Question about maphacks

[jamescossey]

"ginosaji

 

 

 

Posted Today, 12:11 PM

 

Useless topic, all you're doing is bringing attention to an issue that none of us want to see proliferate. I can't decide if this is a troll/smurf account or new guy just flaming. You've posted a number of useless topics today. Not only that but in most of your posts you simply rage and flame. In the future keep the bm to a minimum, don't talk about maphacks, and don't spam. "

 

couldn't quote cause it was locked. but question on the don't talk about maphacks. what do you mean. its an ongoing issue which could be resolved with proper coding. that being besides the point. I thought the forum was to talk about AOS, good things and bad.

 

FYI posted on the forums cause it wouldn't let me send a message to ginosaji

[Hogwarts]

- Frequent single-word posts (spam).

- Walls of text or incomprehensible formatting.

- Hard selling other games.

- Derailing or degrading the quality of a thread.

- Personal attacks or hurty feelings.

- Content that would drastically increase Starcraft II's ESRB rating.

- Large images in your signature.

- Do not talk about moderators, or moderation.

- Do NOT talk about moderators, or moderation.

- If you have to ask, it will probably get you banned.

[Phailer]

Seems pretty clear why they got banned. Quid summed up most of it. Is anyone really surprised by people getting banned for trolling the forums?

[OPReN]

well if mod is doing horrible job we should bring it up

but this forum, mod is doing well

[Midknight]

If you have information to share about issues with the game that could be abused, such as hacks, exploits in the game, etc. don't post them publicly for all to see. You can PM your concerns to any on the Mod staff and we will make sure it goes to the appropriate people. To illustrate, lets say you have cameras at intersections to catch people running red lights. At one particular intersection, the camera goes out. Should you A) Advise everyone that the camera at the intersection of Nimrod Dr and Fluffy Bunny Blvd is not functioning so everyone should try extra hard to not run that light, or B) Take steps to fix the camera without bringing unneeded attention to the lapse? When you openly call attention to these bugs, even if your intent is for the Dev team to hear and take steps to fix them, you're also broadcasting that information to people who will not hesitate to exploit said lapse. That is why we shut down threads that are openly discussing maphacks, exploitable bugs, etc. because that's the kind of thing that should be communicated privately, not publicly.

[ANARCHY]

Should you

A) Advise everyone that the camera at the intersection of Nimrod Dr and Fluffy Bunny Blvd is not functioning so everyone should try extra hard to not run that light, or

B) Take steps to fix the camera without bringing unneeded attention to the lapse?

C) message the devs numerous times, log into mumble when they don't reply for extended lengths of time and wait for them to un-deafen themselves & then make a post about it because there is no response for 6+ months and it hasn't been fixed or you haven't even been given a simple reply like "I'll look into it" and then said thread gets locked, then you get a warning along with some sort of a lecture about trying to do the right thing

[MrGrim]

An argument for your analogy specifically for those who just maphack not the hack itself or any other bugs is if you drive down the road with no cameras but those who can fix it (blizzard) are slow to do so or don't fix it. You can advise everyone around you of those who do speed just so you can avoid them if you see them. See that red camaro? He always speeds because there are no cameras, pull over and avoid him. That's primarily the only reason a shap list of those who maphack being public helps, I don't have to play with a hacker and waste an hour on something that's inherently unfair. Also if the red camaro knows people are avoiding him the random corvette who also can speed maybe won't just because of the trouble the red camaro goes through and the stigma that gets attached to those that speed. The way that people can know who speeds is gossip around the town (players) which can be wrong and uninformed or it can be from the local govt (mods) who say this person did in fact speed, he's jailed/fined and thats further deterrent to speeding. Without knowing about the punishments for speeding whats to stop the corvette from also speeding? For most bugs I agree with you but maphacks are kinda out of devs hands and mostly in blizz's.

[Ancientmagicks]

Rise of Amon C'mon

[Midknight]

Self discipline is the best kind of discipline. Failing that, you must be disciplined by some external party. The very first thing, in going along with the extant analogy, is that people should take it upon themselves to not speed. Not because it's illegal, but because it's inherently unsafe. A vehicle is, inherently, more difficult to control at excessive speed. Likewise, a game that tests your skill vs someone else's skill is, inherently, less of a game if you hack. If you're going to cheat to win, why bother playing? Just give yourself a pat on the back for being the "best player evar", safe in the knowledge that no one who challenges you could ever beat you without ever having to actually play against them. With all the time you save, you can go read a book, wash and wax your red Camaro, whatever.

