Status of "Cheat" Mods

[chrstgtr]

16 minutes ago, Atrik said:

But (obviously) it's nothing as good as just making every player mods visible in the game room.

No matter how many times you say this doesn’t make it right. 
 

Players should be allowed to chose who they play with and what advantages (mods) their opponents have access to. If you are cheating I (and others) don’t want to play with you. The end. If you openly cheat, I don’t want to play with you. If you secretly cheat, I don’t want to play with you.

@Dunedan’s proposal is aimed at letting players decide what mods their opponents have access to. Your insistence on weakening that just further suggests that you somehow believe your wants are more important than the desires of anyone you play with. It doesn’t work that way. Multiplayer games are meant for everyone’s enjoyment—not only yours. 

[guerringuerrin]

33 minutes ago, Atrik said:

If it's an option, it can be nice. But (obviously) it's nothing as good as just making every player mods visible in the game room.

This would be nice to incorporate, although it does not prevent encapsulating code within another mod

 

28 minutes ago, Atrik said:

 I think there never was a single threat about this mod saying something relatable beside "cheat cheat". Even when talking about introducing features, it's about preventing cheats, and the suggestions are totally biased toward preventing mods, not cheats.

This statement is a unfair, considering the lengthy arguments I've and others gave about this mod in the past, not appealing to simplifications like saying it's a cheat and that's it, but delving into the automations it carries out and whether those automations are fair or not in a competitive game and/or if they should be part of the vanilla game and why.

 

38 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Because we love so much to throw cheat every sentence to look very smart, the debate will hardly evolve around more useful matters.

In the same sense as the previous paragraph I would say that it is important for all of us to review how much willingness we have put into having a constructive debate on this matter...

[Gurken Khan]

41 minutes ago, Atrik said:

this feature would be to disallow (a) mod

If I understand it correctly there's a signed version and an unsigned; so it would disallow the secret use of one variant and not disallow the mod in general.

It's hard for me to believe you don't see the difference, and that you don't understand that people don't want to play against players who are secretly using scripts and whatnot.

[Dunedan]

40 minutes ago, Atrik said:

If it's an option, it can be nice. But (obviously) it's nothing as good as just making every player mods visible in the game room.

How would you ensure the names of the mods shown would be legit?

41 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Even if you consider adding some stuff like checksums I don't think  cheats wouldn't find their way through it, easily since it's an even an open source game. So again, this feature would be to disallow (a) mod, not prevent cheats.

It wouldn't prevent cheats, but would make them less trivial if you need to recompile the game to make them work, instead of dropping a bit of JavaScript in a directory.

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'd be throwing the ban hammer like Thor in Ragnarok if I had the power.

Please report players cheating by using mods or other means. Without reports there is little we can do.

[ShadowOfHassen]

You know, we could just put a kernel level anticheat... Maybe that'd help...

[Atrik]

30 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

@Dunedan’s proposal is aimed at letting players decide what mods their opponents have access to. Your insistence on weakening that just further suggests that you somehow believe your wants are more important than the desires of anyone you play with. It doesn’t work that way. Multiplayer games are meant for everyone’s enjoyment—not only yours. 

I only wish for him to correct me but his proposal suggest a single checkbox "all or nothing" the disallow unsigned mod. So no my suggestions isn't weakening it, as host, and every player, can review each others mods.

16 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

55 minutes ago, Atrik said:

If it's an option, it can be nice. But (obviously) it's nothing as good as just making every player mods visible in the game room.

This would be nice to incorporate, although it does not prevent encapsulating code within another mod

Indeed it won't, but I didn't pretend it would. It would be just be better in my opinion for all player to be able to see each others mod rather then having a supposedly official enforcement option that would be hated, by maybe ~50% of players I play with regularly since AFAIK they use 1 or more unsigned mods.

9 minutes ago, Dunedan said:

Please report players cheating by using mods or other means. Without reports there is little we can do.

I would like to report myself for using progui, the most harmful cheat in 0ad, please show me the sanction you deem adapted to such infamy. Ban my account "Atrik_III"?

[Norse_Harold]

5 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

All parties in the know = not cheating

Using it secretly = cheating

This is my opinion, as well.

