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Part 1: Making Survival Games better for all

Pixelatorx2

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Welcome to an (at least) 2 part series of suggestions

This is going to be an essay, so settle in and grab some popcorn.


tl;dr: Split Survival Games into ranked and unranked play, and implement a ELO and Trust based matchmaking system
  • Replacing win based ranking with an ELO/other score typed system
    • Broader range of skills to be appreciated in stats, i.e. kdr, wins, damage done, who you’re playing with, etc.
    • Higher level games, players can play against stronger opponents
    • More detailed breakdown of how good a player is — don’t have to player forever to be considered ‘good’
  • Trust based matchmaking implementation
    • Must play x number of unranked matchmaking games before being allowed into ranked matchmaking, been on the server for x days, x playtime
    • Link your account to discord, forums, to have a ‘trusted’ account
      • Only play against ‘trusted’ players? — don’t get fresh accounts cheating
    • Donor
  • Region-locking
    • There’s been issues with laggy players getting an unfair advantage
    • If you ping is above x amount, restrict playability to only unranked matchmaking, if they fail x number of ping checks (during matchmaking time?)


The idea, but in words:

Basically in principle the idea is simple: split SG into ranked and unranked play. Ranked play will follow a new ELO (eee-low) system, and it will have a trust based system akin to Counter Strike.

What would an ELO look like?

If you're unfamiliar with ELO, it's a ranking system most famously used in Chess. You can read up on it here. For MCGamer, an ELO system would give players scores. You'd start off with, for example, 1000. By winning a game full of other exactly 1000 rating players, you'd gain a smaller amount of points than if you won against a match full of people of a higher ELO rating. This way, you climb and fall through the leaderboards based on who is in your game, who you kill, and if you win or not. This way, even if you lose a game, it is not a waste. With ELO, the game can predict your percentage chance of winning a game based on who else is in the match. If you are predicted to have an <50% chance of winning, and you win, you would gain extra points. >50% chance, you'd gain less points than set as the default. By killing opponents in the game who have a higher skill rating, you would gain points. Dying, so long as you are past the point the game would 'predict you to be', you would still gain points.

With this system, losing points is only done through failing to meet the standards predicted for your skill level in a game.

What this idea solves:

  1. Better competitive environment for PVP players
  2. A more enjoyable casual experience
  3. Cheaters
  4. Teams
  5. Ping

1) Competitive players want the best way to accurately measure their skill level against other players. Wins cater to people who have played longer, and not who is currently best. This can be mitigated by having seasonal, daily, etc. leaderboards. At that point, we then have to ask the question. Are all wins equal? The answer is no, they're not. Some games you may face better players, requiring more skills. Some games you might not have a full lobby. Some games, you may get really lucky with loot. Point is, the best representation of a player's Survival Games skill level is an ELO based system of gaining ELO and losing ELO.

In ranked matchmaking, you would only have the opportunity to play against people of similar skill levels. The Survival Games matchmaking plugin with algorithmically determine the most fair and even match. Some players of a lower skill level may be mixed in to 'test' them, and you would play against people of a similar skill level, allowing you to get better at the game and experience real challenges.

2) How does this help the casual players?

Most of the time, casual players don't want to get stomped by the so called "sweats" and they'd simply like to enjoy a game with any number of their friends. If you're playing as a duo/trio/greater, you're going to play in unranked matchmaking. Here, you'll play against other people who just want to play the game casually, as well as new players in a more friendly, less competitive environment. Maybe you're playing with a new friend, or in a different region. Point is, by separating the competitive and non competitive players it creates a less hostile and more, dare I say it, noob friendly environment for the casual players.

3) How does this solve the cheating problem?

By separating the games unto 'ranked' and 'unranked' we can introduce what is called a 'trust factor'. A trust factor is for all intents and purposes a hidden score that the server gives to players that estimates how likely they are to cheat based on qualities of the server. For example, a player who has:
  • Purchased a donor rank
  • Synced their account with the discord
  • Synced their account with the forums
  • Played a significant number of games
  • Has posted on the forums more than a couple times
  • Nitro booster
  • etc.
is far less likely to cheat based on how invested in the ecosystem than someone who:
  • Just started playing MCGamer
  • Does not use the forums
  • Does not have discord
Based on these two facts, the second person would not be matched up with player one in a ranked game. In order to keep the highly trusted players game fair and cheater free, only similarly trusted players would play against them. This way, fresh players who are here to just cheat and ruin games wouldn't be able to reach the higher level of gameplay.

