Ok, we get it. Hacking is here to stay....

[[DUCK]Die Nasty]

We ALL know that every game out there has the potential to be hacked. Not blaming the gaming companies, because there are millions of REALLY SMART people out there. I get that. They want to excel at a game for their own reasons, maybe even financial. But the rank and file of STEAM players and purchasers of software find this VERY detrimental to THEIR enjoyment of the gaming experience.

So, without having to have Steam or the individual game makers police their software hack reports as much, I suggest the following:

1) Let ANYONE with ANY GAME decide that they do not wish to play in the future with someone else for whatever reason (hacking, racist comments, offense language, etc) to be able to put THAT Steam account on their personal blacklist. This does not affect anyone else.

2) After a Steam account has been placed on a person's "blacklist", they will not see ANY games that that particular account is currently playing a game in.

3) Additionally, if a personally "blacklisted" player does a game search or tries to join a game in which another person is already in and has them "blacklisted", they will be unable to do so (preferably, they shouldn't even be shown the option).

I've talked to MANY Steam players across different games and hacking is an ongoing problem as we ALL know. If you REALLY want the public to help you police this, give them the option to not to HAVE to play with players that they believe are hackers, abusive, discriminatory, etc).

I love all the games I play and am not trying to disrespect or point out any game maker. I just believe this is a possible added counter-measure against those who hack the game and cost you revenue in the end.

[Waifu Silver]

You couldnt be more correct

[Floogo]

This seems agreeable. Althrough Treyarch might probably do this instead of Steam, since not many games use a matchmaking system.

[Satoru]

There are many many may problems with this.

Create troll account and join games. Matchmaking with so many variables and not matching people is literally an n-p complete problem already. Imagine trying to figure out because A likes B but hates C but C hates A, and B hates D etc etc etc you'd literally be matched with no one after the first week. It's a nice idea but in principle the mathematics dont work (unless you want to wait till the end of the universe) and makes matchmaking effectively impossible.

This problem is so difficult there's a Clay Math prize for it! (lots of problems are np compelte, travelling salesmen problem for example is the same kind of problem)

http://www.claymath.org/millennium/P_vs_NP/

Note that with a mere 400 students and 100 slots the number of combinations is already more than the total number of atoms in the entire universe. try to imagine how terrible it would be when you try to match tens of thousands of players.

(Note I had to sit through fricking Cook's lecutures on NP completeness so I know all the horrors of this straight from the horse's mouth, and you can't BS your way through a test when the guy who invented teh damn thing is marking it)

Basically you're asking steam to solve a problem that engineers at places like Fedex/UPS/Amazon can't solve effectively (since the travellling salesmen problem is of critical importance where you want to deliver packages in the best time with the least cost)

It 'sounds' great. But it's not practical or possible and would not achieve the goal you want. Its the main reason such a blacklist system doesn't exist other than banning users entirely.

[Particlect]

what a verry good idea i have seen so many people complain about hacking but if this is approved by steam inteas of complaining they can jus blacklist them

[[DUCK]Die Nasty]

Satoru eredeti hozzászólása:

There are many many may problems with this.

Create troll account and join games. Matchmaking with so many variables and not matching people is literally an n-p complete problem already. Imagine trying to figure out because A likes B but hates C but C hates A, and B hates D etc etc etc you'd literally be matched with no one after the first week. It's a nice idea but in principle the mathematics dont work (unless you want to wait till the end of the universe) and makes matchmaking effectively impossible.

This problem is so difficult there's a Clay Math prize for it! (lots of problems are np compelte, travelling salesmen problem for example is the same kind of problem)

http://www.claymath.org/millennium/P_vs_NP/

Note that with a mere 400 students and 100 slots the number of combinations is already more than the total number of atoms in the entire universe. try to imagine how terrible it would be when you try to match tens of thousands of players.

(Note I had to sit through fricking Cook's lecutures on NP completeness so I know all the horrors of this straight from the horse's mouth, and you can't BS your way through a test when the guy who invented teh damn thing is marking it)

Basically you're asking steam to solve a problem that engineers at places like Fedex/UPS/Amazon can't solve effectively (since the travellling salesmen problem is of critical importance where you want to deliver packages in the best time with the least cost)

It 'sounds' great. But it's not practical or possible and would not achieve the goal you want. Its the main reason such a blacklist system doesn't exist other than banning users entirely.

