Poll: To Cheat-Free or Not Cheat-Free

[=peg=]

i'm up for dm! even dm+! so who wants to play?

[LordHavoc]

You went back to 1999 and stole this from Willit's .plan file didnt you? It just struck me how... all of this looks like a combination of Q3A and UT...

Yes, because they are good ideas

[LordHavoc]

I was thinking of adding "Double Kill", "Killing Spree", and "Royal Riot" announcements in whitehot. But I'd have to ask the public first as I see whitehot as the public's mod Making a mod that they don't agree with is no fun for me.

One major weapon change I like:
hitscan nails - this makes the nailguns suddenly quite useful, they have more range than the lightning gun but less damage.

I had hitscan nails as an option on my clan server for over a year, they reduced lag significantly and made the nailguns useful for the first time.

Keep in mind I'm not advocating major changes to Quake, just making Quake's most unique weapons (nailguns) less sucky, so that they actually see some use

[Monster]

hehe, with my new 0 ping, the nailguns actually are useful. Especially in DM... When I'm fighting underwater in DM3 in CA, the SSG really comes into play nicely, almost everytime I fire with it I get a direct hit.

[golden_boy]

I still think that the best solution is a trust network using keys.

First, we need several servers, of which one (the primary runequake or ffa server) is open for newcomers who can earn trust there. The others (DM, RA etc) require login keys.

For a period of say, thirty hours playtime, newcomers are marked (name, skin) as untrusted and limited to the general server. Thereafter, if no one complains, they become trusted and get a login key for the trusted servers.

Any player can be "vouched for" by at least three (five?) trusted players; in that case, he immediately becomes trusted himself (this nullifies unjustified cheating accusations.) Trusted players can play all mods on all servers.

If enough community members conclude that a player cheats (or if there is proof), the player's key is simply invalidated by the admin and he goes back to "untrusted". Thus a player who is regularly accused of cheating will never gain trusted status, except when vouched for.

On top of that, there is still banning for extreme cases.

Pros:

- community/admin based
- cross platform, cross client
- no security module needed at all (server-side mechanism)
- freedom to use any client plus relatively harmless paks etc.

Cons:

- Relies on experienced players to detect cheaters
- No technical control mechanisms (only human ones), thus no "absolute" control
- Possibility to cheat "a bit" (client side settings and modifications)

[=peg=]

i like that idea but as long as proquake still is the most used server.. i dont see how this can be realized.. unless all the key stuff is coded in the mod. but then again, i am not a coder so what do i know?

[LordHavoc]

I still think that the best solution is a trust network using keys.

A similar discussion keeps going in the Nexuiz community (darkplaces based free FPS game), the main objections to trust networks and accounts in general are privacy, being able to jump on a server and play any time with no signing up for anything, no tracking, etc, is considered a feature.

P.S. one method that has been proven to deter cheaters and punks is easy temp bans on specific IP addresses (not ranges), which just time out after an hour or so, the punks and cheaters are kept out of popular servers by frequent renewal of these bans.

Temp bans do not make them disappear from the community but it does keep them from harassing people all the time, they can renew their IP address if they have a dynamic IP address but they soon grow tired of doing that and either start playing nice or give up