| > You could say that I feel like the rules shouldn't have total access to dictate what I can and can't do with my body. Depends on what they have total access to. There is no problem with having total access to the playing field and monitoring it. I would object if they came up with a brain implant that could figure out whether players were diving and made it mandatory for every player to wear it in order to play. > For the sake of this example, please don't suggest saying that the rules should be changed by the players to accommodate both. I'm not saying that. My problem is purely with the invasive detection software. > please be aware this doesn't really work and is very ripe for abuse > This had the net result of the match-making system not finding enough players for him/her to play against anymore. This is a problem but it's a match making problem. People prefer to play with others of similar skill since being beaten over and over again is too frustrating. The better the player gets, the harder it is to find others of similar ability. I don't know the answer to this problem. In this case people are still playing with strangers they don't know or trust, players who could be cheating. I think people should play with real life friends who they know and trust in real life. Much smaller groups that can police themselves. I've met competitive players who are part of local groups and who play only with each other so there are people doing this. > Ultimately, to answer these questions you have to start asking the client to assist you by providing more signals, but when the client is under user-control it's trivial to lie to it. Hence the need to move some of the anti-cheat code to driver-space. Kernel mode is still under the control of the user. Their detection software got way more invasive but it still can't make any guarantees. They are trying to secure their game client against an adversary who has full physical and logical access to the entire system. Nothing they do can take control away from the user. They can only make it hard enough to prevent most people from trying. > so what exactly do you expect the game companies to do when they run out of available server-side detection methods and still have a cheater problem to deal with that affects their bottom line? I don't have an answer. I just hope they can come up with something that doesn't require me to place so much trust in them. |
Make it fun to lose too.
In the before times, in the long long ago, there was a Half-Life mod called Natural Selection that I played entirely too much of. It was an asymmetrical FPS/RTS hybrid. In the earlier versions (pre 3.0, I think), Aliens were considered to have a slight advantage over Marines, however this was ok because losing as Marines was a lot more fun than losing as Aliens because they got to roleplay the Alamo by locking down their last base with ludicrous defensive measures and holding out against wave after wave of Alien attacks. This strategy would actually rarely result in a sudden turn around in the game as it was possible for a skilled Marine to escape through the Alien horde and find a quiet spot to begin construction of a stealth hail-marry base, or get in position to just barely kill a hive before they could be taken out. For mechanical reasons, this strategy was not possible on the Alien side and consequently losing as Aliens was an exercise in waiting to be curb stomped and no fun at all.