UWE, do you just not care?
deathmonger
Join Date: 2012-07-06 Member: 153953Members
Join Date: 2012-07-06 Member: 153953Members
Just an honest question, so don't get mad. It's okay to say you only care about sales and I'll be on my way. If you do care then I would like to see an honest attempt at fixing the trolling/exploiting/hacking issue. I created a thread for server owners to share the player IDs of trolls and it gets locked down. So how are we supposed to keep the community strong when you don't give server owners a place to share such information? I'm not sure if you've noticed or not, but your gaming base isn't exactly big. People get pretty discouraged when there are these packs of trolls just server hopping and giving them a bad impression of the game and the community.
It's easy to say that this is a server owner's problem, but in reality it isn't. I'll ban them when I can and if worst comes to worst I'll just cancel the monthly subscription without losing any sleep over it. Do you see how this can snowball now? All I'm asking for is a place where you actually let server owners talk about these things and share this information. I don't feel like I'm asking for much here. We can police ourselves if you give us the means to do that more effectively.
It's easy to say that this is a server owner's problem, but in reality it isn't. I'll ban them when I can and if worst comes to worst I'll just cancel the monthly subscription without losing any sleep over it. Do you see how this can snowball now? All I'm asking for is a place where you actually let server owners talk about these things and share this information. I don't feel like I'm asking for much here. We can police ourselves if you give us the means to do that more effectively.
Comments
I would if I could get a promise from the moderators that a thread linking to such a group wouldn't get locked.
It's a server owner's choice whether they believe what is posted. I obviously would not believe something posted by just anyone, but if it's from a reputable source then I see no issue.
Playing the victim is fun.
"Please report all instances of hacking that you believe to the Hack Report section of the iCCup forums with attached replay and why you believe this player was hacking. An admin will review the case and make a judgment based on the evidence given. The more obvious or thorough the evidence, the more likely a player will be banned!"
Discussing hacks also teach people to distinguish real hackers from good players, while censoring information on hackers just allow for suspicion, myths and ignorance.
you mean commander recycling all of the buildings?
that's literally the only thing i've seen which constitutes trolling, and 'oh noes' you can start a new round 15 seconds later.
i've played plenty of TF2 where a bunch of players call themselves 'pacifist' and walk around carrying a dumb picket sign and dropping sandviches i.e. dead weight trolls. it ruins the game for both sides, how can 'ruining the game' be worse one game to another?
They hop in the hive/chair and immediately start spamming mist/medpacks/etc to waste all of the team res. They recycle the RT and burst all of the cysts. So there is no recovery from this. You said you can start another round in 15 seconds, which is true, but then they hop right back in again and there is nothing you can do fast enough to stop them. They're constantly switching names so it's harder to grasp who is even doing it at first. Name another game where a troll can literally make the game unplayable.
This would solve the early game troll recycling everything...but still allow you to recycle that second base.
I do agree that something needs to be done to sort out the trolls...especially as its not that hard to do.
L4D
Some people are dicks. Deal with it. Just change the server. You wont find a mechanic that makes grieving impossible. All you can do is frustrate the normal players and dump the game down with unneeded rules about recycling.
Seriously, everything you do to counter a troll will have 2 effects:
Accept, that it is not possible to stop someone trolling by game mechanics you will only destroy the game this way.
Find another server, or get the steam id of the troll and contact the admin of your server, so he can ban them.
I also have only encountered trolls 2 times in my 600 hours of NS2 and a server change fixed this problem every-time.
So much truth there it hurts, votekick was the best/worst function to ever get added to that game, I still remember being kicked out of 10 games straight and uninstalling the game straight afterwards.
That and comp scene consisted of which sprint line was the fastest and random tank spawns.
All of those are good points, but all I'm asking for us a place to openly share the Steam IDs of known trolls so the community (of server owners) can ban them en masse.
An excellent idea! You should seize the initiative and create such a place.
This is a really bad idea. I'm banned from several server clusters (not rookie friendly, mind you) for having too high of a k/d. Does this make me a troll or a cheater? This may be #firstworldproblems but its very difficult to find a good server as it is, if you can play well. I see disgruntled admins trying to get people banned for personal reasons and that's a really bad thing.
I play nightly and I have only seen a single troll in my 750 hours of NS2 - it was just the other night and he was some reddit troll going by the name Jason. I'd say 1 round out of 750 hours isn't too shabby. UWE is only responsible to provide the tools to remove abusing players, that's it. Your thread title is ridiculous.
You must play on only a single server with an active admin, then. I've played nearly 500 hours, and have been trolled dozens upon dozens of times. Yesterday was especially problematic, as a pack of trolls were running from one server to the next. Since there are aren't that many servers with decent pings and active players on them, it was really hard to avoid them.
