Rampant cheating in PVP?

[verdres]

I don't think the devs intend to add any kind of anti-cheat, and everyone would probably experience performance issues if they did that. I think a reasonable solution would be implementing battle logs that get recorded server-side, and then when players submit complaints during that match they can review the logs for "illegal" actions. For example, instantly swapping to a low-hp target, consistently and abnormally quickly. Or using skills with precision timing that does not align with normal behavior. Or even very egregious behavior such as using skills that ought to be on cooldown.

They also can look out for players exploiting existing bugs, such as the WHM heal charge bug. OR they could, with the cooperation of modders, get examples of mod behavior that can make it easier to automatically cross-reference from battle logs.

[Commander_Justitia]

reasonable solution would be implementing battle logs that get recorded server-side, and then when players submit complaints during that match they can review the logs for "illegal" actions

I think that is simply just too much work, only their SpecialTaskForce does that and they don't have that many of them and only do it when there are tons of reports. Would be easier if they can develop an AI that detects those patterns compared to using human resources, which are just too expensive for all those games.

They should shift ranked mode probably into party vs party only and not have it in solo anymore. Cheating will be less effective against coordinated teams and SE only would have to really check those games and not every solo game, which is a lot less trouble to deal for their GM's.

And they should probably let at least 2 people queue up together for the normal/unranked queue, I can imagine many people who would like to play with at least 1 friend.
In The Feast you were able to as well and there were only 4 people in a party.

[Taliriah]

I think that is simply just too much work, only their SpecialTaskForce does that and they don't have that many of them and only do it when there are tons of reports. Would be easier if they can develop an AI that detects those patterns compared to using human resources, which are just too expensive for all those games.

Yeah, that's exactly the kind of situation where a client side anticheat can actually work wonders. Sure, it's possible to circumvent them but serious products can update themselves on the fly while the game runs. The client integrity checking code that they use can be randomised, and changed whenever they want, and that makes it much harder to defeat durably. It would be better if there was also some server side validation, wow for instance despite having authoritative clients movements (which feels a lot better for the player), have the server detects some type of anomalous movements on the server side (with some well known false positive that result in instant disconnections, mostly involving gliders), but even in the absence of this a good client side anticheat is a lot better than nothing.

Something like battleye is very turnkey, the integration is pretty painless and then they send you the IDs of player who have been detected to cheat, they can even preemptively ban them (by preventing the client from starting when battleeye connects) so you can verify the reposrts and decide what to do with them (perma ban them, give them a warning, have your own policy regarding re-offence, etc). I'm sure other similar anticheat solutions are equally easy to implement. Heck, I'm sure that you could enable it only during pvp duty for the sake of harmless mods used outside of pvp.

The downside is that it's costly. But it's not like they can't afford it. I'm going to assume that whatever reason they offer for not doing that is window dressing for "we don't feel like investing money to solve the problem"

[verdres]

Would be easier if they can develop an AI that detects those patterns compared to using human resources, which are just too expensive for all those games.

Definitely agree, at a glance it seems like a very efficient solution. Depending on how predictable bot/addon behavior is, they could even flag a specific sequence/timing of actions to get a good idea of who to scrutinize.

[CptBuckyOhare]

partying up is fun thing that I agree should be implemented.
thing is that pre-mades will wreck non-pre-mades, so put them together.
2+3 pre-made vs 2+3 pre-made or even 5v5, but dont put non-premade vs pre-made.
People will be on discord coordinating their attacks vs people that just need to go on visuals which makes it really unfair.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

thing is that pre-mades will wreck non-pre-mades

I dunno I gotta say I'm tired of hearing this excuse repeated infinitely by anyone who thinks people shouldn't be able to party up in a mode with 5v5.

You can get wrecked by WAR/WHM so we should stop WHM/WAR from pairing up.

You can get wrecked if someone has better macros for coordinating their team than you.

We can get wrecked by not having a tank/healer so if they can't have one, don't even start the match.

We can get wrecked by hackers and cheaters so don't even play the mode.

These all or nothing approaches provide no open possibilities for "fun" and/or change. At the end of the day I'd rather lose with my friends having fun making our glams be dwarves than be stomped by bots AND have to do it alone.

[CptBuckyOhare]

its a matter of advantage or not it's simple logic, just because you are tired of hearing it doesn't mean it's less true.
Go rant somewhere else

[Raistlin]

You can get wrecked by WAR/WHM

yeah, now imagine a WAR and WHM in sync in Discord, add it a SAM and a DRG holding their LB to team up.

premades vs no premades with this PvP system will win 95% the games.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

yeah, now imagine a WAR and WHM in sync in Discord, add it a SAM and a DRG holding their LB to team up.

premades vs no premades with this PvP system will win 95% the games.

But again you're acting like good players don't already do that. THat's why the LB <%> quick chat is a thing. I know because I've watched it happen and coordinated it with people.

If people want to make excuses they can but just going "if they can talk to each other it will ruin it" makes it where we might as well nerf any/all communication in the mode at that point if that's what we're worried about.

I'm just saying if we're going to say "But they can TALK to each other! That's no good!" then I have some bad news for you in a lot of other pvp games/lobby games lol. At least when you have to deal with screaming 13 year olds you can tell them what you're doing and where you're going.

Without more Quick Chat options or without premades this will eventually become unfun to even the most avid PVP fans because every match will be losing regardless of organization to either hackers or whm/war/rdm/drg/sam mobs anyways.

If I'm going to lose, I'd like to at least lose while having fun with friends. Nothing that you can do while in a discord call is something you can't currently do (to varying degrees of success and vagueness) with macros/quickchat/etc. It's just the current quick chat options are garbage compared to just about every other pvp offering on the market.

Other people actually caring enough to coordinate doesn't change the fact that many people will just ignore team collab efforts to go 1v5 the crystal for the 4th death in a row because they can't read "fall back and regroup" the 6th time you spam it.

[CptBuckyOhare]

Don't think it's that easy there is a fluctuation in the timing because of latency i think?
But I sure hope they can do something like that yes.