Community Opinion: First Offense Hacking Perm-ban

[Tuatara]

Finally c:

 

[bbs22201]

I am totally up for this idea!! I want all the little troll hackers just to leave and feel sorry that they hacked. My only concern for this is what happens if you are falsely of hacking and have no evidence or recordings to prove legit??? Many people get banned wrongfully of hacking when they weren't and sometimes the staff will overlook the evidence and he will have to suffer the evidence even thought he wasn't hacking. All I have to say is staff PLEASE watch people more carefully and pay attention to minor details that could show that they are legit or in fact hacking because if I were to get banned perm for false hacking I would be quite devastated because without any evidence I may stay banned :/

 

[Tom]

I am for this idea however I can see the pros and cons of each side but I still think the pros outway the cons.

 

[Tbeeb]

One word.....FINALLLYY!!!!! xD

 

[Brigade]

The only thing that I have a problem with is that.....
1. This rule is implemented.
2. Lots of people that are hacking or "supposedly hacking" are banned.
3. Lots of perm banned people will buy alts and continue to play.

 

[KiDD]

Not the slightest bit of controversy for me; I believe this is a huge step in the right direction, and personally, I'm very excited. I can say that a lot of people are very happy with this, and I don't see why people wouldn't be. A lot less hackers will be encountered from then on. Look out hackers!

 

[Zinc // Akash754]

Hackers are nobs

 

[Stephanie]

I think this is an awesome! With MCGamer growing more and more, each and every day, the rules on hacking do need to be more serious. Yes the punishment was great, at some point, but now, with people just going to server to server just to hack, they do need to stop them once, and that's it.

There is always the ban dispute section for a reason, for those who think that they should be unbanned. Most probably won't even go through with submitting a ban dispute to be honest. I find people just go to servers to hack, just to see how much will their hack client will be able to go through on the servers with the NCP, or some form of NCP.

 

[Ceroria]

The only thing that I have a problem with is that.....
1. This rule is implemented.
2. Lots of people that are hacking or "supposedly hacking" are banned.
3. Lots of perm banned people will buy alts and continue to play.

People are going to ban evade either way. This just makes it easier to ban rule breakers in the first place.

I am totally up for this idea!! I want all the little troll hackers just to leave and feel sorry that they hacked. My only concern for this is what happens if you are falsely of hacking and have no evidence or recordings to prove legit??? Many people get banned wrongfully of hacking when they weren't and sometimes the staff will overlook the evidence and he will have to suffer the evidence even thought he wasn't hacking. All I have to say is staff PLEASE watch people more carefully and pay attention to minor details that could show that they are legit or in fact hacking because if I were to get banned perm for false hacking I would be quite devastated because without any evidence I may stay banned :/

This is exactly what we are currently working on, making sure every staff member is 100% sure the evidence is conclusive so this doesnt happen c:

 

[Col_StaR]

I'm probably biased, but I think that this is a move in the right direction.

However, I want to remind people that this will not be a, "silver bullet" that will cure hacking now and forever. Here are a few examples of things that complicate hacking matters:

• Alt. Accounts are probably the biggest reason our hacking numbers are so high. When you can buy 50 accounts for $10, you're going to start acting impervious, which is a hindrance on legitimate players. Unfortunately, Mojang has done very little to address this problem, and it's difficult for us to enforce with no control over Minecraft accounts. The best thing that we can do now is to just keep banning the alts.
• Minecraft's weak code infrastructure makes creating hacks and exploits incredibly easy to do. Rusty made some great comments earlier about how Minecraft is basically an open book that exploit-makers use, and unfortunately Mojang has done little to fix that. As such, hacks are both numerous, covert, and adaptable, making catching them difficult. Wonder why our anti-hack system doesn't cover hacks such as aimbot or kill aura? It's because they exploit weaknesses in Minecraft's code, causing it to be difficult to effectively detect.
• Moderation and Reporting are essential to banning hackers, since we cannot punish them if we don't know about them. However, there are simply not enough moderators to be constantly patrolling the servers 24/7, so we cannot depend on them alone to catch hackers. We have two report systems (/report and Report Abuses) in place to allow players to report hackers, but users must actually use those systems in order to be effective. Moderators already have their work cut out for them, but if players want to make a difference, they need to either apply for Mod or to report as often as they can.
  
• The human element. Hackers are human too, and unfortunately the simply fact that they hack shows that they have a malicious side to them. But they can be tricky, devious, and ultimately cunning, so they can adapt to whatever system we may throw in their way. In that sense, they won't let anything get in the way of their fun at other peoples' expense. For this reason, we should all be adaptable and vigilant when hacking matters arise.

