Blizzard Taking a Zero-Tolerance Stance on Overwatch Cheaters

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Because paying customers are more important than your personal life.

Which, coincidentally, I would be one of those paying customers if I am playing the game.

And trying to be considerate realizing that I can not finish the game due to unforeseen circumstances should not be a punishable offense.

It punishes people who diminish the experience of the other players, which, unfortunately, includes people who are being responsible to other priorities. Don't get me wrong, I am not arguing that anyone should let any of these things take a backseat to playing the game, but at the same time if someone frequently is leaving their games even for the best of reasons they are still harming the game experience of others. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a nice thing or even a fair thing, but if someone has so many intrusions in their life that they are leaving games frequently enough for the punishments to matter then I feel it has to be acknowledge they are damaging the experience for other people, and that it is a publisher's right, if not outright necessity, to discourage someone who isn't reasonably certain they can commit to the match from starting a game. It's a terrible situation that potentially bars some people from playing team games who want to, but I'm not sure what the alternative is.

I absolutely get your reasons. I was there in Halo 3 where people would drop just because they didn't get the sniper rifle first. Then the teams were imbalanced, we get curb stomped, and I'd be the only person on a team because I didn't like quitting.

Trust me, I don't like having to leave just as much as I don't like having to wait for someone who's probably talking to his mother or something and we're trying to get a point with a man down. But I get it. Real world life happens. And there's already been an easy and well thought out plan for how to deal with that.

It's called Left 4 Dead. The drop-in, drop out method for that is beautiful. Just modify it for the game.

Say if the guy who had to drop was a Bastion and he's Turreted up. Ok, then have a prompt saying "There is an AI teammate currently in play, would you like to play as that character". If yes, seamlessly drop in and take over that character.

If no, have a flash that takes out the ai character and join again as new. This way, the party is never a teammate down and there's no real need to punish those who has to attend to any responsibility or bio-call

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

If only Naughty Dog would take a similar stance with their multiplayer...

 

[RaikuFA]

Because paying customers are more important than your personal life.

Which, coincidentally, I would be one of those paying customers if I am playing the game.

And trying to be considerate realizing that I can not finish the game due to unforeseen circumstances should not be a punishable offense.

True. But to the higher up idiots, your teammates are of a higher priority because they're still playing that precious game.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

I'm warily positive on this.

On one hand, yay. I hate people who use aimbots (although I now feel sheepish about accusing someone of using an aimbot now that I know the killcam isn't 100% accurate. >_>).

On the other hand, I REALLY hope they're serious about them having a team of analysts on this and NOT a purely automated system. Because automated systems can bug out and be abused and catch innocent people in the crossfire.

So, as long as they have a proper process with humans involved and they err on the side of caution, I'm all for this.

 

[hentropy]

I love mods when it comes to games like Fallout, but as much as I know it sucks, all attempts to modify or change game files should be disciplined/banned for games like these. There's just too much at risk, here.

I don't see how modifying a single player game and giving yourself unfair advantages in a competitive game are related

Whether you're talking about Skyrim or World of Tanks, mods and "cheating" work the same way, by modifying game files to add in things that give you an unfair advantage. Cheating in online games doesn't happen because of leet hacking skills, most of it is just the same as installing a mod. No one cares if you "cheat" and make it easier for yourself in Skyrim, but it does obviously matter in multiplayer games.

Many online games like WoT have a policy that you can mod the game, but the mods will be checked against known cheating mods. The problem with that is that new types of mods, both cheating mods and non-cheating, are created all the time, increasing the chances of false positives and problems.

The best way in my mind is to put a total ban on modding in general, and offer a good number of (free, earnable, whatever) customization options in game, which Overwatch does do. This might already be their policy, but generally I think it's the right way to go.

 

[The Enquirer]

Yet I guarantee harassers will not have anything done to them.

Actually they addressed at least a partial solution to this way back during one of the closed betas. You can rank certain players and not be put in matches with them anymore or something to that effect.

Whether or not toxic players are actually banned or just have a long wait time for matches is something I'm less sure about.

 

[RJ 17]

I absolutely get your reasons. I was there in Halo 3 where people would drop just because they didn't get the sniper rifle first. Then the teams were imbalanced, we get curb stomped, and I'd be the only person on a team because I didn't like quitting.

Trust me, I don't like having to leave just as much as I don't like having to wait for someone who's probably talking to his mother or something and we're trying to get a point with a man down. But I get it. Real world life happens. And there's already been an easy and well thought out plan for how to deal with that.

It's called Left 4 Dead. The drop-in, drop out method for that is beautiful. Just modify it for the game.

