[Anti-SG Hacking Suggestion]

I have been saying the same exact thing for far to long.

 

Yes

 

What Solstice is suggesting makes perfect sense.

People who exploit the economy, face the charges for doing so: Perma ban.

Often times, we see players saying "Oh, I didn't know it was against the rules". However, there are pretty much no servers that actually allow hacking. Many of these SG hacks come with other utilities as well, such as X-Ray. X-Ray is as close to an exploit as it gets. I recently saw a ban appeal for a player using X-Ray, and he admitted to getting 30k/hr with a max fort pick. This is basically adding money into the economy, similar with other problems we have had in the past.

+1

 

I would love to hear some staff opinions on this. The way i see it, I honestly cannot see why this isn't already happening. So, please, either enlighten me or tell me that I'm not going crazy.

 

+1 Yes, please!

 

+1 lately(not saying any names) there have been lots of players banned or complaints on people for hacking, this would remove a lot of hackers. But 1 problem. After a few complaints go out what if they store their $ in a sign? Or buy a star tool so they wouldn't have much in their bal?+1 but some minor tweaks

 

+1

I wholeheartedly agree.

 

This makes perfect sense as this is exploiting the servers economy. +1!

 

And if they somehow are falsely accused of hacking? They would be perm banned...

 

@nicit6

 

This rarely happens, and PermaBans are decided by Andrew himself -- the odds of you actually facing punishment for hacking are really, really low if you don't hack.

DeMacca, I don't see why you tagged me here, but nevertheless I'll contribute that I do like the idea.

 

well i think this is a good idea it will teach hackers not to hack

 

Ok, so my thoughts on this are:

The initial suggestion was for 'Forcing a balance reset would bring the punishment back in line with why people hack in SG to begin with.' Balance resets aren't an ideal punishment as it is very easy to 'hide/launder' money to the point that it is hard for staff to track. Through the use of signs, chest, giving money to friends etc it is fairly simple for players to keep their balance at or near $0 - rendering a balance reset pointless. You could argue that caught hackers are made to account for the profit they made via negative balances. That has been brought up plenty of times before as potential punishments and has never been implemented, for good reasons might I add.

@Iticip then brought up PermaBans. The argument used is that hacking in SG is 'exploiting the economy'. The rules on economy exploits currently are:

Clause 3.2 - Economy Exploits

• Any user caught severely exploiting the economy in any way without reporting the glitch or bug will be severely punished.
• Exploiting the economy is any action that results in an unfair economical advantage to a single user or group of users, by means of a glitch, exploit or bug.

So at the moment only an action 'by means of a glitch, exploit or bug' are considered under this rule. Does 'exploit' include hacked clients? I don't think it does. In this sense, 'exploit' is referring to situations like the glass pane incident. If it was intending to include hacked clients, the rules would make specific reference to them. Similarly, the use of hacked clients is already addressed in Section 6, Clause 1. So, using hacked clients doesn't fall within the ambit of Clause 3.2, which answers @alpert3925's question about why PermaBans aren't currently being given out - The rules don't allow it. Clause 1 which addresses hacked clients just specifies that the offender will be banned

So the next question is, should the use of hacked clients in SG be considered an economy exploit worthy of a permaban? There are a few reasons why I think Permabans shouldn't beused in this situation.

1. Firstly, Clause 3.2 states bans with no appeal are only for 'severely exploiting the economy' (underlined above). 'Severe' economic exploits are ones which are capable to bringing the economy to its knees, something which would require millions+ ECD. Hacking in SG doesn't even come close to this level of severity and relatively speaking is quite minor. I appreciate that you can make a nice amount of money, but it isn't on the same scale as the actions Clause 3.2 deals with and which warrant a PermaBan.
2. Secondly, PermaBans are for Andrew to give out; No other staff member can. I get the impression that the community are already disgruntled at times with how long hacking complaints can take to be handled. Introducing PermaBans, thus requiring Andrew's judgement, will only slow down the whole process even more.

I personally don't think that PermaBans are desired in this situation, they are a disproportionate punishment for using a hacked client in my opinion. Similarly, giving out PermaBans too frequently would have a negative effect on the size of our player base. They are the most severe punishment, and should be reserved for the most severe/repeated offenders.
________

tl;dr
No to PermaBans:
(1) Hacking in SG isn't severe enough to warrant the tag 'exploiting the economy'
(2) Would require Andrew's judgement and slow down the handling of complaints.

 

In absolutely no way do I believe a perma ban is the solution. Also, I agree thy it isn't severe enough to give it an exploring the economy tag. Just because it isn't exiting the economy doesn't conclude that we can't wipe their balance.Also, you said that we couldn't do it because it is against the rules. It's not like we can't change the rules. We do it all the time. Now, as for the last point, that is where I disagree. We could all go back and forth about what Andrew can as can't do, but ultimately it is up to him.

I am going to ask 2 questions and I would love to hear a response as your first one was fantastic.

1) What is wrong with handling hacking complaints the same way, then once convicted of hacking, you are banned until Andrew (or anyone else with this power, I would assume only Andrew.) gets some spare time and can clear their bal/vault, everything. Just like he did to Zecrux.

The only downfall I see with this is it could take some time for Andrew to conduct the wipes. Making blatant cheaters wait a little longer isn't a bad thing in my opinion.

2) Do you think that the current way we are handling hacking complaints is a good way to do it, if not then what do you suggest we do?

Sorry for any spelling errors typing this on my phone

 

I only said that in response to you asking:

I was just summing up the current situation and saying that it doesn't happen now because the rules don't allow it to. I didn't mean to suggest that we couldn't change the rules. I intended to say that it would require a change of rules in order for it to happen.

