Blizzard Taking a Zero-Tolerance Stance on Overwatch Cheaters

[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.

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

But I've decided I don't want to be there.

I want to quit out and start fresh with a new team. (Which I did during the beta. Many times.)

You're suggesting a system in which I am punished for leaving. Which makes me more likely to stick around and makes it so the easiest way for me to leave without punishment is to undermine my own team, or at least make zero effort, thus bringing the game to an early end.

Let me put this another way: who exactly would be helped by the implementation of a punishment for leaving?

 

[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.

But I've decided I don't want to be there.

I want to quit out and start fresh with a new team. (Which I did during the beta. Many times.)

You're suggesting a system in which I am punished for leaving. Which makes me more likely to stick around and makes it so the easiest way for me to leave without punishment is to undermine my own team, or at least make zero effort, thus bringing the game to an early end.

Let me put this another way: who exactly would be helped by the implementation of a punishment for leaving?

We're just going in circles, cause you just say "Should this happen!?" and my answer tends to be yes here.

Should also point out that what the punishment is hasn't been established, and maybe you think I'm asking for a overly severe punishment. If you think I mean a banning, no. Unless you quit like, 100 times in a row, I don't think quitting should equal a ban. But if you persist to quit a lot from full games, then you should get some form of punishment, but it may depend on the specific game.

 

[Davroth]

I predict a not minuscule number of false positives, as usual.

When did Blizzard ban false positives? This is not usual at all*

You are kidding, right? It happened in WoW at the very least.

 

[conmag9]

I've been distrustful of zero tolerance systems from the very first time I was introduced to the concept. False positives are a thing, and probably an extremely common one given an automated system. A much better idea I've seen other companies impliment is creating cheating servers to kick cheaters into. If it's a false positive, you can appeal or at the very worst just wait out a time period before returning to normal servers (with progressively longer sentences, perhaps). That way, fair players get what they want and people don't stop buying games like this for fear of buying a very expensive piece of plastic because some asshole bot can't recognize a glitch.

 

[The_Great_Galendo]

I'm a bit confused. If people get punished for quitting...isn't the obvious solution for someone who doesn't want to play anymore to just go make himself a sandwich or something and come back when the match is over? I assume they don't punish players for sucking at the game.

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

Also this. I assume collision detection and whatnot has to take place on the server anyway, so I don't see why any game would even give clients access to potentially exploitable information anyway. If they want to reduce cheating, why not just make cheating impossible?

 

[LetalisK]

If life is more important, then why do you care? You kind of answered your own question. I would rather be punished in a game cause I had to ensure my grandmother doesn't die cause she fell or something. Hell, my friend who is an EMT and often has to bail on a game himself gets annoyed at people leaving, since its more likely they just got mad, not cause of an emergency.

Same token. It's a game. Why do others care so much that other people are being punished because of a game? It has no real importance in real life. So why is it important that people are punished for displeasing others in a game?

Because rule utilitarianism. No system is going to get it 100% right, ever, so appealing to your personal experience of being wronged isn't going to get you anywhere. "Them's the breaks," as it were. Rather you'd need to take a generalist approach and show that the rule is broken because it is either ineffective(doesn't sufficiently curb leaving) or its margin of error is high enough that it negatively affects the game as a whole more than positively. Personally, I subscribe to the former argument. From personal experience, I haven't noticed much of a difference in quitting between games with anti-quitting measures and those without.

 

[Iceklimber]

I predict a not minuscule number of false positives, as usual.

When did Blizzard ban false positives? This is not usual at all*

You are kidding, right? It happened in WoW at the very least.

We have hooman rights accross the world, with the basic principle of *innocent until proven guilty*
You, as the prosecutor, must carry the burden of proof and follow up the accusations with sources.

As a NoLife Loser I follow what happens in WoW via official sources, fan sites, and cheating communities.
There have merely been single instances like those of a poster on such cheating community pointing out they got banned on their new account due to heavy use of VPN and suspicious mass Auction House posting, but got unbanned after an appeal because technically he did not cheat yet.

So, again: Point us to a *non minuscule number of false positives* bans that Blizzard conducted.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Honestly, fuck cheating. It has ruined a good number of online experiences for me.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Because rule utilitarianism. No system is going to get it 100% right, ever, so appealing to your personal experience of being wronged isn't going to get you anywhere. "Them's the breaks," as it were. Rather you'd need to take a generalist approach and show that the rule is broken because it is either ineffective(doesn't sufficiently curb leaving) or its margin of error is high enough that it negatively affects the game as a whole more than positively. Personally, I subscribe to the former argument. From personal experience, I haven't noticed much of a difference in quitting between games with anti-quitting measures and those without.

