Anti-cheat Policy Discussion Part 1 - What is Cheating?

[snow garden]

Hey folks,

everyone is very keen to be more involved in the processes of Illuvium so I thought rather than coming to council with a completed formal policy for vote, I would start with some open ended discussions.

What I am trying to do is define some clear policies for how Illuvium will handle cheating.

This first discussion is only about what we consider cheating.

The second discussion will be about handling cheating (detection, banning, etc). I'll write that up after we discuss this first part.

Attached is a document with some definitions and examples of cheating vs not-cheating. I don't think there is anything too surprising, but for sure there may be more items , examples, exclusions, changes and so on.

In any case let me open the floor...

[green mountain]

So botting in OW would no longer be allowed even if they pay for the runs? Sounds great if it can be enforced.

[snow garden]

Detection and Enforcement discussion will cover the tradeoffs there. Obviously certain type of bot operations can be hard to detect and we don't want to be putting 30% of our budget towards anti-bot AI's or some such. But I wanted to keep this chat about the what if we can get consensus on that it will be easier to have conversation focused on the how.

I've plenty more to say on the topic, but I'll hold back in light of keeping this focused. I think I shared my original anti-bot paper from 2021 (maybe only with council not sure on that).

Anyway I digress ... already ... 😒

[iron trench]

i thought u can use bugs as long as u reported it. didnt people use bugs in tournaments?

[snow garden]

That's a good point we might need a special case for Arena 'mechanic' bugs.

(Although for major tournaments personally I'd prefer simply having agreement that using a clear bug, noted before tournament, means DQ)

I'm more thinking of things like an item duplication bug or something weird set of overworld steps that gives Mozart infinite capabilities or something that's clearly game breaking.

Obviously it gets pretty grey hence my * note in the doc.

[cyan solar]

Sounds pretty good.. i can't think of new things to be added at the moment but def a good topic.
I also think that botting should not happen in any form, especially in OW.

[lyric rover]

I love this, bots have ruined all the web3 games so far. This just adds to my belief that the OW and specially illuvial hunting should be something exclusive for players to enjoy and not automate this process.

[snow garden]

I agree, I was for a long time a Runescape player and at times that game was nearly destroyed by bots (although some people just made a game out of hunting bots which was pretty cool, some fun videos on youtube around that). But there will have to be some pragmatism, bot detection can be really hard and turn in to an arms race with the bot developers. I've got some thoughts here which we can discuss when we get to part II.

[gentle wind]

I'm all for cracking down all of the bots we can. But we have to be careful about one thing, we can't be banning people for boting if we're not 100% sure about it.

[iron trench]

the OW mobile app and illuvials gym/staking are some kind of paid automation

[lyric rover]

as long as the mobile app doesn't hunt illuvials I'm all for it, paid automation is good if done well.

[iron trench]

it has illuvials captures too.
and the team has thrown an idea of selling booster packs.
i dont see an issue with botting as long as the bots are paying for fuel. and OW is a single player too.
whats the diff between bots and scholars?

[lyric rover]

ugh... I've gone through this topic enough already. I'm not going to explain myself all over again.

[cyan solar]

Yeah me too ... several times i've fought against this... it would basically devalue everything on secondary and people that spend hours to try to capture something 'rare' ... 1 click illuvial hunting is turning OW into an online slot machine
And we tested that a bit in Beyond - for example there are people that open thousands, if not 10k+ disks, in search for the rarest of Illuvitars. What do they do with the unwanted thousands of illuvitars ? they dump it on the market at half of the FP or less just to get some more money to open more disks ... if this happens in OW it's a disaster imo and not only.
People that spend hours grinding would get rekt instantly (even if those automated runs would cost more) .. the secondary market would be a race to catch and sell X illuvial until it reaches 0 in value

Yes i could see something automated implemented as Filow suggested, maybe only for resources.. okay i don't think it would hurt as much.
And maybe i could see an automated system which includes Illuvials but not for AT LEAST after 6-12 months of having a free market ... let the market establish Illuvial/asset real value ... and then and only then after having all of this data maybe we can price an automated run in a way that wouldn't hurt the ecosystem

[past mauve]

I wrote an article that covered these topics: [can't link... DM if u want it] . Your point around 'Hacking', while very broad, probably could use fleshing out with examples ,but note that it 'includes, but not limited to': using macro scripts to perform actions automatically, auto aim/aimbot, wallhacks/ESP/Information hacks (see where opponent is placing on board) to reveal information not usually seen, speed hacks to exceed the speed cap.

Separate to this, there is things such as match fixing, multi-accounts and boosting within ranked ladders and tournaments.

For bug abuse, can include examples such as:
Excess resource generation
Duplication of items
Ability to use items/NFTs you do not own

Any technique that prevents another player playing the game (could be a DDOS, or any other game related exploit), mostly could be used to win PvP.

Any exploit of the match making system/algorithm to find easier matches/or match up with people u know

[iron trench]

smurfing is allowed

[past mauve]

interesting. So if there are ILV rewards, the best players can run up as many accounts as they are able to, to get more?

[iron trench]

smurfing was the meta

endorsed by council member(s) too

u can slingshot your smurf, and claim the highest one

not sure about using undisclosed smurfs to win multiple rewards

or if we have a measure to detect that

[iron trench]

i heard about this where a group of people playing against themself, have screenshots

[drifting bone]

Will probably be harder once we get more players

[jagged arrow]

Not sure about using bots that click the screen as cheating as they are using the same this a player is using. Visual input.
It's more like automation. And can be beneficial in creating a sustainable market. Especially if we talk about actions in illuvium zero, which is limited in NTF anyway.

And I'd like to bring a point about other games that had OpenAI team work on them in this fashion to create AI that can play the game. Examples include DotA and StartCraft.
I don't want the game to disincentivise such breakthrough technologies to be integrated with it.

[iron trench]

one can argue they have carpal syndrome and use bots to aid

[fierce linden]

On a policy side people were expected to name their accounts e.g. Viper, viper_2, viper_3, so only rewards are given to one of them.

People could exploit that and simply not do it, if found out they would get punished though.

This was also with everyone having god accounts with everything unlocked.
There would likely be different opinions about how to take multiple accounts by the same players into account if they have to own seperate NFT collections to make this happen and it would be far more difficult/expensive.
Further this also depends on what rewards structure you have, if e.g. majority would be in qualifying for tournaments, you likely can´t play that event on 2 accounts at the same time.

The, from my experience competing in AAA Games at the top level, far more likely issues are unsportsmanlike behaviour, which depending on the defintion is cheating or not. This could range from streamsniping/quesniping to boosting or directly wintrading.
Those can often be proven to 99%, rarely to 100%, which can make it at times difficult to handle.

[solar pond]

I also played Runescape for a long time, and personally enjoyed and supported the concept of random events they had put in place (think Mime, Sandwich Lady, Evil Bob, etc). Basically a fun CAPTCHA gets triggered when certain behaviors are detected.

I suspect that Jagex removed them not because it was obsolete but because they realized they were making money with bots. Which I hope Illuvium won't end up doing.

(Sorry probably should have kept this for the part on HOW)

[cunning vessel]

I submit that using scripts or macros in OW for things like perfect jumps/movement etc is ok

[cunning vessel]

They just have to submit their dr certificates and the dr will be called hahah

Could we contract other devs who have dealth with botting etc. I watched a video of piratesoftware on the YT who was heavily involved in WoW. He strongly dislikes web3 games which could make him perfect to bring in as a consultant?

[flint tartan]

Somebody called a Dr? 👀

[solar pond]

I'm not sure if these are included as part of Hacking or Augmenting the Official Client, or even if they would apply to our current games but I would consider adding:

• Unfair use of connection/disconnection, artificial lag, and packets manipulation.
• Unfair use of third-party hardware peripherals to gain an advantage over others (this one can be tricky to differentiate with accessibility devices)
• Ghosting and stream sniping

[iron trench]

bots in wow pay $15/month its good for business

[jagged arrow]

Coding is a skill. It is another dimention of skill ceiling. And it's not like you can learn how to be good at positioning, but you can't learn to code.
If such tools are not using data that is not available to players, they should be allowed.

[cunning vessel]

add on feature for the DAO. Only approved bots for the games??