 

But here is where the analogy breaks down a little, as we don't have reliable, objective ways to deal with hacking. We can't ban someone from playing the game and it's sometimes even hard to determine from just a replay whether he's hacking or just very intuitive. Some people are pretty damn good at making blind skill shots; predicting where people will stand even when they can't be seen. I've made a few of these. But, of course, success is attributed to internal causes while failure is attributed to external causes. When you succeed, it's because you succeeded, but when you fail, it's because someone or something else caused you to fail. "If he's worse than me, he's a n00b but if he's better than me, he's a hacker." Even if we had a way to detect and punish hacking in a meaningful way, how can we objectively determine who is hacking and who is just that damn good? Is it better to ban someone because they "may" be hacking, or to give an actual hacker the benefit of the doubt?

 

Lastly, "doing the right thing" isn't just a one-time deal. If you're really "doing the right thing", reporting suspected exploits and exploiters via PM, for instance, you have no room to decide we aren't responding "quickly enough" and take it upon yourself to implement an ad hoc solution that violates the rules of the forum (ie. making accusations of an activity which you have zero capacity to objectively and definitely determine). Do you want witch hunts? Because that's how you get witch hunts.

 

The fact is that most of the concerns about hacking are entirely out of our control in the first place. You don't need to tell people, "The guy in the red Camaro always speeds and runs this particular intersection" because, first off, more than one person drives a red Camaro, and secondly, people should be exhibiting caution and driving defensively in the first place. And you have the benefit that this is just a game; if you lose because someone hacked, all you've lost is some time. If the time is really that valuable that you can't afford to "waste" it playing a rigged game, you can't afford to "waste" it playing the game even if it were fair. Moreover... how sweet is it to beat hacker despite the disparity?

[ginosaji]

@James Sorry, my inbox was full, just deleted a bunch of stuff.

 

 

We've had discussions on this before. We've also discussed it as a moderating staff. We've agreed that the best course of action is to keep the issue as private as possible for a number of reasons, many of which Midknight has already enumerated. Maphacking isn't something that can be dealt with by Red or Ecko, it's an issue that Blizzard has to deal with. On top of that, we're mostly powerless to punish people that abuse maphacks. The only thing we can do is ban people from mumble, which doesn't work as a deterrent for everyone.

 

As Midknight has already said, talking about maphacking only brings more attention to it since we are almost entirely powerless to stop it. I understand your anxieties, but trust me, all you guys are doing by making these topics is drawing attention to an issue that can't be fixed be anyone in the AoS community.

 

There won't be a public ban list and here's why... As of right now, maphacking is a relatively insignificant issue other than that it has a high potential to be destructive in the future. That possibility is one I and the other mods want to avoid, as I'm sure all of you do as well. As I said previously, talking about maphacking only makes the issue more visible. Minimizing that visibility is far more important than any individual or group of individuals potentially "wasting" time playing with a maphacker. As far as competitive play, the community is small and the visibility is high. If you hack in the IH community you will be found out and banned very quickly, so that shouldn't be a concern.

 

From here on I'm not only going to lock discussions about maphacking, I'm going to hide any comments that reference it. I'm not gonna warn/ban for it, I just don't want this game to be ruined because blizzard can't get their ish together and fix the holes in their engine. If you want to talk to someone about maphacking message a Mod or talk to me on mumble (preferably mumble, I'm on most nights).

[BestZeratul]

If you have information to share about issues with the game that could be abused, such as hacks, exploits in the game, etc. don't post them publicly for all to see. You can PM your concerns to any on the Mod staff and we will make sure it goes to the appropriate people. To illustrate, lets say you have cameras at intersections to catch people running red lights. At one particular intersection, the camera goes out. Should you A) Advise everyone that the camera at the intersection of Nimrod Dr and Fluffy Bunny Blvd is not functioning so everyone should try extra hard to not run that light, or B) Take steps to fix the camera without bringing unneeded attention to the lapse? When you openly call attention to these bugs, even if your intent is for the Dev team to hear and take steps to fix them, you're also broadcasting that information to people who will not hesitate to exploit said lapse. That is why we shut down threads that are openly discussing maphacks, exploitable bugs, etc. because that's the kind of thing that should be communicated privately, not publicly.

 

The analogy isn't very good because exploiting bugs without breaking the TOC isn't against any laws.

[jamescossey]

Thanks for the good explainations midknight and gino.

[Jerhova]

oooh Now that Map hacking was brought up, I'm very interested. I mean ive only beenplaying these games for 20 years and maphacking has been around since the internet started. Saying people are gonna map hack because it was mentioned is like saying they are going to rob a bank because the news reported one got robbed earlier. People are either going to do It or not. Is our job to help police ourselves.