require video evidence to ban cheaters

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by alex98pl, Apr 5, 2018.

  1. alex98pl

    alex98pl Member

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    inb4 losing my friends due to a controversial topic

    It has been eight months since I joined the Devinity discord. Throughout all these times, Devinity felt like home and I'm proud to be in a community where we care other staff and community. I'm worried that all this would come down in a crumble because of the cheaters in battle royale. My only suggestion is to have video evidence require to ban cheaters so staff and community can review the footage. Even with the strongest eyesight, videos should be mandatory.

    I would like to acknowledge that the last time we talked about cheaters in the community conference(months ago) was when there wasn't one case of a non-cheater being unfairly banned. Since we saw Sir Juan Carlos been accused of a cheater because of a recoil difference, video evidence has been taken and after reviewing the footage, it has been claimed that he wasn't cheating. If Juan Carlos were to be banned by a lone staff who haven't taken video evidence, it's an almost guaranteed that user will never be unbanned, even if he claims he wasn't cheating.

    Because of Juan's case, who knows how many alleged cheaters were banned. I suggest for those people that were cheated in the past should be stayed banned, but for them making an appeal without any evidence recorded should be unbanned. Even though this shows a "second chance" to the cheaters, we don't know whether or not he legitimately cheated based on our knowledge. Only the staff would know but can be counteract with bias.

    I would also like to point out this ban appeal. It's ridiculous that now were expected our users to record some gameplay in their own end when the user can literally turn off their hacks while recording. The users in our server are there just for the purpose for entertainment, not to upload their battle royale lets-play in their YouTube channel.

    I believe Devinity is the friendliest community and bans people in the appropriate time length. All I request from this thread is to provide video proof to the cheater whether he made a ban appeal, or a different alternative. Guilty until proven innocent is not what Devinity is all about, its those that everyone wants to be fair.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2018
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  2. counter

    counter Moderator Staff Member Server Moderator Platinum VIP

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    I believe video evidence should be taken by Battle Royale staff to reduce the amount of potential innocents getting banned. This is a too great of an issue to just simply ignore and turn a blind eye upon because it's troublesome and worrying for the prosperity of this community. We need better and more efficient alternatives to combat and differentiate cheaters from actual good and legitimate players. The spectator view is extremely buggy and can be very misleading and representing to someone to believe that this player might be actually cheating because of the constant flickering. It's just simply not reliable to solely based cheater bans by spectating them. While I do agree to some that video evidence shouldn't be required to ban cheaters as it's very time consuming, it will definitely help lowering down the amount of potential innocent bans if one were to appeal. I don't believe in and have a great distaste for the "zero tolerance" policy regarding anti-cheat bans because no matter how apologetic or remorseful the player in question is, we're essentially flipping them off especially in Flood whereas there's literally no incentive to cheat. One aspect I really liked about Devinity for the past several years is that we've been very forgiving to players and I believe we should keep on being forgiving. An alternative could be to blacklist unbanned (alleged) cheaters from our battle royale servers only. People who cheat in Battle Royale and/or appeal from any gamemode should stay banned on our Battle Royale servers only. Our community and the Garry's Mod playerbase has been slowly decaying and I don't think we can afford to lose any more players.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2018
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  3. manchyy

    manchyy full time idiot

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    this is really stupid. why?

    why do i need to still record videos before banning cheaters with so much experience? i think it would be better if we had some sort of trust factor for br staff, since now people who dont even play br claim to be br mods when they cant even tell apart if person is cheating or not.

    and this ban appeal - there were 2 witnesses of the person cheating. me and viral. we both play br a lot and have caught loads of hackers before. and yes - the 'person has to record to prove he's not cheating' is dumb. i would still agree on jrs and mods (only for those who barely play it) to at least have some video evidence of person cheating in case of him applying for unban.
     
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  4. Viral

    Viral Devinity's Finest Forger Staff Member Server Moderator Platinum VIP

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    While I think it would be a good idea to record all bans that are handed out, I think this should only be required once/if @Donkie added the video recording gui talked about here. Not everyone can record at all times so currently I don't think it'd be a good idea, but I definitely encourage it if people are unsure about whether someone is cheating. Bans should be handled on a case by case basis, if the user is active within our community and helping us catch cheaters then he should be considered for another chance, but be watched very closely to see if they've reformed.
     
