Ban List Submission Rights for Non-admins?

[Tensim]

Hi all,

 

I'm not an admin. And while I belong to a clan, I tend to play these days as a 'loner' or independant player due to odd working hours. That translates to playing on a lot of different servers.

 

What I find enormously frustrating is witnessing (and capturing all necessary evidence of) a hacker, but not being able to do anything about it since the server does not stream to PbBans.

 

When I check the player's (i.e. hacker's) GUID here - they usually come back clean as a whistle (I don't have admin rights, so I don't see any data returned for clean [sic] players).

 

I appreciate you want everyone to stream to PbBans (and I personally believe PbBans has made the greatest contribution to the anti-cheat movement, so I am all for that), but I feel tremendously impotent that I, myself, cannot submit evidence of a new cheater witnessed on a non PBBans server.

 

Surely it is in everyones interest that individuals are empowered to submit evidence of cheating irrespective of where this was witnessed. Yes, I appreciate that PBBans staff may not be drawn to the labour intensive task of studying demo's and Pb_plist's if the cheater was observed on a non-PBBan server. However, if the cheater's GUID comes up clean on PbBans, then wouldn't it be of benefit to halt that hacker even before they entered a PBBan streaming server?

 

More worrying still is the fact that the hacker is NOT on PBBans ban list not because they have never played on a PBBan streaming server, but because they are in posession of a hack which cannot be detected. Not surely that circumstance is of interest to PBBan staff?

 

I appreciate the blunt answer may be - "if the server doesn't stream to PBBans, then leave". If I've witnessed a cheater, then walking away doesn't do it for me - I want to chase that person down until they are rightfully on the ban list.

 

So folks, what can you do to help frustrated individuals eager to support the AC community?

[hugin]

Hi Tensim.

Well I can assure it is frustrating when you see those obvious cheaters on a random server you join for some quality time.

However we at PBBans also have to protect the innocent players out there, thats why we need to have streaming logs as additional evidence to ensure legitimacy and to back everything up.

 

And thats the hole point behind PBBans, or the streaming technology developed on the PBUCON (Even Balance) feature here at PBBans are crucial to ensure the necessary data logged. So far we are alone about the HUB features and the benefit behind it.

 

However, there is things you can do, and that is to record what you see, and then try to get a hold of any admin at the particular server you are playing on and hand over the demo to them. That way they can submit the demo for review and that way get a potential cheater on the MBI. Goggle do wonders on such.

 

Hopes that ease up on your frustration a bit :)

[RoadWarrior]

While you're at it, if you find that these servers are not streaming here, perhaps they do not know about us. I recently came across a clan that didn't even know such sites as pbbans existed, and they are now happily streaming their servers here, with much relief from having to deal with cheating the hard way.

 

As for undetected cheats. Those will always exist. Every single time a cheat is developed, it is released before the detections. It's a simple law of nature. If evenbalance, or pbbans, or any other anti-cheat site were psychic enough to be able to write detections for every new and upcoming cheat, we'd become gods. The cheat comes out first. Then, and only then, can detections be made for based on getting a copy of it. Since we do not pay for cheats, nor do we want our SGA's or forum members paying for cheats, this can be somewhat of a process to go through at times.

 

Now, having gone through all that, said-cheat gets added to the detections list, cheat-coder then starts working on yet another new, undetected cheat, releases it....it's a viscious circle. It's also the reason why there are companies like evenbalance, and anti-cheats sites like pbbans.

[Tensim]

Hugin,

 

Thanks for your reply. I had completely forgotten about need for log files. That's a showstopper for my argument!

 

Roadwarrior,

 

Whenever I witness a cheater, I always go to the clan forums and recommend streaming to PBBans. Some come back with "PB who?" or "Yes we might". I can only try. Point is, I will promote PBBans wherever I can - I introduced my own clan admin to PBBans!

 

I fully appreciate the life-cycle of hacks. If I thought you could foresee a cheat before it was written then I would be asking you for this week's lottery numbers...

 

 

I take it admins the only people who can see details on 'clean' players?

 

Ideally, if I have demo & pb_plist evidence of a cheater, I would consider that adequate evidence to put them on the 'suspicious list'. I'd like to see their other aliases. If they are a member of a clan, then I would like to submit my evidence to the player's clan.

 

How about the concept of a 'You have been spotted' list? Not enough evidence (i.e. no server logs) for an outright ban, but a public warning?

 

Perhaps too contentious?

[FireStorm]

Hi Tensim

 

I used to be am still am like you. Going round the pub servers spotting and collecting evidence, and trying to get something done about it. With A/C sites the evidence does have to be streamed, tamper-proof evidence. This goes for everything we do here at PBBans. How could you start a watch list with no evidence to back it up. It would mean nothing as anyone could fake info and get someone on it.

 

If you do spot a hacker on a public server that IS streaming to pbbans ( check this @ http://www.pbbans.com/msi.php ) then do grab a demo and a pb_plist screen shot, and note the specfic time and date as well as your time zone.

 

What you might be better off doing tho is jumping in our IRC channel #pbbans @ Quakenet, there might be one of us who can jump on the server and collect the evidence we need to get a ban done very quickly and save you having to trace the admin.

 

Just remember to find make sure the server is streaming before coming to us as its only then we might be able to help you, if it is a streaming server the least we can do is help you trace the admin.

 

May I ask what game do you play?

 

PBBans

[Tensim]

Hi Firestorm,

 

Thanks for your feedback. I play COD4.

 

Regards