Now, this may seem like it would penalize people who do not use discord/the forums, but I think the opposite. I think it would incentive them to invest the time into the server. As for being a donor, this wouldn't be an "auto" boost into the 'trusted' category. More than one of the aforementioned requirements would need to be met in order to be considered 'trusted'. Note that this is also a score -- not just a threshold.

4) Teams would not be allowed in ranked matchmaking. No boosting, no large teams. Simple as that. Teaming would go into the 'casual' mode, and clans would use a clan system that is TBD.

5) Ping would have a limit for playing in ranked. In essence, it's "region locked", except if you have good enough internet to play anywhere.

That's all for the main idea. I'm going to mention some potential caveats right away.

1) Games would take longer to find.
This is an unfortunate byproduct of trust and elo matchmaking. One way to prevent this is have a variable threshold system, where you'd have the threshold for trust/ELO change based on how many people are interested in finding a ranked game.

2) New players might feel discouraged.
It would certainly be a new system for new players, however I feel that keeping them to unranked matchmaking for, lets say, 25 games, they will learn to play the game against other new players rather then Mr. Playing-Since-2012 who knows the ins and outs of every map.

3) Hard to develop.
It would take some time, and it would radically change how MCGamer is played in the future. However, I feel that it would really push MCGamer past the 2012 era of signs (which, btw, would still remain for unranked :)) into the modern age. The technology is there!


Anyways, those are my thoughts (part one, at least) of one idea of how to improve MCGamer. Thoughts?

*Just to be clear, a 'trust factor' can also be implemented not into ranked matchmaking itself, but in terms of being allowed into ranked matchmaking. As in, some suggestions about being 'trusted' could be required to be completed before participating in ranked MM.
 
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Jowz

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These are very great ideas! I agree that it will take a lot of time and some money, but it would make the experience and community better overall!
 

ToxicBlaze

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not a fan. But can completely understand why u like those ideas.
 

Decemberr

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I understand why you, as well as some other community members, may believe in ideas such as these.

I do think that changes to MCGamer are necessary and inevitable, especially when it comes to the competitive aspect. Many players have improved when it comes to PVP, many players are new to PVP, and there are simply still a plethora of players (such as myself) that are horrible at PVP. It's natural to consider ranked/unranked/etc.

However, it's important to point out that some of the issues you've mentioned are not complex and can't be fully resolved by one step, even if it's something as large as this one.
Hackers will always exist and find a way in. Connection issues will already exist; ping isn't the only problem in the world when it comes to connection, nor is player:server.
Teams will exist in competitive or not, if it ever happens; staff can only do so much and people are resilient.

If MCGamer were to implement this idea as proposed, it has the potential to be more detrimental to the network than beneficial. In example, region locking restricts players using VPNs (poor routing, bypassing, etc.), players that want to play when their region is offline, those that are going to another region with more players online, and blocking parts of the world that just simply do not have low ping to any individual region (it's not cost-effective or timely to add a new region for every single part of the world).

Forcing people onto the forums, Discord, or (especially) to donate is also not feasible. No one should be forced to use additional accounts if they don't want to. They definitely shouldn't need to donate. If competitive/ranked matches do exist in the future, I do agree with in-game time requirement, however. This is reasonable. Not using an app, however, that doesn't make someone undedicated and/or a hacker.

As for ELO/MMR/whatever, sure, reasonable if ranked is implemented properly, which I fully trust our devs to do if done.

I think you have good intentions with this and I'm sure something like this been thought about. I'm happy to see where things go moving forward, particularly with Chad more involved, open to suggestions, and dedicated.
 

Hakodate

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1) Competitive players want the best way to accurately measure their skill level against other players. Wins cater to people who have played longer, and not who is currently best. This can be mitigated by having seasonal, daily, etc. leaderboards. At that point, we then have to ask the question. Are all wins equal? The answer is no, they're not. Some games you may face better players, requiring more skills. Some games you might not have a full lobby. Some games, you may get really lucky with loot. Point is, the best representation of a player's Survival Games skill level is an ELO based system of gaining ELO and losing ELO.

