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This is similar to an approach I suggested some time ago here for other games as well - if you detect griefers/cheaters/trolls, just let them play against each

by js8 9y ago

This is similar to an approach I suggested some time ago here for other games as well - if you detect griefers/cheaters/trolls, just let them play against each other.

sov 9y ago
That's what Blizzard did for Diablo II about 15 years ago.
- sbarre 9y ago
  Yep, this is easily the best way to deal with people who are committed to messing with an online community.. Make them think they're still having an impact when they're not.. I believe HN does something similar but I ran a small forum back in the early 2000s and we could flag one or more people into groups where their posts were only visible to each other, but not to anyone else. Since the site was invite-only, there was no anonymous access so they had no practical way of finding this out on their own. Eventually they got bored of "being ignored" and left on their own..
  - RangerScience 9y ago
    > their posts were only visible to each other For the Something Awful forums, this is called hell-banning.
- bitwize 9y ago
  Blizzard has another cool anti-cheat tactic that's deployed alongside cheating bans. Remember that old story about how ITS had a command to crash the system to take the fun out of crashing the system? In Overwatch, one character's Ultimate is basically an aimbot; another's is basically a wallhack.
apetresc 9y ago
Shadowbanning seems like a technique that only worked back when it was an original idea that nobody knew about. Nowadays if you have a dedicated cheater who actually has something concrete to gain from abusing the system, it's absolutely trivial to "test" if you're shadowbanned by checking on an account in good standing, and treating that exactly the same as a supposedly-ineffectual normal ban.
- kazinator 9y ago
  If shadowbanning traps most of the casual abusers, leaving only the elite cheaters, we cannot quite say that it doesn't work, right? Shadowbanning can be refined to deal with the situation you have identified. For instance, the abusive account's postings can be shown to an account in good standing, if their IP addresses are the same, or in the same class C, or in recent login history, those accounts did appear to some from the same machine or small network. The system can also detect a pattern of behavior whereby some account in good standing is expressing unsual interest in accounts in poor standing, like specifically searching for their postings or looking at profiles or whatever. Or maybe some more subtle clues.

by js8 9y ago

This is similar to an approach I suggested some time ago here for other games as well - if you detect griefers/cheaters/trolls, just let them play against each other.

sov 9y ago

That's what Blizzard did for Diablo II about 15 years ago.

sbarre 9y ago
Yep, this is easily the best way to deal with people who are committed to messing with an online community.. Make them think they're still having an impact when they're not.. I believe HN does something similar but I ran a small forum back in the early 2000s and we could flag one or more people into groups where their posts were only visible to each other, but not to anyone else. Since the site was invite-only, there was no anonymous access so they had no practical way of finding this out on their own. Eventually they got bored of "being ignored" and left on their own..
- RangerScience 9y ago
  > their posts were only visible to each other For the Something Awful forums, this is called hell-banning.
bitwize 9y ago
Blizzard has another cool anti-cheat tactic that's deployed alongside cheating bans. Remember that old story about how ITS had a command to crash the system to take the fun out of crashing the system? In Overwatch, one character's Ultimate is basically an aimbot; another's is basically a wallhack.

apetresc 9y ago

Shadowbanning seems like a technique that only worked back when it was an original idea that nobody knew about. Nowadays if you have a dedicated cheater who actually has something concrete to gain from abusing the system, it's absolutely trivial to "test" if you're shadowbanned by checking on an account in good standing, and treating that exactly the same as a supposedly-ineffectual normal ban.

kazinator 9y ago
If shadowbanning traps most of the casual abusers, leaving only the elite cheaters, we cannot quite say that it doesn't work, right? Shadowbanning can be refined to deal with the situation you have identified. For instance, the abusive account's postings can be shown to an account in good standing, if their IP addresses are the same, or in the same class C, or in recent login history, those accounts did appear to some from the same machine or small network. The system can also detect a pattern of behavior whereby some account in good standing is expressing unsual interest in accounts in poor standing, like specifically searching for their postings or looking at profiles or whatever. Or maybe some more subtle clues.