[solar pond]

I don't think any scripts/macro should be allowed. No matter what it's for. If the community thinks it's annoying to fail jumps, they should push to have it changed as part of the official game. Just my opinion.

[flint tartan]

Since positioning is obviously heavy weigthed as a Part of skill to be good, allowing third Party tools which totally take over that need eliminates imo much of the skill needed, Fun, active participation of the game and shouldn't be allowed.

[jagged arrow]

It's such a gray area. Imagine a 3rd party tool that allows you to save your illuvial positions as templates. And on the click of a button it positions them for you.
It's clearly not doing something that a gamer can't do. It just automates the process and allows you to focus on other aspects of the game.

[flint tartan]

Focus on the other aspects of the game you automated aswell? 😅

[jagged arrow]

I can spend the time looking at opponent list. Trying to figure out what their play might be. Istead of going pixel by pixel to position my illuvials so that there is just enough space in a hole for a later game play.
And this is more of an example.

[iron trench]

bots for minting ✅
bots for playing ❌

[flint tartan]

Sure but you don't need to. Just write a Tool that if enemy plays x illuvial you play y illuvial Positionen to counter it.

[jagged arrow]

I didn't mean use coding to do positioning. I said positioning is a skill. You can get better at it. Coding is also a skill. You can get better at it. Why is one cheating and other a sign of a graeat man 😄

[flint tartan]

Cause it's a game, not a hackaton

[iron trench]

bot is only an extension of a person

[jagged arrow]

But you can have a printed sheet that does the same. 😄 Not seeing how this is an unfair advantage. It's like people who use notes during a MTG game. And people who try to remember.

[flint tartan]

Haha, yea... Let me see you scanning through this sheets in 20s 😂

[jagged arrow]

Pretty sure people played last arena with some notes on the side before they learn up a rotation.
T1: Jotun + Sword + bond
T2: Whatever.

Would it be better if the game allowed you to have presets of positioning instead of a 3rd party tool to do this - yes. It'll be more accessible.
But the dev team cannot do everything.

I can argue it can allow players time to think instead of being monkeys. Moving pieces at the exact same places every time.

[fierce linden]

preset positioning is a distinc advantage over people not using that (saves time on your turn), as far as I am aware game companies don´t like these things, as it forces everyone to use it to be on the same playing field

Companies would try to implement that feature themselfs for equal playing field or something close or wouldn´t like to see it I think.

[jagged arrow]

I agree with this. I've played way too many card games with decklist add-ons. It's a clear advantage.

It's way better if it's native.

But if it's not - if "botting" or some other restriction prevents it from being widely acceptable, then select few will use it.

[solar pond]

You’re comparing taking notes which 99.9% of players can do vs, using 3rd party tools, which only a few will end up doing. The idea is to make the game fair and inclusive. The more advantage you allow to the select few, the less fun it is for the big majority.

[flint tartan]

It's like arguing on chess tournaments AI should be allowed, because you could also take a truck full of books with proposed strategies with you

[solar pond]

Or arguing that Olympians are allowed to take steroids because everyone can take broccolis.

[fierce linden]

People do use 3rd party databases/stats to make in game decisions in many games, via a quick few sec search or button clicks, that isn´t something new/special.

e.g. players in TFT who use tactics. tools website and know how to look through things will in few sec find w.e. info they are looking for to help in the game
people do the same in card games, checking winrates of cards for mulligans or similar

You won´t make people not use those in a strategy game, that seems unlikely, the question there would be how much data can they have access to in e.g. hearhstone case you had no data from blizzard, but 3rd party software was gathering to high enough sample size to make 3rd party tools/databases very usefull.

So this being online is different to e.g. chess or even gaming events at offline levels, as you have databases with easy search options.

[jagged arrow]

There was a part of the document that mentions exactly using stats and nft prices as an example for a valid behavior.

[fierce linden]

Yeah the difference part would be if you have to make all the moves after you gained the knowledge or if something makes it for you, is what I wanted to get at.

[jagged arrow]

I think there should be some discussion about at which point something is considered a chore and not being an expression of skill. And that can be automated in order to make the game less tedious.

[fierce linden]

I believe that would be something Labs themselfs would want to implement then as a quality of life improvement.

e.g. fewer clicks to change a weapon on ranger and stuff like that, is what you mean?

[jagged arrow]

I can argue that moving an illuvial from a to b is not a skill in itself. A 5 year old could do it.
So gathering the knowledge to do the move is the actual skill that you have to posses.
And the document is saying that it's allowing the collection of stats.
But it's somehow bad then to act on them?

And you're right that it will not be viable to expect people will not use statistic data to determine their play.

[fierce linden]

On that moving part e.g. the game is designed with time of your turn to be used for that I assume, so if you cut that time lower, while others can´t unless they use 3rd party software, that would be an "unfair" advantage.

you modify the quality of life of the current version of the game via 3rd party so to say.

[jagged arrow]

I've seen quite a few high tier HS matches for example in which players spend 95% of their turn timer to think. And then they do 3-4 actions in the last 5 seconds.
So the skill expression is not in the move, but in the decision. And if you remember there was a problem with animations preventing people to queue actions at some point.
e.g. when harvester golem died. So they added a way to speed those up.

Yes - I agree it would be best if the game handles this behavior to level the field.

But the mechanics are not the important part.

[fierce linden]

Let´s say a low elo player would mess up positioning every now and then, but a premade tool helps them, they likely climb in elo because of that vs people who don´t use it, not even on a time base, but also on a eliminates a point of failure they can make.

You could compare that to someone buys items in a moba according to stats website that filters for current matchups, instead of deciding themselfs, that will be enough to gain elo, it eliminates points of failure for players.

[fierce linden]

Timer and making decisions within the timer was a skill expression part of the game for sure, I´d have won couple more games if I didn´t lose to being slow at times^^

[jagged arrow]

I think many good gamers think in terms of leaving the most opportunities for opponent to make misstakes and acting on them.
A metagame will form in any conditions, you'll be able as a good player to determine the likely positions opponents will take.
it'll even be easier if you know they're using a software. And you'll have an opportunity to prevail.

We can even try to put this in some rails by making a parallel to TFT. The slots there are way limited, so you have in a way more deterministic way of knowing where the opponent can put units.
This still allows you to outplay them.

From personal experience in GU I can raise a concern about the following:

In the GU community there are tools that allow you to see your opponent's deck that they used the match they played before you.
And this data is available publicly, so it won't be considered cheating as per the suggested document.

And it gives clear advantage to people who know how to get the data and those who don't.
For example if you're on mobile - good luck. If you match vs someone who has your deck list before even the mulligan phase.

So we're going back to most of these tools should be taken by the team as their own and put into the game.

We can now argue that the problem is not botting/automating, but having access to information faster.

And even then there are examples of top tier tornaments in which deck lists are available in advance. It is a different game.
But for ladder games, this has to be on the same playing field.

Another valid concern to have is: What happens with NFTs?

1. You define cheating.
2. You accuse someone of it.
3. You determine that they were breaking rules.
4. Now what?

If this conversation is planned for another thread, I can stop here.

[flint tartan]

Explicitly not subject to this thread

[slim relic]

I will admit to you on world of warcraft I used a robot to climb to the maximum level '🤖

[fierce linden]

I´d personally consider this a game dev flaw tbh, making people´s decklists real time available to others.
It isn´t cheating, as the game devs allow for it, I´d not be happy about something like that when playing that game.
I fail to see a reason for them doing this though.

[fierce linden]

On this point, if we are at "let´s have preset positions" you could just preset couple different ones and randommize it to prevent your opponent from knowing 100%.

[jagged arrow]

It was not real time. You could see their match history and their last game. And if it was 5 minutes ago, you can 99% assume it's their current deck if they're running the same god + god power.

[iron trench]

wow has so many addons for questing, dungeon, raids, almost feels like cheating
the blizzard obviously didnt intend for an addon to tell me what to do during a raid boss

[fierce linden]

That´s still close to real time, and would negatively impact gameplay I think, so I wonder why they have that data available to everyone.

[jagged arrow]

WoW = coding is a skill you can have in the game 🙂

[iron trench]

oh yea macro is huge in wow

[fierce linden]

That´s not true, if you compare old bosses and current ones, the current content and for years now has been created with addons in mind.