In ranked matchmaking, you would only have the opportunity to play against people of similar skill levels. The Survival Games matchmaking plugin with algorithmically determine the most fair and even match. Some players of a lower skill level may be mixed in to 'test' them, and you would play against people of a similar skill level, allowing you to get better at the game and experience real challenges.
This seems like a great idea on surface, fair playing field and all that. But the main issue with it is that MCSG, and any other Minecraft server for that matter (except Hypixel, which is still more casual-focused, with an exception of Ranked Skywars), would simply not get enough players to make 24-player games with similar ELO possible (let's say 100 points of difference). Other games have a much larger audience, which easily solved the aforementioned problem. Can possibly be solved by making ranked lobbies have a maximum of 12 players, but there are still a lot of issues MCSG has to find a solution to in order to make this possible.

There will also be an issue with high-ELO games - there might simply be not enough players with, let's say, 3000 ELO to fill a full game. Take this for example - http://prntscr.com/pm0i31. There's a 1000 ELO difference between #1 and #4 (Season 6 of Badlion SG). The same thing already exists in Overwatch, people with 4300+ SR (their version of ELO) have to wait a lot of time to queue for a game, and yet they still can get queued with people with just 3000 SR simply because the game can't find enough people in that specific region to match them with (more on region-locking later).

I'd suggest to take an approach similar to Badlion SG - they didn't make "ELO-locked" games (as in games based on ELO difference of all players in the game; example - a game only filled with 100 ELO difference between the lowest and the highest ranked players), and instead had all players join the same game, no matter the difference in ELO - if you had high ELO and died before DM, you lost a lot of points; if you had low ELO and won the game - you won a lot of points, you get the idea. They also had a max team limit of 2, and given how much MCSG players love to team (even in alpha) I don't see MCSG implementing a team limit this low anytime soon, which is quite unfortunate.

2) How does this help the casual players?

Most of the time, casual players don't want to get stomped by the so called "sweats" and they'd simply like to enjoy a game with any number of their friends. If you're playing as a duo/trio/greater, you're going to play in unranked matchmaking. Here, you'll play against other people who just want to play the game casually, as well as new players in a more friendly, less competitive environment. Maybe you're playing with a new friend, or in a different region. Point is, by separating the competitive and non competitive players it creates a less hostile and more, dare I say it, noob friendly environment for the casual players.
Good idea on surface, but splitting a playerbase this small into 2 groups would be even worse, I can definitely see what you're coming from though. CS:GO, for example, can allow for that fairly easily given their huge playerbase, but any Minecraft server simply can't - this was proven countless times, one of the most notable examples being Badlion and their split leaderboards for Teams of 2 and SoloSG in Season 4 - lobbies simply didn't fill in, which, in turn, had them go back to the same-lobby system for to2 and solos in Season 5. This can possibly be solved with an easier access to SG Maker (or CustomSG, whichever you prefer; what I mean by easier access is that almost everybody can easily earn a token to make a CustomSG lobby to play with their friends). There's still an issue though - if, let's say, 5 people want to team in SG, they'd prefer to do so in a public lobby instead of playing against each other over and over again. This can possibly cause a lot of performance issues as well.

3) How does this solve the cheating problem?

By separating the games unto 'ranked' and 'unranked' we can introduce what is called a 'trust factor'. A trust factor is for all intents and purposes a hidden score that the server gives to players that estimates how likely they are to cheat based on qualities of the server. For example, a player who has:
  • Purchased a donor rank
  • Synced their account with the discord
  • Synced their account with the forums
  • Played a significant number of games
  • Has posted on the forums more than a couple times
  • Nitro booster
  • etc.
is far less likely to cheat based on how invested in the ecosystem than someone who:
  • Just started playing MCGamer
  • Does not use the forums
  • Does not have discord
Based on these two facts, the second person would not be matched up with player one in a ranked game. In order to keep the highly trusted players game fair and cheater free, only similarly trusted players would play against them. This way, fresh players who are here to just cheat and ruin games wouldn't be able to reach the higher level of gameplay.

