On the one hand, I'd love to get my hands on that list of hacking players just for reference and data's sake. I am definitely interested to know who on our staff is hacking. That information may prove to be invaluable.
But on the other hand, there are so many complications with this data and its validity. Enough so that, no matter how confident Archybot is with his findings, we may not be able to act on them.
- How exactly did Archybot get these findings? We can't confirm the validity of his findings unless we know how he got such information, but the post seems to just pull data from the air. It sounds like he mainly just compared his community's ban logs with who's on the listings, which has its own concern. But even if his data is backed by anticheat findings, anticheat itself is far from a flawless system; it's a good system, but it does still make mistakes as you can find with a quick google search.
- If Archybot is pulling his hacking confirmation data from Badlion's records, but not pulling any current data from our system, how can we really be certain of his findings? Our networks are rather similar, but it is entirely possible for two distinct confounding circumstances to occur that would throw off the data. Either case is possible, which would be the primary flaw in this research method:
- A user doesn't hack over there, but does hack over here. Cases like these would deflate the proposed number of hackers.
- A user does hack over there, but doesn't hack over here. Cases like these would inflate the proposed number of hackers.
- Lastly, even if the findings are bulletproof and somehow guarantees that the two exceptional cases above are not possible, we would not be able to punish for it immediately like some people may be anticipating. This is all (questionably-verifiable) evidence coming from another separate network, a definitive third party. We would benefit from the added information by being more careful around those players, but we couldn't ban them for hacks with, "Archybot says so" as their evidence. That's not how it works.
I think we all can get behind the idea of removing closet hackers, which is why everyone is rallying around these findings. But from a community standpoint, we need to remember that there is a right way to do so, and a wrong way to do so. And sometimes the right way to do so is also the most arduous. Yet it is better for us to take our time doing things the right way, as opposed to rushing into a band-aid solution and then pay for it in the end.
Ceroria, we aren't going to get angry at you if we're working together towards the same goal (though I would up the ante on your "bugging" efforts, since even I was not aware you were making such an attempt).
But what we will get angry about is people who are demanding fixes without offering solutions or alternatives. And in addition to that, don't get angry when the system doesn't meet your expectations. Such actions sound to us like, "I'm not impressed, therefore you all must suck." We're all in this together, but no one's going anywhere if everyone endlessly antagonizes each other.
Furthermore, we are still working towards improving XAC, but remember that such a thing is very complicated and requires a lot of research. We would love to adopt other well-established anti-cheat systems, or perhaps even just know the methods in which they implemented their own hack tests. But such systems are closely guarded and are unlikely to be shared (selfish, but understandable). So everyone who demands that XAC be equal to anticheat, or MCG ditch XAC and use anticheat instead, should adjust their expectations back to something actually realistic.
. As long as grave doesn't make a comeback, I should have it.