[jagged arrow]

I'm not entirelly sure about this, but blockchain 🙂 If it's on the chain, you can't hide it.

[iron trench]

thats because WoW adapt and progress forward

WoW didnt intend to allow gold farming, but here we are

selling game time

[fierce linden]

Maybe I am missing a blockchain part here or I am unaware of GU economy systems, but blockchain recording what cards you use in your game isn´t something necesarry unless cards farm some exp or something, right?

[jagged arrow]

It's like you have a tractor, but you insist people digging by shovels, because otherwise it's not their skill.
Progress comes when people no longer have to do the mundane chores.

[jagged arrow]

I think there is merit to recording stuff on chain. This allows you to do 0 API development. And any 3rd party tool can use the chain instead.

It allows you to grow a community to help develop around the ecosystem.

[iron trench]

imagine not allowing AI to play your game

[fierce linden]

I also think there is merit in not giving all data to the public 😅
It makes games very quickly very solveable, if you wanna look at e.g. TFT they heavily try to design the game for that to not be possible and in some patches still struggle with it.

[jagged arrow]

Do you really need chinese kids to farm gold for you? We can argue which is more humane 🙂

[iron trench]

exactly
what is the different between using bots and scholars?

[jagged arrow]

I'll reitterate. Allowing to automate chores is a good thing.

No kid slaving for gold is enjoying the skill expression.

[slim relic]

I bought a lot of gold💰

[fierce linden]

Bots are obv lower barrier to entry, no counterparty risks and more time efficient.

[iron trench]

m0zart is a bot

[fierce linden]

yeah, that´s quality of life, but you have to not min max, optimize the fun out of the game as well^^

[jagged arrow]

Aren't there games that pride themselves on that as well? I'm not much familiar with eve online, but I've heard comments about spreadsheet warriors there.

[iron trench]

we should ban the ranger from using automated robot to harvest mats, carry inventory, capture illuvials and teleport the ranger

[fierce linden]

Everything has a niche for sure, but again there is a difference to you having data on your 2nd screen and acting on it and having the game have the data and just place units for you, there are games that have auto combats as well, I don´t think Illuvium is intented to be one of those.

[jagged arrow]

Can we somehow pin down the problem here?

Automate something that requires near 0 skill = OK.
Others = Not OK.

[iron trench]

i played ragnarok online mobile a lot, got auto-play

[jagged arrow]

Are you a bot Jag? You played a game without playing it 😄

[iron trench]

in a few years we gonna have self driving cars, like whaaat

[fierce linden]

You have to differentiate between mechanical skill and knowledge skills there as well.
Like one could argue doing correct jump combos in the overworld is 0 skill, while many people won´t be able to do it well.

Same for the positioning thing, some will take few secs some others will take 5 times longer.

[jagged arrow]

Okay maybe a better framework to think about it could be: if you can make a mistake doing it, it's a skill?

But then everything is a skill.

I agree a match should not be decided based on the tech players use agains each other.
In that sence a big enough set of mistakes will result in the "better" player winning.

But do we have a chess player losing if they slightly place a figure to the side of a square?

[fierce linden]

My take on how a strategy game, so this is more re arena than overworld, is good in 2024 is if the game isn´t easily solveable with 2024 tools and allows for enough mistakes to happen, that are meaningful enough if they happen as well, it is a good game.

Presetting positionings to save time is in normal turns just a quality of life upgrade, but if you e.g. swap many units, have to redo many augments etc. you have a big advantage, that isn´t about quality of life anymore, but about being able to pull the turn off I think.

I wouldn´t feel too hard on this one either, but it would slightly make it into net negative for game exp imo.
It would also lead to "inlfluencer posts a set of preset positions with a team" "next one makes preset to counter" and the average player has to run behind having the current counter to the latest update.

I think a better example for the chores would be checking market prices of shards/illuvials than anything in arena.

[jagged arrow]

So in a sense the discussions here should be different depending on the game?

As they are different genres. In one of the games the skill expression is in the movement, in the other in thinking and in the third in the long term planning.

[fierce linden]

I think that is a good way of looking at it.

[jagged arrow]

Cuz in chess, moving is not the important skill to have. It won't matter if something moves the figure for you.

But in a sport, movement is a key element. Fine motorics, etc.

[fierce linden]

Chess has a different Grid to be fair, making a mistake on the moving there is hard, making a mistake with Illuviums hex layout is very likely

[jagged arrow]

But does that create a fun experience for the players? Being a hex away. Trying to squint your eyes every time.
At some point people will not enjoy doing it.

Maybe if there are better controls, like snapping if you hold a key and so on. I'm maybe just tunneling on what's available.

[fierce linden]

You can either try to perfectly predict/min max or leave more room to lower the chance of error.
Having some quality of life tools might be good there for sure (I´d like that, but messing up positioning less often certainly won me many games in the past^^), but you also don´t know your opponents moves, so a 100% thing doesn´t exists unless the blind gameplay stops all together.

[jagged arrow]

My biggest issue is with this:

Using a Bot to Interact with the Game
Using a tool that automatically clicks the screen, or interacts in any other way, with the client is also cheating

I'm sure there's no easy way of preventing this.
And we have to really go into the topic of policing this in order to see that in web3 we'll be hitting a lot of problems.

The problem will not be in having bots, the problem will be in taking action against them.

There will be NFTs/tokens made out of those bots on chain. The game/DAO should not have control over NFTs once someone has obtained them. Otherwise it's hypocritical in saying that gamers will have true ownership. And illuvium will in no way be better than a web2 studio, that bans someone and seizes their assets or makes them irrelevant.

And if the DAO does decide to go against both decentralization and ownership by making a centralized decision agains someone's assets.

What happens next? (Seraph recently went through a similar debacle. It was with hacked assets, but it's no different)
Studio decideds to play god and make the assets worthless in game.
Then those NFTs hit the marketplace and innoscent players are affected.
Or the price drops for the "hacked/banned" assets and other players see a dump and they sell their own assets cheaper - innoscent vitims.
Or players that bought 90% discounted assets claim they didn't know about the ban/hack tag and demand their assets to work. Making everyone pissed because they followed the rules and didn't buy those, but someone who feigned ignorance bought cheap.
Even if somehow the DAO is able to go around all the NFT marketplaces and hide the NFTs in the UI, so people can't buy them.
What happens when orders are made available? Or when NFTs are moved to L1? Banned/Hacked assets will be able to accept some generic orders, that don't filter for the banned tag.

TL;DR: Botting will happen. Trying to police it will bring much controversy and waste of time trying to please everyone.

However this line of thought goes across the whole document. What good a "no cheating policy" is, if there is no feasible way of banning it?
What's left is trying to prevent it, but this is a huge expense.

What's left is making the centralized data stored by the studio really valuable to people, so that they fear losing that.

[flint tartan]

And i'm sure that problems will have a heated debate in another thread 🙃

[unique mauve]

There's maybe no way of preventing bots from existing altogether, but there are definitely limitations you can impose to mitigate their effect.

Couple of good examples are a recent WoW policy to combat gold selling (accounts new within the past 30 days cannot use the AH, cannot mail, cannot trade other players). This creates a buffer period to detect bots and ban them before they can have any impact on the economy.

A slightly softer touch from Last Epoch, where in-game progress limits a player's ability to trade. As players play more, they can trade more. It's similar in that it gives a buffer period for the developer to ban bots and/or address exploits.

At any rate, as Johnny mentioned, this just defines "What is cheating?". I think it's worth keeping botting on the list. While it might not always be possible to prevent all forms of botting, it's definitely worth putting botting on the list of activities that comprise cheating. IMO it's not something we want to give a free pass on.

How to handle assets obtained through illegitimate means is definitely tricky, but I don't think it precludes the DAO from having a definition for "What is cheating?".

[jagged arrow]

Sure. Botting in some forms is cheating. What will we do with it is for the next thread.

What WoW did seams reasonable. Axie also had a weeklong period before claiming tokens. Meaning no tokens are minted in the period. I've seen also games have your NFTs with some sort of timers before you can mint them. Allowing for both seamless gaming and safe nets before assets are created. Nut sure this is something we can change at this stage if the team didn't have it in mind.

