Player's Profile Rating System To Stop Stupid Behaviour On Public Servers?

[roshnak 41]

So, the question is would it be fair for BIS to implement a system where a player's publically 'voted on' behaviour would incur a time limited sanction for their malicious/disruptive behaviour that would limit/restrict the offending player from joining certain public servers, who's admins have set a point system threshold to who or whom they do not deem suitable to join their server.

And the answer to that question is no. It's a bad idea that is open to abuse and designed to solve a problem that it is relatively easily handled utilizing the tools that already exist in the game. No other game needs a special tool to globally police players' behavior. Why does this one?

The bottom line is if BE can accurately hand out life time bans, then a profile rating system can be implemented and potentially hand out temporary sanctions based on an algorithm against players depending on the severity of their behaviour. At the end of the day, if you're not doing stupid sh*t then there would be nothing to fear.

Again, no. First of all, unless you work for BE you can't say whether or not the lifetime bans it hands out are accurate. Secondly, even if we assume that false positives are impossible, false negatives are definitely not. Anti-cheat programs fail to catch cheats all the time. The consequence of this under the current system is that a guilty person doesn't get punished. As Das Attorney already pointed out, the consequence under your proposed system is that innocent people are wrongly punished.

And even if your proposed system was infallible (it can't be), it's still not possible since it's designed to prevent "stupid shit," as you put it, which apparently comprises a list so long that it would take a whole day to list it all, including such actions as parking helicopters on inaccessible rooftops. This is clearly not the type of thing that can be detected by an algorithm, since it really just amounts to behaviors that you personally don't approve of.

At the end of the day, you're just mad that people aren't playing the game the way you want them to.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

And the answer to that question is no. It's a bad idea that is open to abuse and designed to solve a problem that it is relatively easily handled utilizing the tools that already exist in the game. No other game needs a special tool to globally police players' behavior. Why does this one?

Again, no. First of all, unless you work for BE you can't say whether or not the lifetime bans it hands out are accurate. Secondly, even if we assume that false positives are impossible, false negatives are definitely not. Anti-cheat programs fail to catch cheats all the time. The consequence of this under the current system is that a guilty person doesn't get punished. As Das Attorney already pointed out, the consequence under your proposed system is that innocent people are wrongly punished.

And even if your proposed system was infallible (it can't be), it's still not possible since it's designed to prevent "stupid shit," as you put it, which apparently comprises a list so long that it would take a whole day to list it all, including such actions as parking helicopters on inaccessible rooftops. This is clearly not the type of thing that can be detected by an algorithm, since it really just amounts to behaviors that you personally don't approve of.

At the end of the day, you're just mad that people aren't playing the game the way you want them to.

Rosnak, no disrespect, but do you even know what an algorithm is or how it works? Parking a helicopter on "inaccessible rooftops" is only a minute factor of how an algorithm works.

[roshnak 41]

Rosnak, no disrespect, but do you even know what an algorithm is or how it works? Parking a helicopter on "inaccessible rooftops" is only a minute factor of how an algorithm works.

Why are you singling out one thing from that post when you yourself stated that there is a list of behaviors you don't like so long it would take all day to write it out? (To be clear, I do not think that you literally have a list this long.)

I know that there is genuinely no way for a computer to detect whether or not it is okay for a player to park a helicopter on an inaccessible rooftop (as an example), especially given that I bet you and I already have different ideas of when it would be okay to do so. I do not think that detecting whether a helicopter was parked on an inaccessible rooftop is hard, I think it's silly to want to detect it in the first place, and I would likely feel similarly about any other issue you have with the way people play Arma in public servers. This is a sandbox game, and behaviors that you do not like are not disapproved of by everyone or in every situation. And even if they were, they still shouldn't incur a global ban from playing the game in multiplayer, temporary or otherwise.

Again, what you are essentially saying is that you want to give players an "Arma Worthiness Rating" (whether it's assigned by other players or the game itself doesn't really matter) and then allow people to say "No playes with less than a 60% Worthiness Rating allowed to play in my server." This is a bad idea. You're trying to turn a open community into a exclusive one.

Edited February 20, 2015 by roshnak

[fn_Quiksilver 1633]

This is clearly not the type of thing that can be detected by an algorithm, since it really just amounts to behaviors that you personally don't approve of.

At the end of the day, you're just mad that people aren't playing the game the way you want them to.

It is his server, I get ticked off as well when players grief on my server/missions.

