Forum Discussion

Zulkiers's avatar
Zulkiers
Seasoned Ace
3 years ago
Solved

Idea for how to combat some bots/hackers

An invisible 10 meter circle is placed around a player every few seconds. If they don't leave that circle within a few minutes, they are booted from the game for inactivity.

10 meter might be too much, but 5 might be too little.

After several inactivities in a row, the person is banned for a day. If they continue the ban increases and can result in a permanent ban.

Also, if the number of numbers in their name exceeds 6, flag them. If their name is 50%+ numbers, flag them. Flagged get monitored and possibly banned.

gameplay discussion
  • aim_with_my_eye's avatar
    aim_with_my_eye
    3 years ago

    @drevinum9 It is not a lot of work, and it's bloody billion-dollar corp, not 1-man startup. Also they violate their ToS while letting such problems exist. Why would i do their work for free? But ok, just to not to be tub-thumper, here's some first bot signs that comes to mind(order is random and doesn't mean function evaluation priority or something):
    1. Character doesn't take loot or moves far from drop point.
    2. Almost no climbs. Also no schmovement techniques.
    3. Low/zero damage.
    4. Item 1 doesn't change with ring positioning stages.
    5. Inactivity reports from teammates.
    6. No pings. No loot requests. No any team interaction. No healing but the basic drop kit.
    7. Persisting of signs for enough number of matches.

10 Replies

  • Midnight9746's avatar
    Midnight9746
    Hero+
    3 years ago

    What you're suggesting wouldn't solve the problem. What it would end up doing is causing bot accounts to start having scripts where they'll randomly move, hackers won't be affected as they're usually wall hacking, so they're b-lining to players, while legit users would be punished for trying to play the game. We all hate when people rat, however staying low at times is part of the game, and this suggestion would just get people banned when they're trying to wait to third party or when they're slowly rotating.

  • drevinum9's avatar
    drevinum9
    3 years ago
    @Zulkiers You didn't really think this through did you? Now the moment you pick up a sniper you can't use it or you will get banned... the moment you try to stay in cover you get banned... you want everyone to move constantly... The cheaters can easily script movement to avoid your "solution" aswell if they ever implemented it. Surely this would do more harm than good
  • Zulkiers's avatar
    Zulkiers
    Seasoned Ace
    3 years ago
    @drevinum9 guys, that's not what I said.
    The ring moves every minute or two.
    You'd be able to stay for pretty much an entire rotation.
    This is mostly to eliminate those people who jump every 5 seconds or who just punch every 3 seconds.
    The distance given is more like a diameter.
    Punching every 3 seconds could easily move you out of a 5 meter circle before the timer is up, that's why I said that had issues.
    As for making a sniper spot, you could kill 5 squads and wouldn't have to worry about getting booted.
    Oh, BTW, if you hit someone with a weapon then you are fine. So snipers are fine.
    But, Ultimate damage, especially Bangalore's, would not count as the one bot would launch the ultimate and then smoke itself whenever the ult was ready.
    And in front of it was a Wraith bot who only jumped every few seconds, thus giving the bangalore some ultimate damage.
    The bangalore couldn't punch the wraith because it got stuck down a few feet by a mini-ledge about thigh-high.
    So yes I did think it through.
    However taking it out of proportion like you did causes headaches. I can't think of the right word but I'll just go with that.
  • aim_with_my_eye's avatar
    aim_with_my_eye
    3 years ago

    @drevinum9 
    There are ton of activity info can be evaluated to exclude real players from the suspicion list - damage done, actual distance between spawn/landing point and current position, presence of basic items in the inventory, number and variety of interactions during match etc. I guess, the only reason it's not done - bots are harming players expirience, but boosting activity metrics, so EA can continue feeding us with skin recolors instead of real progress.

  • drevinum9's avatar
    drevinum9
    3 years ago
    @aim_with_my_eye Oh okay so we are gonna go through thousands of players inventory and behavior patterns in game and somehow calculate a limit for how bots are playing vs real players and also players abusing a strategy while also the servers are dying already as it is. Where do you think they magically gonna get the resources to even compute all of that? You are surely aware of how cheap outdated poor servers they have and putting more load on them will make the game unplayable for real.
  • aim_with_my_eye's avatar
    aim_with_my_eye
    3 years ago

    @drevinum9 
    0. I encourage you to study a bit about how programs and algorithms work, and what optimization is. It can make next items in the reply unnecessary.
    1. Tons of metadata is being collected during game even without this hypothetical bot detection algorithm. 
    2. We don't need to permanently analyze all of data for all players in lobby instance - a simple function can narrow down circle of suspects by detecting main bot signs, and after that digging deeper.
    3. The entire function will contain significantly less code than some basic game mechanic, like weapon shot, and take up an order of magnitude less CPU time, because it doesn't need to be executed for each server tick. 
    4. Writing of such algorithm is almost basic difficulty of programming. Considering Source engine using C++, it may be optimized to the limit.
    Conclusion from items is in my previous reply - the command to make it happen just was not given.

  • drevinum9's avatar
    drevinum9
    3 years ago

    Optimization sure can take you far but they don't spend time on doing that because time is money and money for doing that is expensive... Then you never mention any real tangible algorithm that could distinguish between bots or players just standing still.... you are allowed to stay in one spot for 2 minutes....

    You need to make a lot of work to fight a problem that is barely visible, I have not seen a single bot in my games that are doing the sort of behavior you are mentioning.... perhaps they only exists in the lower brackets of the MMR grouping.... It is not worth their dimes to invest in fighting your bot problems

  • aim_with_my_eye's avatar
    aim_with_my_eye
    3 years ago

    @drevinum9 It is not a lot of work, and it's bloody billion-dollar corp, not 1-man startup. Also they violate their ToS while letting such problems exist. Why would i do their work for free? But ok, just to not to be tub-thumper, here's some first bot signs that comes to mind(order is random and doesn't mean function evaluation priority or something):
    1. Character doesn't take loot or moves far from drop point.
    2. Almost no climbs. Also no schmovement techniques.
    3. Low/zero damage.
    4. Item 1 doesn't change with ring positioning stages.
    5. Inactivity reports from teammates.
    6. No pings. No loot requests. No any team interaction. No healing but the basic drop kit.
    7. Persisting of signs for enough number of matches.