There's the concern of not being able to trade stuff you catch from the get go and the person catching the first rhamphyre, might not be the first one to mint it.

[snow garden]

Addressing comments about allowing some automation: I think allowing any non-official automation is a significant risk. Once you open the door to that, it will make bot detection much harder (every time you want to ban you would need to ask is this an illegal bot or an acceptable automation tool?!?).

Tedium and time spent is part of a games design, sometimes intentional and satisfying (e.g. levelling in Runescape was rewarding specifically due to the grind), but if some element of play is not enjoyable then the design should be updated..

That said I think a reasonable exception would be officially published automation APIs. Specific gameplay elements that we authorise.

You can think of the automated OW run idea as an official automation, one where there is a trade of between reward/effort. It also serves as an anti-bot mechanism to some degree simply by making it harder to justify spending time on building, maintaining and running bots!

I don't think there's any reason to attempt to tackle scholar like programs in this chat (although of course it is a related and relevant point). In the end with scholars there are still humans playing, and most people seem to think these lending type programs are a good idea. But even if you don't ... enforcement is basically impossible.

[teal elm]

Once someone gets the pdf hosted on google drive I’ll pin the google drive link. For the secfreaks

Hmm links to google drive may actually be blocked for most of us. It is for me.

[molten ore]

What are the secfreaks?

[teal elm]

Security freaks. I made that up. Some people don’t do PDFs.

[molten ore]

Oh.... googled it and I was about to go down the rabbit hole.

Still might...🐰

[torn sky]

Eliminate any bot activity on playing game would be cool. For example, there is blockchain based Proof of view technology from verasity that helps eliminate any bot views and comeup with genuine views from users. It might be good idea to integrate with one of those providers to eliminate the bot activities

[iron trench]

is account sharing cheating @snow garden ?

boosting should be allowed right?

[snow garden]

That's something I didn't think of in this paper. Loaning assets is okay but accounts ... I would say no simply because it's a dangerous security practice to endorse. What do you guys think?

[molten ore]

Is that not what currently exists? Eg my Son uses my phone for ILZ and can play it while I'm in OW or Arena. Same login for both. I think this is what @iron trench means, or at least how I read it.

[iron trench]

In general, account sharing is a violation against EULA in web2, for example boosting and selling accounts.
imo it shouldnt be prohibited since it's a personal security risk

and some can argue they are sharing with family (not sure we are checking IPs)

[molten ore]

Interesting, didn't know that was a thing.

[delicate parcel]

boosting and selling... isnt that basically the tenets of scholarship model? lol

[iron trench]

exactly

i believe in free market and true ownership

[jagged arrow]

One could argue that web2 is sanctioning this behavior, because they want to get more money out of more accounts.

I don't see how scholars are acceptable, but sharing an account is not. That is the very way scholars play. They use an account, that belongs to someone else.

[green mountain]

Boosting and account sharing should absolutely be forbidden, especially when there are monetary rewards involved

[jagged arrow]

How can you determine which behavior is lending and which is boosting. It's the same.

[green mountain]

You are lending assets to someone else to use on their account, not yours.

[jagged arrow]

That's not how any scholar program I've seen work. In most of them you create a second account and you give user/pass login to a scholar and you keep the wallet yourself.

[green mountain]

Is our system going to work like that? So what happens if the scholar wins any ranking rewards, who gets those?

[jagged arrow]

Seems like the easy way out to blame security. Same as the SEC does. We're protecting the people.

However I still think that the DAO will suffer if it's allowed. Because there will be an alternative to spending money in ILZ, for example, to speed up things. When you can instead get an account that's leveled up.

There will still be a way for a black market to form in ILZ though. For example. I want to sell elements. I work out with someone to issue a verry bad marketplace (the building) offer. And the counter party accepts it for an exchange of money.

[jagged arrow]

If we do nothing, our system will work like that. And the one that wins the rewards is the wallet owner. Scholars were always at the mercy of owners. They could at any point not get paid.

Risk for owner is, that a scholar starts playing your land. They sell everything and leave.

[green mountain]

Yes but the fact remains it is still 2 different accounts, with 2 different leaderboard rankings.

For web3 I can see it being allowed, but it's taking away from the esport essence and competitive play, especially if its endorsed by the developers.

So it comes down what we are trying to be.

[jagged arrow]

I can always create 2 accounts. Say that my main account is a second small account I make. And pay for someone to boost me and claim that it's a scholar.
There are way too many ways to poke holes into this.

[green mountain]

There will always be ways to cheat the system, doesn't mean it should be endorsed.

[jagged arrow]

And I previously said that it'll be very hard to police NFTs across accounts. So the strongest tool we can have to punish bad behavior is to target the account itself. Meaning the accounts should be valuable to people. Having stuff that is hard to get and not on chain. If we allow somehow for boosting/account sharing/account selling we can lose our ability to ban cheaters at all.

We also have a pretty open policy on multiaccounting. The moment you say people can share those. What happnes with (sorry for ping) @fierce linden's 5 accounts on the leaderboard? He can just say he's given them to scholars. Do they become eligible for rewards now?

We should have a new way to handle asset sharing. A lending contracts for example. There are a few that already operate on IMX. You can borrow illuvitars at the moment.
This ways scholars should have their own accounts.

[green mountain]

Smurfing should have never been allowed in the current leaderboard rewards scheme, it really makes no sense as the goal was for people to try, beta test the game and provide feedback. Once the game is live it's a different scenario altogether.

If we aim to be a casual game then account sharing and boosting should be allowed, if we want to be competitive and create an esport then it shouldn't be, it's that simple.

A basic example would be if you invite a top tier soccer player like Ronaldo or Messi to your local regional team out of nowhere and completely stomp the opposing team. Would that be fair? No, that's why it is not allowed.

[snow garden]

Account sharing is different to asset sharing. A lot of people don't want a group of people to play round the clock 24/7 and top out leaderbaords for experience simply becasue they can spend more time than a single person for example.

Is it okay for someone to give their account to a pro player and get top 100 rank in Arena so they can play in the world championships (and probably lose miserably) just for the experience or 'street cred'?

I mentioned the security angle becasue one of our key tennets is to promote good web3 security.

The default is account sharing == bad for lots of reasons both with regards to game balance/fairness and and security and probably others too.

Its reasonable to discuss, but a solid argument needs to be put forth as to why our official position should be so different to the norm.

---

This is orthogonal to creating systems which allow asset sharing, guilds, rewards distribution and so on. You can think all those things are good and important, and still not promote account sharing.

---

This discussion is also NOT about enforcement or the pragmatics of how it will work. We are trying to agree on what we consider cheating. We are setting an ideal. Its a second discussion (and an ongoing stream of work) to enable and enforce that ideal.

[fierce linden]

This is a good example, I’d think someone lending assets to a different account is in no way problematic, that is an upside of ownership, but promoting for multiple people to play the same account to (main use case cheat elo system) seems like very clean cut cheating to me.

[snow garden]

We have been working with Polemos to ensure their lending solution will work for core workflows, and the support will only grow over time. Definitely an important thing which many want.

And when passport supports multiple/external wallets it should be pretty open for anyone to craft their own lending and scholar like solutions.

But as you say: thats not the same as account sharing.

[fierce linden]

I think on the multi account comment, If you yourself play and invest your time, then no one gets an unfair advantage, which cheating would mean. Nothing stops someone else from making more accounts if that gives any advantages, there is nothing unfair here where another person or Programm help you.

[jagged arrow]

I think this leaves out a big loophole. I can say I'm sharing assets to scholars. But in reality to use multiple accounts to farm leaderboard rewards.

Maybe there should be no allowed ways to operate multiple accounts for whatever reason. Be it smurfs or scholars or multi-accounting (which is broadly regarded as cheating).

The good points to having smurfs, which Viper has before discussed about stability in climbing, ease of streaming and so on, could potentially be solved by other means.

[fierce linden]

Once you need to own assets for every of your own accounts, that will limit it to some extent, but further to any somewhat competitive minded player playing more than 1 account is rather normal in a strategy/moba game, prohibiting that for some baseless smurfs are unfair idea (how? people spend their time and need to own assets on these) would just turn players away I believe.
It would also indirectly incentivize unsportsmanlike behavior or direct cheating oriented things regarding how to get higher ranks with lower risks.