A lot of 'stupid shit' is entirely detectable by code. I illustrated on page 1, code to entirely prevent the crap that OP is encountering. Troll thinks he's cheeky by hiding all the vehicles? If the script detects the vehicle is in an anomalous position for no apparent reason, reset it. Problem gone. Don't require an admin around to police that low level and extremely time consuming stuff like TKing/vehicle griefing (including what OP mentioned) and other exploits which can be easily patched via a 'stupid' script which doesn't waste a persons time to manually investigate and police.

The problem with associating a rating with the player UID/GUID, is that as someone mentioned earlier, what is acceptable in one gamemode is unacceptable in another. The best solution is for coalition of admins running the same scenario to get together and share bans lists. And, at the low level, it is entirely possible to script-out much of the game-disrupting stupidity that individual players can get up to. What is your time worth? Do you have the time to watch your server 24/7, or want to trust someone else to do it (assuming they have the time)? Having 3-4 trustworthy admins around to sort stuff out is great, but even then, what happens when they are not around? Oftentimes, on almost all servers, all the admins are in roughly one timezone. Leaving all the off-hours with players vulnerable and with no protection.

Re scripted solutions...The (surmountable) challenge is in weeding out false positives. Griefing is often not intentional, but there are certain common 'markers' of intentional griefing, such as repetition over a period of time, length of time since they joined that it began, sanction of the victim (voting or 'reporting' system for victims of griefing), etc. There are also ways of respecting the weakness in scripted solutions, by allowing the player to sit in 'jail' and think about his crimes, or as mentioned above, allow the victim(s) of the griefing to determine if it was intentional or not.

Little example:

1.

Last week on my coop server, two guys were running around killing one another, not bothering anybody else. I was not on at the time, but the logs gave me rather detailed outline of their behavior. Was anyone unhappy or wishing an admin was around? Nope, not them and not the other players who were not affected. No one was reported and no one was kicked or banned from the server by the script.

Contrasted with:

2.

Last week again, someone came on the server and began teamkilling. Shortly after he began, the script received reports from affected players. After around 5 minutes on the server (and 4 teamkills) the player was subject to 'threat management' to protect other players. Teamkilling became very difficult for him. He persisted however. 4 more teamkills later (over 25 minutes instead of 5), the 'stupid script' determined he was a persistent threat to players on the server, and ejected him. He tried to return, but in the database his name had a recent (hot) threat flag. As soon as he attempted rejoin, his session was terminated back to desktop and his name was also put into a 'to ban' array in the DB for attempting to rejoin. He no longer attempted to rejoin, and I can only assume he found another server to victimize.

I was unaware of all this as I was out working on my 5 iron at the driving range :p

Later that evening, I finally got to my PC, checked the reports, and 1 minute later his GUID and IP were in bans.txt.

So this 'stupid script' protected the players from the griefer, instead of letting him waste their time, and the total time I spent sorting him out was just under 1 minute. I also asked some of the affected players about him and they reported that at one point there was a griefer on the server, but they did not remember his name. Why not? He was quietly and discreetly swept under the rug by the dumb script shortly after he began, then disposed of.

There are many gameplay-related ways to grief, but we can take care of most of the common, repetitive and lower-hanging issues without having to constantly monitor manually.

Edited February 21, 2015 by MDCCLXXVI

[roshnak 41]

A lot of 'stupid shit' is entirely detectable by code. I illustrated on page 1, code to entirely prevent the crap that OP is encountering. Troll thinks he's cheeky by hiding all the vehicles? If the script detects the vehicle is in an anomalous position for no apparent reason, reset it. Problem gone.

What is an anomalous location? Who decides what an anomalous location is?

A lot of 'stupid shit' is entirely detectable by code.

I guess I really wasn't clear about this. My problem isn't with being able to detect that something is happening. It's with being able to tell whether or not it's stupid, since in many cases it comes down to personal opinion, or the context of the mission, or whether or not you're having a bad day.

The problem with associating a rating with the player UID/GUID, is that as someone mentioned earlier, what is acceptable in one gamemode is unacceptable in another.

Yeah, it was me. I was the one who said that. And it's the most important part of my post. I don't care if people run scripts on their individual servers or in their missions that move vehicles or punish teamkillers or anything else. I care that people are trying to create a global standard for the "right way" to play Arma and punish people for not conforming to their views.

Edited February 21, 2015 by roshnak

[fn_Quiksilver 1633]

What is an anomalous location? Who decides what an anomalous location is?