 

7 hours ago, Dunedan said:

It isn't? Undisplayed mods wouldn't work that way either, unless the player uses a recompiled version of 0ad, which is a much higher hurdle than just installing a mod.

I agree with this.

5 hours ago, Dunedan said:

I created an issue to add an option to only allow signed mods: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/7166

I don't think that this would solve the problem. WFG isn't signing mods frequently enough to satisfy the userbase, and probably never will. Many users choose to use unsigned mods, even in ranked games. I guess that your proposal is an attempt to minimize the effort for attempting to solve the problem. I think that it would not actually solve the problem, though.

I think that it would be better to put the effort in to adding a feature that shows all players the mods in use by all players in the match. It would also be useful to add a feature that allows the hoster to define two lists: a list of required mods, and a list of optional mods, and to enable a setting that blocks users from joining unless they have mods consistent with those lists. I think that this is the most that we can do to resolve this conflict short of using a kernel-level anti-cheat system.

Edited 10 hours ago by Norse_Harold

[real_tabasco_sauce]

The option to allow or disallow unsigned mods on the host side seems like a good idea. It can allow more casual hosts that don't feel strongly about the use of this mod to let players use it, and allows hosts that want a level playing field to disallow this mod.

Secondly, the argument that "there are other cheats, therefore a cheat mod isn't bad" is not valid. From what I've seen from the gaming industry as a whole, anti-cheat is as much about making it harder to cheat vs. actually stopping cheating.

Lastly, just because this cheat mod improves the experience for a select few players, doesn't mean it's features should be added to the game as a means to level the playing field. We shouldn't completely rework the GUI and gameplay style of 0ad just because a select few players want high-level automation.

Edited 10 hours ago by real_tabasco_sauce

[real_tabasco_sauce]

30 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

I think that it would be better to put the effort in to adding a feature that shows all players the mods in use by all players in the match. It would also be useful to add a feature that allows the hoster to define two lists: a list of required mods, and a list of optional mods, and to enable a setting that blocks users from joining unless they have mods consistent with those lists. I think that this is the most that we can do to resolve this conflict short of using a kernel-level anti-cheat system.

So this would be like the host is signing what mods can be used vs letting this be determined by what mods are signed by WFG. I suppose its good too, but it might not be user friendly. Should @Dunedan's idea constitute a 'competetive mode' with higher standards for fairness, I think it would be more intuitive. Its easier for hosts to simply select or deselect a button than to manage lists of mods, especially when they might not be aware of the mods players are using.

I think the default setting should be off tho.

Edited 10 hours ago by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

6 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Using it secretly = cheating

There is a grey area where the majority of people know about the mod in a given host, no one mentions it, and the mod user(s) ignore players when it gets brought up. The status quo is unfortunately that clean users need to ask mod users to stop instead of mod users asking if they can be allowed to use the mod. 

I'm not clued in to the signing/compatibility checks situation, but we need some setup where the onus is on the mod user to make sure everyone in the host is ok with the mod. The mod does not have to be banned to solve the issue of player discontentment like that of @RangerK.

There is absolutely an advantage of using progui's autotrainer compared to basic autoqueue, I'm tired of this fact being denied. It is good that autoqueue is unoptimized for the sake of the game, automatic features should always perform worse than direct player management. Quickstart and autotrainer both break this rule of thumb by providing automation that outpaces even the best 0ad players' direct management, all without even a thought. 

I think quite a few high level players aren't interested in disturbing cheaters unless they are beaten by it. Some of this is due to players being unaware of the amount of production building idle time they have when they play (more than you think). I think there are statistics that could be shown on the summary table that would reveal the magnitude of the progui advantage.

 

[Stan`]

37 minutes ago, Norse_Harold said:

I think that it would be better to put the effort in to adding a feature that shows all players the mods in use by all players in the match. It would also be useful to add a feature that allows the hoster to define two lists: a list of required mods, and a list of optional mods, and to enable a setting that blocks users from joining unless they have mods consistent with those lists. I think that this is the most that we can do to resolve this conflict short of using a kernel-level anti-cheat system.

I'm not sure you have access to user mods right now (I suppose guest have access to the host's mods though).

My issue with just listing mods is you are basically just listing names. So I can make an autociv named mod with the progui features and it will go under the radar.