Now, this may seem like it would penalize people who do not use discord/the forums, but I think the opposite. I think it would incentive them to invest the time into the server. As for being a donor, this wouldn't be an "auto" boost into the 'trusted' category. More than one of the aforementioned requirements would need to be met in order to be considered 'trusted'. Note that this is also a score -- not just a threshold.
This doesn't solve anything, the only solution would be a good anticheat that would detect any level of reach, which is almost impossible to do server-side. A possible solution to that would be to add a client-side anticheat like BLC, but it also has it's downsides - not many people want to deal with third-party clients in order to play their favourite game competitively, and some might simply not like the design of it.
Look at Prime matchmaking in CS:GO - there's still a lot of cheaters in there. They also have a Trust Factor in place, but there's still a lot of things that make it almost impossible to climb out of low trust factor games. Now more in detail:

  • Purchased a donor rank - cheaters can easily buy a rank if they have money; most of the people that play Ranked Skywars on Hypixel have at least VIP or VIP+;
  • Synced their account with the discord - literally doesn't solve anything. You can make a new account on Discord in under a minute; most cheaters already have Discord accounts, and it's not like Discord is banning people permanently who cheat in a certain game. If there was a platform that would've done that, this might've been a decent solution.
  • Synced their account with the forums - same as above.
  • Played a significant number of games - Prime matchmaking in CS:GO is an example of why it doesn't solve anything.
  • Has posted on the forums more than a couple times - not all players want to post or use forums; cheaters can easily post a lot of stuff in order to earn higher trust factor.
  • Nitro booster - same as before - if you have money, you can easily earn a higher trust factor and still cheat ingame.
You do mention that some of the stuff you listed might not solve anything and that it would make people invest more time into the server - sure, it would make cheaters invest more time into the server, but it still wouldn't solve the problem; they can just buy an account with high trust factor/boost their alt's trust factor to a decent enough value and cheat in high trust factor games (example - CS:GO Prime matchmaking. You can find a Prime account with high trust factor for a very cheap price, or just straight up buy Prime from them for just under 10$). Also, what would stop them from cheating in casual games that don't have trust factor/ELO/anything mentioned above that was supposed to prevent them from doing it? The only solution to cheating is a good anticheat.

There's another issue with trust factor - if games will be based on it + ELO, there wouldn't be enough players with a similar enough ELO and trust factor. (Your solution #1 would probably work well enough)

4) Teams would not be allowed in ranked matchmaking. No boosting, no large teams. Simple as that. Teaming would go into the 'casual' mode, and clans would use a clan system that is TBD.
As said above, given how much MCSG players love to team (even in alpha), it wouldn't get much approval from most of the playerbase, and splitting an already small playerbase into 2 parts is almost always a bad idea. I'd really like to see that happen though.
Again, great idea on surface, but extremely difficult to pull off with a playerbase this small.
CW system would be a great addition as well.

5) Ping would have a limit for playing in ranked. In essence, it's "region locked", except if you have good enough internet to play anywhere.
Great on surface, but very bad if you take more details into account. Imagine that someone lives very far from any of the 3 currently present hosts and they simply can't get a decent enough ping to play ranked - frustrating, isn't it? OCE would be first to suffer from this - people from Australia and NZ only get decent ping to servers hosted in these countries, and given how small the playerbase is in that specific region, they would have a very hard time finding any ranked game. This also renders all players in most countries in Asia unable to play ranked SG on any of currently present hosts.

3) Hard to develop.
It would take some time, and it would radically change how MCGamer is played in the future. However, I feel that it would really push MCGamer past the 2012 era of signs (which, btw, would still remain for unranked :)) into the modern age. The technology is there!
Would really like to see that happen, but the main problem remains - small playerbase.

Aside from that, I would like all of the things that you mentioned implemented one day, I'm a competitive player myself and I'd really like to see MCSG move past a win-based leaderboard system which is just a huge and pointless grind, and it doesn't measure the skill of a player as accurately as an ELO-based leaderboard. This post was meant to point out most notable issues with things that you mentioned, great thread and suggestions overall.
 