I guess I really wasn't clear about this. My problem isn't with being able to detect that something is happening. It's with being able to tell whether or not it's stupid, since in many cases it comes down to personal opinion, or the context of the mission, or whether or not you're having a bad day.

Yeah, it was me. I was the one who said that. And it's the most important part of my post and the only thing that really matters. I have never stated that scripts can't be run to determine if a vehicle isn't in some specific location or that a player is killing people assigned to the same team or side as them. What I am saying is that there is no way for the game to know whether or not this behavior is acceptable in the context of the situation. I don't care if people run scripts on their individual servers or in their missions that move vehicles or punish teamkillers or anything else. I care that people are trying to create a global standard for the "right way" to play Arma and punish people for not conforming to their views.

Is parking a helicopter (meant for use by the whole server) in an inaccessible place (such as on top of a building) and then abandoning it, ever an acceptable thing to do?

I would say no, and on the first page I provided an outline of a dumb script which will take action if that occurs.

In effect I agree with you that we both don't want a global standard for the "right way" to play A3. However, there are global standards such as with BattlEye. If someone is running a detected cheat engine, BIS global standard is that that GUID is no longer welcome in MP.

With respect to the OP however, would you not eject the troll from the session?

If he is getting his fun from your server by hiding the helicopters and making it impossible for others to play the game the intended (by scenario designer and server admin) way, is that acceptable to you? To me it is not, and a simple 3 line of code can prevent that (and I would call it) griefing.

If someone comes into the game and starts killing team mates, he is having fun on A3 the way he wants to have fun, right? I suppose it is wrong to remove him since he is merely a non-conformist and who am I to say how he should have fun? :)

Edited February 21, 2015 by MDCCLXXVI

[roshnak 41]

Is parking a helicopter (meant for use by the whole server) in an inaccessible place (such as on top of a building) and then abandoning it, ever an acceptable thing to do?

Almost certainly. There are several scenarios I can think of that would cause a person to leave a helicopter in an inaccessible place. And you're also assuming that the helicopter was meant for use by the whole server. What if it wasn't? What if the scenario called for it to be left there or at the least meant that it was acceptable to leave it there? What if the player died or fell off the roof or had to jump off for some reason? Remember, we aren't talking about specific missions here. We're talking about a global detection system.

Edit: Again, I don't have a problem with people running these scripts on their own servers or having rules and enforcing them. Yeah, if you don't like what someone is doing on your server, kick them, ban them, whatever. I don't even care if you have a good reason. If the players don't like what's going on, they can vote kick people (although I do think that this system should be made more accessible).

Also, I don't think outright cheating is the same thing as griefing, and thus I don't think comparisons with anti-cheat programs are valid.

Edited February 21, 2015 by roshnak

[Jackal326 1158]

Almost certainly. There are several scenarios I can think of that would cause a person to leave a helicopter in an inaccessible place. And you're also assuming that the helicopter was meant for use by the whole server. What if it wasn't? What if the scenario called for it to be left there or at the least meant that it was acceptable to leave it there? What if the player died or fell off the roof or had to jump off for some reason? Remember, we aren't talking about specific missions here. We're talking about a global detection system.

I think actually what the original post was talking about was a rating system to ban people for being dicks and the possible implementation of that, not detecting whether someone meant to park a helicopter on a roof or not. Though that was used as an example of griefing, this is more about addressing the issue as a whole, not just that one example...

[das attorney 857]

Hmm,

Interesting points and counterpoints but I stand by what I wrote earlier.

The other day I found a six-month old bug in some code I wrote. It was only an error in a distance script, but imagine if it was an error in a script to detect naughty behaviour. I could have been kicking/banning/reporting people for 6 months - all the time confident that I was right and they were wrong.

Ultimately, I think things like scripts are great to record and log behavoiur, but it requires the critical eye of a human to sort wheat from chaff.

Also, I watched 2001 SPace Odyssey again the other day (lookout 1968 spoiler alert!).. HAL murders everyone because they feed a load of crap into him and get him to violate his programming. Perhaps he should have only been allowed to log information into a log.txt instead of killing people. OK so it would have been a really shit movie, but my point is it's probably a lot safer to not give unfeeling computers sweeping powers.

@Infiltrator - if you are needing some help with specific things, put a post up on the mission editing forum and I'm sure people will be happy to help. They like a good challenge over there. Like 1776 says, scripts are good for passive things (respawning blown up/abandoned vehicles/anti team kill etc), so voice your problems and maybe someone can help.

If you do want to go down the road of entrusting more to a script though, beware as you may spend more time trying to unfuck the things it fucks up than you would have done by adminning the server yourself!

