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As you may or may not know, map hacking was one of the main ingredients that led to the death of the BroodWar ladder. By 2004, the system was so polluted with bots and cheaters that it was completely empty. As time went on, alternate ladders sprung up to fill the gaping void in competitive play, but the Blizzard ladder remained a farce.
Now here we are, almost a decade later, with a brand new ladder and a fresh start. However the recent drama surrounding both Spades and HRGZack has brought hacking in the SC2 community to the surface of public awareness. Though it may have always been present, the past few weeks have proved that it is certainly a problem not being solved by Blizzards current system.
While the Warden program of logging users and banning them in waves does have its benefits, it attacks the behavioral problem of hacking in a retroactive fashion, using negative reinforcement to prevent it in the future. As it stands right now a hacker knows that when they cheat they run the risk of being banned, but they also know that the ban might come in as long as 6 months. So, essentially, that hacker rationalizes his/her behavior by thinking that they "pay 10 dollars a month to cheat" - and that's even assuming that they are flagged and banned by the Warden system at the end of that period.
When the 6 months are up, and IF the user is indeed banned, all he/she has to do is stroll down to GameStop and pick up a new copy, knowing that this $60 will buy them at least another few months of cheating. Is $10 or $15 a month a steep penalty for cheating in a competitive online video game? Maybe, but for someone who cheats for fun, more than likely not.
Another implicit problem with this "wave ban" system is that it is giving regular players tacit permission to start cheating on the ladder. A perfect example of this is the recent HRGZack story; a player who cheated his way up the ladder and eventually into a free vacation at MLG. Yea the information did surface, and he was thankfully banned, but all of this negative attention has surely illustrated a glaring problem concerning the Warden system: that this player went on cheating for multiple seasons while maintaining his rank in GrandMaster league with absolutely no consequences.
In fact, not only were there no consequences, but he was rewarded with airfare, a hotel, and tickets to one of the most popular SC2 events in the community. Of course he was caught, but how many others haven't been? Hearing that this player went on cheating for multiple seasons, in the most exclusive league no less, makes thousands of people wonder the same question: "what if?".
So now an idea starts to grow that lots of people are cheating on ladder. Every time a DT walks into a Turret, or pack of Muta fly into a group of Thors, the player will assume that it was caused by his opponent using a hack. In fact, the paranoia will become so widespread that people will either stop laddering, or feel the need to use a cheat of their own so as they are not at an inherent disadvantage. This is a self-perpetuating cycle that will eventually lead to the downfall of the SC2 ladder, just as it did in BroodWar.
The bottom line is that Warden is not doing a good enough job at preventing cheating on the SC2 ladder. So what is the solution? I don't know for sure, but I have an idea.
You are the solution; the players. The honest numbers on Battlenet far outnumber the hacking numbers. If Blizzard turned every honest ladder player into a detective, I think the whole idea of hacking without repercussion would fall to the wayside.
You, as the player, need to be reporting and flagging every single person that you HONESTLY believe to be cheating. No, not the guy who cheesed you and talked about your mother and called you a noob, but the player who starts producing Marauders at the 20:00 minute mark just as you tech switch to an Ultralisk Cavern, or the player who heads off your Medivacs in the middle of the map with his Blink Stalkers. You need to watch the replay and asses the suspicious moves objectively, and then, and only then, if that player is indeed truly doing things to indicate a hack, report them to Blizzard.
Now this is where Blizzard needs to step into the picture and take action.....even more so than they currently are. Yea, of course we all know that today we can report people as we see fit, but does that report actually do anything? Seemingly no.
Blizzard needs to assign a team of employees to filter though these thousands of reports a day. I'm talking like 10-20 people dedicated to going through each individual replay reported, all day every day - this is their sole job at the Blizzard Corporation. And when this Blizzard hack-detection team sees a reported player who does actually look like he was hacking, they add his name to a list and wait for additional reports to come in with him named as the culprit (and believe me, they will come in...). When, perhaps, three or five strikes are levied against this player, a ban is implemented and the players account is frozen.
The advantage to this new system over the Warden system is the inconsistency of the banning. The hacker never knows when the ban will come. There is no "wave". There is no time to update to the latest version of the hack that Warden can't detect, and there is no time to rake in a few more paychecks to fund that next copy of SC2. Can you imagine a hacker being banned in a "mass wave" by Warden, going out to pick up a copy of SC2 that next day, and then having his new account banned 3 days later? Suddenly, instead of paying $10 a month to hack, he is paying $20 a day. Will it be worth the cost anymore? I doubt it.
Another advantage of this new system is that the hacking player will be forced to at least attempt to hide their cheating. Right now we have a system where people hack BLATANTLY because the only safeguard in place is a program designed to register anomalies in the MPQ and ban in a wave. A SC2 hacker today doesn't care if they are flagged as a hacker because they know the ban is coming for them off in the distance, regardless of whether they hide it or not. Their mentality is "have fun while you can".
