Team Cheaters

The other night I was playing on a wide map, 10 players, a couple of which belonging to the same team/clan. But as two individual factions, since it was a FFA and not a Team Match. It is not relevant now what team/clan exactly. Not even that they belonged to the same community.

What I want to discuss is something else. Not necessarily connected to the fact the players play different factions, being part of the same community (clan or team, or whatever).

One of the two players said above lost his Commander quite earlier and I had the doubt that he stayed in game to provide inside to his friend, thanks to the fact that he could have full Intel on the whole planet.

So, straight to the point. What would prevent a player, who's lost his Commander and therefore has now vision on the entire System, to provide Intelligence to an other player, for instance via voice chat?

Of course during Tournament this is not going to be an issue. But the lion share of the games are made online between people that for the most do not know each other and cannot benefit of the same kind of control that's being made during Tournaments.

Should we speak about this problem?

Nothing can really be done. If your tournament match is being livestreamed by a caster, you can do the same thing with a second monitor running Twitch.

I'm speaking about more ordinary online sessions of the game. FFA and stuffs, not Tournaments.

I thought about few ways to possibly solve the problem. Possibly implemented via Mod, not necessarily by Uber.

1. Optional choice to give vision of your forces to eliminated players. So if I do not trust anyone, I simply uncheck the option and I stay hidden from any observer, and safe.

2. Post-poned vision on the whole map to players that have been eliminated, but still in game.

3. A new player role, Judge or Caster, that people could select for official games, that enables the observers to get vision of the entire game, without having to join and suicide their Commanders. The latter is a mere detail, but the role could have its own capabilities, different from the capabilities granted to active players.

One or more of those could already place a patch on the issue. Specially 1. and 3. may be trivial to implement.

I believe we have to speak about this aspect, because as soon as Clans start to play dirty, you will see people stop playing online as freely as we do now.

And listen, I know you know, but let me say it nonetheless in bold: having a buddy telling you everything about the map, is a very dirty cheat.

I like the idea of eliminated players being allowed to stay in, but with only the same vision as the active team player. I can't see why this wouldn't be the case in the finished game.

Sorry, I see that I didn't explain the situation clearly.

What I am speaking about is when players who play individually in a FFA match (not a Team match), and are connected via Voice Chat, benefit of the vision one of the two players has, once got eliminated. The player who's still in game can benefit of a spotter who can tell him everything is going on on the map. Other players may be totally unaware of that. And ultimately is a cheat.

This is gonna be relevant as soon as (and if) we are going to implement a sort of Elo Rating System, Chess-style, that allows players to match against others with similar skill set and experience.

If PA aims to be played online seriously, there should be an in-game method available to everyone (by default or by mod) to avoid this kind of exploitation.

Yeah this has happened to me before it really sucks.

I think eliminated players should be able to stay in the game and spectate everyone. They should also be able to use the chat.
You cant really stop this without punishing respectful players that want to learn.

your suggestions
#1 explained above
#2 delayed by how much? It wouldn't solve the problem, just make it a tiny bit smaller
#3 do you trust a random person on the internet to be a judge in your game?

That said, why not make a mod.


I think the best way to solve this problem is to release Team Alliances.

dont play ffa, simple fix.

I like the chronocam delay idea. While it is true that alliances don't have this problem (as long as you can spectate only your allies), they are still irrelevant for FFA games.

Haha, no it seems I didn't read it properly
Hmmm, it's a tricky one, certainly. How about, players who are eliminated are booted, but are given the option to watch a replay after the match is over? That way, they can still see what happened and how they were bested, but aren't able to do so in a way that would alter the match.
I don't know how this would be managed, but IIRC there is already a "review game" option on the main menu, so it could quite easily be incorporate here? In fact, it would already BE there if such a menu exists LOL....

EDIT: Like, a little ping comes up on the main menu when you log back in, or are still playing "Hi Dr Z, would you like to see the last match you lost/won again? Just click on ... "

Sure.

First, if the solution will come in the form of a Mod, not everyone will have it, at risk that games online will not be compatible with each other.

Anyway. Let's see in details what I suggested. I'm confident that there are other solutions, but those are what I thought at first.

I define inactive a player that participated to the game, and it has been eliminated, but didn't leave the server yet. Therefore has access to a full vision of the map.