These particular trolls are insidious, and are more than happy lingering around the game for a long time, waiting for the game to advance to a point (10+ minutes) where everyone has become invested in the outcome. This happened to me on ns_veil yesterday. We had two hives locked down (cargo and pipeline), as well as nanogrid, and aliens were scrambling to try and reclaim something. The game was nearing the 10 minute mark, and the aliens figured the best bet would be an all-in rush on control. So everyone came to base for defense, and I had to jump out of the comm chair to help when the numbers were getting low. That's when the troll stepped into the chair, recycled literally everything except the observatory, spammed a massive number of scans, and then spent the next few minutes chattering like an imbecile over voice chat. This guy was 0-6, and was present for almost the entire game up to that point.
The game was of course ruined. I left the server out of disgust, and just played HoTS for the next few hours. I haven't gone back to play NS2 yet. At this point, I think I'll just keep playing HoTS since it's single player and there's no chance of some fcking troll interfering with my game.
Well, you should have picked better servers to play on. I've played on all kinds and had plenty of high K:D ratios without anyone threatening to ban me. The server owner is free to do whatever they want. I can admit that the cheating/exploiting is a touchy issue as I don't know that I've personally ever seen anyone do it. Sometimes I have seen some things that might have been an alien skin exploit, but I can't prove it so I don't worry it about so much. Trolling is another matter entirely. It's very easy to prove that someone was trolling, so I don't see any reason why we couldn't have a list like that on these forums. Again, it's the server owner's decision whether they find the source credible or not. For instance, I've played with ScardyBob several times and I trust his judgement, so if he says a person was trolling then his word is good enough for me. If you told me the same thing then I'm not going to do anything about it unless I see some solid proof, such as a game recording that shows the action as well as you going into console and getting his Steam ID. That's just how I would do it anyway.
The thread title is ridiculous because that's the way to grab people's attention around here. If this list has to be taken to a 3rd party source so I guess so be it, but I would like to know that I'm at least allowed to direct server owner's towards this list without getting my thread locked down. What's the point in creating such a list if nobody is going to know where to go to view it?
The solution could be as simple as no recycling unless you have another IP at another tech point.
Or no recycling in the tech point the comm is in (so he has to relocate himself before he can recycle starting base).
Would require change but mot remove the strats.
Now you will have trolls that just spam Medpacks in the base until the starting t-res are all gone. This is even worse, because the game does not end fast this way. No. This time the troll gets ejected and the game ends 20 minutes after this, because the marines never got back from this res disadvantage.
You could write walls of text to tweak the game mechanics for every possible situation of grieve. Here you sacrifice 15 t-res to the trolls. There you will sacrifice options the com has and the troll will easily come up with another thing to ruin your game. You simply can't win this battle. Just see, that it is futile. Find another server, or contact an admin for a ban. That are the best options when weighting costs and benefits.
Just curious because I've tried joining several servers and I just get a kicked message. Not sure if this is a function of reserved slots or banning or what...
That's probably due to reserved slots.
Just says kicked, but more than likely you're running into reserved slot servers.
The only way I can think of to handle this is to have a system like league of legends where there's matchmaking, and you can report players to a committee or something, but with a community as small as NS2 I don't think that's exactly practical.
A wall of text is not needed...just some consideration of how to minimise trolls impact.
Comm recylcing the main (and only) base why? we have concede votes now so it should not be needed.
This just simply allows trolls a way to destroy and end a game.
The change to a relocation is minor and not that much of a change to the strat.
It does not take options away from a comm but rather add a minor hurdle (that you actually have another base set up before you recycle your existing...not exactly a bad idea for the comm to begin with.
We need to recognise that this behaviour turns a lot of people off the game and try to minimise it.
Having everything recycled and then have med spam is worst than just med spam (as you can still spawn and struggle on).
We dont see alien trolls khamms as often...the reason is that simply spending res does not end the game and screw everyone over to the same extent.
Sure its a disadvantage but you could still choose to play on...this is not possible if they recycle everything and then spend res.
This has been an issue for a long time even back in NS...but now marines are encouraged to have 2 tech points the old relocations of NS are not around (also due to fixed locations).
Its about time we as a community brainstormed a way to fix it....simply relying on admins has not stopped it happening in the past and wont now.
We can find way to severly limit the impact of trolls...the lack of recycling on the alien side is an illustration of one such measure that could be adapted for marines (ie limit when recycling can happen.
@ritualsacrifice No one should be above reproach....I dont care how well known they are.
I have seen well known and respected players fall from grace...not looking at someone due to the fact its simply them is wrong.
Forums though are not the place to voice claims of hacking, though wish Valve would release names or steamid of people they ban every few months.