But in my proposed system, every player that clearly sees you are hacking and reports you could potentially add one more strike to your account. Playing as an obvious cheater now has it's draw-backs. If you, as the hacker, play 3 games one day, are reported by all 3 players and then are verfied as a cheater by the Blizzard team, your newly acquired account (that cost you $60) is now worthless.
So now you have to try to hide your cheating in the way that Spades did. You can't send out your Stalkers to intercept an incoming drop, and you can't preemptively prepare for Cloaked Banshees without at least pretending you scouted. Hacking won't be easy anymore, and obviously, it will be a lot less fun.
On a side note, yes I do realize that hiring 10 or 20 people a year at a $30,000 salary would be quite the expense, but Blizzard will have to measure that number against the number of game sales they lose to other competing games as hacking gets out of control in SC2, just as it did in BroodWar. And no, there will be no alternative KESPA or ICCUP ladders popping up like there were in BroodWar because Blizzard has total rights to the entirety of SC2. If the ladder fails here, the game dies.
I also think that this Blizzard Corporation team of map-hack detectives should focus exclusively on Master and GrandMaster League. Not that the lower leagues aren't worth the time, but you will have a lot less false-reporting if you exclude the leagues that think that a player with 3 Void Rays at the 10-minute mark is using a money hack. Not only would this cut down on the volume of reported players, but also the laddering hacker would inevitably rise through the leagues as he continued to win and eventually find himself in Master League, under the watchful eye of the Blizzard Hack Detection Team.
Another suggestion to add to this would be to implement some sort of incentive system for the player base. Maybe some sort of special avatar or profile for people who successfully contributed to the banning of a hacker, or some other form of public recognition that would make people take the time and effort to honestly evaluate whether a player is cheating or not. Conversely, a player who is constantly sending erroneous reports to Blizzard for inspection should be punished accordingly.
Obviously the specifics can be tweaked here and there but I think that this has a good foundation, and more importantly, I think the current Warden system is not doing a good enough job in thwarting the nascent of mass cheating in SC2.
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Reported RedZ top 8 masters over like 3 times 1 week ago, blatant hacking proofs, sent blizzard mail with 5+ replays and guess what ? He ins't banned yet. Blizzard don't take this as seriously as they should. Sadly, so don't expect that much from them.
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Nice read, +1
Yet i think the real solution is to give the client the information needed, if you have <= 1k DSL it should be absolutely fine, the only hacks that would then still be viable are the micro-hacks which are blatantly obvious.
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The only real potential practical solution to the hacking problem would be a private server like iccup. I don't see that happening any time soon
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I think we should just accept the cheaters on the ladder. At least accept the fact that they will get banned eventually but not as fast as we would like.
Cheaters on LANs are unacceptable. We should work on something so that invites to proven cheaters can be revoked, maybe even prize money taken back from all tournaments up to 2 years, even if it was impossible to cheat there. But I guess we need some sort of syndicate for that, and we aren't there yet.
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On June 08 2012 19:28 Bellazuk wrote:
Reported RedZ top 8 masters over like 3 times 1 week ago, blatant hacking proofs, sent blizzard mail with 5+ replays and guess what ? He ins't banned yet. Blizzard don't take this as seriously as they should. Sadly, so don't expect that much from them.
This is ridiculous and an emotional response to an unfulfilled (and unrealistic) expectation. Blizzard has always done their bannings en masse (with the pros and cons well documented).
Cheating is lame and needs to be taken care of, but this sort of knee-jerk reaction isn't needed. I've also been on the receiving end of (presumably) self-righteous (but sorely misguided, or more sore from losing) players making threats and hurling insults to try and excuse their own lacking play.
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With the amount of publicity hacking has gotten over the last month or two Blizzard is sure to have heard about it. They do a great job with listening to top level players and organizations, and if it becomes something that the top players need to see changed, then it will happen.
The difference between now and Brood War was the legitimacy of Starcraft as an e-Sport. Not only was it not nearly as big in N.A. as it is now, Blizzard just wasn't aware of the consequences of losing their ladder.
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Interesting thoughts and +1 of course.
Now to be honest, I think that Blizzard won't go into this kind of system for 2 reasons.
First it would be aknowledging their "mistake" or at least, the uncapability of their system, which we know they never do.
Second because the investement on the Warden system didn't generate the expected returns yet and considering their recent policy, there not likely to "waste" money on stuff they consider to be already covered.
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LoL has a system where everyone can judge cases of people being reported (for a lot of things, mainly feeding or bm) at a "tribunal" and you gain a small reward for every case where you were right (I think the cases approved by the majority are then passed to a riot employee who validates the judgement or not).
Altho im not quite sure how it works (never done it myself), the idea is a great one and could prevent a lot of unnecessary work from Blizzard. They just need to find appropriate reward for the people doing that (cosmetics?).
