Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat • Hacker News Board

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#121

Post by s73v3r_ » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:41 PM UTC

swanson wrote: post #2

I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into some kind of training mode. It's a bit like the argument that no one would pirate if they content was easy to get for a reasonable price. If players could train with the spell range circles, skill shot path projection, last hit helpers, etc in a sanctioned way, I wonder how much this would remove the desire to seek out the cheating programs. Edi…

"I wonder if Riot would consider building the scripting UI they show into some kind of training mode. It's a bit like the argument that no one would pirate if they content was easy to get for a reasonable price."

Well, much like that argument being bunk, the idea that no one would cheat if it was for this is also bunk. People like getting stuff for free if they can, and people like winning, even if it means cheating.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#122

Post by portaljester » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:43 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #101

IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting factor to how you want to play? For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how good someone is. Why should that be? It's a strategy game. Imagine if you could express your ideas effectively into actual game actions?

StarCraft is not just a strategy game. It is a real time strategy game. The focus on real time is why APM and micro etc are so important. Broodwar is my personal favorite game, on the surface it is easy to not know video games can be physically taxing.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#123

Post by lifeisstillgood » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:43 PM UTC

One of the things coming out of this is that legitimate coding within a game (for example teaching children how to code - a very important point for me at this point in life) is almost out the window

I love minecraft for their RPi version but beyond that, I don't know of any games that have that kids pull and can still be taught

it's something like "we used to turn on a PC and see a command line. now we have to jailbreak something"

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#124

Post by echohack5 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #101

IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting factor to how you want to play? For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how good someone is. Why should that be? It's a strategy game. Imagine if you could express your ideas effectively into actual game actions?

(As a former high level StarCraft / SC2 player / caster).

It's not chess. That's why.

There is a real physical aspect to the game. Training your fingers to hit certain combinations quickly to execute build orders, and mix in micro is key. Pro players use hot packs to warm up their hands, or glasses to aid their eyes.

The game developer takes a lot of care to ensure the UI / hotkeys / peripheral setups are optimized for pro players.

Using external tools to defeat this setup simply isn't fair and diminishes skill built into the hands and muscle memory of players. Even at a mid-level of skill, people learn simple combos. For example, a Protoss player hitting "4+e" because that's where they have hotkeyed all their Nexuses and e is the hotkey to build probes.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#125

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #101

IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting factor to how you want to play? For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how good someone is. Why should that be? It's a strategy game. Imagine if you could express your ideas effectively into actual game actions?

[deleted]

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#126

Post by rcoveson » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #89

Unfortunately, their latest anti-cheat measures broke the ability to play on Wine. Guess no LoL for me anymore.

They broke GPU passthrough setups as well at first. There was some community backlash and they rolled that back, and I believe they also mentioned they intended to work with the wine people on a solution for that as well.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#127

Post by maerF0x0 » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

aetimmes wrote: post #115

maerF0x0 wrote: post #101

IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting factor to how you want to play? For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how good someone is. Why should that be? It's a strategy game. Imagine if you could express your ideas effectively into actual game actions?

>IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting factor to how you want to play? For the same reason that sporting organizations regulate the equipment allowed during play - the make sure the playing field is reasonably level. >For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how good someone is. Why should that be? Because dexterity has historically been a basis f…

> Imagine the cost of such an interface in today's society, especially compared to a regular USB keyboard and mouse. Now imagine you're a game designer. Do you want to build a system that explicitly favors those rich enough to purchase the best equipment, or do you want to spread your playerbase as widely as possible?

While I kind of understand the Ready Player One-esque issue here, I am thinking that most ergonomic aids would look more like software plugins for WoW or EVE than professionally developed HCI hardware.

If I were to be leading a game I'd just make it a requirement that tools were opensourced (hard to enforce in reality tbh) but at least that would help.

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#128

Post by hathawsh » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:47 PM UTC

What I wonder is how the encryption keys are stored. There are obvious ways to obfuscate keys, but at decryption time, the keys need to be exposed plainly in memory, don't they? So how do game makers like Riot prevent debuggers from discovering the keys and revealing them to everyone? Does every player have different keys?

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#129

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:49 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #101

IMO games should encourage ergonomic aids. Why allow the UI to be a limiting factor to how you want to play? For example people used to talk about APM in SC2 as a sort of measure of how good someone is. Why should that be? It's a strategy game. Imagine if you could express your ideas effectively into actual game actions?

[deleted]

Re: Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

#130

Post by rcoveson » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:49 PM UTC

phoe-krk wrote: post #108

shmerl wrote: post #95

Does it hinder Linux gamers who are using Wine? A lot of such anti-cheats can't figure out when Wine is used and ban Linux users. Some also ban custom D3D implementations like DXVK even if they are really correctly implementing the API.

Yes - it hit the news that LoL will no longer work on Wine or virtual machines because of these anti-cheat measures.

Can't speak for Wine users, but VMs are working now. The workaround was found within days of the patch (they were just checking for the CPU feature "hypervisor"), and they actually ended up rolling back that check due to the community response.