ToxicBlaze

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I'd love to hear why you're not interested.
Well because the unranked and ranked games would be really bad for my region due to having a lower number in players. I also don’t like the idea of there being no teams in ranked since mcsg is filled with teams and good players kill them. The idea of buying donor isn’t bad as it would probably bring more money into the server. Overall I wouldn’t mind this as long as it’s only in the big regions like EU and US as it wouldn’t affect me.
 

Pixelatorx2

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This seems like a great idea on surface, fair playing field and all that. But the main issue with it is that MCSG, and any other Minecraft server for that matter (except Hypixel, which is still more casual-focused, with an exception of Ranked Skywars), would simply not get enough players to make 24-player games with similar ELO possible (let's say 100 points of difference). Other games have a much larger audience, which easily solved the aforementioned problem. Can possibly be solved by making ranked lobbies have a maximum of 12 players, but there are still a lot of issues MCSG has to find a solution to in order to make this possible.

There will also be an issue with high-ELO games - there might simply be not enough players with, let's say, 3000 ELO to fill a full game. Take this for example - http://prntscr.com/pm0i31. There's a 1000 ELO difference between #1 and #4 (Season 6 of Badlion SG). The same thing already exists in Overwatch, people with 4300+ SR (their version of ELO) have to wait a lot of time to queue for a game, and yet they still can get queued with people with just 3000 SR simply because the game can't find enough people in that specific region to match them with (more on region-locking later).

I'd suggest to take an approach similar to Badlion SG - they didn't make "ELO-locked" games (as in games based on ELO difference of all players in the game; example - a game only filled with 100 ELO difference between the lowest and the highest ranked players), and instead had all players join the same game, no matter the difference in ELO - if you had high ELO and died before DM, you lost a lot of points; if you had low ELO and won the game - you won a lot of points, you get the idea. They also had a max team limit of 2, and given how much MCSG players love to team (even in alpha) I don't see MCSG implementing a team limit this low anytime soon, which is quite unfortunate.
Personally, I agree with your suggestions about splitting the player base. I didn't mean "within" 100 rating. I wasn't clear enough -- I meant having a very few skill groups (probably low, medium, high) that encompass a large skill rating, and not simply 100 or so rating difference.


Good idea on surface, but splitting a playerbase this small into 2 groups would be even worse, I can definitely see what you're coming from though. CS:GO, for example, can allow for that fairly easily given their huge playerbase, but any Minecraft server simply can't - this was proven countless times, one of the most notable examples being Badlion and their split leaderboards for Teams of 2 and SoloSG in Season 4 - lobbies simply didn't fill in, which, in turn, had them go back to the same-lobby system for to2 and solos in Season 5. This can possibly be solved with an easier access to SG Maker (or CustomSG, whichever you prefer; what I mean by easier access is that almost everybody can easily earn a token to make a CustomSG lobby to play with their friends). There's still an issue though - if, let's say, 5 people want to team in SG, they'd prefer to do so in a public lobby instead of playing against each other over and over again. This can possibly cause a lot of performance issues as well.
I don't think this would 'split' the playerbase at all. Most people would continue to play ranked, that's how it is and will be, people are competitive. I see 'casual' (or unranked) as the gamemode similar to casual in CS:GO. Most people play competitive, but casual games do fill up. You're right in terms of playerbase, but there will always be people who want to warm up or just chill and play these gamemodes.



This doesn't solve anything, the only solution would be a good anticheat that would detect any level of reach, which is almost impossible to do server-side. A possible solution to that would be to add a client-side anticheat like BLC, but it also has it's downsides - not many people want to deal with third-party clients in order to play their favourite game competitively, and some might simply not like the design of it.
Look at Prime matchmaking in CS:GO - there's still a lot of cheaters in there. They also have a Trust Factor in place, but there's still a lot of things that make it almost impossible to climb out of low trust factor games. Now more in detail:

