Potential Private Match Abuse

(Amerika) #1

So, we all know that Private matches are coming. Which is pretty great because it’s something the competitive scene desperately needs.

However, unless it’s setup right there will be the potential for very easy abuse.

Abuse Scenario:

I create a private server where myself and quite a few others join. I create an easy to make and impossible to detect script that moves our characters and fires our guns from time to time. This keeps us from being dropped due to being AFK. Since credits are mostly gained by time on server we’ll be soaking up quite a few credits while not actually playing. It’s not the most efficient way to play but you will get a steady amount of credits while not actually playing. And since it’s password protected then the chances of it getting reported might be slim.

What can be done to prevent this type of situation from happening?

[ul]
[li]You can’t remove all XP/Credit gains because players who want to play mainly competitive and do a ton of scrim and match play will be severely penalized. This would be a huge PR mistake and make a huge positive (yay private servers) turn into a huge negative very quickly.[/li][li]Requiring the use of interactivity from a player won’t work because you’d most likely need to click a button and you can set the autoclicker with the exact coordinates of the button. So clicking a “start next map” button wouldn’t help this situation much.[/li][li]You could put in a CAPTCHA-style system where a player needs to input a random word in a box. But give it a bit of time and easy to use open source OCR tech could fix that. This would be far less likely to be abused but still quite possible and fairly easy.[/li][li]The next match button could be moved to a random spot on the screen but the autoclicker could also be set to try each part of the screen very quickly where the button appears.[/li][/ul]

Basically, I’m trying to come up with a good way, given the current UI design, to prevent credit farming from happening. You guys have probably already thought this through and have a solution. There might also be a simple solution staring me in the face that I missed (I blame the lack of coffee).

Thanks for your time and comments are appreciated.

Amerika

(Glottis-3D) #2

i do not care about those ppl. they are on private server and they do not ruin any other;s game

(Nail) #3

lets wait till the private lobbies actually show up before we worry about theoretical silliness, we’re not getting private servers due to possibilities of abuse, I assume SD has taken steps to ensure it’s not a problem

(Amerika) #4

They would be gaining credits faster than anybody else which would turn private servers into a PR nightmare. The EV XP bug blew up and it doesn’t gain anybody anything other than a few cases and superficial levels (while annoying people). Lets not pretend that people won’t care or certain sites won’t explode with rage when hundreds of people are using private servers to gain credits.

Right now is exactly the right time to ask questions like this. Being proactive and discussing potential issues and resolving them is key to any new feature being implemented. And it is much better than being reactive after the fact for developmental, community and PR reasons. Assuming that people have thought of every course of action or repercussion with new features isn’t a very bright thing to do. I already mentioned they might have already went down this line of logic and have a fix in place. I’m simply raising the question as a just in case because I’d rather be told that I was wasting my time making this thread than to be correct with the issues I cited and have said nothing.

(Szakalot) #5

sounds like a game that lasts 20 min and nobody gets a kill is a pretty good giveaway.

I’m with Nail on this one, lets get game-features rolling first, and worry about their abuse later.

(DB Genome editor) #6

Spotting this sort of “idling” sounds like a perfect job for Echo: not hits, no kills, no objectives being progressed, how hard can it be to notice?

(Amerika) #7

You have to be pulling reports looking for this type of thing. But that same data could be easily used to ban people who are obviously aimbotting…yet it doesn’t happen until somebody is actually reported.

And then you get into a sticky situation of having to punish people which has other repercussions where my suggestions are meant to avoid even the possibility of people doing this in the first place.

(sunshinefats) #8

If the devs follow the model set forth by competing games(which they more or less seem to be doing) then private matches won’t be eligible for xp/credit rewards. At any rate, that’s what I would expect to happen since that’s how most other games do it.
Doing it any other way is kind of asking for trouble because it certainly will be exploited somehow.

(Ashog) #9

Waiting for private lobbies to appear in order to think about it is silly because:

  1. It will be too late and take too much time to fix, so those people will already earn a lot of undeserved credits and also rob SD of some potential real money at the same time

  2. Why not to think about it if we can, it’s free too :slight_smile:

One of the options could be the game autokicking everybody from the server after each match.

j/k :slight_smile:

How about the game checking the objective xp from time to time? If, say, no 10 XP was earned during 15-20 min of a match with certain amount of players - autokick everybody and terminate the lobby.

(Nail) #10

make them unranked/non-scoring, problem solved

(alphabeta) #11

Agree with Nail

(Nail) #12

problem is, OP wants the XP/Cr enabled, that ain’t gonna work, not needed, what’s needed is “Stats” give those players every bloody stat imaginable. Stats are always better than points

(Glottis-3D) #13

Nail came in, solved the problem, and didnt ruin anything…thats not Nail, whom i used to …

(Nail) #14

I’m not allowed to call people names

:flamethrower:

(ZGToRRent) #15

In my opinion, private games should not be rewarded with XP/Credits.

(mti_) #16

With the lack of kick votes ever actually succeeding could this not already be a potential in the game as it is?
And seeing that this not really an issue right now do we expect this to be a major problem down the line?