SCUM Entry and Standard

[insettoinfetto]

Developers, lately I've been going through comments regarding cheating and different approaches to the game.

On twitter, I read a good suggestion about limiting the presence of cheaters.
Why not setting up some official servers that you can only join with specific amount of time played?

This could merge with a old suggestion I made. Setting up 2 version of SCUM by just tweaking the settings (no extra code needed, no custom server settings, nothing at all).
Two version to meet different needs and visions of the game.

So in the Entry version the game is simple and easy, with abundance of loot and some features disabled. For example no mechs, limited malfuctions, limited exhaustion, etc.
In this scenario a cheater can have a limited impact on players, as they can easily and quick recover from the damage they do.

In the Standard version, the settings could be the official ones, the actual settings.
But you can only join after you reached 500, 1k hours, whatever amount of hours you think it's right. But it should be enough to avoid hijacks like players leaving alts online to easily reach that amount of time played.

Here losing an account for cheating is much worse, as you need 200/500/1000 hours to have a chance to play there again.
And these servers, the community of players could have a role of support to admins and developers, as they are more aware of the problem. They can better guess if it was luck or the work of a cheat.

In this scenario you need less admins on official servers.
Just few on the Entry official ones, as in the Standard official servers there should be less problems and suspicious events to check.

What you think?

[CrankyOldMan]

Not actually!

Companies not only are selling cheats they are selling accounts now, or rather I should say renting!

The providers of the cheat programs will not only sell cheats, they then will sell accounts that have the required hours of game play.

There are already companies that purchase the Scum game and register steam accounts for them and then rent access to the game through that purchased game and charge according to the cheat program level that you rent.

If that account gets caught and banned, you report it to the company and you get another one in the blink of an eye!

[insettoinfetto]

Originally posted by CrankyOldMan:

Not actually!

Companies not only are selling cheats they are selling accounts now, or rather I should say renting!

The providers of the cheat programs will not only sell cheats, they then will sell accounts that have the required hours of game play.

There are already companies that purchase the Scum game and register steam accounts for them and then rent access to the game through that purchased game and charge according to the cheat program level that you rent.

If that account gets caught and banned, you report it to the company and you get another one in the blink of an eye!

If this is so, there will be no reason to play any online game.

[CrankyOldMan]

This has been happening for decades!

It is 100% Illegal for many games. Most definitely it is for SCUM!

[insettoinfetto]

Originally posted by CrankyOldMan:

This has been happening for decades!

It is 100% Illegal for many games. Most definitely it is for SCUM!

I've played more than 50 games online, in some of them there was no trace of cheating.
So this could be stopped or at least countered by Jagex.
But it seems that for them it is not a priority.
If you reported cheaters before and after Jagex reporting form, you should know it very well.

SO, going back to topic, why not creating a small tweak that let server owner to limit access to those that have more than X hours of playing?
Isn't that complex, right?

Waiting for a dev feedback on this.

[CrankyOldMan]

Now that I don't see why not!

The servers I admin allow anyone on with a few exceptions. Our settings are easier than vanilla, basically because we want to introduce Scum to the new players.
Kinda like a starter server.

The settings were voted on by the players themselves.

Having a setting that a player needs to have x amount of hours to log on would make running the server a lot easier for most players would be well aware of the game play!

Requiring less assistance or intervention by the admins.

[Pheidian]

Originally posted by insettoinfetto:

Originally posted by CrankyOldMan:

This has been happening for decades!

It is 100% Illegal for many games. Most definitely it is for SCUM!

I've played more than 50 games online, in some of them there was no trace of cheating.
So this could be stopped or at least countered by Jagex.
But it seems that for them it is not a priority.
If you reported cheaters before and after Jagex reporting form, you should know it very well.

SO, going back to topic, why not creating a small tweak that let server owner to limit access to those that have more than X hours of playing?
Isn't that complex, right?

Waiting for a dev feedback on this.

Of course its not their priority. Their priority as a business is to make money. If they make money to ban just enough cheaters to keep players in, they end up selling a lot more licenses to those companies selling cheats and renting licenses. Sold copy is a sold copy.

It doesnt matter to Jagex as a company if the players are non cheaters or cheaters, if they keep pouring money in to the game. Heck, I bet lot of cheaters have bought more copies direct or indirect than average player who owns the one copy of the game...

[insettoinfetto]

Originally posted by Pheidian:

Originally posted by insettoinfetto:

I've played more than 50 games online, in some of them there was no trace of cheating.
So this could be stopped or at least countered by Jagex.
But it seems that for them it is not a priority.
If you reported cheaters before and after Jagex reporting form, you should know it very well.

SO, going back to topic, why not creating a small tweak that let server owner to limit access to those that have more than X hours of playing?
Isn't that complex, right?

Waiting for a dev feedback on this.

Of course its not their priority. Their priority as a business is to make money. If they make money to ban just enough cheaters to keep players in, they end up selling a lot more licenses to those companies selling cheats and renting licenses. Sold copy is a sold copy.

It doesnt matter to Jagex as a company if the players are non cheaters or cheaters, if they keep pouring money in to the game. Heck, I bet lot of cheaters have bought more copies direct or indirect than average player who owns the one copy of the game...

I stopped playing, like many others, for cheaters.
When you join a server and ask, all player reply that cheaters are a everyday problem, even for new players.

So, even if their focus is on 1.0 now, they will meet a wall sooner or later.
When a rumor spread in the gaming industry, it's really hard to counter it and regain game reputation.