Notice A statement on cheating in Elite Dangerous.

[znôrt]

It should be 100% of those reported and found to be doing what the O.P. states is against the rules.

first, 'those reported' is not a valid population. this just can't depend on cheats being reported. much less in a game that, e.g. explicitly allows solo impacting multiplayer goals. the fact that reporting is even a thing just spells out on how many levels and to what extent cheat protection fails.

second, isn't that tautological? "those found to be cheats will be considered to be cheats!" and how would you tell? and specifically, how would you tell it publicly?

see why it's a tricky measure? there is no way to know the numbers. not even frontier knows them. it is all about getting to a state of trust in which the numbers intuitively look more right than wrong. basically, in an ideal case we shouldn't even be looking at numbers: just the general perception that cheating is not a thing. we had such a state, in the exact same conditions, except the cat is now out of the bag. there is no way to put it back in, frontier has to deal with it.

we are far, very far, from that. no inquisition will take us nearer, it will please some hard-justice an-eye-for-an-eye fans, and it will just make discontent worse in the big picture.

 

[Alwayslate]

The more I read of this thread, the more I'm disappointed.

And you guys are even still posting replies to this, waiting for FDev to read them, as if they would.

 

[Old Duck]

Out of curiosity, how many of you "This is terrible, Frontier, TERRIBLE!" people actually experienced cheating yourself? Seems all this "The cheaters are coming, the cheaters are coming!" panic was created because someone created a thread with a link to a video / article about cheating, not because we're all dying to CMDRs with infinite shields.

Am I wrong?

 

[ryan_m]

Out of curiosity, how many of you "This is terrible, Frontier, TERRIBLE!" people actually experienced cheating yourself? Seems all this "The cheaters are coming, the cheaters are coming!" panic was created because someone created a thread with a link to a video / article about cheating, not because we're all dying to CMDRs with infinite shields.

Am I wrong?

If I wouldn't get modded in the process, I'd post about 20 videos recorded by me and friends I play with encountering the same people over and over across the last couple years.

 

[znôrt]

Out of curiosity, how many of you "This is terrible, Frontier, TERRIBLE!" people actually experienced cheating yourself? Seems all this "The cheaters are coming, the cheaters are coming!" panic was created because someone created a thread with a link to a video / article about cheating, not because we're all dying to CMDRs with infinite shields.

Am I wrong?

no. but you're not right either. it's not about that anymore. cat, bag, etc ...

 

[Incandescence]

One thing I don't understand.

How is banning to solo going to solve anything? They can still run their cheats from solo and affect the BGS and ruin the game for many.


What kind of suspension is this?
Besides for the guy who protested.

Cheaters should have their account Completely suspended for x amount of months on first offence.

And then permanently.

 

[rOmiLaYu]

Community: FD aren't telling us anything about cheaters.

FD: Say what they can say.

Community: Its not good enough.

Its quite understandable why they might not even bother.

I'm going to take issue with this.

While I understand the sentiment, and have expressed it myself before, this time it is a little different. I'm sure if you were diligent enough, you could go back and find some post of mine where I said something along the lines of "Given the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' zeitgeist on this forum, is it any wonder why FDev don't engage more?" And I'll stand by that in those cases....but in this case, I think they could have done much better. There is literally nothing in the OP that was not in Will's earlier post in another thread. Sure it's longer, but it's not any more substantive. The Beluga CMDR who staged "the protest" at Jameson Memorial and all of the resulting attention is no doubt the catalyst behind this post, yet it wasn't even mentioned...now I get the idea that "Giving the satisfaction of a mention" might feed more of the same behavior, but, on the flip side of that, not clearly delineating what happened is going to feed further misinformation as we have already seen even in this thread. Some of the community, like our beloved CMDR Turner, felt that the Beluiga CMDR was doing us a service, highlighting the issue...only to find out that he was mistaken and that the Beluga CMDR was cheating already and this was his "three strikes and you're out" infraction. I've seen the email he received from FDev and it clearly says that his permaban is because it is his third offense. It also says in the email that he will be unable to further affect the BGS. So now you have the "OMG Frontier, he gets permabanned for showing what's wrong with your game? GG FDev!" reaction which is altogether untrue.

To your point, though Agony_Aunt, I don't think FDev "said what they could say." And if that is indeed all they can say...well, that's unfortunate. As someone who plays this game principally as an explorer, frankly, I'm not all that bothered by any of this but I do see how it is upsetting a good many people. I'm not going to say that we are owed a better explanation or DOOM! or any other hyperbole, but I do think that they could have been more specific and assuaged many more fears than they did.

Fly aimless, CMDR's.

 

[rOmiLaYu]

Out of curiosity, how many of you "This is terrible, Frontier, TERRIBLE!" people actually experienced cheating yourself? Seems all this "The cheaters are coming, the cheaters are coming!" panic was created because someone created a thread with a link to a video / article about cheating, not because we're all dying to CMDRs with infinite shields.

