I believe the current procedure for reporting players who are violating rules is completely unfair to the players. THE PROBLEM Currently, if a player comes across a hacker, they must first open up their screen recording software (which means if they don't have one, they must get for this single purpose), and start recording. Hopefully, they can actually do that in time to catch the hacker on camera. Next, the player must upload the video to be seen by the staff. BUT, it's not as simple as heading to the forums and using an embedded feature to attach a video. No, the player has to use Youtube, Imgur, or something else to do so because the developers of the website won't implement this ability (which isn't difficult to do (coming from a web-dev background)). Then, after filling out the rest of the forum (and memorizing the hacker's IGN), the player can submit a report ticket. Then, the player has to wait however long for a mod to actually read the ticket, and do something about it. Other than the removal of the hacker, the player receives no benefit from doing this (so if nothing else, at least reward them credits or something in game). The other issue is time. The amount of time it takes to complete the above steps is enough for the hacker to continue ruining everyone's fun over and over again. What this means is that not only are the players suffering, but so are the staff! A server full of hackers is bound to lose players. The administrators of the server won't even take the time to implement a half-decent anti-cheat system into the server. YET, they expect their players to go through a lot of effort to report hackers - something that shouldn't even be possible in the first place. THE SOLUTION There's a handful of ways one could go about alleviating this problem. One, which I mentioned above, would be to at least reward these players. Give them some in-game credits, or even just some cosmetic rewards at the very least. However, a much better solution would be to balance out the effort it takes to remove a hacker. Rather than having the player do almost all the work, make it easier on both the player and the mods. Implement an in-game command. Doesn't matter what the command is, but I believe the most optimal idea would be to have it summon a mod into the server where the hacker is. A few ideas might be "/summonmod," or "/report." Mods can see for themselves that a hacker (or any sort of rule violator is present), and act on it accordingly. May be as simple as doing a "/ban" or whatever the command is on them. THE BENEFITS A few significant benefits would come from this alternative approach to removing hackers: Less work for players and mods. Faster removal of hackers. I believe this approach would eliminate more hackers which would lead to an overall more enjoyable, hack-free server. As with any command, this one could be abused. But I doubt it would be a major issue when compared to the advantages it offers. I hope the staff take this suggestion into consideration, and hopefully we'll see it implement into the server for the benefit of each player and staff member on it. Thanks for reading! EDIT 1: The /summonmod command would NOT simply pull the mod out whatever they're doing. It would ideally give the mod an option to teleport directly to the hacker and investigate the situation. Meaning, no the mod would not have to try and hunt the hacker down. If mod's are concerned about their gameplay being interrupted because they're being called on to moderate, then they shouldn't even be a mod in the first place. It's their responsibility, and they knew it when they applied for staff.
Howdy Faded! I think the server definitely needs a /report command. Whilst the discord support channel is beneficial and can provide players with a quick response, there can be times where players are made to wait a long time. Additionally, the reporting process on the forums can take hours before a staff member views it, meaning the hacker can go unpunished for a while. I highly expect that this will be added. +1 Have a great day!
The idea of /report has been gone over many times, and there are reasons it hasn't been implemented. It's really not that difficult to upload a video: I use dropbox so I automatically receive a link to the video without having to upload it to YouTube. You're always welcome to @ a staff member in #support in the MCC Community Discord if you want to get a quicker response. A mod+ will usually hop on and take a look. Both of the commands /summonmod and /report could easily be abused, and /summonmod would ruin gameplay for staff members. As far as the anti-cheat goes, I'm sure you've heard the generic response of "The owners are constantly updating it and it's evolving". I don't dislike the idea of getting credits in return for accepted reports, but I just don't think it's something that needs to be implemented and is even really worth the time. You're helping the community out when you report on forums, even if it takes awhile.
I obviously agree that /report needs to become a thing, but at the same time it shouldn't. As of right now the staff can check to see if a player who could've been /reported was online, but they would have to wait and try to get into the same lobby as them in order to track them down. If they were able to directly tp into the game or spectate games in progress, then I would agree with the idea of adding it. So until a change like this is made, I would overall be a -1 as this just couldn't work with the current system that's in place- or worst case it could be abused. Here I made a post a while ago that relates to spectating games in progress and why we need it. As always, hope you have a great night.
As someone who has farmed over 1 300 reports on the new forums, trust me when I say it's not as hard as you're making it out to be. There are many ways to fix the problems in your scenarios, and I feel like the idea of /report can be avoided as a whole. --- Recording a hacker is really not hard; you simply need to know how to do it. I personally use OBS' replay buffer feature, which allows me to record the last x seconds of gameplay as a video file. This is especially useful for catching hackers and the like. I simply save the video, clip it down if necessary, and put it into a folder to upload later. Using an embedded feature may be easy to implement, but it does take up server space when files are uploaded. Because staff members may need the evidence you collected as part of an appeal, keeping videos of hackers for months on end is not viable. It would waste server space and as a result, money. If you use your time wisely, you'll start to upload the video to YouTube, then from there fill out the form, copy the video link and file the report. It can be very efficient when done properly. Why would you need credits to report a player? If you're doing so, it's to make the server a better place, not to grind credits. Honestly, there shouldn't be any sort of reward for reporting players because you're simply uploading a video and filling out a ticket with it. Again, if you do it efficiently, chances are the hacker will get banned within the hour. You are also free to drop their IGN in the #support section of the MCC Discord or inform a staff member directly in-game. Staff members are unpaid volunteers, and so they really lose nothing from this. The anticheat has improved exponentially since the update released in July. Around that time, it was possible to grind 50+ reports in under two hours simply by playing Solo Skywars, and now there are hardly any hackers. Things have gotten better, and they certainly will continue to improve as time goes on. Summoning a staff member is definitely venturing into murky waters. If the staff member is busy with something like a deal on a subserver or spectating another player, what happens? Do they just get pulled straight out? Implementing a "click here to be teleported" type idea would also be futile; it's too easy to misclick and suddenly find yourself smack dab in the middle of a CTF game. /report or a similar command can also be abuse very easily; what if a small group of players insists I am hacking, and continually spams /report? Even if there is a cooldown, surely someone will summon a mod every 10 or 20 seconds to spectate me and prove I am not hacking, which is a total waste of the staff member's time. ---I just feel like the potential for abuse and worsening of other issues is too great to even consider adding this to the server. -1
If they add a /report system, they should make it similar to /chatreport, where you can be punished for abusing it. However, it's a terrible idea to teleport a staff member immediately, they should be allowed time to finish whatever they're doing, and then they can click something in chat and be teleported to wherever the reporter player currently is. I know that bungeecord is able to tell which server a player is at. As for the space issue, the server can just delete the report files that were responded to. Chatreport would have the same problem if this were an actual issue. It takes a while to get a video ready - it's not always the last 10 seconds, so I have to put it in an editor and chop off some 10 or 20 minutes of gameplay before the hacker comes into the video. After that, it still takes a while for youtube to upload it. If they add something into the report page that is faster than youtube's uploading, that would be great. Finally, I want to address something. Once I asked a staff member if it was possible to go into "staff mode" in capture the flag, and they said it was NOT. What kind of server doesn't let moderators spectate people who could be hacking? I assume it's the same for all minigames, including skywars. I've witnessed blatant fly hackers on capture the flag hack game after game, to no end, but when a moderator joins, they suddenly stop hacks and pretend they're innocent. Even after reporting them, it still takes a couple hours for them to be banned, whereas it would be a lot faster if a moderator could just witness it themselves and ban on the spot. The server could probably use a bit more staff support features, particularly in minigames.