[roshnak 41]

I think actually what the original post was talking about was a rating system to ban people for being dicks and the possible implementation of that, not detecting whether someone meant to park a helicopter on a roof or not. Though that was used as an example of griefing, this is more about addressing the issue as a whole, not just that one example...

Okay. Again. I understand that this is not about that one example, as I stated in the first line of a previous post.

My problem is that it is not possible to create a system that can automatically detect when someone is "being a dick" and downrate them for it. This is my problem with the core of the "automated system" argument. Whether or not someone is being a dick is dependent on context, especially in a sandbox game.

I also have problems with the idea of letting other players rate each other and the whole concept of an "Arma Permanent Record," which I have written about previously.

Why is it that Arma would need a system like this but every other game seems to get by just fine without it?

[I give up 152]

Just one doubt.

How the outlaws, criminals, drug dealers and similar are going to be rated on LIfe mod?

Bad or good rating?

[infiltrator_2k 29]

I understand people's concerns with such a rating system being implemented. But what people need to understand is that such a system could be an optional feature like BE enabled servers are. This would give players an option whether they wanted to dick around in servers or play the game as it's suppose to be played. People's perceptions to what is acceptable behaviour and what is not obviously varies vastly. I guess people view what Arma is and what it's suppose to deliver differently. Where people have bought the game they obviously feel they have the right to play it how they see fit. Whether it's running around the map blowing everything up that moves and teamkilling or playing the game tactically and as a team.

Personally I like playing Arma MP the way it's suppose to be played in COOP, and that's as part of team who plan and coordinate completing the missions objectives via coms. So, when I'm midway through a mission with some great teamplayers on TS and you then get a player with the mentality of a 12 year old join the server who screws around by doing a number of things that just irritates players, it only serves to upset everyone. You only have to use your imagination to know what those things are. When Nuxil recently pulled BEC it freed over 3,000 retards, and the result was instant; I had people posting abusive childish messages and using hacks. The point is why should server admins have to police their servers to stop these retards with bans all the time if there's the potential of universal and optional solution?

An algorithm could calculate a number of factors before reducing a player's rating. It could in theory base its calculation on factors like whether or not the player has been voted to be sanctioned together with other conditions that have been met in-game based on their actions. But let's for argument sake say that the rating's algorithm made the wrong call and unfairly reduced a player's rating... as long as it's over 50% accurate with increasing and reducing a player's rating it'll always give a more accurate reflection of that player's behaviour. If a player's rating is based on an incremental chart of one to ten, then a player's rating should ever fall below five if they're not purposely dicking around.

So, having an option to join or host a server with a rating system enabled would seem to be the solution to keeping everyone happy in both camps. If a person is sceptical or believes the system is unfair let them jog on and join a server without the rating system. Then they can dick around it in all they want. Although as the server will likely be full of people doing the same 'stupid sh*t' they'll likely get bored, as people who do stupid sh*t seem to get off on annoying people.

[fn_Quiksilver 1633]

I understand people's concerns with such a rating system being implemented. But what people need to understand is that such a system could be an optional feature like BE enabled servers are. This would give players an option whether they wanted to dick around in servers or play the game as it's suppose to be played. People's perceptions to what is acceptable behaviour and what is not obviously varies vastly. I guess people view what Arma is and what it's suppose to deliver differently. Where people have bought the game they obviously feel they have the right to play it how they see fit. Whether it's running around the map blowing everything up that moves and teamkilling or playing the game tactically and as a team.

Personally I like playing Arma MP the way it's suppose to be played in COOP, and that's as part of team who plan and coordinate completing the missions objectives via coms. So, when I'm midway through a mission with some great teamplayers on TS and you then get a player with the mentality of a 12 year old join the server who screws around by doing a number of things that just irritates players, it only serves to upset everyone. You only have to use your imagination to know what those things are. When Nuxil recently pulled BEC it freed over 3,000 retards, and the result was instant; I had people posting abusive childish messages and using hacks. The point is why should server admins have to police their servers to stop these retards with bans all the time if there's the potential of universal and optional solution?

An algorithm could calculate a number of factors before reducing a player's rating. It could in theory base its calculation on factors like whether or not the player has been voted to be sanctioned together with other conditions that have been met in-game based on their actions. But let's for argument sake say that the rating's algorithm made the wrong call and unfairly reduced a player's rating... as long as it's over 50% accurate with increasing and reducing a player's rating it'll always give a more accurate reflection of that player's behaviour. If a player's rating is based on an incremental chart of one to ten, then a player's rating should ever fall below five if they're not purposely dicking around.