[lyric rover]

Illuvium should have as much official automated/asset sharing features as it can in order to mitigate bad player behavior.
There's already an idea in feedback on how we can create official scholarship programs in Illuvium without account sharing:
#1224359515521159389 message

[iron trench]

guilds and whales like polemos have plenty of plots. how are they going to let scholars play those plots at Open Beta?

1. Is the lending solution ready for OB? or
2. Are they going to send the plots to scholars' accounts? or
3. They are going to create accounts for the scholars to play?

4. How about Institution/Crypto Funds account? Surely the Founders or CEOs are not going to play the games by themselves and let the "employees" play it for the company?

[snow garden]

None of these solutions require account sharing.

[jagged arrow]

I've seen web3 solutions for lending on IMX already. Lootrush comes to mind. You supply assets and whoever wants borrows them.

[iron trench]

fraggy has been saying that he is playing Kieran's plots, i wonder if kieran sent his plots to fraggy or fraggy is using kieran's account?

[snow garden]

Until such time passport supports multiple wallets we are providing a secondary wallet that can be attached to an account. Specifically you can attach a wallet which is not a passport wallet but instead one of the lending wallets from any of the vendors out there. Although this isn't fully functional it can be used for playing land plots and sharing Illuvials. You can also of course just use it to store your lands on your own hardware wallet too.

[lyric rover]

he's obviously playing in Kieran's account, otherwise he would own the landplot.

[iron trench]

if thats true, i rest my case

[snow garden]

The third party sharing/lending wallet vendors need to implement rules about how payment/leasing/rewards work, which they can do. We have based this on the Polemos solution but it should work for any lending solution where parties agree to a set of rules which govern what can and can't be done by different parties on the wallet.

We are however getting way off topic.

[iron trench]

can account sharing be safe if we use ledger?
afaik we only need to sign to make purchases, not sure if we need to sign to travel or use fuel ingame

[lusty egret]

I never played Kieran his plots, he rugged me

[iron trench]

this is my chance

[cunning vessel]

She

[drifting bone]

It

[iron trench]

they

[pulsar coyote]

what about schoolars? others get to use your assets and know your ingame username and pass but no way to sell or move around assets?

disregard this message im reading through the past comments

[boreal thorn]

a large part of bot detection is player report, isn't? But this can cause false reports as well

[jagged arrow]

I think to keep it on the safe side. Acknowledge all multi-acount issues as cheating. And have exceptions where proven otherwise.

[civic summit]

As someone who had a RuneScape bot farm random events did absolutely nothing to stop bots lol

[iron trench]

allowing multi-account has the benefit of pumping DAU number

[jagged arrow]

We can just count wallets as others do and accomplish the same 😄

[solar pond]

Like I said, most likely because they accepted making money from the bots membership. Wasn't worth enforcing the rules. Btw, was it fun or paying well? I'm curious.

[civic summit]

I lost a good bit of money and I was completely okay with that. I thought once I figured out the right thing to do the botting would be passive income. Due to the nature of the constant cat and mouse game I would have had to pay too much attention to them all for it to be worth it.

[snow garden]

Enforcement is a tricky and we discuss that that once we come to a consensus on what cheating is.

[snow garden]

Personally I never really felt impacted by the bots. Didn't hurt my personal play experience.

[warped thorn]

May I ask a question?

[snow garden]

You can ask ... 😉

[warped thorn]

This stage will be free for everyone, right?

[solar pond]

There is absolutely an impact, e.g. extreme economic inflation and shortcuts in the completionist aspect of the game (for most players). Unless you were playing in a strictly self-sufficient manner or Ironman, I find it very forgiving to say that one would not be impacted by the bots. However, you said, “felt” impacted. 🤔

I guess these are your feelings and I can’t invalidate them. Personally, I felt impacted even beyond just the inflation and completionist aspects. What comes to mind quickly is being in the presence of bots ingame while doing certain tiresome tasks, bots freeloading/sabotaging a Soul Wars game, or having to world hop for world-capped activities such as PvE.

I understand though that if decently managed, the negative impact on players' experiences can be relatively low, e.g. when one buys a resource on the GE, he is not aware of the bots that generated it.

I still see bots being tolerated as a by-product of weak core values at a gaming company. It easily becomes a crutch to prop up fundamental analysis at the cost of game balance and integrity, and (personally) player experience. It’s an unsustainable and inorganic growth, like supplying a fake demand. It steers the gaming organization's focus away from striving to create real player experiences.

I would love to see Illuvium not only pioneer on-chain gaming but also become a model of a successful fight against bots. I think it’s an interesting time for gaming companies to innovate and make use of deep learning, AI, and lower than-ever CPU, storage, and memory computation overhead costs. Add to that a strong community that reinforces detection and supports the general fight. Ultimately, take investigative and legal actions directly against bot developers and botting farms. Beloved games and their developers must not surrender in the arms race of bots and cheats.

Keep fighting and do your best to mitigate the impact on real customers and players, the ones who truly support the whole industry.

[warped thorn]

thank you for help explain in details. 🙏

@snow garden
Bot impact are serious especially in FREE zone..
that is the reason why other project only secure the free zone gate after server overload such as screen freeze and delay etc;

Eventually, change to paid zone for all players by implementing various of measurement.

Unless server are really ready for it otherwise are the real players (?) who will end up getting frustrated and more complain incoming due to bot.

Please don't underestimate bot activity.

[snow garden]

I'm not suggesting we tolerate bots, I'm just mentioning my own experience. I come from very very early RS ... i.e. I'm old, I played when party hats were dropped, when the black hole was a thing, I remember when bluerose got 99 smith, RS2 is 'new runescape' to me, and although I played on and off since then it was very casual for most of that time

[solar pond]

Yes, luckily keeping Disks of Returning and H'ween masks was the perfect safe heaven to this economy doomed to fail. 🥲

[snow garden]

I didn't keep any d1sks unfortunately. But I had a bunch of other rares.
Anyway way off topic, although it is nice to reminisce 🙂

(lol... I wrote 'd1sks' ... Beyond addict 😉)

[small tapir]

I have some thoughts and questions regarding bots and the impact they may or may not have:

Inflation in stage 0 regions:
This is a given and will happen with or without bots, all assets in the 0 stages will trend to 0 since they will be free and unlimited. Bots will speed this up.

Inflation of 1, 2, 3 stages:
If I understand correctly there is a yield curve which will make Illuvials on every set more and more rare the more they are found. Of this is the case then bots should not be able to do anything but speed this process up as much as if every one of those bots was an actual player.

On the other hand those bots have to be powered by fuel to travel and craft just like a regular person, bringing us more rev dis as much as if there was a human behind every bot, and perhaps even more since I don't think bots will be as efficient at most tasks as humans are.

[small tapir]

The way I see it is bots will be revenue generators for the DAO since they will be investment vehicles for large investors to buy as much fuel as they want. Whereas if they are not able to do so they will be limited to buying Illuvials on the secondary market, from other players, which would make the revenue for the DAo from 100% (or 95% if you exclude Land) from the fuel sale to just 3% from trading fees.

So I would like to see more reasons why bots will be a bad thing for this game specifically, because if the only effect is them generating more revenue then I would not want to spend time and money on trying to ban them.

On the other hand, it might be better to build an official tool to allow investors to buy as much fuel as they want and simulate runs, that way bots will probably be less eficient and be left un used wothout spending resources to try to ban them and without loosing the ability to carter to those investors.

[snow garden]

@small tapir very good points and my original botting paper from a few years ago (posted somwhere around here... no idea if its still out) came to the similar conclusion. However this conversation is about what is cheating, not about how rigorously we enforce it.
If we don't say bots are cheating then we just open the floodgates.
How much time and effort we put in to anti-bot team is something that I want to discuss separately, but ultimately will be about how much of a negative impact it is having on the game.

I do think the idea, which has been raised elsewhere, of "Illuvium Provided Automations" is a good one and something we should pursue. Be this automated overworld runs, or something else.

But given it is such a broad topic, with very valid points on either side of many issues, I really want to keep this topic focussed on 'what' is cheating, not the 'how'.