Well, that's rather like saying, "Why invent Punkbuster or VAC?" I understand it's mathematical probabilities from what you are saying, but at some point (and based upon certain people I have played against and with), what is in place right now doesn't work.

Pontificating about the mathematical problems relating to this issue only points out the limitations the software companies have in rooting out 'undesirables'. The majority of people (yes, there are pirates) that spent their hard earned money on this game and others deserve BETTER.)

If people are cheating/hacking, being racist or otherwise disparaging of a group of persons, then WE as the buying public, should be able to pick and choose who we want to play against.

People say, "If you find something offensive on radio or TV, change the channel". But in most cases we are not "PAYING" for that privilege. When we buy a game like COD:BO2 and others, there IS no alternative to where we have to play multi-player games. Some game makers used to let SERVER ADMINS decided who could play on their servers and who could not. Treyarch does not give us that ability with this game.

All I am asking is to let the "Paying, Playing, Public" to decide WHO they want to play against or NOT. It's NOT a complicated programming feature to accomplish. There have been whitelist/'blacklist servers for email for over a decade.

[Satoru]

You're not understanding the problem if htat's your stance

Anti-cheat mechanism are GLOBAL ban lists. It takes entire populations out of the system so they're not variables. They take people OUT of the amtchmaking system globally. Thus your implication that I am against such systems if utterly false. I never claimed such a thing.

I said USER blacklists that impact the global matchmaking system are untenable, unscalable, and prone to abuse.

WHat people are proposing are just like dormitory problem. Localized prefrences that effectively can only be matched via brute force, which even in small scenarios (400 people with 100 slots) woudl take the entire lifetime of the universe to computate. Rememver that the sytem MUST find a solution. It cannt like the travelling salesmen problem find a solution that is 90% there which is what ups/fedex do. . A game matchmaking system MUST get to 100% compliance. Which effectively requires it to got hrough all possible matches to find the solution. Which even in small sets requires more time than the universe has existed.

Even if the solution wasn't NP complete. You'd have massive problems with matchmaking. And also think about the ABUSE of said system. A small group of userse could effectively block out wide rangse of people. not because they're cheaters. But becuase they want to. Victims of such users woudl ahve NO IDEA why they cannot join servers. They'd simply be match made with users in far off regions because the localized blacklists from teh trolls block them from all server on the east cost.

Think of TF2. I could crate tons of fake accounts, ban users from a specific Clan or whatever I felt like, then simply park myself on tons of servers. Entire populations would not understand why they can't join a lot of servers.

The problem is that users are bad arbiters of choice. Especially in a black list sytem where abusers can totally skew the system to ensure that legitimate users are effectively 'locked out' of entire parts of the system. Since local blacklists are not checked or can be appealed in any way. Users have no idea why they cant playon specific server or why the matchmaking takes forever. Remember that in a 6v6 scenario only ONE person needs to be a troll to entirely skew the server. Users would never know which user it is neither woudl admins.

The problems are

1) mathematically complex
2) abuse outweighs benefits

There's a reason such a system has never been implemented. The solution crates more problems than it fixes. And genereally doesnt actually fix the problem at hand.

[KIDZAP]

Well that's the problem we don't have 400 players trying to fill 100 slots. We have an average of 20K players which would mean approx 1600 games going at one time. I highly doubt you could skew the outcome and effectively block anyone in this scenario. Not to mention if player "A" doesn't want to play with player "B" there's very good chance for obvious reasone that players "C" "D" "E" ect don't want to play player "B" either. I'd like to have that choice to put certain players on a block list. There's a choice to join friends in a game isn't there?

[SheGeek]

If it is feasible, I would really like this.

[[DUCK]Die Nasty]

Me thinks thou does protest too much. Is not the collective observations of 100s/1000s of players more accurate to the WILL and the DESIRE of the people that PAY for this game to have an enjoyable experience worth ANYTHING to the game comapnies??? If you, because of your equations/desires don't think it is of any use, I have NO issues with you opting out. It's easy enough to create another division of players. They do it every time they introduce a new map pack, etc.

[[DUCK]Die Nasty]

KIDZAP eredeti hozzászólása:

Well that's the problem we don't have 400 players trying to fill 100 slots. We have an average of 20K players which would mean approx 1600 games going at one time. I highly doubt you could skew the outcome and effectively block anyone in this scenario. Not to mention if player "A" doesn't want to play with player "B" there's very good chance for obvious reasone that players "C" "D" "E" ect don't want to play player "B" either. I'd like to have that choice to put certain players on a block list. There's a choice to join friends in a game isn't there?