So, having an option to join or host a server with a rating system enabled would seem to be the solution to keeping everyone happy in both camps. If a person is sceptical or believes the system is unfair let them jog on and join a server without the rating system. Then they can dick around it in all they want. Although as the server will likely be full of people doing the same 'stupid sh*t' they'll likely get bored, as people who do stupid sh*t seem to get off on annoying people.

This could be done via a centralized database for all the servers running the same/similar scenario(s).

I don't like the idea of a global rating spanning different scenarios/gamemodes, but I think further cooperation between server admins (at least sharing hacking/griefing bans) is a step in the right direction.

I don't think BIS should be getting involved in this, as a simple bans DB and open lines of communication between server admins would accomplish it far more efficiently.

Also a little tidbit from someone who has 'been there done that' with co-op server admin on 3+ full coop servers:

rate of re-offending is quite high.

That is, if you ban someone for griefing, say for 7 days ... I found that upwards of 70% of the time they end up re-offending once they are unbanned, usually within 2 weeks of coming off the ban.

So, advice is, if you are going to ban someone for griefing/trolling, make it a perm ban or you're statistically likely to encounter them again doing something similar.

Edited February 21, 2015 by MDCCLXXVI

[infiltrator_2k 29]

This could be done via a centralized database for all the servers running the same/similar scenario(s).

I don't like the idea of a global rating spanning different scenarios/gamemodes, but I think further cooperation between server admins (at least sharing hacking/griefing bans) is a step in the right direction.

I don't think BIS should be getting involved in this, as a simple bans DB and open lines of communication between server admins would accomplish it far more efficiently.

Also a little tidbit from someone who has 'been there done that' with co-op server admin on 3+ full coop servers:

rate of re-offending is quite high.

That is, if you ban someone for griefing, say for 7 days ... I found that upwards of 70% of the time they end up re-offending once they are unbanned, usually within 2 weeks of coming off the ban.

So, advice is, if you are going to ban someone for griefing/trolling, make it a perm ban or you're statistically likely to encounter them again doing something similar.

It would be interesting to see how a profile rating system would alter player's behaviour. Subconsciously being aware of it running would IMO encourage discipline, more teamplay and a lot more communicate.

---------- Post added at 13:18 ---------- Previous post was at 13:14 ----------

This could be done via a centralized database for all the servers running the same/similar scenario(s).

I don't like the idea of a global rating spanning different scenarios/gamemodes, but I think further cooperation between server admins (at least sharing hacking/griefing bans) is a step in the right direction.

I don't think BIS should be getting involved in this, as a simple bans DB and open lines of communication between server admins would accomplish it far more efficiently.

Also a little tidbit from someone who has 'been there done that' with co-op server admin on 3+ full coop servers:

rate of re-offending is quite high.

That is, if you ban someone for griefing, say for 7 days ... I found that upwards of 70% of the time they end up re-offending once they are unbanned, usually within 2 weeks of coming off the ban.

So, advice is, if you are going to ban someone for griefing/trolling, make it a perm ban or you're statistically likely to encounter them again doing something similar.

It would be interesting to see how a profile rating system would alter player's behaviour. Subconsciously being aware of it running would IMO encourage discipline, more teamplay and a lot more communication.

[St. Jimmy 272]

I could imagine quickly "hey let's raid mister X's profile with negative rating" and then a whole mob just rates someone down because of le internet army... This would need a good implementation so it can't be abused.

[infiltrator_2k 29]

I could imagine quickly "hey let's raid mister X's profile with negative rating" and then a whole mob just rates someone down because of le internet army... This would need a good implementation so it can't be abused.

Absolutely. And if there were conditions in place it could prevent such a system from being abused. It would have to be 50/50 with regards to decision making with a public vote working in conjunction with the game's algorithm. A simple example would be teamkilling, but not if say a pilot crashes or is shot down whilst carrying a number of players. The system would have to be devised so to this type of teamkill is waived. But if a player continuously shoots his fellow team members then yes, players should be given the opportunity to cast a vote when the system prompts them.

The administrator of the server could also set the condition parameters - just like the difficulty. The server admin could decide what condition and values trigger a public vote. Also, a vote could be just a contributing factor to whether or not the offending player's rating will be reduced... meaning, let their be a set number of consecutive offences before the system reduces a players rating. Otherwise, having an instant sanction will only encourage players to abuse the system merely to be vindictive.