[snow garden]

Realised I forgot to write about collusion such as win trading in Arena. Out of office today but will add some words around that.

[outer willow]

This is actually a very good idea

[blazing bane]

Blickter's suggestion about buffer times and rmarket/trade estrictions are a must. Seems like it's going to be an absolute nightmare to maintain any amount of competitive integrity either in OW or Arena

[iron trench]

thats not the spirit of blockchain true ownership

even if they are cheating, they paid fuel for those nfts

[blazing bane]

It would truly be a fascinating move to design an entire third person videogame that functions as an internal economic linchpin and then immediately surrender it to scripts and bot farms

[green mountain]

Cheaters also pay for web2 games and still get banned jagsin

[iron trench]

yes cheaters are banned from ILV games
im talking about the assets

[green mountain]

Same for the assets, if obtained through cheating - bai bai

[iron trench]

kieran has said they cant do that

[green mountain]

So any anti cheat attempt will be totally useless from the get go, just move your assets to a new wallet lolz

[iron trench]

we are running on 3rd party blockchain anyway

[green mountain]

So what's the point of running any game on a blockchain? Might aswell use normal web2 assets in-game, that match an nft you own

Also I've had nfts frozen or banned in axie for scholar multi accounting, so it's possible in a way

[iron trench]

axie owns ronin

[green mountain]

Was before ronin I think, not 100% sure

[lyric rover]

this is the problem with NFT's in general, they're not stored on chain, just their URL. That's why they are bannable or subject to change.

[iron trench]

yes. thats why only btc and eth are investment grade

[lyric rover]

I mean inscriptions in BTC are on chain, so it might come a time where it may be wise to inscript ILV NFT's unto the BTC chain

[iron trench]

trading them is so complicated

[lyric rover]

true that, let's hope it gets easier as time passes by.

[iron trench]

i gave up

we do have fully on chain NFTs on eth tho, and there are fully on chain games like dark forest

[lyric rover]

are you sure about that? 😛

the data is stored somewhere, not on chain.

[distant trench]

Correct

[lyric rover]

how else would you be able to edit or ban nfts?

[distant trench]

Illuvium is actually missing lots of metadata not on the blockchain indeed.

[green mountain]

If we have no means to treat cheaters, in a game with real money economy, then it starts to seem like a flawed concept really fast

[distant trench]

You can't really... what's the point of web3 of you can?

[lyric rover]

I meant devs, and yes they can

[green mountain]

Maybe ban the nft from being used in any game? Owner can still sell it for the picture, and still owns it

[distant trench]

That's what the team also knew from the very beginning and they still developed a game that is easily cheated... so they actually don't care

[distant trench]

How would the purchaser know it can't be used in game if you can sell it anywhere on different market places? Illuvium can't flag it as "bad" everywhere

[distant trench]

What would devs do exactly?

[green mountain]

There can be an identifier that the nft has been banned, if it's impossible to lable it as banned and unusable in-game, then I don't know what's the solution

[distant trench]

In game sure... we are talking about assets that exist outside of the games.

[green mountain]

Yes I meant brand the nft itself, to be known its banned and unusable ingame

[distant trench]

Again you can't.

[lyric rover]

they can do a lot. Change the nft to a black square for example, and a lot more.

[distant trench]

No they can't... it's a generic image for all same assets.

[lyric rover]

for illuvials yes it's generic, not for illuvitars for example.

[distant trench]

Do you guys understand how NFTs work and what data is stored on chain and what not? Just have a look at immutable blockchain illuvials nft metadata

[distant trench]

I don't know illuvitars exactly but if it's a simple image the whole thing including pixels should be completely on chain. If it's not, that's a concern of not using blockchain properly

[lyric rover]

I'll say it again, NFT's are not on chain.

[distant trench]

Metadata is... and the links to big data video / images etc is generic.

[lyric rover]

correct

[distant trench]

Only option would be giving full permission to burn any asset.

[iron trench]

Famous example is autoglyphs

[iron trench]

they can reupload the file to a dickbutt

for context thats a nft collection

[distant trench]

But it would be for all those NFTs

[iron trench]

ohhh ur right
they are not unique like pfp

its just the ID hash on chain and the rest of meta data is on server side

very little data on chain

[lyric rover]

and thus the importance of DAOs

[summer pecan]

If I'm such a good player that I can play arena and overworld at the same time, is it cheating?

[snow garden]

Pragmatically any game with any kind of grind will be overrun with bots, auto clickers, and other 'assistance' tech. Particularly if you can make money from automating said grind.

The idea here was that if we provide a 'legal' mechanism to do the same, we can control it, rather than spend half of our tech team effort fighting bots (and losing, you might win a battle, but its like a hydra, kill one technique and two more come back in its place). If you just want to fast forward the grind to get certain things you can sacrifice some efficiency to do so. Maybe new features wouldn't have automation for 3 months post release, maybe some things never would, and we can always change parameters if its hurting the play experience.

Some people want to play the whole experience some people only want to play certain parts. Is it really so bad to let them choose? Ultimately the community via the council will decide that.

In any case I'm not sure if it is the best option, but its certainly not as ridiculous as your comment tries to make it sound.

[distant trench]

To be honest and direct with you Johnny the back end architecture of overworld is built in such a way it's extreme easy to automate and bot, one of the easiest I've ever seen. So this makes me think it was always meant to be an intended feature to have things automated in the future.

Not even depending on having the game client.

So on topic of anti cheating policy. What is the point of having a policy if you can't enforce and support it anymore?

[snow garden]

No bots depend on having the game client, in some cases it makes it easier but it is ALWAYS just bits going down a tube.

Here the design is predicated on a serverless architecture with relatively simple requests because a long term goal is to run logic for Illuvium on chain. (Some other reasons too as discussed in my early blog post on the topic)

The anticheat work has been a little behind because for testnet it wasn't deemed as important (although obviously airdrops have added some more weight to this).

[remote flint]

Not only automate and bot but there really isn’t any security in obfuscation. Values can be edited without any networking knowledge. Not revealing anything public but I’ve done some reports and there’s a lot of work that can be done with free and script kiddy programs

[snow garden]

The anticheat stack only went out in the last release and there's a lot of the work to do there. The point is not 'don't enforce the rules' it's about finding the line where enforcement costs outweigh their benefits.

The idea was there would be a part two of this chat once 'what is cheating' is defined the second discussion was to be about the strategy and philosophy of enforcement.

[remote flint]

Honestly the anti cheat itself doesn’t matter a ton for beta if you can tell easily who the real cheaters are and can block them from airdrops.
I want anti cheat as early as possible though so the cheaters keep have to find new ways to hack and it naturally builds defense before there’s real money involved

[snow garden]

The reality every game is easy to cheat for any reasonably skilled actor and in a 'true ownership' model you lose the main weapon ... removing people's items/coins.

That idea (true ownership) can, and has, been challenged but if you take that as an absolute there are still plenty of options.

In any case this is far from my 'technical advisor' remit, but I would suggest the first step is to stick to the plan and agree on the definition of cheating (ASAP). Once that's done the community, team, and council can decide where to do draw the line with regards to enforcement.

[snow garden]

I don't disagree but it seems (gameplay) features are king right now.

[remote flint]

yeah it makes sense.I know there's some hacks out there that I don't understand the workings of but for the ones I've heard of the good news is they seem to be relatively easy to spot in the backend. Won't be 100% but I'm expecting there to be some angry script buyers here soon when they get banned from the airdrop. and I agree, we need to come up with the definitions of cheating, have leeway so we don't run into something that breaks the game but technically isn't defined as cheating, and have good anticheat + cheat detection mechanisms.
anti cheat I'm not 100% worried about, we need a firewall for it but shouldn't invest 100% of our time towards it. Detection will be bigger so we can cut it off before they can ruin the market. If there's a botter out there that's automating the game 100% but at the same speed as everyone else and paying me revdis then I'm not too unhappy

[snow garden]

Just to be clear the 'anticheat stack' is a catch all for all features and tools related to prevention, detection and action.

[green mountain]

Can't you ban an nft from being used in-game? So the owner can still move it around, and is still the owner, but the value of the nft dropped 99%.

They agree to the tos before playing, then break it and get a deserved punishment. Sounds fair to me.

