Smurfs and cheaters: what could be done to improve?

[Mar]

CS2 brings many changes to the game and, with that in mind, I've decided to list good ideas/suggestions that could potentially help Valve improve the game for the community.

Edits

Adding below the suggestions made so far regarding anti-cheat, smurfing, ranking and other subjects.

1. No non-prime cases in Overwatch
2. Add personal ID verification
3. Integrate with AnyBrain AI or implement an equivalent AI solution
4. Limit the amount of reports an user can give per day or week to avoid abuse by design
5. Remove the kick feature altogether, or in lobby with 4 pre-made players, or count all pre-made members' votes as 1 vote and count 1 vote per solo-queued player
6. Offer in-game friends system with unlimited player slots to preserve Steam friendship for close friends
7. Remove low-trust penalty for playing with lower-trusted users or through "looking to play"
8. Add an option to choose the language spoken by team mates
9. Make personal performance impact more on competitive ranking
10. Allow users to observe its own Trust Factor indices

Original Post

These are my first thoughts. I hope you guys can help me on this quest and maybe we can bring it to Valve's attention in due time.

First and foremost, I think it's just unfair and borderline "trash-talking" to state that Valve is either not doing anything to combat cheaters or even worse, intentionally doing nothing to make more money.

IMO, if you think seriously about it, the problem is harder to solve than it looks like. The tricky thing about managing justice and fairness in any community, is that you have to do your best to protect innocent people from being punished and avoid "false positives", which could lead to truly unfair situations. Hence the need of "proof" and "evidence" in any justice system. That would explain the "useless" AC system or Valve's allegedly "accomplice" behaviour perception by the community.

I guess machine learning (AI) implementations based on past Overwatch convictions is the way forward. However, covert cheaters, togglers and the kind, are a more subtle issue because it's harder to differentiate a legitimate skilled player from a "suspicious player" behaviour.

E.g., imagine a CT stack on site A. If all 5 Ts go to B site, were Ts wall hacking? What about the opposite, all 5 Ts go to A site, were CTs stacked there due to vision assistance or was it a lucky guess? Hard to tell. Maybe timing analysis could figure it out, but I reckon it would be fairly hard to measure it, at least probabilistically.

We also have to account for similar problems and vicious cycles. Is the unbalanced ranking system making people think they're playing against cheaters? Is rank decay making the smurfing problem even worse?

IMO, I think Valve should embrace "assisted" gameplay as a game mode. Then players could legitimately use vision or aim assistance, similarly to CoD Warzone skills to avoid radars or have faster hands or movement, neutralising the need of external cheats. That way, people that don't have time, patience, interest or good enough setup, could enjoy the "assisted" version of the game. That would also allow people with physical or cognitive disabilities to play the game. Maybe developers could apply/focus on a more strict AC system for its really "competitive" modes?

Regarding smurfing and rank decay, I personally think that experience and playtime should have a bigger impact on the ranking system, so that once you "conquered" your rank you have a feeling of completion and you'd forever be "known" as a knowledgeable player, regardless of how sharp your aim still is.

I also think that not allowing players of disparate ranks to play together actually fuels the smurfing problem, since most people want to play with friends that may or may not be of a similar rank. Maybe advising that matches with heterogeneous ranks will take longer to be found? Instead of computing that 2 GE + 3 SEM are equivalent to 5 MGE, and therefore matchmaking them, the system could wait until it finds a lobby with an acceptable rank deviation or a match with mirrored lobbies.

Another idea would be allowing your personal perfomance on unranked matches to count towards your ranking stats, so we can eventually play against different ranks. That would be applied to unranked matches between Prime players exclusively. Classificatory matches could also help here. If you played overly well, you'd acquire the chance to be placed above your current rank (similar to placement matches when you loose your rank after 28 days). Sudden low performance matches could also trigger "classificatory" matches, ones that if you don't manage to win, will derank you.

What do you think could be done to improve the ranking system? What about cheat detection? How can we positively contribute to the game and its community?

[Fr4ntic]

You bring alot of points. Let me answer them for you:

no
no
no
no
no
no
nah
no
no
no
not really
no
no
no
NO!!!
no
no
no
no
no

And ....no

[Chiyoko]

How to counter cheaters:
- Make better anti-cheat, no non-prime cases in OW.

How to counter smurfs:
- Make personal performance impact competitive ranks.

[Mar]

Originally posted by Fr4ntic:

You bring alot of points. Let me answer them for you:

no
no
no
no
no
no
nah
no
no
no
not really
no
no
no
NO!!!
no
no
no
no
no

And ....no

Thank you for your contribution. I'm sure it will count as an example of how not to be helpful. ❤️

[Hamless Hog]

How would doing nothing to cheaters make them money anyways

[Mar]

Originally posted by Rize:

How to counter cheaters:
- Make better anti-cheat, no non-prime cases in OW.

How to counter smurfs:
- Make personal performance impact competitive ranks.

