Hi,
first of all, congratulations on making me change accounts. That's how eager I was to write out this reply, because I had a few problems with Sentinel in the past. Since then, it seems to have improved a lot, but it's still not quite perfect.
My experience with the I-don't-record-evidence-but-I'm-going-to-ban-you-anyways-Anti-Cheat
From what I have experienced, the anti cheat works great.
And from what I have experienced, it's pretty... unfair to legitimate players, to say the least. I would post a link to my thread here demonstrating how I was wrongly banned, but it has either been deleted from the website, or has been moved to an inaccessible location. It took quite a bit of effort to have my sanction lifted, because the developer responsible for the anti-cheat implied that the ban was actually legitimate (Spoiler alert: It wasn't). This is the greatest problem with the Anti-Cheat; not that it bans innocent players, because that will inevitably happen from time to time on a server as large as this one, but that said players don't get a fair chance at appealing.
Despite however many players are lying, there are without a doubt many players being wrongly sanctioned. Whatever happened to "It's better to leave ten cheaters unpunished than to ban one innocent player"? This
really ruffles my feathers, because players are seemingly presumed guilty by default when they're banned by Sentinel.
Removing the Anti-Cheat outright is
absolutely not the way to go, because it
does ban hackers in massive quantities. Somebody recently contacted me claiming that they tried to
auto-click, and within
seconds, they were banned for a week. I'm not sure whether the timing was a coincidence, or how well it fares at banning players for more malicious hacks, but to ban somebody within seconds is pretty impressive to be honest. However, I do feel we should resort back to the aforementioned policy of "It's better to leave ten cheaters unpunished than to ban one innocent player".
An idea:
Whenever somebody disputes a Sentinel ban with an explanation on what might have happened, whether it be legitimate or otherwise, their sanction should be lifted. The exception to this would be that if they've already been sanctioned for hacking in the past, then the ban will be looked into further. Another exception would be that if their appeal is accepted, and they're banned by Sentinel
again, they'll automatically be permanently banned.
Once the Anti-Cheat is reliably differentiating between legitimate and illegitimate actions, we can begin to put more faith in its judgement. Nonetheless, whether this sounds ideal or not, it won't be considered because nobody reads what I write anyways :'c
Miscellaneous responses
assuming this is sarcasm im inclined to agree the name couldve been better...
Don't look at me, I asked them to name it 'Aegis' :(
Nope. First ban. But cubecraft thought it'd be funny to premanently ban every single person who's appeal was denied.
That's not how it works. Unless you're the alt to an already sanctioned account, or are found to have DDoS attacked the server, you will never be permanently banned upon first offence.
Thats inevitable noone is perfect not even machines
Yeah, innocent players will always be banned on occasion regardless, but it isn't a machine that's handling the appeals. So what, do those wrongly banned just have to hope that whichever staff member receives the appeal is in a good mood at the time of reading it? Because to my knowledge, the Anti-Cheat does not record evidence. I'm not sure whether it's possible, but if the Anti-Cheat were to record footage of what has triggered it, the appeals process would feel a lot fairer and less of a gamble.
That's not an appropriate excuse, and secondly, it's been out for roughly six months, and was in development for presumably around the same length of time.
now how do you correct something that is broken without actually knowing what's broken (by testing it) that's why they've released it to see how it fairs on the server
Perhaps if they
know it's broken, they should give those who are banned by it the benefit of the doubt more often than not, then.
Sooo you want an irregular auto-clicker to not be picked up?
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to be fighting someone in 1.8 if they have a free 22 CpS because of an auto clicker, right?
Because of games like Paintball, it
is beneficial to "Butterfly click" in 1.9 now. Perhaps they could have it only trace autoclickers in the 1.8 version of the server, and
finally move 1.8 KitPvP to said server? (Those autoclicking in Paintball will still be at a disadvantage, since they'll exhaust all of their ammo in seconds and will be left vulnerable). It just seems odd to me to restrict how fast you're allowed to click when on the server :/
Remember when cube was using Nocheatplus & everyone was always getting falsely kicked and hackers used to not at all be affected by this?
Super Craft Bros... Super Craft Bros... ROAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!!! >:c EVERY. SINGLE. GAME. MATE. LAGGING BACK. KICKED FOR FLYING. DOUBLE-JUMP BUGGING OUT. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THE WITHER KIT!
Conclusion and my idea again but explained better I guess idk it's 4am go away:
The Anti-Cheat does help the server more than not. It's the reason the server is actually playable, because the likes of xTurtle and the apparently "confusing" 1.9 combat system have likely popularised hacking more than ever before (Not that I'd go back to playing Assassins or anything though). However, those handling appeals to bans from Sentinel do need to ask whether the user has been wrongly banned.
An interesting change would be to encourage the player in question to describe the situations leading up to their ban. Make sure to encourage younger players to have their guardians appeal on their behalf, and if their story coincides with the ban logs, then accept their appeal. Of course, a genuine hacker could lie and get unbanned, but the vast majority of them will simply find another server to cheat on, or will generate a new account.
The Anti-Cheat has gotten a lot better from my experience (I've only been banned by it once, lol), but if there are still players being wrongly punished, then they
really shouldn't be getting their appeals denied.
For the record, I recall staff releasing ban statistics for Sentinel a short while ago, and it was quite surprising. I don't remember where exactly it was posted, but perhaps
@johncoles could share with us how many accounts are banned on a monthly basis? Would be a neat and prestigious thing to show off on the website. You'd honestly be surprised at how many hackers are banned :o
Right, back to
@Eiriana and then I'm going to sleep v.v