Say if the guy who had to drop was a Bastion and he's Turreted up. Ok, then have a prompt saying "There is an AI teammate currently in play, would you like to play as that character". If yes, seamlessly drop in and take over that character.

If no, have a flash that takes out the ai character and join again as new. This way, the party is never a teammate down and there's no real need to punish those who has to attend to any responsibility or bio-call

The problem is that no one wants an AI teammate on their team. Either the AI is derpy and essentially throws the match (Yeah, L4D does have bots that fill in the roles of missing players...do you know how many pills, stim-shots, and health packs the bots waste? ALL of them.), or - as seen in the couple bot matches I played in Overwatch - the bots are pretty much hackers themselves capable of leading you (in terms of their aim) through walls and popping off down-range headshots as Mercy. Until someone develops a bot that can actually play with the skill level of an average player - in a case such as this, it would likely have to be the average skill level of the players actually in the match - then no one is going to want a bot on their team.

As such, they need to create some form of system that discourages the Rage Quitters from jumping out of a match after the 3rd time they die. Unfortunately there's no real way to differentiate on a case-by-case basis, as such they're forced to err on the side of the offenders. For every person who has to leave the game due to a genuine reason (i.e. a family member just injured themselves, mother is yelling to do homework or she'll take a hammer to your PC, your house just caught fire, you're literally 10 seconds away from crapping your pants, etc) there's 10 others that are leaving because "FUCK THAT GOD DAMN REAPER HE'S SO FUCKING CHEAP! *rage quit*" So you either let everyone have free reign to come and go as they please and rage quitters will be ruining games unchecked, or you punish people who leave the game early.

If you had to leave for a genuine reason, yeah, it sucks that you're going to get slapped with the punishment. But you had real life things to take care of and you took care of them as you should have. But something has to be done to discourage the rage quitters.

Personally I like the way that LoL handles things. Leave a game early: you're unable to join up with any other game other than the one you just left. This way people that disconnect don't get punished. Don't want to play the game you just left? Well you can't play a new game until 15 minutes (I think that's how long it was) after the game you quit has finished.

This way the people that have to leave due to RL reasons won't even notice the "punishment" while the rage quitters are blocked from jumping into a new game immediately.

 

[fix-the-spade]

There's a difference though. DS3 has people getting banned because cheating jackasses jump into their games, drop a bunch of modded gear off, then leave. That changes the data in the game to indicate the save file has non-standard gear in it. That's where the mistake is coming from.
Conversely: Overwatch is simply a shooter. I don't believe there's anything a cheater can do in a competitive shooter that would make it seem like someone else was cheating when they weren't.

In Dark souls they don't even have to leave anything behind. They can drop in, attack you and the effects of the non-standard attacks are enough to corrupt your stats.

Speaking of which, the method of using corrupted stats to corrupt another players stats does in fact work in most online games, not just Dark Souls.

If your game applies a non-standard effect to a certain item or attack, you can spread that effect onto other players by using it on them. This is actually a pretty common problem in Battlefield, where a player with a hacked one hit kill assault rifle can make other players get flagged by FairFight because in theory that should be impossible and it alters the victim's stats as well the perpetrator. FairFight tracks a lot of other stuff though, so it tends to not kick players on the receiving end.

We'll see what Blizzard's stat tracking and anti-cheat is like. They're either going to mostly succeed or fail horribly as thousands of players get banned for no reason.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Personally I like the way that LoL handles things. Leave a game early: you're unable to join up with any other game other than the one you just left. This way people that disconnect don't get punished. Don't want to play the game you just left? Well you can't play a new game until 15 minutes (I think that's how long it was) after the game you quit has finished.

Overwatch kinda does that, at least if you disconnect, it does.

I got logged out for some dumb reason several times during the beta, and I had to re-start the game, and each time I did, I got put back in the same match that I was previously in.

 

[loyalcitizen]

So brave!
Way to take a stance on this controversial topic. So surprised to hear that a video game company doesn't want people to cheat.

Maybe learn to code better. Maybe don't put any game info on the client side.

 

[K12]

Personally I'd prefer long term but temporary bans to completely permanent bans. There's going to be a few people who get banned due to an error of some kind and as long as they get a decent opportunity to appeal I'm basically fine with this.

 

[MeatMachine]

Considering that Team Fortress 2 is my favorite game, and is being devoured alive by swaths of cheating assholes even after Valve claimed to have finally tuned-up their VAC bans, I'm okay with permabanning people found guilty of cheating - at least in principle.

