Hello, time for my next suggestion :)

I was thinking about cheating prevention after reading the tread that I've spawned up in the General Discussions forum. I suddenly thought of the central banning system most games have. Take Battle.net for example, it can record your account name/IP and ban you from any game on it.

I was thinking of something similar in Soldat. Can Michal and whoever runs the Lobby server have some kind of cooperation where they create a command that prevents a certain IP from getting a server list? I was thinking of something of this nature: A player reports a cheater to the server admin; admin gets the IP and mails it to Michal; Michal gives it to lobby server operator and he 'bans' it from getting server names on both Soldat and the lobby site. Could this be done? And if it could, would Michal and server operator agree to do this? Because this might work, I think.

And now to the offsets: ASE. ASE can give you the servers' names and IP's, but lately I've noticed that its close to useless. It barely gives me the 1/4th number of servers that I could find on the lobby, and it usually gives me the ones that I never play on, and these are usually empty at that. The other option cheaters have is just asking people they know for the server IP's, this cant be helped, I'd think.

If someone offsets this, there could be another way. Perhaps to make a code that will have the lobby server deliver the request to the server, and if the request is from a cheater IP that's known to the lobby server, it wont relay the request. Again, could this be done?

quote:A player reports a cheater to the server admin; admin gets the IP and mails it to Michal; Michal gives it to lobby server operator and he 'bans' it from getting server names on both Soldat and the lobby site.

Just to have something to post, ill state the obvious.
You would have to have a more secure reporting system than that.

wiii postcount +1

To bad most cheaters have dynamic ip's.
Isnt there already something like that? the banned.txt file everyone has and gets updated from the lobby server? Could be wrong tho...

Lol.. Avskum has a point. I mean then i could just go report some guy's ip and say that he was 'cheating' cos he barret-camped me..

The admins could also varify the true identity of that IP. I mean, what I described was only a rough example of how it can work, I'll respond to any other offsets that people bring up.

I'm aware of the possibility that people will report others' IP's to get back at them for something, thats why the admins have to know who the reported IP's belong to. They can see for themselves who they are in the server consule and ask around players about their playing habits.

Another problem close to this one that might come up is: 'how can we trust the admins, they might report someone falsely as well.'

The most obvious solution to this is to have a group of trustable people to run a "filter" before the reported IP's get sent to Michal/server op. Yet, then again, the problem might strike again at "how might we know that these so-called 'trustable' people are trustable? They might slip up when they get pissed at someone too". Thats true enough, and I'm not sure weather that can be dealt with except by having a 'check-up' method, that is, having two or more groups that check the reported IP's individually, and the IP's have to be checked by each group before reaching Michal. That way, we can limit this flaw dramatically. Another problem might be: "Who wants to do this job", or "who has time"? I think anyone that really loves Soldat might volunteer for something like that. I know I would. Cheaters did ruin the gameplay before and they are doing so now, only at a smaller scale.

wont work. sorry i cant see it happen
i have faced cheaters and i just laugh @ them coz the only way that they CAN win is to cheat (then you change server). Pretty sad really. what is the point in playing if you just cheat?
nah, people will allways cheat...you cant stop it, and if you try, people will only get mor ingenoius as to how they hide their cheating...
my solution, laugh @ them and change server.

I think it's a pretty bloody good idea. Definitely worth a consideration from the big man himself. Problem is organising it and having people 'doing' it. And how do people go about contacting server admins anyway? It's not always as obvious as a server with the name of their website.

As for ASE though, I think that boils down to the 'show in ASE' option within Soldat's config.exe preferences. I imagine most people just don't bother with it for some reason, which is a shame because ASE would be far better to use than the compact lobby.

I know that people will do it, dont you see all those pissed-off topics about "I hate cheaters!!11" "OMG cheaters cheaters everywhere" ? That's called motivation :P

i dont think it will work...
but of course this is just a theory, try it, prove me wrong!

like SteamID ?

maybe make them be monitored by michal or someone (e.g. someone dobs in IP 124.222.35.444 for cheating, but they wern't, then dude finds IP playing at ABCserver, they spectate, find they are not cheating and warn the dobber [this works both ways like if he was cheating, they ban him]) see what i mean?

that sounds good, but who could be stuffed monitoring all this? and trust me, there will be alot of 'dobbers'.

Its not a bad idea thats for sure, but these trustable people as you said will as you also said probably not have time. I know I sure dont or wouldn't, I barely have enough time to post here anymore.

I'm with it

Not everyone has a static IP, but they could have static ID numbers.

Ex :
Soldat assigns you an ID when you are online for the first time, and after that it would save your ID to some encrypted file. This way you'd get banned by ID instead of the old, unreliable, IP. Just my thought.

2 points:
1) this isnt really feasible until soldat has a central authentication system
2) there are d*ckhead admins out there who ban for petty crap. Relying on admins for reports would be a bad idea

There was an ability to block ip's from the lobbyserver in earlier versions.
I remember a screenshot on this forum of someone who used a cracked regkey for soldat, and wasn't able to log on the lobby. All he got when requesting servers on the lobby server was 4 lines of information ("servernames") with the message he was banned.

But as the one above says, the first thing we need is a central auth. system, otherwise it will not make much sense to block/ban ip's from the lobby server or gameservers...i think...

good intheory:bad in practice. sorry, but this world's too corupt for the buddy system :/
and what if someone uses my comp to download and hack soldat when im gone? just not reliable. :(

I'm telling you that an IP block list would not work. There are just too many ways to get around it (I will not name them as you probably know a few yourself.) Certainly we wouldn't block everyone on the list forever, but there would be warning levels. Here's an example :

Please enter a Name, Password, & Email
Name : Mr. Pink
Password : xxxxxxxxxxxx
Email : f-you@yoMama.co.uk

* /me clicks okay button *

Email Authentity Confirmed.

Here is your Generated Web Profile
Name : Mr. Pink
Warning Level : 0
ID : 023940893401183009321

Have fun playing Soldat!

* /me turns on a hack of sorts *
* /me joins Llama's Uber Server *

DollyLlamma : WTF A haxor!
Mr. Pink : I'm just really good :)
Mr. Pink : I swear!

* Message box off to the side appears, says :
Vote to kick Mr. Pink (Warning Level 0)
1) No
2) Yes (Minor)
3) Yes, Lvl2 (Behavior)
4) Yes, Ban (Hacking)

You have been banned by vote for hacking
Warning Level Increased by 2

END OF EXAMPLE

Whenever you go to use the web, there will be a login requesting your name and password. Obviously there cannot be multiple ID#s or Emails for different logins. This way it is nearly unhackable by dumb noob cheaters. I'd also LOVE to have the kick thing in a box instead of having to press escape and crap, even if the rest does not get implemented. There you go Sniper, the ultimate banning system.

could we trust people in a server to deliver justice properly? everyone in a server who have an extreme dislike for a person who does not hack, could still vote ban him, being too harsh a punishment

i say just keep it server to server.

Server admins who ban will not increase their warning level. That will only be increased by vote kick, proportional to the number of people who voted. Keep in mind these are simply suggestions, nothing more.

Point is that if we do implement such a system, that it will certainly take away from the simplicity of Soldat. Anyways, hackers are everywhere and unpreventable. I personally don't think additional measures need to be taken atm.

I wish Soldat did not have cheat protection. At this way we would have less lag and we could train against speed cheaters and laugh at them because they sux

Have you confirmed the current cheat protection causes lag? I'm pretty sure that it doesn't. Now if we used Punkbuster, that would be a whole 'nother ball game.