[iron trench]

isnt the tos for the account, not the assets?

[green mountain]

Don't know the full technicalities with web3 but even so, account + playable assets are frozen, player still owns the nft in the end that is unusable ingame

[snow garden]

But they can sell it to someone else.

Even if you change names and the like, the caching on the metadata could trip someone up.
But mostly that's not 'true ownership' in the strictest sense.

[green mountain]

What does true ownership mean? If I own things in real life and break the law they get taken away

[snow garden]

Ignore that then, criminals get NFTs illegally, instantly sell for low price (or just normal price if its a fast moving item). Now what do you do?

There are plenty of options, but its a community decision around what is acceptable.

[green mountain]

Dunno there absolutely needs to be a way to punish and take away the cheaters assets, otherwise web3 gaming is doomed

[snow garden]

There are definitely options.

[green mountain]

No one wants to participate in a cheat infested clown fiesta.

Like why should I spend hundreds of hours farming if kids are teleporting around and botting 24/7

[distant trench]

You're missing the point it's gonna happen regardless. It's how to deal with it later.

[green mountain]

So ruin the economy first and think about it later. I know there will always be cheating attempts but we should have an idea how to deal with them sooner rather than later

[heady plinth]

@snow gardena lot from top LB in season 1 is from buyer 🤡

@snow gardenbut I respect you for S2 now that we are carrying out missions that all have to be from capture and cant buy , you are making progress💯

However, S2 is now at the top of the list of genuine players hahaha, unlike S1, there are lots of cheats

[distant trench]

It's 3 weeks away from launch and there is not even a definition of cheating yet... no definition means there is no proper governance or technical implementation that meets that definition to ban them. If everyone is now so concerned why didn't these people speak up months ago? It's too late for overworld and arena. Let the team focus on the key deliverables now.

[distant trench]

You're wrong there web3 is all about having ownership of your earned or bought assets, no censorship and use however you want without an authority deciding what is good or bad use.

[green mountain]

Maybe cause these people were not aware the extend of the problem? If you were all this time then why haven't you approached the subject in advance?

[green mountain]

That sounds like a complete nonsense to me and I see this argument used alot. Ownership is one thing, letting scammers and cheaters run rampant has nothing to do with ownership, it's just a dumb thing to do.

[distant trench]

Bots and cheats have been around since the 80s...

[green mountain]

Yes and have been banned accordingly

[green mountain]

By that silly logic SBF should have never been prosecuted for the ftx fiasco, we are web3 we can do whatever the f we want

[distant trench]

Ftx is a centralised exchange, regulated. They just trade crypto assets something very different, nothing to do with web3.

[green mountain]

It was just an example. Ownership of assets has nothing to do with scammers and cheaters, those need to be punished if you have any hope of web3 reaching mass adoption.

Why would anyone leave web2 cause they are getting scammed by the banks, governments and all these creepy fks, only to enter web3 to be scammed again? Does that sound like a great idea to you?

Ownership means nothing without the proper structure to support it.

[distant trench]

It's not a scam at the expensive of others, it's making clever use of technology that is available to everyone equally.

[green mountain]

What are we talking about here, our game? How is it not a scam at the expense of others, if one player has to spend 10hrs a day to play and farm, following the rules, and another one can teleport around or bot 24/7? Why am I wasting my time playing then? And after all the wasted time, I aquire assets which value has been greatly diminished by bots and cheaters?

Why would I choose to spend my time and money in such environment?

[distant trench]

The whole discussion should be about a appropriate definition, and how you can PREVENT it, not trying to go after them...

Because you'll never win chasing after them. Ever

It should technically be impossible to "cheat" whatever definition is decided.

[green mountain]

You cannot prevent every single cheat either, so there needs to be measures for those who slipped the prevention, otherwise you encourage it

[distant trench]

Nah. Just prevent harder until it's economical not viable anymore and they will go away

[green mountain]

I disagree, if a player breaks the terms of service, especially for something serious as this, with money involved (even without), they should lose everything which was aquired 'illegally', this is to protect your normal players. Without those, you don't have a product.

[iron trench]

its a not a scam.
a scam is when someone ask u to send money and not deliver as promised

the cheater pay for fuel to get the assets.
thats a business transaction

kieran and johnny have commented the same way

[green mountain]

It is 100% a scam, you are scamming every single player who is not using exploits out of their time, effort and in a way money

[iron trench]

we are not freezing their wallets or assets

[green mountain]

Who's we? And how is it decided?

[iron trench]

it is definitely not, someone robbing the bank and get rich quicker than me doesnt mean i got scammed

[green mountain]

If every bank allows anyone to rob them without any repercussion then yes it definitely means you are getting scammed

Why go to work if I can just rob a bank, now apply this to 8 billion ppl and watch the circus unfold

[iron trench]

ive asked kieran, they cant freeze them

[iron trench]

theres a difference between unfair practices (use exploits, robbers dnt get punished) and scam which is between 2 parties

wait until u hear about squatter rights

[green mountain]

You can argue on the use of the word scam all you want, doesn't change the fact it shouldn't be allowed or endorsed in any project at all, web 2 web 3 or web 300

[minor pewter]

In the overworld i would suggest cheating to be the following:

A. High risk economy breaking.
If: The cheater is able to extract more resources from the overworld on a single run through hacks than normal players.
A1. they can use more ergon energy than was allotted (>4000 (+ergons) )
A2. They are able to have more catch chances than are allowed in the form of increased dimensional stability. (This includes making your characters OP to solo an encounter)
A3. They are able to catch the same illuvial multiple times. In the form of duplication assets prior to purifying.

B. No economical risk other than reduction of price
If: players are able to circumvent any and all effort during a run.
B1. They can use infinite kinetic energy.
B2. They can one-shot or shoot infinite amounts to instantly open a singularity
B3. They can teleport to specific points on the map.

C. Low risk, slightly reduces value of specific assets.
If: the player has more information through hacks than the regular player.
C1 map hacked -> allows details of every instance or deposit on the map.

I would say A is a definite dealbreaker. You cant allow hackers to be favored in some way. Not that i know if any of these is doable.

B creates a negative sentiment around putting in effort, but since every player will have to spend to go on a run, there is no issue to the ecosystem if they finish a run almost instantly.
It should be noted that through B-hacks the economy needs to be spot on to allow accurate minimum-pricings for all assets.

C is the least impactful (yes in concert with B it actually somewhat is) and i would allow players the option to buy this perk. Running around the overworld over and over and over gets boring. And leaving always makes me question whether i got all the good stuff.

Could you help bring to light things i missed?

[distant trench]

A fun game is the product.

[green mountain]

Fun for who? Not for the players who choose to play as per the rules and what the game allows. I don't know why this needs to be argued at all, it's common sense.

[distant trench]

This is good. A is basically exploits.

And currently none of those are doable.

[green mountain]

I'd say using any third party app or exploit of game mechanics that gives an unfair advantage over 'normal' players should be considered cheating/exploit and be punishable.

If something is deemed 'acceptable' it should be built in into the game for everyone to use.

I can't think of a single game/sport that allows unfair/unsportsmanlike behavior to run unpunished that is successful.

We can't think of every single possible cheat/exploit in advance. If it gives a player unfair advantage then it should be punishable and looked down upon, or built into the game for everyone to use.

[fierce linden]

The not a single game allows 3rd party anything isn´t true, Riot allows companion apps, Blizzard allows addons, companion apps to certain extends yes, but they do help players who use them compared to ones who don´t.

Jungle timers in League of Legends are a prime example, tremendous advantage to use it, noone is getting banned for it.

[green mountain]

Help and unfair advantage can be different, the examples you gave are true, but those are far from unfair as the player can perform the same tasks themselves.

Anyone can time their jungle camps themselves, this just helps in a way, wouldn't say it's unfair.

[fierce linden]

Well then we have to define the word unfair, because before as I understood you said anything that gives advantage is unfair, this certainly gives an advantage

[green mountain]

I specifically said stuff that gives 'unfair advantage'. It's gonna be hard to define every possible scenario.

[fierce linden]

In general gaming companies try to build things that give advantages via 3rd party things into their games at some point, but they are usually behind on this.
Using League of Legends again, giving suggested item builds in the game existed via 3rd party things before they had it in the game, it was a good and wanted feature, that´s why they made it.