From your words, you take my argument as the only time this will ever happen in life.

There are others with unforeseeable situations that will occur. Something as even mundane as sitting down to a game and having a bio-break that is very necessary.

I do not care about being wronged, per se. It's happened enough in my life. It's the mindset that only one side of the inconvenienced must be address and is the only valid side. In fact, I'm taking more of a generalist approach to the situation than most others. That side is this:

"Those who paid for the experience might be unfairly inconvenienced."

In Truth, those punished for having to quit ahead of their scheduled time (as long as they aren't a rage quitter) are fairing worse than a team that he or she quit on. There's a chance that a team will get a new team mate right away. The game can possibly go on without a hitch. A person who had to quit for a valid reason (if some totalitarianist views are held) will be punished, full stop.

And on both sides... it's a game. Will it bug people who are punished for handling issues they didn't plan on? Absolutely. Will a team most likely lose a game being a team mate down? Yeah. But on the same token, it's just a game for both sides. No one is going to lose citizenship, No one is getting fired... A game. Some people lost a game and they are suddenly wanting someone to pay for such a horrendous slight? Some people must have negative points towards an xp bar that really doesn't accomplish anything? It's a game. But we are all up in arms over our experiences being sullied... so why does only one side have a justification?

Because trust me, it sucks when you can't complete a game for any reason.

I don't cheat (not even single player cheat codes), and I don't rage quit just because I'm on a losing team. It's apart of the whole experience. So for the most part, this stuff won't even apply to me most of the time. Just sits with me wrong.

 

[CaitSeith]

Honestly I would rather a strike system at least for a game just coming out because no anti cheating system is perfect and it would suck for someone to be banned who never did anything wrong. If you need a good example look at what happening in Dark Souls 3.

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.

Overwatch hasn't been released yet, so we don't know if there exists an exploit that could make it happen (very unlikely though)

 

[RJ 17]

Honestly I would rather a strike system at least for a game just coming out because no anti cheating system is perfect and it would suck for someone to be banned who never did anything wrong. If you need a good example look at what happening in Dark Souls 3.

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.

Overwatch hasn't been released yet, so we don't know if there exists an exploit that could make it happen (very unlikely though)

Furthermore - because Overwatch hasn't been released yet - no one knows what sort of anti-cheating system Blizzard will be using. All the more reason for people to not flip their shit until they see how this anti-cheat policy will be executed. If it turns out to be a crappy system that bans innocent people by the truckload, then I'll be right there handing out torches and pitchforks at the front of the line.

 

[LetalisK]

From your words, you take my argument as the only time this will ever happen in life.

Not at all. And I should clarify I didn't mean you personally. "You".

 

[BoogieManFL]

Just like on the gold farmers and botters than infested WoW for years.

 

[Lightspeaker]

On the topic of early leavers I really can't agree with the sentiment that 'leaving is bad' in this case really.

I agree with 'leaving is bad' in games like LoL or DOTA2 or ranked games of anything. These are serious commitments you're making by the very fact of starting a match. Games can take an hour or more. And there is no provision whatsoever for dropping in/dropping out gameplay in it because match inherently has progression. You can't turn around a match very easily by just being amazing if you were to join when its 60 minutes, all the rax are gone and nobody on your team has items in DOTA2. To a lesser extent if you're 14-0 in CSGO ranked and have no money its hard to turn that around if you've just joined. Which is why you can't join a match in progress for either.

In contrast, however, Overwatch matches are very short and very much in the feel of TF2. There's no overall progression in the match (such as building items in DOTA-like games). You CAN just jump in with a couple of minutes to go and make a difference if you're good enough. Team Fortress 2 had drop-in/drop-out gameplay, so when I first started playing Overwatch I regularly just dropped in and dropped out until I got a message warning about punishment. At which I was utterly baffled. Because of the systems in place Overwatch very much FEELS like a drop-in/drop-out shooter. But they've got leaving systems in place. Despite the fact that leaving means someone else can still join.

Of course, they should absolutely keep the systems in place (and, indeed, make them much tougher) for ranked. But for casual normal play? Frankly it just seems kinda confusing given the way the game is designed.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

What will stop the banned player from creating a new account? Will the bans be IP bans, or just the regular kind?

 

[deadish]

Now if they would just be as strict with WoW botting ... oh wait, those people pay a subscription, so it's financially disadvantages to perm-ban them.