Whether cheaters are automatically detected or manually reported, though, there are still numerous ways people can get unfairly labelled cheaters. I'd like to hear a detailed approach about how Blizzard would handle appeals before I approve of permabanning, but if someone is guilty beyond any doubt, fuck 'em - into the trash they go.

 

[FillerDmon]

.... it was just fun enough that I'll consider myself willing to trust that they know what they were doing, but I better not get flagged for any false positive shit. Still waiting until I know the dust has settled before I risk Dark Souls 3, even though I'm salivating at the chance to play it.

 

[RaikuFA]

Yet I guarantee harassers will not have anything done to them.

Actually they addressed at least a partial solution to this way back during one of the closed betas. You can rank certain players and not be put in matches with them anymore or something to that effect.

Whether or not toxic players are actually banned or just have a long wait time for matches is something I'm less sure about.

On consoles they most likely won't.

 

[Denamic]

spawn camping is uncool

Spawn camping also puts you in a disadvantage. It should punish itself, as you have to spend a lot of time running after you die when the people you're camping respawn like 3 steps away. If you can't break a spawn camping team, you definitely can't win anyway.

 

[Phasmal]

Well that's good, I hope they're thorough about it. I also hope that people don't abuse the fuck out of this and just report anyone who beats them a lot. I know quite a few people who get accused of HAX all the time but are just pretty good at the game.

But yeah, cheating is a no-no. Makes the game less fun for everyone.

 

[Zhukov]

I personally want them to ease off on the quitter penalties, or put in a sort of system to measure the latency at the time of quitting
I got hit with a -75% XP penalty for quitting even though I did it because I was getting unbearable lag spikes

admittedly I solved it by getting the PC version
but I want games for my PS4, you see

When its a full team both sides, quitting should be punished.

Why?

It's not a MOBA where if someone quits you're down a man for the rest of the game. People can join mid game. During the beta whenever someone quit they were usually replaced within a minute.

If I decide I'm done playing on a team of useless chucklefucks or rude manchildren then surely they're better off with a new player who wants to be there rather than my surly arse. Besides, if I'm forced to finish the game then the quickest way for me to make that happen is to cause my own team to lose. Pick a healer then just run around in circles. Pick a large character and stand in the faces of my teammates so they can't aim. If the enemy has a DVa play Roadhog and pull her exploding mech into my team every time she ults. I'm sure I could think of more ways to make it happen.

I actually had one game where someone called me useless for playing Tracer. For the next four rounds I picked Mei and continuously got him killed with maliciously placed ice walls/blocks until he quit.

 

[Saelune]

I personally want them to ease off on the quitter penalties, or put in a sort of system to measure the latency at the time of quitting
I got hit with a -75% XP penalty for quitting even though I did it because I was getting unbearable lag spikes

admittedly I solved it by getting the PC version
but I want games for my PS4, you see

When its a full team both sides, quitting should be punished.

Why?

It's not a MOBA where if someone quits you're down a man for the rest of the game. People can join mid game. During the beta whenever someone quit they were usually replaced within a minute.

If I decide I'm done playing on a team of useless chucklefucks or rude manchildren then surely they're better off with a new player who wants to be there rather than my surly arse. Besides, if I'm forced to finish the game then the quickest way for me to make that happen is to cause my own team to lose. Pick a healer then just run around in circles. Pick a large character and stand in the faces of my teammates so they can't aim. If the enemy has a DVa play Roadhog and pull her exploding mech into my team every time she ults. I'm sure I could think of more ways to make it happen.

I actually had one game where someone called me useless for playing Tracer. For the next four rounds I picked Mei and continuously got him killed with maliciously placed ice walls/blocks until he quit.

I'm speaking generally. I haven't played a lot of Overwatch to speak more specifically, though it sounds like you're the rude player here, so you're not getting much sympathy from me.

 

[Zhukov]

I'm speaking generally. I haven't played a lot of Overwatch to speak more specifically, though it sounds like you're the rude player here, so you're not getting much sympathy from me.

I'm not asking for sympathy.

If I'm a rude player then surely its in the best interests of my poor teammates if I am allowed to leave without consequence rather than be given a reason to stick around and be rude.

 

[Saelune]

I'm speaking generally. I haven't played a lot of Overwatch to speak more specifically, though it sounds like you're the rude player here, so you're not getting much sympathy from me.

I'm not asking for sympathy.

If I'm a rude player then surely its in the best interests of my poor teammates if I am allowed to leave without consequence rather than be given a reason to stick around and be rude.

Well, I would rather you either leave and get punished, or stay and not try to ruin my experience playing the game.