leave the server themselves.

Of course, there are more things that can be done to cheaters to troll them and making their cheating plain useless and frustrating to the cheater himself.

A long time ago I did a similar mod for Qwerty/Killah's siege server to deny multigunning (I think it was called Multigunning Pwnzord or something like that), and it seemed to work fine to avoid multigunning and to give some laughs too.

So what do you guys think?

[papercoffee]

Dude this would be hilarious ... but what about more random and ridicules stuff like nali-cows hunting the cheater and kill him... They are spawning right behind him and he have to run or die.

[UT Sniper (SJA94)]

That does sound funny, you could also change their crosshair to something like this also , and play a troll tune to the client. Maybe if a player is in sight of the cheater and makes the cheaters moving speed a tenth of the normal one.

[Rakiayn]

also make a big banner in the hud that floats above the player, that says 'cheater'. and an arrow that points down.
I like the idea ,but my concern is that if the cheater gets headshot, the player he tried to kill gets banned for cheating.

how about turning them to a nali rabbit ? (without the weapons ofcourse)

[Feralidragon]

I like the idea ,but my concern is that if the cheater gets headshot, the player he tried to kill gets banned for cheating.

Nope, the other player wouldn't get banned, since the kill part would be done server-side (and afaik ACE only checks what the client is doing, not the server). Here yes, the other players should be aware that the player is cheating with some sort of indicator, and even the kill message would be "you trolled X" while the cheater would get "you were trolled by X", so there wouldn't be any confusion.

@Everyone: keep the ideas coming. I just think a game is supposed to be fun and nothing else, so if there's something trying to take out the fun, I think we should get back the fun in one way or another without taking things too seriously, but still keep it as fair as possible.

The same could be applied for campers, spawnkillers, etc.... the possibilities for trollin' are endless!!!!!!

[GenMoKai]

LOVE the idea, reminds me of the jailbreak llama. Also the view is getting distorted. Maybe a idea as well?

[KeeperUTX]

That would be awesome. Some jerks keep cheating or otherwise killing the others in Unreal coop, thusly slowing our progress by turn Coop into DM , think this could be done in U1 too??

@the bunny idea : Yeah, let's turn every cheater on UnEarth into bunnies! NOW WHO'S DA BADASS!

@the problem? crosshair idea: or maybe give them the 'Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world soundclip'
Like so : Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world? FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- and it would continue until the cheater lost his nerves and left!

Real gr8 idea, Feralidragon, me likey!

[JackGriffin]

Mind if I add some thoughts? This is very much a near-and-dear issue for me and something I've experimented with in the past.

I have a server-side mutator from a couple of years ago that I'd be happy to find and give to you if you pursue this. I called it "Llama" and it pretty much did what you are proposing. It worked in levels from small "messing around" on the player like setting jump height to zero, then onwards to stuff like removing touch on weapons and forcing pinata at every spawn. Finally it would remove the player's collision completely, making them fall through the map every spawn.

It just doesn't work, and there's several reasons as to why. First, it requires too much admin involvement. Admins with this level of power on their server don't want something else they have to keep an eye on. Yeah, you can automate it to a degree but that has problems I'll get to in a moment. Creating a mod like this then making it work on it's own isn't feasible given the variety of offenses that would trigger it. Admins would have to manually assign the punishments and that's one big PITA.

Secondly, it just ramps up the problems. In my experience if you flag a cheater then ruin their game without banning them, you run a very high risk of creating a monster. Most of the serious server crashers/exploiters I've spoken to relate the same kind of story: they learned their craft because they wanted to retaliate against someone who penalized them from a server. I can't express strongly enough that cheating is the game-within-the-game and when you 'play' that game with them it's not punishing them. They enjoy the challenge and it will only fuel further problems, especially if it's done publicly or in front of other known players.

Thirdly, and the most damaging, is that no clear way exists to ID players without error. This is the main issue with ACE and until it's solved (and I don't think it ever will be) nothing like this will work on the people you need to the most. It's not hard to bypass every identifier currently in use. I can prove that too by challenging any server admin to ban me then I'll get back on the server. It's really that simple. Hackers and troublemakers simply rinse off into a new identity and then you as an admin are back to square one. That's why it's just too much work.

I guess my premise is that it's too much trouble, it can never work, and you will end up creating more adept cheaters.

My new forum icon (thanks to this post)

[UT Sniper (SJA94)]

In this video that sort of music could be funny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-yNANdC ... re=related
What about a server side radar everyone has on the server.

[Higor]

Ferali, with ChanClan and SAM discussed various things and I'd really like to propose it:

The corner seat
It basically puts a player on team 255 and forces him to PlayerSpectating state, until a moderator assumes the player should go back.
I know it's kinda silly, but it was devised to prevent ACE crashes due to player kicking (happens more frequently than you think), and to teach a noob certain rules before being ready.
I know it may bring problems with some underdeveloped scoreboards (nearly all of them lol) but it's a good system if a secondary way of identifying the player if he decides to reconnect is used.