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  5. Rick

    Rick female nipple Gold VIP

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    I try to record any issues that are "fine lines" or issues with high level players, but there's no way that I'm going to do this for everyone. False bans, whilst they might seem somewhat common because of the amount of appeals we get, are very much in the minority and it's a lot of work to fix the one ban out of 20 that is false. This is a much more reasonable requirement and our staff should already be doing this if they can.

    As the staff member with the most bans on battle royale I can tell you that this is not a reasonable request, it's a good idea and on paper it looks like it might make our servers a better place, but unless there was a very easy 1 click record that didn't clog up my computer it's not going to happen.
     
    Last edited: Apr 6, 2018
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  6. Nyaaa~ ∑:3

    Nyaaa~ ∑:3 Old Champion

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    It is a fine idea, but I dont think that everyone would record their gaming sesions 24/7. Even I, while constantly using my recording software to... record shit, can't use it 24/7 and capture every single cheating bastard or rulebreaker. In that situation - its better to do something this instant, rather than wasting 2-3 minutes on recording something, that can grow up in a big problem.

    I can say something like: "Yep. In cases of BR we should review some kind of evidence before making a desicion", but not everyone needs that. Experienced BR staff dont even need to hesitate after seeing a blatant cheater on the loose, but Fresh BR moderators should definatly think about recording such things. Especially after that one incident with a JR Mod, who banned everyone who's high on the leaderboards.

    We shouldn't make this a nessesity, rather than an option. People that care about gamemode and other stuff will always complain here anyway.
     
    #6
    • Agree Agree x 1
  7. Sir. Juan Carlos

    Sir. Juan Carlos Doggomeme Overlord

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    Video evidence should be a must!I got approved of cheating because of the bugged spectator system.I would not be unbanned since nobody could prove it.And nowadays recording a video isnt hard.Just get shadowplay or OBS they both work fine and are free.Also mods could abuse their powers if they dont record videos.Lets say a new mod gets acceptet.He does everything right.Until he has a bad day.He goes to play some br.He gets killed by somebody and is really angry.He just bans that person out of pure anger.NOBODY could prove him right or wrong and he could just go through with that.NOT GOOD!Most countries have a seperation of powers who control each other.Meaning that the controllers also get controlled.That how it should be.
     
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  8. Vixen

    Vixen Neko Trap Gold VIP

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    This is not a Country, this is a Gaming Community.
    While i agree that Video Evidence would be good, It's not really needed since we are build on TRUST. If we don't have Trust in the people we choose as staff, Why should we have them as staff?
     
    #8
    • Agree Agree x 1
  9. StormSniper

    StormSniper Dedicated Member Bronze VIP

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    Yea I would agree.
     
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  10. FrozenHumanity

    FrozenHumanity Member Gold VIP

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    record <demo_name>

    As easy to record as it gets and doesn't consume much space.
     
    #10
  11. alex98pl

    alex98pl Member

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    I will admit that the first post I made was vague. I waited for a day to get everyone's opinion on it, so here's an update post.

    With regards of video recording, I will agree that a stockpile of MP4 files from OBS is too much. Although, a great alternative would be using Jeff's guide on how easy to record demos in Garry's Mod. I recorded four minutes in three demos in battle royale and each of the demos were around 8 MB of data. While it does sound small, keep in mind that it needs to be stored somewhere. As Donkie said with the filehosting service, it would be a great beneficial to store all the demos, with the name of files being steam id's.

    I don't know much about the spectate feature in Battle Royale, I think it depends on the user's ping and what sensitivity he's got. I wouldn't say "extreme", as that could be an exaggeration. It's worth checking it out and improve it human-like. Otherwise, that's as far as I can explain it.

    As for who is required to record, I believe all people, staff and user, required to record to ban a cheater. If we were to let the higher-ups to not record, it would create distrust of the community. No matter how "experienced" you are, at the end of the day, we're all humans and we make mistakes. If we do happen to reject the video evidence idea, a zero-tolerance policy should be removed and therefore give the suppose cheater a second chance. Even though that is against other people's morals, a permanent ban, without knowing the person cheated or not, is truly against Devinity's spirit for being fair on the ban appeals. Remember the banned user will never come back, nor can he/she play in our flood server.

