ESOCommunity

Frost Bite wrote:I agree with eaglemut.. as u said @Riotcoke . i dont play ep.. cos of less players.. and this seems to be the exact reason for many of the players.
The solution is right there.. but we are just dumbs to not use it.and spend time on accusing other players of cheating.

There's basically no point of players lower than around pr30 even trying Ep, as the balance changes won't make a huge difference because they're not skilled enough to see the difference. Myself included.

Riotcoke wrote:

Frost Bite wrote:I agree with eaglemut.. as u said @Riotcoke . i dont play ep.. cos of less players.. and this seems to be the exact reason for many of the players.
The solution is right there.. but we are just dumbs to not use it.and spend time on accusing other players of cheating.

There's basically no point of players lower than around pr30 even trying Ep, as the balance changes won't make a huge difference because they're not skilled enough to see the difference. Myself included.

EP also brought a lot of QoL changes, you get to play on better maps, cheater-free, diplomacy gamemodes... it’s still much better than RE

wingman2 wrote: I just wonder why those proofs are not taken serious... There could be (for example) a community maintained list of confirmed hackers which is moderated by ESOC staff and which is used to warn the player when cheaters join their game lobby on EP. I mean, what else can we do if Microsoft fails to do it...

There is no point warning people about RE cheaters on EP, that's what EP anti-cheat is for.

@Riotcoke well.. All i want is a fair game. And i hope even conscripts want to play a fair game.. with no cheaters.. ive played in ep patch.. and the maps are good.. idc abt balancing shit. Im like you..

@wingman2 Players got more than one account, a hacker can use any of his accounts to hack.. further if you are providing a solution like using ip address to identify players?.. well I dont think it would work too because players can use vpn.

EAGLEMUT wrote:

wingman2 wrote: I just wonder why those proofs are not taken serious... There could be (for example) a community maintained list of confirmed hackers which is moderated by ESOC staff and which is used to warn the player when cheaters join their game lobby on EP. I mean, what else can we do if Microsoft fails to do it...

There is no point warning people about RE cheaters on EP, that's what EP anti-cheat is for.

But you are able to play RE using EP Launcher, right? And that could help a lot and would be a reason for me to switch to EP Launcher (while still playing on RE patch until the majority uses EP at some point). I also don't think that the current EP anti-cheat system is perfect. The AOE III multiplayer is broken by design to allow such hacks. I mean peer to peer games are hard to get cheat-free from the development point of view. And the EP's game file checks do nothing against simple injections during runtime. I think the only reason EP is "hack-free" at the moment is because players are just more respectful there or not able to program a new hack. This might be a drastic statement but that's how I think about it. Banning is just the only way to make their life difficult. They may have multiple accounts but not infinitely many.

Or !.. we could wait for aoe4.

wingman2 wrote:But you are able to play RE using EP Launcher, right? And that could help a lot and would be a reason for me to switch to EP Launcher (while still playing on RE patch until the majority uses EP at some point). I also don't think that the current EP anti-cheat system is perfect. The AOE III multiplayer is broken by design to allow such hacks. I mean peer to peer games are hard to get cheat-free from the development point of view. And the EP's game file checks do nothing against simple injections during runtime. I think the only reason EP is "hack-free" at the moment is because players are just more respectful there or not able to program a new hack. This might be a drastic statement but that's how I think about it. Banning is just the only way to make their life difficult.

That is true, but you are wrong on the following point:

They may have multiple accounts but not infinitely many.

There is a bug with ESO that actually allows these cheaters to create infinitely many accounts. It is fruitless trying to fight that by warning about a certain account name.

Oh... That's even more frustrating. :(

Realistically how many cheaters do you get a low levels? I think i've only ran into one.

In my experience 0,5-1% games

wingman2 wrote:There could be (for example) a community maintained list of confirmed hackers which is moderated by ESOC staff and which is used to warn the player when cheaters join their game lobby on EP. I mean, what else can we do if Microsoft fails to do it...

Multiple people have suggested this in the past. See here, here and here.

There are a few reasons why the ESOC staff has not made a a list of confirmed hackers.

• Some hackers can literally make infinite accounts. It would be harder for us to keep track than for them to make a new account.
• Gathering evidence takes time. Even recorded games can be forged, leaving Agecomm stats as the only reliable source of evidence.
• There are much more useful and fun things to spend our time on, such as tournaments, marketing, developments, media and enjoying ESOC.
• ESOC doesn't want to be responsible for a blacklist that is likely going to be the source of a lot of drama.

Frost Bite wrote:,,,but we are just dumbs to not use it...

well, wow

Why did they give up on aoe3? It has a lot of players still

edeholland wrote:... leaving Agecomm stats as the only reliable source of evidence.
...

UrvyZnapy wrote:Why did they give up on aoe3? It has a lot of players still

It doesn't though, it hardly makes them any money compared to Aoe2, which honestly is all microsoft really care about.

Maybe people play less because they gave up? Much cheating and imbalanced maps and civs is a big problem

Frost Bite wrote:Why develop a unnecessary software when the EP PATCH IS HACK PROOF.

Pretty tired to see players accusing and carping about hackers.. Stop complaining and play on EP.

LMAO Hack proof, good joke

Well, people who are against this idea could look at it from a different perspective. Such a tool could be used to automatically verify tournament matches for example. Remember Roiarthubis and Uhlan?
Also it could be available for people to verify their own games. Think about you playing QS and you're not sure if you actually lost or if they spawned an extra 3 huss that killed you?
EP isn't hack proof as maybe the community tries to sell, it just has an anticheat system that can be worked around.
I think this idea is nice, it just makes math to check if the res and units are in line with what the game makes possible, and if it doesn't it just lets you know so you can do whatever with this information. E.g. Ban from tournament, making right conclusions about your own games, pest people...

If you'd like to go ahead and build it, I'm sure we can discuss ways of integrating it e.g. with ESOC ladder or the recorded game upload.

If on the other hand you're basically saying "here's a thought, someone go and spend time building it" then it might not be too likely to happen. This isn't a question of whether this sort of tool would have any value at all, but rather whether it has enough practical use to be worth investing the time over other improvements.

Unfortunately I have 0 skills at programming so I can't help there. I could try to work out the maths behind it if someone is up to making this happen.
I just wanted to point out that the tool isn't useless at all.
Also make it clear that there is no such thing as a hack free gaming environment, even though ESOC is the safest place to play AoE3 in that regard.

I have some programming skills and could help out if there is enough positive feedback and help with the required reference data to use for verification.

But aren’t the agecomm statd famously completely broken?

ovi12 wrote:But aren’t the agecomm statd famously completely broken?

How are they broken? Some features don't work (anymore?). But the information given has always been accurate. Or what do you mean exactly?

Some statistics are indeed bugged. For example russian's military investvements. But those are bugged in game too and can just be ommited.

wingman2 wrote:

ovi12 wrote:But aren’t the agecomm statd famously completely broken?

How are they broken? Some features don't work (anymore?). But the information given has always been accurate. Or what do you mean exactly?

Some statistics are indeed bugged. For example russian's military investvements. But those are bugged in game too and can just be ommited.

I thought for example that the graphs at least were a lot of the time bugged and just showed nonsense?