[green mountain]

Yep, again that is harmless and nothing unfair about it. Might read a guide or watch a stream for the same result

[fierce linden]

yeah but you see, what you consider unfair is different to what others consider unfair, I´d certainly consider it unfair if I have to time jungle camp timers in chat vs my opponent having them displayed on mini map

[green mountain]

I wouldn't consider it unfair because it's not that hard to keep track on it yourself

[fierce linden]

Well again, someone can install something that shows this information every game, someone else has to watch videos, read guides, remember things, this is cleary a different setting

[green mountain]

Unfair means something that the normal player has no access to or is unable to perform it through any means that are built into the game. The examples you gave are perfectly doable by any player without the necessity of third party programs.

[fierce linden]

Well both examples essentially save someone time, which in Illuviums case often many people had argued that saving time is a very valuable thing, as then one can farm more nfts in lower amounts of time needed.

[green mountain]

For example, I'm all for a third party app that tracks what I have discovered in ow already, and illustrates it on the map in a better way, since the player has already done the effort of discovering them.

A map hack that shows everything from the get go is a no no.

[fierce linden]

e.g. in-game overaly that displays market values and shows if it is worth to throw a certain shard or something that calculates which shard is best roi to use, would you consider this unfair?
anyone can access this information, but it would take them time

[green mountain]

I wouldn't consider that unfair, no, because the player has access to all that information, even if it will take more time.

[fierce linden]

now in reality these ways of saving time could save more time than the show everything on the map thing though

I am not arguing for show everything should be allowed by any means, but to understand if you mean the way you get to the result matters more than the result of the 3rd party help

[green mountain]

Come on man, how does it save more time than a map hack? The ow regions are huge, you can save 10-15 mins per run, while looking something over takes 1 min.

[fierce linden]

I mean you can do more than just this, placing illuvials would be another example, prob saves 1min/combat to not do this yourself, I can find more things like this.

In general I only wonder what line you have, as both things save time for players, but one you say is super bad, other is totally fine.

Or like I asked before the way you get there matters more than result

[green mountain]

The line is, the player can obtain any information through the dex themselves even if it takes more time. The player cannot know the full map layout with illuvials, fruits and ores.

One is fair and the other is unfair

[fierce linden]

But the player could spend time to check the map.

Again just playing devils advocate.

[green mountain]

They can spend the time to check to the best of their ability and still miss something

[fierce linden]

Same could be argued for positioning or calculating roi on what to capture, which shard to use.

[green mountain]

Anything for positioning should be considered an exploit, otherwise it's PvsAI rather than pvp. Calculating roi I'm fine with

[fierce linden]

ok, interesting

[green mountain]

Anyone can calculate their roi themselves even if it takes more time. Nothing unfair about it. On the other hand I cannot teleport around the map if I want to, as an example of unfair.

Any positioning script is unfair since it's not the player making these decisions. Watching a stream and learning is different and part of the process, as you are the one performing the actions in the end based on your knowledge and understanding.

[fierce linden]

Yeah I understand your point, you care about the way people get to the result of saving time, not the fact they can via tools.

[flint tartan]

But you can fly to the assets, you just need more time to get there... Same as in your roi example 🙃

[green mountain]

But there's always gonna be a chance you miss something no matter how hard you scan. With the map hack there is no such possibility unless you are blind

[fierce linden]

What if heatmap would turn blue once you see something, then you could never miss anything as well.
(maybe heatmap should act like that anyways)

[green mountain]

The latter part exactly, at least everyone will be on the same playing field

[grizzled void]

Why not just provide a full list of everything available in a run when entering a run? like a pack opening reveal animation. Then u remove the advantage someone apparently has had in terms of knowing what is inside a run. Then it’s up to the player to explore and find the content in a run. I would much rather have it like this to even the playground, if there are no other alternatives to prevent this type of action

[heady plinth]

cheat cheat cheat buy buy buy , gg, broken p2a s1

already a long time peaople make proposal about market trading include point is mistake, but no response , gg

[iron trench]

is the OW full scan script considered cheating?

[outer willow]

From all the cheats/botting this must be the worst one for the game

[waxen estuary]

Or minting items without even running the client? 🙂

[remote flint]

Literally all it does is tell you what’s in the map and I believe location which doesn’t save a ton of time. Just make it a paid feature and you’re set

[lyric rover]

yeah just take away the thrill of the entire game, no biggy.

[remote flint]

Don’t use it if it takes away your thrill. Having to hunt is the most boring part for me. Best part is just finding out what’s on the map

[lyric rover]

well if you know beforehand what you're going to find then it isn't much exciting is it?

[remote flint]

Yeah that doesn’t matter to me at all. You have to pay for the travel, use paid service once you’re there to scan what’s available, then decide to mine or leave

[lyric rover]

right... So you pay to travel, pay for scan service and then just leave if you don't find what you're looking for. Talk about burning money.

IMO if we start going this route of destroying the actual game to fight the exploiters it's the beginning of the end.

[snow garden]

I've updated the original document to include collusion, it is otherwise unchanged (minus some formatting).

Note that this is not a statement about how things will be enforced or if automation will be a feature. That's probablly a longer and harder discussion.

But I think it would be good to get this first step agreed.

• @limpid lily + <@&814435151307866142>

[delicate parcel]

Kieran has alluded that this will be a paid feature. It's basically the god mode he plays on. You can see on the map what the illuvials are on board.

[outer willow]

Yes so open a pack, nothing special, shoot rocks and quit. Then do another. So the guy actually running around and searching for stuff that doesn't know what's in his pack, might miss the rare illuvial, and his value is way lower that he gets from his pack than the cheater. Prices go down for everyone because of supply demand, real players have no monetary incentive, game dies.

[outer willow]

So a paid version for people that don't have the cheats, but free for the cheaters, got it

[delicate parcel]

Not sure how you jumped to that conclusion. Labs is monitoring this and they won't share how they track these cheaters but I have been assured that they have identified them and will be banning them.

I've asked Kieran to confirm this to give you guys assurance.

[green mountain]

That's great that they will be banned, but what happens to the assets they have obtained through cheating? If they are not frozen/banned or dealt with then we are not doing anything

[waxen estuary]

But what happens to the crimson wastes that only has butterflies and star nosed moles left afterwards?

[outer willow]

If it's so easy to ban them, why offer the godmode at all?

[lament carbon]

i like the idea of having blue patches showing up on heat map - wouldn't reveal exactly what it is.. but would help find, differentiating from the resources that also show red currently

[lament carbon]

in relation to the collusion part..
Is there possible a way a player can manipulate a DC to their advantage?
e.g I once had a situation where i vs'd this guy multiple times, the game would always freeze due to a DC, after i while i'd DC then reconnect, to find the game still in motion (1 round later). Also sometimes the game just froze at the start, when i would reconnect it was still frozen, causing me to forfeit - Felt like he had more time to waste than me, knowing something i didnt just to get more points towards his rank lol

[fierce linden]

I don’t think you can abuse dcs in ILV atm, but it is a common thing in other games if they don’t have reconnect features especially and game crashes or doesn’t start/freeze for both then.

Collusion would be eg wintrading or if people intentionally que up at the same time to vs each other for a „fair“ game, so they match similar mmr. (Cheating should be banned)

If someone can via non regular gameplay/actions force the game to crash that (in my opinion) is clear banable.

[crisp horizon]

Catching up a bit here.. sounds like the team has really changed its tune around bots for ILZ? Last I checked Kieran and others were talking about how since we own the assets, it's perfectly fine for us to automate things and for people to bot their own lands. The point being that these were blockchain based assets and you could do whatever you want with them as long as you're not doing exploits etc.. Based on that info I had experimented with Autohotkey etc in the past to make claiming fuel easier (reduce a couple of clicks), sounds like this is no longer allowed?

In any case if this is something you're going to enforce you guys really need to establish and communicate clear official policies prior to launch, especially since the attitude towards automations was very different before. Like where is the line- if I have a mouse and keyboard that has built-in macros for instance, is that cheating?

Especially important since @snow garden has stepped down as CTO since the inception of this thread, and he seems to have been the main voice/communicator from the team side on this