Am I wrong?

I think ryan_m summed it up very well in an earlier post in this thread...that the cheating in Elite is largely invisible to individual player because it isn't affecting PvP only. It's the botting and the BGS manipulation that seems to be more odious. And how would many CMDR's even know if the CMDR whom they encountered were cheating? 20Kmj Prismatics and Grom Bombs might feel like cheating to a novice combat pilot.

 

[Renegade Bovine]

And no, you don't have to refund cheaters if you ban them for ToS violations!

While this probably varies by jurisdiction, I assure you most people "banned" will immediately dispute the charge on their credit card for purchase of the game. When the customer explains to the credit card company that they bought a game and the game owners are now preventing them from playing it, I suspect most credit card companies will quickly side with their cardholder customer. Frontier would have to invest money in hiring people to respond to these credit card companies, etc...

This would actually be less of a problem if Frontier charged a monthly fee rather than a one-time fee for "indefinite gameplay" as they could just refund the current month.... but oh well!

 

[Deleted member 110222]

I think it's a good time to remove engineering.

It'll become significantly easier to detect cheating after that.

 

[N00dle CMDR]

That is the elephant in the room. The mechanic here seems to be that unless overt evidence is presented, there does not seem to be a systemic anti-cheat effort. Even when that evidence is presented (BGS-botting), it does not seem like there is a concerted effort to combat cheating.

Perhaps some statistics on the number of bannings would help the community believe that FDEV is "taking cheating seriously".

Would it be better to have some set of filter defining the range of possible stats, and any account demonstrating values outside of that range is autobanned, with autogenerated email defining the reasons for the ban, with an autogenerated support ticket?

I personally do not like cheats that cheapen the experience of the game, or that alter the gameplay in some way. Also as one of the heads of the Hull Seals, we will not suggest, or advocate that people use any cheat, hack, or exploit of the game. If a Seal is found to be doing this it can be case for dismissal as a seal.

That said, things that don’t alter the game play experience, like changing your hud colors, I personally do not see as a problem, as it doesn’t change the game itself, and it can help those with visual impairments like myself enjoy the game more. That’s why we say that using these can be cause for dismissal. Not that it will.

Making the game more accessible to everyone with impairments is one thing. But letting people bot and dominate the BGS... use hacks or bugs to overpower others and in other ways alter the way the game is played, is not something we will support in any way.

These people are the ultimate gankers. As they make playing the game unenjoyable. CQC is rife with these cheaters. Every time I am in voice chat with people playing CQC there is always talk about this person or that person cheating in an obvious way. So in addition to the fact that CQC has no bearing whatsoever on the main game, the cheating makes many people not fool with it at all.

And rather than try to program something to combat the cheating, why not use one of the machine learning AIs that is so readily available today to watch the data, and also watch the reports of cheaters. It can readily see abnormal data and react much faster than a human could. It could also detect these cheats in the main game as well. And it could better respond to the reports, sending messages to the person reporting saying something like “your report has been confirmed, thank you” or “the data does not indicate the player reported was cheating, do you have evidence to this effect that you could share? If so use this link please:” Add to that having reports auto generated of the number of bans in the last month, or 6 months or whatever... and other metrics that can be seen like total number of active players over the same time, average hours spent in game, and other interesting things.

All this would give the data mongers something to look at, and draw up other conspiracies about, but overall it would give people a sense of security, even if a false one.

 

[Incandescence]

I'm going to take issue with this.

While I understand the sentiment, and have expressed it myself before, this time it is a little different. I'm sure if you were diligent enough, you could go back and find some post of mine where I said something along the lines of "Given the 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' zeitgeist on this forum, is it any wonder why FDev don't engage more?" And I'll stand by that in those cases....but in this case, I think they could have done much better. There is literally nothing in the OP that was not in Will's earlier post in another thread. Sure it's longer, but it's not any more substantive. The Beluga CMDR who staged "the protest" at Jameson Memorial and all of the resulting attention is no doubt the catalyst behind this post, yet it wasn't even mentioned...now I get the idea that "Giving the satisfaction of a mention" might feed more of the same behavior, but, on the flip side of that, not clearly delineated what happened is going to feed further misinformation as we have already seen even in this thread. Some of the community, like our beloved CMDR Turner, felt that the Beluiga CMDR was doing us a service, highlighting the issue...only to find out that he was mistaken and that the Beluga CMDR was cheating already and this was his "three strikes and you're out" infraction. I've seen the email he received from FDev and it clearly says that his permaban is because it is his third offense. It also says in the email that he will be unable to further affect the BGS. So now you have the "OMG Frontier, he gets permabanned for showing what's wrong with your game? GG FDev!" reaction which is altogether untrue.

