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Can someone explain how these strategies aren't standard across online games by now? They've been around for years, but it's always a big deal when a game adds

Can someone explain how these strategies aren't standard across online games by now? They've been around for years, but it's always a big deal when a game adds them.

Reedx 7y ago
Because it's a non-trivial feature to develop, test and maintain. Simply using a flag (banned = true or false) is lot easier / less complex / fewer potential side effects.
- ben_jones 7y ago
  To go further, automated ban systems often result in a ton of customer support, and depending on the game's monetization model they can heavily affect the bottom line if too many of a certain type of player are removed from the game. Also this problem is exasperated in Apex Legends because it is a free game that is also popular in Asia.
- socialist_coder 7y ago
  I would disagree with that. When you ban someone, they know. They make a new account and come back. When you move them to a cheater queue, they don't know. They keep playing, none the wiser. It's infinitely better for everyone. The cheater still gets to play, and the non-cheaters aren't affected as much because the cheater doesn't just keep coming back. The complexity in your app is that you need to have multiple matchmaking queues, which you probably already support due to skill tiers. So is it really that difficult to add more matchmaking queues for the cheaters?
  - afiori 7y ago
    But it is more complex in the sense that you need a lot of fine tuning. If you just match cheaters with cheaters then it is easy to see too. You need some kind of dynamic ranking of "toxicity" (in this case cheating) match user with other of similar toxicity.
  - pingyong 7y ago
    >When you move them to a cheater queue, they don't know. They keep playing, none the wiser. When 99.9% of the people you get matched with are cheaters (many of which might be quite obvious), it's not that hard to figure out that your account was probably shadow banned. Some cheaters might not care, but it's certainly not hard to figure out.
socialist_coder 7y ago
They are. Basically every online multiplayer game does this when they get big enough. I'm not sure why it's news.
sov 7y ago
They've been used a lot in the past--most notably, for me, in Diablo II back in the early 2000's. I remember writing a bunch of D2JSP code back in the day and getting my account "flagged"--basically stuck forever to play against pickit users and autolockers. Friends were able to join my game, but not I theirs, and the "available games" list was way smaller.
syntheticcdo 7y ago
Not necessarily about cheating, but a good Riot Games post in the past dealt with their attitude toward creating a "Prisoner's Island" for toxic players: https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/01/ask-riot-banished-to-prisoners-island/ https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/01/ask-riot-ban...

Can someone explain how these strategies aren't standard across online games by now? They've been around for years, but it's always a big deal when a game adds them.

Reedx 7y ago

Because it's a non-trivial feature to develop, test and maintain. Simply using a flag (banned = true or false) is lot easier / less complex / fewer potential side effects.

ben_jones 7y ago
To go further, automated ban systems often result in a ton of customer support, and depending on the game's monetization model they can heavily affect the bottom line if too many of a certain type of player are removed from the game. Also this problem is exasperated in Apex Legends because it is a free game that is also popular in Asia.
socialist_coder 7y ago
I would disagree with that. When you ban someone, they know. They make a new account and come back. When you move them to a cheater queue, they don't know. They keep playing, none the wiser. It's infinitely better for everyone. The cheater still gets to play, and the non-cheaters aren't affected as much because the cheater doesn't just keep coming back. The complexity in your app is that you need to have multiple matchmaking queues, which you probably already support due to skill tiers. So is it really that difficult to add more matchmaking queues for the cheaters?
- afiori 7y ago
  But it is more complex in the sense that you need a lot of fine tuning. If you just match cheaters with cheaters then it is easy to see too. You need some kind of dynamic ranking of "toxicity" (in this case cheating) match user with other of similar toxicity.
- pingyong 7y ago
  >When you move them to a cheater queue, they don't know. They keep playing, none the wiser. When 99.9% of the people you get matched with are cheaters (many of which might be quite obvious), it's not that hard to figure out that your account was probably shadow banned. Some cheaters might not care, but it's certainly not hard to figure out.

socialist_coder 7y ago

They are. Basically every online multiplayer game does this when they get big enough. I'm not sure why it's news.

sov 7y ago

They've been used a lot in the past--most notably, for me, in Diablo II back in the early 2000's. I remember writing a bunch of D2JSP code back in the day and getting my account "flagged"--basically stuck forever to play against pickit users and autolockers. Friends were able to join my game, but not I theirs, and the "available games" list was way smaller.

syntheticcdo 7y ago

Not necessarily about cheating, but a good Riot Games post in the past dealt with their attitude toward creating a "Prisoner's Island" for toxic players: https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/01/ask-riot-banished-to-prisoners-island/ https://nexus.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2017/01/ask-riot-ban...