I had something similar (called it Limbo mode) on my Team Balancer which forced a player into spectate until ACE passed the ID checks, funnily it was discarded due to the balancer breaking after the noobs reconnected over 50 times (combined) before ACE loaded for them, and breaking the whole array system every game or so...

[Feralidragon]

@Jack: No matter what admins do, some cheaters will always try some sort of revenge, that's inevitable. Cheaters are dumbasses, and there's nothing more to it and should be treated as such. So, they don't like it? Great, now they can see why we don't like what they do either, and this is basically turning the spell against the wizard.
Now, not doing this because it can engage some cheater in trying something worse is, sorry to say: the cowards way out, and you can bet some cheater is probably reading this very post and knowing what people think.

It's not the challenge alone, actually it's the dominance they like to feel over a game and over software in general, because being a hacker is all there is about, the "challenge" is just a cheap excuse for the actual objective.
Taking away that feeling of dominance may engage them to quit or to retaliate. For the ones who retaliate, if they know you fear them, they will try all the tricks they know and call themselves hackers and laugh at your expenses, however if they know you don't fear them and you don't give a damn about what they think, even if they end up successfully attack you, even those will think twice before wasting their time in doing something as long as you get back up on your feet and don't quit.

In a world full of information, all that may happen is if they retaliate they are making you stronger and more knowledgeable in fact, and if they try enough times, you get enough info for them to run out of "tricks". Of course, they will always learn new tricks and all, but it will be progressively more difficult for them, specially if you assemble more admins for the same cause.

Anyway, bottom line is: if you fear retaliation, they will dominate you hands down, and you may as well quit having a real server, that's my opinion in all this.

PS.: By "you", I mean the "plural you".


@Higor: Yes, that's a nice idea. A player could be in spectating mode for a while, and ACE would only kick in intervals, with timeouts per player. If the player reconnects too quickly, the timeout wasn't fully reached yet and therefore ACE doesn't kick in before that. Is this your idea if I understood correctly, right?
Although, I think ACE itself should do that job internally (as an optional setting perhaps?) if too many reconnects within a short amount of time are a problem for it, so probably you guys should contact Anthrax with a similar idea and check if he can implement it safely.

[JackGriffin]

I get your point and I agree with you, however the real world application of armchair morality is often not at all what you think it will be. I'm just discussing UT here so frame this response in that light.

Of course you can assemble people together and strive towards a common good but in the UT world it's just not feasible since there are so few players. Only a couple of servers have anything approaching full-time admin staff. Even with that you don't have the tools to deal with cheaters. You pound them and they come back. 10 minutes of google search will fully equip anyone with the means to bypass anything you can throw at 'em. There is a vibrant cheat community that's only more than happy to help you learn what you need to learn and they delight in the chaos that ensues. Hell, when I was learning radar code for the original MH mod stuff I asked for help in the cheater forums to explain how the radar worked. I very clearly explained I wanted it for good purposes but that made no difference and several cheat authors jumped right in, sending me copies of their cheats with important sections highlighted to help me. It's very much the same 'atmosphere' as you would see here, just a very different agenda and moral compass being used.

And finally (though I hesitate to add something like this) you really can't win. If you go to the mat with someone and they REALLY don't want to lose, you end up spending money and lots of time guarding the fence. Someone like Scarface ought to post a little of what they have had to endure and the amount of effort it's taken to keep his servers running. Twenty bucks USD will buy you all the DDOS services you need and there is a thriving market full of competition for your money. If I were a cheater and had a little time and a little money and some basic horse sense and you pissed me off enough then I could cause so much trouble you'd shut your servers down. A lot of these guys look at this as a hobby as much as you look at your modding as one. They share exploits and cheats like you and I share code classes, and they like a good challenge. If you give them one then you are just asking for what happens.

It's not a shame to walk away from a fight. One of Sun Tzu's quotes that is a favorite of mine is "He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight". This isn't a winnable battle no matter how right you are.

[Higor]

...and Scarface's servers are still up and running. (I admit i had to patch lots of exploits at uScript level there)

[iloveut99]

I was thinking in the following: every time ACE detects a cheater, something in a mutator could be activated for that player in specific, in which every single time he tried to damage a player (no matter how), he would get headshoted instead and the frag would go to the player he tried to kill.

That would affect the gameplay of the current game. If he focus only on one player that player can win easily than other for example.

[Dr.Flay]

The idea of not kicking the cheaters was the basis of my idea for "Mjolnir the friendly Banhammer"
http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3626&p=34043

The only way I can see it balancing out the potential negatives, is if it is factored in, as a game-mode, so you "plan-in" the cheating.
eg. like the "mutant" mode in some games, or the "handicap" mutator maybe?

Make it so that cheaters are worth a very high-score, they always take damage in team games, always glow, give awards for killing cheaters
Ferali is right, the only way to deal with it is to not kick them out, but to strike a balance.

Think of a game mode that uses cheating as an option but with consequences, and you can think of the opposite requirements to fight the cheating.