So for the next few months, people should remember that the hacking situation is a lot more complicated than a policy change. If we see some positive results, awesome. But if we let ourselves fall prey to false expectations of the, "silver bullet", we will ultimately be disappointed when reality strikes. Remember: this is simply a step to change an ineffective policy, and hopefully it will be a step in the right direction.

Really, the only liability that we can see out of this is the potential for bad bans to occur, and the severity of such bans will be raised because they will be permanent. But we must all be mindful of our actions, and be sure to mitigate any potential problems before they become bigger and more troublesome than they need to be.

• The staff needs to be accurate with their enforcement of our rules. They are responsible for being aware of what hacks are, and for ensuring that their peers are up to the task as well.
• The players need to be responsible for knowing the rules and knowing our procedures. They should know that hacks aren't allowed, that Modded Clients are not allowed, and that certain Mods are allowed. They should also be knowledgeable of the Ban Dispute System in case something goes wrong, and should direct others to it as well.

And after that, we can start focusing on addressing the other problems.

 

[Ceroria]

I'm probably biased, but I think that this is a move in the right direction.

However, I want to remind people that this will not be a, "silver bullet" that will cure hacking now and forever. Here are a few examples of things that complicate hacking matters:

• Alt. Accounts are probably the biggest reason our hacking numbers are so high. When you can buy 50 accounts for $10, you're going to start acting impervious, which is a hindrance on legitimate players. Unfortunately, Mojang has done very little to address this problem, and it's difficult for us to enforce with no control over Minecraft accounts. The best thing that we can do now is to just keep banning the alts.
• Minecraft's weak code infrastructure makes creating hacks and exploits incredibly easy to do. Rusty made some great comments earlier about how Minecraft is basically an open book that exploit-makers use, and unfortunately Mojang has done little to fix that. As such, hacks are both numerous, covert, and adaptable, making catching them difficult. Wonder why our anti-hack system doesn't cover hacks such as aimbot or kill aura? It's because they exploit weaknesses in Minecraft's code, causing it to be difficult to effectively detect.
• Moderation and Reporting are essential to banning hackers, since we cannot punish them if we don't know about them. However, there are simply not enough moderators to be constantly patrolling the servers 24/7, so we cannot depend on them alone to catch hackers. We have two report systems (/report and Report Abuses) in place to allow players to report hackers, but users must actually use those systems in order to be effective. Moderators already have their work cut out for them, but if players want to make a difference, they need to either apply for Mod or to report as often as they can.
  
• The human element. Hackers are human too, and unfortunately the simply fact that they hack shows that they have a malicious side to them. But they can be tricky, devious, and ultimately cunning, so they can adapt to whatever system we may throw in their way. In that sense, they won't let anything get in the way of their fun at other peoples' expense. For this reason, we should all be adaptable and vigilant when hacking matters arise.

So for the next few months, people should remember that the hacking situation is a lot more complicated than a policy change. If we see some positive results, awesome. But if we let ourselves fall prey to false expectations of the, "silver bullet", we will ultimately be disappointed when reality strikes. Remember: this is simply a step to change an ineffective policy, and hopefully it will be a step in the right direction.

Really, the only liability that we can see out of this is the potential for bad bans to occur, and the severity of such bans will be raised because they will be permanent. But we must all be mindful of our actions, and be sure to mitigate any potential problems before they become bigger and more troublesome than they need to be.

• The staff needs to be accurate with their enforcement of our rules. They are responsible for being aware of what hacks are, and for ensuring that their peers are up to the task as well.
• The players need to be responsible for knowing the rules and knowing our procedures. They should know that hacks aren't allowed, that Modded Clients are not allowed, and that certain Mods are allowed. They should also be knowledgeable of the Ban Dispute System in case something goes wrong, and should direct others to it as well.

And after that, we can start focusing on addressing the other problems.

I was going to like this post before reading it, but once I started scrolling down I figured it'd take me just about the same amount of time if I just read it first ahaha.

A fix I think would be an amazing step in the right direction would be to close Minecraft's open-modification policy. Easier said than done, right? I'd say Mojang/Microsoft compiles a list of modifications that are allowed (things like OptiFine, Direction/Armor HUD, whatever other major mods that are not considered performance enhancing and either find out (if possible) a way to make those the only installable mods through the knowledge of the average player, or simply add them to the game. The only problem with this is it may effect the ability to use resource packs, etc to make your Minecraft more customizable.

If they make Minecraft less open to modification, and make installing third party modifications tougher, we would see a large decrease in hacking. Unfortunately we have little to no control over Mojang, so this is highly unlikely to happen, plus it's not that easy to limit certain third party access and so on.

Hopefully I actually made sense in that, it's somewhat hard to formulate a solid response to something from your phone (which doesn't like me very much)

 

[Nikola]

I love this idea!
No, literally it made my day when I first saw it. #ChadIsAwesome