1. Optionally keeping your army hidden from inactive players.

2. Optionally post-poning the entire stream of a game for inactive players.

3. A new user role in-game, Caster or Judge.

I explain in more details

1. Right now, as soon as my Commander is destroyed, I can immediately see everything on the map. There is no choice for other players to keep their status hidden from me. At that point if my friend is still in game, and my faction has been dismantled, I have plenty of freedom and time to go checking out every single corner on the map and keep my friend up to date via Voice Chat.

As a player I could chose to negate vision of my army to inactive players. That way I could protect myself from an illicit use of a complete vision on the map.

Of course I do not want to negate others to see my movements forever. The reply is where a newbie should go checking out for analyzing the game in order to learn and getting better.

All the data of a game of all the players will be saved in the reply, at the end of the match. All data is stored on the server anyway.

2. A spectator mode, specially for Tournament, has been proposed already. The proposal includes the possibility to post-pone the streaming of few minutes. It would protect players in Tournaments from having the opponent getting inside about the map from spectator at home.

What could be done is to post-pone the vision of inactive players as well in FFA games as for Tournaments.

3. Right now, in Tournaments, Casters join the match as players, then they self-detonate their Commander, and stay in game as inactive players.

Why not to have a specific role for Caster, so that to assign that role specific capabilities, like chatting in private with each single player, and having a different, more useful UI for their role?

Those are just ideas.

I don't see how anyone could actually have a problem with this set up anyway? If you get eliminated, just wait until the match is over and watch the replay however you like. The only downside is that players can't watch and interact in real time. But really, if it stops cheating, is anyone that bothered? I would be quite happy to get on with another game, finish up, then come and check the replay for my previous game if I wanted to see how it turned out. Again, there could be a ping "The winner of your match against X Y Z was Z".

EDIT: You could even allow players to rejoin a "post game chat lobby" or even a shared replay, where everyone could discuss tactics, unfair events, whatever, without ruining a live game.

The Devs said they have discussed a spectator delay. I wouldn't expect it soon, but it may happen.

I wonder, would there be user definable delay lengths? Because if it was only 1 minute, then it could still be abused by players who would tell others, for example, that someone had 3 nuke launchers right in the middle of their base. Or something. Although I wonder if any delay would still be too little to stop some cheating.

You're right. What they did was very low. Very dirty.

In my experience, I've never seen players (or a clan) showcase so little class.

I did have one time a guy provide intel to other players, but that is because I beat him. There also wasn't much the other players could do at that point... so it's only kinda similar.

The only way to really fix that would be to kick players from the game upon death, which I think would do more harm than good.

The other possibility would be to implement a vote to kick option. If enough players want someone gone, then go for it.

There'd need to be countermeasures though, to prevent clan members from vote kicking the non-clan member who is winning or something...

Ultimately, one way or another, there will always be a way for trolls to show their lack of class.

Why would kicking players do more harm? If, as I suggested, you were able to review the whole game in replay anyway, there is no reason to need to stick around and put people off by chatting to them. Or the option of a shared replay, or post game chat lobby.

The vote to kick option is a possibility, but if players are chatting on a teamspeak thingy, and so are not obviously colluding, then no one would be able to work out what they were doing in time.

Agreed, you will always get trolls/cheaters, but it will be interesting to see what Uber comes up with. Especially if they have an eye for eventually making this into an e-sports worthy game.

It would do harm because watching the matches is fun. Especially for clans.

I know The Realm has a lot of fun smack talking each other and some of the most fun starts when people die.

Remember, PA is supposed to be about fun first, competitiveness second.

Yes, and having someone ruin your game by telling everyone what you are doing would certainly affect this.

I guess it is more important to allow community spirit than it is to try and stifle cheaters.
Still, maybe an option to lock out eliminated player spectating in random games, if you wish? Would that solve the problem of clans wanting to talk smack?

But someone ruining the game like that is by far the exception, not the rule.

We shouldn't go running to change something just because we've had one issue with it.

It's also not just clan game. Even with randoms it can be a lot of fun. I love watching the game after I die, even with randoms. And I know I'm not the only one since it's common for people to stick around until the end of the match, again, even with randoms.

Agreed, I just hope it stays that way. I also like to linger for a while if I'm annihilated, so I think it's better overall to have this option. I guess if you find that it happens to you a lot, stop playing randoms.