Buckethead wrote:Send me a private message who want to join the team that will manage the cheater blacklist.
Im finishing a tool that will block players who are on that list on QS and Lobby.
I saw this post and I cannot say that I am fan of this, for a few reasons. I am assuming that this is directly related to the EP and would become a part of the EP "package". If this assumption is wrong and this is a third-party tool then my concerns are somewhat alleviated but I think this still deserves discussion.
I'm pretty sure that ESOC's role of implementing anti-cheating measures in the patch is a good one: it's a defensive measure to ensure that people cannot easily cheat in AoE3 on the EP. Excellent. 11/10
Things are different if the EP takes an "offensive" role, namely that of actively barring certain players from playing the game. That would mean that EP takes on a role of justice which is really only one Microsoft should have. Should ESOC really be doing that at all? Doesn't this endanger the EP, since it now goes beyond just a game modification and now actively moderates account? I think that this is possibly crossing a line which shouldn't be crossed (remember that Microsoft are very nice and lenient to tolerate the EP at all).
Other questions when we start discussing the actual management of the blacklist? Is this list private? Who gets to decide who is on the list and who isn't? What about poor quality cheating accusations? Moesbar hacks can be very subtle. I think that allowing cheating accusations to be rampant can really turn up the level of toxicity in the community. We already have issues with this since people still can't wrap their head around the "no cheating accusations" rules.
Who, in the end, gets to decide who is a cheater and who is not? What happens if I get on the wrong side of ESOC and they prevent me from playing on the EP? What about smurfing in tournaments?
I understand anti-cheating measures and fully support them and I can also understand the merits of a public cheater blacklist. But actively barring accounts from playing on EP? Based on a private and secret criteria?
ESOC would be taking on a role which should really be reserved to the people who are hosting the ESO servers.
That is something which is really iffy at best. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Playing on ESO is a privilege. We don't host ESO and to be quite frank, it's already very nice of Microsoft to let the patch get away with all it does.