    I would like to end this with an open heart to manchyy. He has shown sympathy towards Juan by unbanning him and removing the infraction. I respect people who does this, and is shown Devinity a great place to be.
     
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  12. Vixen

    Vixen Neko Trap Gold VIP

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    We had several Cases of wrong Bans which got discussed later on and the Players which were Wrongly Banned have been given a Second Chance.
     
    #12
  13. Sir. Juan Carlos

    Sir. Juan Carlos Doggomeme Overlord

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    I do trust the staff, but that could always happen.Sometimes people do dumb things, including myself.And its really easy to record.If you have a NVIDIA GPU its as easy as starting gmod.And Shadowplay is super good while not consuming much power meaning your game still runs.And even a 720p 30fps Video is enough.It doesnt need to be 1080p 60fps.OBS is also free (and just 200mb) and you can just record with one click.Recording isnt hard at all.
     
    #13
  14. Vixen

    Vixen Neko Trap Gold VIP

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    Not everyone (including me) can record Games or has Nvidia. I have AMD, I play gmod on roughly 20 - 40 FPS and im happy when they're stable i don't want to lose 10 - 15 FPS because i have to record who im banning. If it's being doubted, i'm the first one to say I was too fast and that its fine to unban.
     
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  15. FrozenHumanity

    FrozenHumanity Member Gold VIP

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    Is this post invisible or something?

    Demos don't hurt fps fyi.
     
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  16. Sotori

    Sotori Flooderator Inc. Staff Member Community Manager Platinum VIP

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    I don't see a reason not to record evidence to back up your claim if one makes an appeal. Cheating to me is someone looking for some instant satisfaction; On a joy ride to ruin the game for others only for their benefit. Video evidence doesn't have to be edited or made fancy to show a player is cheating, although I do take the time to edit my evidence so it's easier to spot what the cheater is doing. First hand experiencing this, while taking the time to edit the videos, this doesn't consume a lot of time. (No more than 15 minutes). The one problem I do have with people cheating is the fact that if we don't step up and respond to who or who didn't cheat this community, and unfair bans were given out we would die out extremely fast.

    What I essentially am saying is that it would be great to record evidence through any means possible and it doesn't take a whole lot of time if you have an external recording software instead of using the demo, except trust should be a big factor in bans due to the fact that if one doesn't put the trust in staff, why do we have staff? (Referencing Rashu's post)

    TL;DR I'm pro-evidence recording
     
    #16
  17. Rick

    Rick female nipple Gold VIP

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    Demos often really fuck up how the gamemode looks.
     
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  18. FrozenHumanity

    FrozenHumanity Member Gold VIP

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    Did this ever get enacted? If not it really needs to be. There's clear incompetence with the staff team when 3 members unanimously agree that this player is cheating. Or at least when the staff team thinks 1 barely suspicious kill is anywhere near ban worthy.
     
    #18
  19. StormSniper

    StormSniper Dedicated Member Bronze VIP

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    I think it got put off for a while to see if any other inccidents occur.
     
    #19
  20. jeffreythe00

    jeffreythe00 Dreamer

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    My proposition.

    Permanent ban = Should require some kind of solid video evidence.
    Any other punishment = No video evidence required; Staff judgement suffices.


    I suggest requiring video evidence only for permanent bans because.
    • It eliminates any uncertainty factor from staff judgement. (Example: "Unban me please, I wasn't cheating! I was just doing really good! These staff are too ban happy!)
    • If someone reports a "suspected cheater", you have to get on the server to observe anyway. So why not record too?
    • People "toggle" their cheats on and off to make them look "legit". So when you don't record, you miss the opportunity when it's available. Then if you ban them perm for cheating, it looks especially bad on us when they open an unban request and we have no evidence to provide. IMO /facepalm
    • If you're not sure if someone is cheating, you can pass your video to another staff member to review.
     
    #20
    • Agree Agree x 4
    • Disagree Disagree x 1