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There are always cheaters on the ladder. I used to rage on it. Now I just move on.
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Russian Federation381 Posts
blizzards spits on us and you're trying to change something... well, trying is good!
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On June 08 2012 19:28 Bellazuk wrote:
Reported RedZ top 8 masters over like 3 times 1 week ago, blatant hacking proofs, sent blizzard mail with 5+ replays and guess what ? He ins't banned yet. Blizzard don't take this as seriously as they should. Sadly, so don't expect that much from them.
They get thousands if not ten thousands reports per week and you are really angry they don't instantly ban a person that you spam report?
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On June 08 2012 19:42 Roggay wrote:
LoL has a system where everyone can judge cases of people being reported (for a lot of things, mainly feeding or bm) at a "tribunal" and you gain a small reward for every case where you were right (I think the cases approved by the majority are then passed to a riot employee who validates the judgement or not).
Altho im not quite sure how it works (never done it myself), the idea is a great one and could prevent a lot of unnecessary work from Blizzard. They just need to find appropriate reward for the people doing that (cosmetics?).
People love to hate on LoL but that is actually quite a brilliant way to crowdsource.
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What about a new ladder? I have a huge lack of technical expertise but if it happened in BW why not now?
Imagine all the active laddering moving to a place where hacks are actively monitored and scanned, the map pool is competitive and responsive to the community. Sounds awfully nice to me.
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On June 08 2012 19:42 Roggay wrote:
LoL has a system where everyone can judge cases of people being reported (for a lot of things, mainly feeding or bm) at a "tribunal" and you gain a small reward for every case where you were right (I think the cases approved by the majority are then passed to a riot employee who validates the judgement or not).
Altho im not quite sure how it works (never done it myself), the idea is a great one and could prevent a lot of unnecessary work from Blizzard. They just need to find appropriate reward for the people doing that (cosmetics?).
LoL is also a free game and has a lot of flexibility with their ability to punish people.
I agree there should be a means to punish certain things, that's what the reporting was intended to do to begin with.
To be honest, I have my skepticism about the whole "ban in waves" even occurring. Almost feels like the reporting is there purely to function as a placebo button, to keep people content, while at the same time avoiding any conflict with a paying customer (meaning never actually punishing anyone).
That's pure speculation of course, simply that I've never heard of anyone actually getting banned or punished via this. Only thing I've heard was the announcement of future, stricter, possible punishments... and that one guy that got dropped to bronze.
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also with warden they ban innocent people that only want to change mpq, for other reason(like sound, image ecc...)
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On June 08 2012 19:53 MrCash wrote:Show nested quote +On June 08 2012 19:42 Roggay wrote:
LoL has a system where everyone can judge cases of people being reported (for a lot of things, mainly feeding or bm) at a "tribunal" and you gain a small reward for every case where you were right (I think the cases approved by the majority are then passed to a riot employee who validates the judgement or not).
Altho im not quite sure how it works (never done it myself), the idea is a great one and could prevent a lot of unnecessary work from Blizzard. They just need to find appropriate reward for the people doing that (cosmetics?). LoL is also a free game and has a lot of flexibility with their ability to punish people. I agree there should be a means to punish certain things, that's what the reporting was intended to do to begin with. To be honest, I have my skepticism about the whole "ban in waves" even occurring. Almost feels like the reporting is there purely to function as a placebo button, to keep people content, while at the same time avoiding any conflict with a paying customer (meaning never actually punishing anyone). That's pure speculation of course, simply that I've never heard of anyone actually getting banned or punished via this. Only thing I've heard was the announcement of future, stricter, possible punishments... and that one guy that got dropped to bronze.
You might want to check out that GM hacker thread here as well, since said GM hacker now is in bronze.
Blizzard works on it but they got so much work and investigation you cannot expect it to get done fast.
Something like a report function can be very abusive if you don't properly investigate.
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Read as far as "players as detectives": No, I am not going to waste my time policing the fucking ladder. Blizzard's job, period. I don't fucking care how they do it. I am completely up for a yearly 100 € deposit to allow me to play on the ladder and risk losing it if I get too many reports of being a hacker (by players who played against me). Just an automated system like that would be completely ok.
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Fuck it, I'm up for a 1000€ deposit and risk losing it.
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On June 08 2012 19:53 SimDawg wrote:
What about a new ladder? I have a huge lack of technical expertise but if it happened in BW why not now?
Imagine all the active laddering moving to a place where hacks are actively monitored and scanned, the map pool is competitive and responsive to the community. Sounds awfully nice to me.
An alternate ladder is completely out of the question, just like LAN. Blizzard was very careful about how they set up the legal boundaries of SC2 and made sure that they would be in total control for the life of the game. Like I said above, if the ladder fails here, the game dies with it.
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EPT