  • Purchased a donor rank - cheaters can easily buy a rank if they have money; most of the people that play Ranked Skywars on Hypixel have at least VIP or VIP+;
  • Synced their account with the discord - literally doesn't solve anything. You can make a new account on Discord in under a minute; most cheaters already have Discord accounts, and it's not like Discord is banning people permanently who cheat in a certain game. If there was a platform that would've done that, this might've been a decent solution.
  • Synced their account with the forums - same as above.
  • Played a significant number of games - Prime matchmaking in CS:GO is an example of why it doesn't solve anything.
  • Has posted on the forums more than a couple times - not all players want to post or use forums; cheaters can easily post a lot of stuff in order to earn higher trust factor.
  • Nitro booster - same as before - if you have money, you can easily earn a higher trust factor and still cheat ingame.
You do mention that some of the stuff you listed might not solve anything and that it would make people invest more time into the server - sure, it would make cheaters invest more time into the server, but it still wouldn't solve the problem; they can just buy an account with high trust factor/boost their alt's trust factor to a decent enough value and cheat in high trust factor games (example - CS:GO Prime matchmaking. You can find a Prime account with high trust factor for a very cheap price, or just straight up buy Prime from them for just under 10$). Also, what would stop them from cheating in casual games that don't have trust factor/ELO/anything mentioned above that was supposed to prevent them from doing it? The only solution to cheating is a good anticheat.

There's another issue with trust factor - if games will be based on it + ELO, there wouldn't be enough players with a similar enough ELO and trust factor. (Your solution #1 would probably work well enough)
I'll admit that trust factor was the wildcard idea in all of this. I do, however, believe you're wrong that it wouldn't solve anything. I have 3000 hours in CS:GO. I've been playing for years. I have prime and I (believe) a high trust factor. I haven't seen a cheater in months. It is extremely rare for me to face a cheater, even in a free to play game at a rank with a decent amount of players (MGE).

I do agree however that this would only further splinter the playerbase, and would make games take possibly too long to fill. This idea is definitely not for the initial launch -- only when the playerbase has significantly grown again would this be possible.


As said above, given how much MCSG players love to team (even in alpha), it wouldn't get much approval from most of the playerbase, and splitting an already small playerbase into 2 parts is almost always a bad idea. I'd really like to see that happen though.
Again, great idea on surface, but extremely difficult to pull off with a playerbase this small.
CW system would be a great addition as well.
Agreed about when it would be too small of a playerbase this wouldn't work well, however, once there's sufficient demand I do believe that this would be possible. People do team, you're right, but then there's casual for that :) You don't get ranked as a team, and as someone who plays pretty much only with friends, we wouldn't mind not teaming in a ranked gamemode.


Great on surface, but very bad if you take more details into account. Imagine that someone lives very far from any of the 3 currently present hosts and they simply can't get a decent enough ping to play ranked - frustrating, isn't it? OCE would be first to suffer from this - people from Australia and NZ only get decent ping to servers hosted in these countries, and given how small the playerbase is in that specific region, they would have a very hard time finding any ranked game. This also renders all players in most countries in Asia unable to play ranked SG on any of currently present hosts.
Agreed. This was an idea that someone suggested in the discord. Personally people who lag do annoy me, but it's a byproduct of playing over the internet.
 

Pixelatorx2

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I understand why you, as well as some other community members, may believe in ideas such as these.

I do think that changes to MCGamer are necessary and inevitable, especially when it comes to the competitive aspect. Many players have improved when it comes to PVP, many players are new to PVP, and there are simply still a plethora of players (such as myself) that are horrible at PVP. It's natural to consider ranked/unranked/etc.

However, it's important to point out that some of the issues you've mentioned are not complex and can't be fully resolved by one step, even if it's something as large as this one.
Hackers will always exist and find a way in. Connection issues will already exist; ping isn't the only problem in the world when it comes to connection, nor is player:server.
Teams will exist in competitive or not, if it ever happens; staff can only do so much and people are resilient.
I agree that these are not solutions alone, but are instead stuff to aid the staff in all of these issues.

If MCGamer were to implement this idea as proposed, it has the potential to be more detrimental to the network than beneficial. In example, region locking restricts players using VPNs (poor routing, bypassing, etc.), players that want to play when their region is offline, those that are going to another region with more players online, and blocking parts of the world that just simply do not have low ping to any individual region (it's not cost-effective or timely to add a new region for every single part of the world).