The good thing with Dunedan's approach is that one can rely on zip signatures which are harder to craft. With mod names, you mod can be a zip, a list of files in a folder, with or without mod.json and it's gonna be pretty hard to compare them between users. And if you can't compare them, you're just in a slightly better place than right now, but you have almost no extra guarantee.

Agreed on the signing times @Itms and I can take a while. And as mentioned on the autociv thread, not all mods are eligible.

8 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

There is absolutely an advantage of using progui's autotrainer compared to basic autoqueue, I'm tired of this fact being denied. It is good that autoqueue is unoptimized for the sake of the game, automatic features should always perform worse than direct player management. Quickstart and autotrainer both break this rule of thumb by providing automation that outpaces even the best 0ad players' direct management, all without even a thought. 

I'd be against porting all of them to the main game, but I think some features in autociv are great, like the hotkeys. Our hotkey situation is bare, to say the least.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

10 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I'd be against porting all of them to the main game, but I think some features in autociv are great, like the hotkeys. Our hotkey situation is bare, to say the least.

Yea those things I talked about as far as I know are just in progui (quickstart and autotrainer), which is what the calamity is about. The autociv hotkeys still require the player to execute every action. 

I think for adding things from autociv we probably want to focus on things that provide a useful quality of life enhancement but also avoiding anything that accomplishes multiple tasks in one action (macros).

Edited 10 hours ago by BreakfastBurrito_007

[ffm2]

8 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

8 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

We can argue whether this is cheating or not

All parties in the know = not cheating

Using it secretly = cheating

Is it that complicated?

The current state of the multiplayer lobby just shows that this is not the case. Players just download proGui through mod.io and just use it. Even Atrik just assumes everyone knows by now that he is using it. One day Chrstgtr tells him he should not do it in his games, next game he does it again.

When I or RangerK return to this game after a break and join a 4vs4 game no ProGUI user tell them that he automates unit commands and unit production beyond human capabilities. Instead some even tell it is just a GUI.

4 hours ago, Dunedan said:

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I'd be throwing the ban hammer like Thor in Ragnarok if I had the power.

Please report players cheating by using mods or other means. Without reports there is little we can do.

If some official sign were there, like a mod ban Atrik for a day or at least say that
-proGUI's autotrainer
-proGUI's quickstart
is considered officially as a cheat in regular use (not announced).

But we have this situation where the proGUI users just use it like great mods like autociv and feldmap. And then users tell in lengthy discussions about how it is ok and not a cheat.

Can we have a adult jumping in saying:
-The autotrainer of vanilla is intended to work that way (turning of if there's no res., don't automate adjusted batches), for this alpha
-Don't give units commands via makros / mods etc.

If you like the vertical panel or what that's ok for me. Maybe split it up in 3 mods and have one of them signed or accepted by the community.

One can automate everything away, but then it is a different game. Afaik DotA focused their game to play just playing the hero of Warcraft 3. That's ok. But you can't automate things away and play with the others that still do another part of the game in a way they never can reach you.

People will still cheat, but we can end this "is considered by some" discussion. Even if the advantage were small or however it is downplayed. Or start a poll before or something.

[Gurken Khan]

3 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

There is a grey area where the majority of people know about the mod in a given host, no one mentions it, and the mod user(s) ignore players when it gets brought up

10 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

Using it secretly = cheating

 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

17 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

 

I guess you see it as a black and white issue. I promise you its not, most players disapprove of cheating with progui but don't work together to exclude it from games, that still makes it cheating. It only takes one person to offend but it takes the near unanimous and timely agreement of multiple players to actually stop it. Most players don't want to "disturb the peace" to argue that a player should should be disallowed from using cheats, which starts heated arguments and delays the game. Instead the conversation online should be about whether to allow it when someone asks to use it.

[AInur]

Most of the cheats that you discuss exist in the form of a mod. Here is a potential solution: the clients synchronize all mod files from the host during the gamesetup process, regardless of whether the client has the same mods or not. All clients and the host will expose their mods folder to each other for synchronization over network, while players are chatting or waiting for the game to start. The advantages of my solution are:

1. All cheat edits of signed legitimate mods will be overwritten instantly.

2. Players don't need to restart the game or go through the hassle to download mods in order to join a particular host.

3. Less likely for OOS errors.