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Comment by dchftcs | Hacker News Reader

Cheaters don't have to play like normal people to avoid detection. They just have to make it expensive to police them. For example, the game developer may be afraid of a even a 10% false positive ban rate, and as a result won't ban anyone except perhaps a small number of clean-cut cases.

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Yes, the current status is that cheaters can play distingushable from humans. But my point was more that, if we create a system that allows cheating that still is equivalent to a good player, then it just feels like playing against good players. Which, to me, feels like it'd be mission accomplished.

This is one of the cases where ML methods seem appropriate.

Most cheaters are playing well outside of human limits and doing huge amounts of damage to the legitimate player experience. A 10% safety margin beyond human play sounds reasonable. A world where cheaters can only play 10% better than humans is a far better world than the one we are in at the moment.

"A world where cheaters can only play 10% better than humans is a far better world than the one we are in at the moment."

My world is pretty fine, as I don't play games on servers, without active admin/mods that kick and ban people who obviously cheat.

ML solutions can maybe help here, but I believe they can reliable detect cheats, without banning also lucky or skilled players, once I see it.

Human administration is not scalable.

Why not? As long as there are players, some of them also want to be admins. You maybe mean commercial administration is not scalable for games with a fixed price? Sure, but give the option to the community to manage (rent) servers on their own and they will solve it themself.

Its not even an option in most titles and the industry as a whole has moved away from such hosting models, partly to ensure players receive a consistent and fair experience. Community servers were rife with admin abuse.

Its okay if you havent played an online game in 20 years mate

Strong disagree. I play a lot of casual CS, and the number of extremely poor / new / young players using rudimentary cheats and performing far below average is huge. Most players don't watchfully spectate the bottom fraggers in the lobby, but if you do, the number of them brazenly using wallhacks is quite high.

These players aren't using aimbot / triggerbot (or if they are, they don't understand the gunplay and try to shoot while running), and may not even understand wall penetration, so their reaction times wouldn't look abnormal at all. From the data, they would likely have below average reaction times still.

Even though they are not performing well, their presence still massively alters the gameplay for legitimate players. For one, lurking becomes a pointless endeavor. You're better off rushing wildly than attempting any sort of stealth.

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