For me, there are issues with conducting wipes. The 'lowest-level' wipe would be a simple balance wipe, however this likely to often be ineffective. If someone is able to install a hacked client, then they are likely to have the intelligence to put their money into signs/give it to friends/buy items and put in chests etc. As wiping a balance is something that [likely] only Andrew would have the power to do, it seems a bit of a waste of his time to review evidence of hacking to then only wipe a minimal balance.

So then in order to make a 'wipe' more effective, it then requires to look for chests/signs/evidence of giving the money to another account. To start wiping possessions is a seriously significant punishment and I don't think a proportional response for dealing with people who use hacked clients. Also, how much do you wipe? Is it everything? Then the punishment loses all effectiveness after it has happened once. Someone who has had all of their possessions wiped then appeals the ban has no incentive to not hack again. There is nothing left for them to 'protect'. Allowing wipes of this nature in anything other than extreme circumstances (and left completely to Andrew's discretion) is just opening a can of worms and a whole range of issues. Not to mention that generally speaking we want to attract and keep players on the server. Giving out disproportionate punishments like this would just put people off the server. It is one thing to play tough against hackers by banning then, but its completely different to cripple them at the knees and wipe out potentially years of playing.

As you highlighted, Andrew has done similar in the past with users. So in extreme circumstances Andrew does get involved. This shouldn't happen in anything less than extreme circumstances though.

My view on this is that they are extremely complicated complaints that need to be handled by very knowledgable/experienced Staff. It is not as simple as just saying that senior staff can handle them, because quite frankly the majority of us don't have anywhere near the required level of knowledge. I would rather they were handled correctly over a slightly longer period of time than rushed and the wrong decisions were made.

I also think that often the complaints are very hard to handle. So many of them include a short video where the complainant says something like 'I got this short video, sorry about the poor quality, it may show hacking but it may not'. Bad quality, short, one-off videos are unlikely to show solid enough evidence of hacking to be certain.

In this regard, the player base can their part to help out by submitting complaints with plenty of good quality evidence.

 

In fact i believe that hackers of all kind , be it x ray hackers or force field hackers should all be PERMA BANNED. In many servers i play in the past, hackers are not easily let off the hook. Why? because once they are so easily forgiven and only given a temp ban , they would re download the hacks and all the problems come back in. I therefore would recommend a perma ban until 1-2 months later where the player will be allowed to do a unban application.

+1

 

In absolutely no situation do I think Andrew should be handling hacking complaints.

I think you misunderstood what I had said. I meant that Kuke and Unknown continue to review the complaints as they are now. If/When someone is banned for hacking, that is when Andrew would get involved regarding the wipes.

I agree, but it takes no more than 5 seconds to check someones balance. If they have any significant amount of money (Up to whoever has the power to make that decision) then it could be wiped. If its a few hundred or so then, yes, it would be a waste of time.

Putting money into signs is logged and can be tracked and then removed.

Paying money to friends I find unlikely to happen. That friend could just keep the money. What is the hacker going to do, file a complaint saying "I knew my balance was going to be wiped so i payed all my money to Bob1234 and now he won't give it back"


We could go back and forth about this all day and night. At the end of the day, as Andrew has said hundreds of times EVERYTHING is logged, and if we really want to we could find their money, their chests, and their signs, and wipe them.

The way I see it, it comes down to whether or not Andrew has the time (and is willing) to do all this, or trusts other staff to do it for him.

Repeat offenders are an entire different scenario. I am going to stay on the topic of the suggestion instead of writing about this.

So is it only extreme when the entire server is breaking rules by posting on complaints and non stop slandering in global chat and on the forums? I specifically remember a Moderator had to go into Alert and tell everyone to stop because it was so out of control. Having another situation like that isn't something anybody wants.

Obviously I am twisting your words here a little bit, but my point still stands that doing these wipes would scare of some hackers.

I completely agree. I never said that anyone other than Kuke and Unknown should be handling the complaints.

I am not really sure what you mean by this. If there isn't enough evidence to convict them of hacking then no punishment would even be considered.

In no way am I suggesting that the way hackers are convicted should be changed. The thing I want to be done is their punishment.


I am going to reword my second question as it appears you didn't understand what I was asking.

Do you think that the current punishment for convicted hackers is useful to prevent them from hacking again? If not, and you don't agree with the wipes, what do you suggest we do?


I would also like to thank you for both responses as it also got me thinking about what should be done. Additionally, I urge more people to post here to get more of a perspective on where the community stands.

 

Sorry I took your second question to be asking about my opinion on how the process of handling complaints, rather than the outcome/punishments.

I didn't necessarily mean just friends. I was thinking more broadly about transferring it to another account or alt account etc.

It may be possible to track this, but I think your last line sums up the situation well. Only Andrew and a handful of others have access to the logs. To do this for all victims of hacking would require a considerable amount of time to dive into the logs. Bearing in mind that the people who have access to the logs are also the most busy members of Staff, I don't see this as a viable option. I noticed in another suggestion you mentioned andrew/revan running capture the flag type events, there simply isn't enough time for senior Staff/andrew to do everything that is suggested they do in this suggestion forums.

I also still stand by what I said in my post above. Even if this is possible (to search for and wipe money/chests etc), I don't think this is an avenue we want to be going down. I still believe it is a disproportionate punishment for hacking to have potentially years of items wiped out.

 

I completely agree. Personally, I don't think this would be the best course if action. That being said I certainly think something needs to be done. That is why we need to figure out