AusIV
04-01-2007, 07:30 PM
Yesterday I was playing on Banff. I was giving my opponent a good thrashing, and he asked me to help him with his geography homework. I didn't want to, but he was taking the full time alloted for his turns, so I figured if I helped him it would speed him up a bit. He said he was working on a crossword, and needed a 7 letter country in Africa that started with N. Naively, I said Nigeria and was promptly kicked.
I returned to the server and confronted him, and took a screenshot of him admitting to it. I PMed a mod with this screenshot, and was told that they don't delete gray accounts because they'd just create another, and what was the point?
I understand that position, but I still feel something should be done to keep cheaters from being so easily rewarded at the expense of unexperienced players.
I have a few suggestions on how to take that advantage away from cheaters. It's worth noting that I wrote a half-life server-side mod several years ago, and one of the features I dealt with cursing prevention. I think the current punishment for swearing is far too harsh. When I implemented a protection against cursing in my half-life, I had a couple of different protection methods for server admins to choose from.
The first (and easiest to implement) was to simply not echo what a user said to the other players in the server, and tell them that they had used a prohibited word. If you're concerned about people searching for ways around the prohibited word (n!ger!a instead of nigeria), you might keep a count, and if they use two or three prohibited words in one connection, then kicking might be appropriate.
Another method I implemented replaced the bad word with a random word from a list. The list could contain just one line: "****", or an entire dictionary of random words that could replace the offending word.
A method I have not personally implemented, but saw in use in other mods, replaced everything a player said with something insulting to the offending player. For example, if someone used the n word, it might tell the server "I think insulting someone's race is funny!"
These methods prevent malicious players from being to exploit the system at the expense of honest players.
I don't know if anything will be done about these problems, but if something is done I may consider getting a gold account again.
I returned to the server and confronted him, and took a screenshot of him admitting to it. I PMed a mod with this screenshot, and was told that they don't delete gray accounts because they'd just create another, and what was the point?
I understand that position, but I still feel something should be done to keep cheaters from being so easily rewarded at the expense of unexperienced players.
I have a few suggestions on how to take that advantage away from cheaters. It's worth noting that I wrote a half-life server-side mod several years ago, and one of the features I dealt with cursing prevention. I think the current punishment for swearing is far too harsh. When I implemented a protection against cursing in my half-life, I had a couple of different protection methods for server admins to choose from.
The first (and easiest to implement) was to simply not echo what a user said to the other players in the server, and tell them that they had used a prohibited word. If you're concerned about people searching for ways around the prohibited word (n!ger!a instead of nigeria), you might keep a count, and if they use two or three prohibited words in one connection, then kicking might be appropriate.
Another method I implemented replaced the bad word with a random word from a list. The list could contain just one line: "****", or an entire dictionary of random words that could replace the offending word.
A method I have not personally implemented, but saw in use in other mods, replaced everything a player said with something insulting to the offending player. For example, if someone used the n word, it might tell the server "I think insulting someone's race is funny!"
These methods prevent malicious players from being to exploit the system at the expense of honest players.
I don't know if anything will be done about these problems, but if something is done I may consider getting a gold account again.