How could be improved? What would a "better anti-cheat" look like? Kernel implementations like Faceit? Regarding personal perfomance, it seems to me that time to damage and wining duels percentage should have more weight, since the easiness of my GE friends to HS me annoys me the most. I guess monitor frequency and FPS performance also make a huge difference in those since they can reduce or amplify TTD.

[Mar]

Originally posted by Hogarth:

How would doing nothing to cheaters make them money anyways

Exatcly. I think most people just say things like that because they're frustrated and don't even want to think about it. An overall unenjoyable game sure would hurt more financially than the allegedly lost 10$ per new account created by banned cheaters.

[Hamless Hog]

Originally posted by Moa:

Originally posted by Hogarth:

How would doing nothing to cheaters make them money anyways

Exatcly. I think most people just say things like that because they're frustrated and don't even want to think about it. An overall unenjoyable game sure would hurt more financially than the allegedly lost 10$ per new account created by banned cheaters.

You were the one that was suggesting this. Are you suggesting you havent thought this idea of your through?

[Ray Benchmark]

Well. ESL uses a system called playercard / trusted mode since 2005. You had to show them your person id card and verify it for that.

Faceit does this since some days now too.

Steam should do this aswell. Yes. It does not work in all countries but in most in EU at least it works.

[Mar]

Originally posted by Hogarth:

Originally posted by Moa:

Exatcly. I think most people just say things like that because they're frustrated and don't even want to think about it. An overall unenjoyable game sure would hurt more financially than the allegedly lost 10$ per new account created by banned cheaters.

You were the one that was suggesting this. Are you suggesting you havent thought this idea of your through?

I thought you were agreeing that "doing nothing to cheaters" would NOT bring more money to Valve, therefore refuting the misconception that "Valve does nothing because cheaters bring more money", which I agree that is an invalid argument. Have I misunderstood you? What exactly you mean that I was suggesting?

[=PALMITu ☯∞☯]

The only solution i see is.

ANYBRAIN AI Anti-Cheat!...
It could fix the cheat and smurf problems lika a magic...

But VOLVO will do nothing about it!

[Mar]

Originally posted by Ray Benchmark:

Well. ESL uses a system called playercard / trusted mode since 2005. You had to show them your person id card and verify it for that.

Faceit does this since some days now too.

Steam should do this aswell. Yes. It does not work in all countries but in most in EU at least it works.

Sure thing. That's an excellent and simple point. I guess that with the advent of generative image models, ID'ing people will be a norm. I'll add to the list. Thank you.

[Hamless Hog]

Originally posted by Moa:

Originally posted by Hogarth:

You were the one that was suggesting this. Are you suggesting you havent thought this idea of your through?

I thought you were agreeing that "doing nothing to cheaters" would NOT bring more money to Valve, therefore refuting the misconception that "Valve does nothing because cheaters bring more money", which I agree that is an invalid argument. Have I misunderstood you? What exactly you mean that I was suggesting?

Ah I misunderstood what you had said in your OP. I had thought you were suggesting something different.

[Mar]

Originally posted by =PALMITu | <☯> |:

The only solution i see is.

ANYBRAIN AI Anti-Cheat!...
It could fix the cheat and smurf problems lika a magic...

But VOLVO will do nothing about it!

Sweet! I haven't heard about it before. I just googled it and it looks very promising. Highlighting below some of their features:

"Using Human-machine Interactions (HCI) with Machine Learning techniques, our platform automatically learns how the player interacts with the game. With zero human effort it adapts to different context and games."

1. Real-time continuous player identification with zero friction and over 99% accuracy.

2. Continuous tracking of mental fatigue and stress while the player interacts with the game.

3. Non-intrusive automatic age detection and validation.

[=PALMITu ☯∞☯]

Originally posted by Moa:

Originally posted by =PALMITu | <☯> |:

The only solution i see is.

ANYBRAIN AI Anti-Cheat!...
It could fix the cheat and smurf problems lika a magic...

But VOLVO will do nothing about it!

Sweet! I haven't heard about it before. I just googled it and it looks very promising. Highlighting below some of their features:

"Using Human-machine Interactions (HCI) with Machine Learning techniques, our platform automatically learns how the player interacts with the game. With zero human effort it adapts to different context and games."

1. Real-time continuous player identification with zero friction and over 99% accuracy.

2. Continuous tracking of mental fatigue and stress while the player interacts with the game.

3. Non-intrusive automatic age detection and validation.

Hoping so much VAC Live go full AI, just like AnyBrain!

[Brostradamus]

I hope in Source 2 the abuse of the report system is finally curtailed. For instance by limiting the amount of reports you can give per day or week. I can't help but feel that it's a system that gets abused all too much. The same applies to the kick feature. As for online digital ID's I personally oppose them though I understand the sentiment behind where you guys are coming from. I just don't want to personally be apart of an internet gulag like the WEF are pushing for.