Well, therein lies the probliem. If the game companies can't "fix" it. why should the paying PUBLIC have to endure it? They've already made you sign away so many of your rights via the EULA. And to get to your description, it's really not that hard to overcome.

1) Don't hack (Yes, there are plenty of incredibly skilled people out there playing). But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.... (you know the drill).
2) Don't be a racist or xenophobic.
3) Don't disparage gender or sexual orientation.
4) Don't be a general a$$h@t. (If you would be ashamed for your mom to hear what you are saying, then STFU and don't say ANYTHING).

[76561198088276955]

I have to agree with the OP that community moderation would serve well with the type of system that Steam uses. I would love the option to blacklist or block players who cheat, are offensive to me, or do things like grief players in games I'm in.

Creating a troll account would be absurd and kind of stupid and not something I see happening often.

Host: "I don't want to play COD with you, Block"...
Hacker: "Haha, I'll make a new troll account and buy another copy of COD! GOT YOU!"
Host: "Umm, you're still a jerk, Block again"...
Hacker: "Haha, I'll just make ANOTHER troll account and buy COD AGAIN!"
Host: "Block again"
Hacker: "Umm wait... this is getting expensive and I'm spending money and hours of stalking just to get blocked in like 30 seconds..."

I mean seriously, sure, there are people out there that can counter security measures. For all programs out there I'm sure there is someone who can and will rip it apart for fun. Not having them would be like saying "There's people out there that can pick every type of lock, so why bother putting them on the door to my house".

[Bernd Ottovord]

Its an excuse for not being good as I have not once ever encountered a hacker and I have played call of duty for 5 years. And for the person thinking that someone else is hacking even though they are not just because that player is not good he would backlist everyone who is better than he or she is and then end up playing with complete noobs so if they better then anyone else they would think "OH ok then no more hackers" but in reality they are the noobs and need to stop complaining, And if you really think there is a hacker report them, They will be checked and will see there is no hacking. Now obviously if someone has 100% accuracy on their stats then they are obviously hacking. Now before you call any hackusations watch the kill cam and if they look suspicous just check out they're stats and if is not crazy 1230 k/d and 100% accuracy then they are not hacking.

Hacking also isnt someone kills you because of lag, its dafuq he has a 100 killstreak and is killing us throught walls and has godmode.

So to sum it up hardly anyone is hacking and/or gets banned quickly and it is just mostly noobs that cant accept the fact other people are better than them.

Whoopdedo Thats my input ~Kraken

[76561198088276955]

As someone that watched my account get hacked before my very eyes and has played many MMO's I can tell you that hackers are out there, they are real, and they are not the most fun people to play with either. They didn't just make up VAC banning system because some guy in their security programming department was on the clock with nothing to do. Companies like Punkbuster don't make their living hunting down and blocking people that are good. Yes, I admit, a lot of cry baby noobs will use it to block people that are better than them until they end up in a match with people that are as noobtastic as they are. In the end, it could result in the horrible atrocity of people that are noobs playing with other noobs and people that are good stuck in matches with other people that are good and sometimes even losing because they didn't have enough noobs to shoot and are stuck with other people as good as they are.

However pretending there aren't hackers because you think you've never seen one in 5 years? I'm willing to bet at least one person or more was VAC banned for hacking while you were typing that post. Community moderation isn't perfect, there is no such thing as perfect moderation. The closest thing there could be to that would be actually having GM type moderators in every game and enough of them to reply to every complaint. I'm sure that would be manageable if people were willing to fork out $50/month to play COD too. However, since we live in a world where that's not really likely to happen, community moderation for the most part does the trick.

I would however suggest a repelling blacklist. If you block a user, you simply don't see, hear, or have any communication with each other. When possible you're opted out matches together and if you happen to be forced into a same match, you don't even see each other’s names. If everyone in a match is blacklisting the same person that should cause an investigation to that player. If for example “X” number of people report someone for hacking same day, they are investigated for hacking. If “X” number report for language that person loses speaking privileges for said time. Community moderation should never be one person having power over another, but rather an option to maintain order in an environment where businesses cannot provide the staff to do it for the community.

[SheGeek]

@ Icantbeliveigothacked. I have seen an awful hacker once. There were warthogs non-stop starting about 1 min in the game. His own team reported him - it was awful.

[Tito Shivan]

Isn't that the idea they're toying around with on L4D2? (and i believe with CS:GO too)
http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=7025