To your point, though Agony_Aunt, I don't think FDev "said what they could say." And if that is indeed all they can say...well, that's unfortunate. As someone who plays this game principally as an explorer, frankly, I'm not all that bothered by any of this but I do see how it is upsetting a good many people. I'm not going to say that we are owed a better explanation or DOOM! or any other hyperbole, but I do think that they could have been more specific and assuaged many more fears than they did.

Fly aimless, CMDR's.

See, why couldn't Frontier write something like this?
I didn't know getting perma banned even stops the offender from affecting bgs.
Why can't Frontier post a proper statement saying simply.

"Due to the recent cheating epidemic, we have taken action against accounts that were in violation of our Terms of service, and end user license agreement.
As a result 136 offending accounts were permanently restricted to Solo play mode.
It is also important to mention that their actions in solo will NOT affect the Backeound simulation in any way shape or Form.
We are also taking proper measures and including random server check ups to insure any offenders will be caught in due time.

We request and thank the community for the patience and support, know we are doing our best but we cannot promise 100% cleanliness as there will always be new ways to exploit the system.
Fly safe commanders. "

There you go Frontier, much shorter and would've satisfied more people. Would've gave me personally some hope, as opposed to this lukewarm no statement. We know your stance on cheating Frontier, we don't need a copy paste statement on where you stand on it.

 

[Arry]

first, 'those reported' is not a valid population. this just can't depend on cheats being reported. much less in a game that, e.g. explicitly allows solo impacting multiplayer goals. the fact that reporting is even a thing just spells out on how many levels and to what extent cheat protection fails.

second, isn't that tautological? "those found to be cheats will be considered to be cheats!" and how would you tell? and specifically, how would you tell it publicly?

see why it's a tricky measure? there is no way to know the numbers. not even frontier knows them. it is all about getting to a state of trust in which the numbers intuitively look more right than wrong. basically, in an ideal case we shouldn't even be looking at numbers: just the general perception that cheating is not a thing. we had such a state, in the exact same conditions, except the cat is now out of the bag. there is no way to put it back in, frontier has to deal with it.

we are far, very far, from that. no inquisition will take us nearer, it will please some hard-justice an-eye-for-an-eye fans, and it will just make discontent worse in the big picture.

Logically F.D do not have the resources to check every one, every time, someone logs on. So you re right, it is a nightmare, to deal with it.

 

[Arry]

Logically F.D do not have the resources to check every one, every time, someone logs on. So you re right, it is a nightmare, to deal with it.

I was talking about those, that have been caught, in the act. 100% ban, for software cheating. Which is the subject of the O.P.

 

[Ambroza]

Not sure I understand the purpose of this announcement. It appears that you're just reminding us that yes, cheating is still a violation of the ToS and that you're totally doing something about it. As far as I can recall, that's been the gist of every public statement Frontier has released regarding this issue, but things never really seem to improve, and in fact may have become even worse.

 

[Arry]

Out of curiosity, how many of you "This is terrible, Frontier, TERRIBLE!" people actually experienced cheating yourself? Seems all this "The cheaters are coming, the cheaters are coming!" panic was created because someone created a thread with a link to a video / article about cheating, not because we're all dying to CMDRs with infinite shields.

Am I wrong?

I have reported loads of NPCs; who must have been cheating, when they have destroyed my ships, because I keep hearing that NPCs are no opposition. But do they get banned? Not a chance.

 

[Arry]

If I wouldn't get modded in the process, I'd post about 20 videos recorded by me and friends I play with encountering the same people over and over across the last couple years.

There must be a place that you can send them, for F.Ds eyes only. So you can avoid the name and shame thing.

 

[ryan_m]

There must be a place that you can send them, for F.Ds eyes only. So you can avoid the name and shame thing.

They have all been sent FDev's way along with tickets when they happened. One specific person that was blatantly hacking (600 m/s Conda, infinite shields) at CGs for weeks in 2018 was spotted during DW2 at Sag A, so let that one sink in. He didn't have his hacks on and we smoked him, but he is still able to play in open.

 

[znôrt]

And rather than try to program something to combat the cheating, why not use one of the machine learning AIs

machine learning is actually programing something, just different. and while i guess we're not really far away from this, i doubt that a company that's not willing cough up a few extra servers even for load issues on release day will want to hire the resources to feed such an analysis (are you even suggesting in realtime?), let alone pioneering such an effort after (apparently) failing to explore any other more traditional, cheaper and proven approaches. that's a big leap of faith, both in frontier and in ai.

yes, indeed, ai is the future, it has already changed the present, but it's still a while until it can be a magic substitute for bad design, indolence or incompetence. sorry if that sounds harsh.

 

[The Replicated Man]

Well, when it can be prove to be a deliberate logging off; you may get your way. Until then; nothing will change.

There is a major difference between losing a connection; legitimately or otherwise and using a software patch, to cheat in a game. Lets keep things in proportion shall we.

I consider both topics linked actually. Both are cheating and should be dealt with accordingly. There is no greater evil here.