Forcing people onto the forums, Discord, or (especially) to donate is also not feasible. No one should be forced to use additional accounts if they don't want to. They definitely shouldn't need to donate. If competitive/ranked matches do exist in the future, I do agree with in-game time requirement, however. This is reasonable. Not using an app, however, that doesn't make someone undedicated and/or a hacker.
I digress in terms of it being not feasable. I didn't mean it in the sense that you have to do any of the things. It would simply be a boost to your 'trust' that you could still gain through actually going through the process of playing matches.

An idea that I was going to suggest, but chose to suggest trust factor instead would be to use those things I suggested as a way to unlock ranked matchmaking. Lets say, you need to play a minimum of x games to unlock ranked (we don't want everyone jumping right in). This alone would stop the hackers who just want to ruin peoples games and not put any effort in. Then by doing the ideas suggested above, linking, etc. you'd be able to shorten your time.

The listed ideas are simply ways of proving that you're not just a fresh account here to ruin games, but not the only solution.
 

Razzledgirl

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Lets say, you need to play a minimum of x games to unlock ranked (we don't want everyone jumping right in). This alone would stop the hackers who just want to ruin peoples games and not put any effort in.
I just have to stop you there - this would not stop hackers. If the solution seems so simple, it is most likely not a solution. Think of it of this way... people who are determined will find a way. If a hacker wants to, they will join; they can disable their hacks and possibly get killed right away just to meet the requirements... and go along their merry way hacking into the night
 

Pixelatorx2

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I just have to stop you there - this would not stop hackers. If the solution seems so simple, it is most likely not a solution. Think of it of this way... people who are determined will find a way. If a hacker wants to, they will join; they can disable their hacks and possibly get killed right away just to meet the requirements... and go along their merry way hacking into the night
Again, I digress. I think of hackers as two distinct groups. Low effort and high effort. Low effort cheaters are the aimbotters, the blatant wall hackers, the ones who are just here to make people upset and ruin games. High effort cheaters are ones with good clients, ones that subtly extend the users reach to 3.0+ blocks to gain an advantage, who alert them to oncoming people.

Low effort cheaters are people who just want to jump in a game and cheat. Nobody with an aimbot on expects to get away with it -- it's blatant, they know they're cheating, and they frankly don't care. It's not a matter of if they get caught, it's when. Setting a minimum games so that they're required to spend at least a day or two just playing unranked matches would significantly decrease the amount of these people who get into ranked play. Maybe in their time in unranked they get seen by staff, reported on the forums, or caught by XAC. Regardless, they're required to spend time playing games that do not matter to most people.

I don't doubt that the high effort cheaters, or 'closet' cheaters as they call them nowadays, will likely slip through the cracks. This is not meant to be the be all end all of anti-hacking measures. This is to prevent the blatant ones, the low effort ones, the ones who don't give a damn if they get banned anyway.
 

Razzledgirl

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Again, I digress. I think of hackers as two distinct groups. Low effort and high effort. Low effort cheaters are the aimbotters, the blatant wall hackers, the ones who are just here to make people upset and ruin games. High effort cheaters are ones with good clients, ones that subtly extend the users reach to 3.0+ blocks to gain an advantage, who alert them to oncoming people.

Low effort cheaters are people who just want to jump in a game and cheat. Nobody with an aimbot on expects to get away with it -- it's blatant, they know they're cheating, and they frankly don't care. It's not a matter of if they get caught, it's when. Setting a minimum games so that they're required to spend at least a day or two just playing unranked matches would significantly decrease the amount of these people who get into ranked play. Maybe in their time in unranked they get seen by staff, reported on the forums, or caught by XAC. Regardless, they're required to spend time playing games that do not matter to most people.

I don't doubt that the high effort cheaters, or 'closet' cheaters as they call them nowadays, will likely slip through the cracks. This is not meant to be the be all end all of anti-hacking measures. This is to prevent the blatant ones, the low effort ones, the ones who don't give a damn if they get banned anyway.
Well, it was a response to you saying it would stop hackers as if it was all. Not sure how I feel on this one. I was never one to deal with hackers as it wasn't my forte. I don't think I ever even banned for it once. It is something to talk about sure, but don't be surprised if something like this isn't implemented.
 

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