Rare, what's going on with support?

A lot of gaming companies ban in waves and not each time they get a report. This is a technique so the people who are altering game code can’t so easily fine tune it.

You’ll see people who are reported for behaviors punished a lot quicker and it will feel unbalanced and maybe unfair, but it’s actually the better practice. It allows them to collect necessary data to fine tune their own game code to work against the cheaters. When you report someone they can now put that person’s game on a watch and collect data. Which is why it’s so important to report cheaters even if it feels like nothing comes from it.

@abjectarity said in Rare, what's going on with support?:

A lot of gaming companies ban in waves and not each time they get a report. This is a technique so the people who are altering game code can’t so easily fine tune it.

You’ll see people who are reported for behaviors punished a lot quicker and it will feel unbalanced and maybe unfair, but it’s actually the better practice. It allows them to collect necessary data to fine tune their own game code to work against the cheaters. When you report someone they can now put that person’s game on a watch and collect data. Which is why it’s so important to report cheaters even if it feels like nothing comes from it.

Fingers crossed that this is indeed what they're doing, Abjectarity.

@abjectarity Ban waves are outdated, especially in a game like sot linked to gamepass, new accounts are basically free.

We need a real anti-cheat with an effective fine tuned auto-moderation but that will never happen.

@vaughnsilver said in Rare, what's going on with support?:

new accounts are basically free.

This is unfortunately the biggest issue with all games that don’t require some form of identity verification, but even in the ones that do try to stop alt accounts, you still see a lot of them.

@vaughnsilver said in Rare, what's going on with support?:

@abjectarity Ban waves are outdated

Outdated?

If they're done right, they're wildly more effective.

By that I mean, they monitor the workarounds that those players are using, establish concrete preventative measures, implement them, and we don't see that specific hack (at least not in the same way) until the cheaters find another hole.

@abjectarity If cheaters are not blocked immediately, they will ruin the gaming experience of hundreds of other players

@d3adst1ck said in Rare, what's going on with support?:

@ixxxoloff Banning cheaters immediately results in lots of not-yet-caught cheaters getting away with it.

What happens is that as soon as a cheater is banned, they tell the cheat maker that they got caught (or charge back) and the cheat maker disables or warns all of their clients that the cheat is now detectable. Those cheaters wait until the cheat is no longer detectable and go back to cheating as soon as possible.

If they delay bans, they can catch tons more in a ban wave and the cheat maker gets flooded with a lot of charge backs.

This is exactly why they do it in waves. It really is the best way to handle it, as frustrating as it might be to normal players. It’s best to monitor, collect evidence, and then once you feel you’ve gotten what you can from them, ban them all at once. A lot of people use multiple cheats and so they won’t even know which got them banned, which causes extra work for the cheat makers.

Dealing with cheaters is a very frustrating thing for everyone who is just trying to enjoy something they love, the game makers and the normal players.

If you ever hear an enforcer talk, they love catching cheaters and banning them, so you can be sure they're not turning a blind eye to these reports. Taking down cheaters and, especially, cheat makers is a matter of pride for them. But they're also looking for the most effective way to do it that causes the most damage to the cheat makers, and (as others have stated) ban waves are the best for this.

Doing one-off bans does nothing in a game like this, where starting a new account is trivial to cheaters. They're not attached to any account, and not afraid to lose cosmetics or anything like that. They do it because they have nothing better to do and love upsetting other folk, which is a sad existence, really. Rare are more than aware of this and the account creation loopholes (which may be out of their control, i.e. a Microsoft issue).

It's frustrating and I'm sure there is a lot of room for improvement on the detection side, but I think it's wrong to assume Rare are ignoring the problem.