'Admitting to Hacks'

[jonnysurvives]

For me, this has got to be the dumbest rule of the lot. Or at least the way that it gets applied is.

If you get a screenshot of a player being asked up-front whether or not they hack and them saying they do, that's fair enough, but in most cases this rule is used to get people banned for innocently believing that the staff could tell the difference between what is serious and what isn't.

Example 1:

A while ago I was playing on Teweran 2 with a mod in-game. I had been chatting to the mod in the lobby, so when I ran into him I felt comfortable enough to write '*turns off hacks*' in chat. My only mistake was thinking that a moderator was likely to have some common sense, but lo and behold he immediately kicked me for 'admitting to hacks'.

Example 2:

A friend was in a lobby having just teamed to take down a hacker in deathmatch. Said hacker is now hurling hackusations at the two, to which the friend replies 'Yeah, I'm the hacker...'. Presumably the hacker screenshots this and reports my friend because before he knows it he's banned for a week for admitting to hacks. He now has no chance of getting mod because he's obviously hacking scum and in no way fit to moderate the servers.

I'm not saying this rule should be removed entirely, just that it should be applied more sparingly and a whole lot more discriminately. Currently, the way the rule is applied makes the staff come across as a bunch of robots incapable of perceiving anything but the extrinsic, surface meaning of what is said (I hate to generalise- there are plenty of staff not like this). It's no mystery why there is still considerable stigma around the staff- it's because of stupid stuff like this.

 

[Austin_HG]

For me, this has got to be the dumbest rule of the lot. Or at least the way that it gets applied is.

If you get a screenshot of a player being asked up-front whether or not they hack and them saying they do, that's fair enough, but in most cases this rule is used to get people banned for innocently believing that the staff could tell the difference between what is serious and what isn't.

Example 1:

A while ago I was playing on Teweran 2 with a mod in-game. I had been chatting to the mod in the lobby, so when I ran into him I felt comfortable enough to write '*turns off hacks*' in chat. My only mistake was thinking that a moderator was likely to have some common sense, but lo and behold he immediately kicked me for 'admitting to hacks'.

Example 2:

A friend was in a lobby having just teamed to take down a hacker in deathmatch. Said hacker is now hurling hackusations at the two, to which the friend replies 'Yeah, I'm the hacker...'. Presumably the hacker screenshots this and reports my friend because before he knows it he's banned for a week for admitting to hacks. He now has no chance of getting mod because he's obviously hacking scum and in no way fit to moderate the servers.

I'm not saying this rule should be removed entirely, just that it should be applied more sparingly and a whole lot more discriminately. Currently, the way the rule is applied makes the staff come across as a bunch of robots incapable of perceiving anything but the extrinsic, surface meaning of what is said (I hate to generalise- there are plenty of staff not like this). It's no mystery why there is still considerable stigma around the staff- it's because of stupid stuff like this.

I might add that evidence is relatively easy to forge. I have been banned on two accounts (one of which was revoked, but the other still not,) in which evidence was Photoshopped to show me "admitting to hacks," even though I never did. And; chat logs were never checked, as I understand it takes a lot of effort to do.

I agree, the rule should be there, but used along with common sense.

 

[MoLoToV]

I can understand your frustration, but let me quote the rules :

• Admitting to using a modded/hacked client, even jokingly, will result in a ban

 

[Teaches]

I can understand your frustration, but let me quote the rules :

He knows the rules, he asking for them to be changed and listing some reasons why. He's not saying that he was unfairly banned/kicked.

 

[I_love_desk]

I think it's the 'even jokingly' which is the problem. It's pretty easy to see that if someone has 1000 wins and goes "im using x-ray xddd" they're kidding and not admitting to hacking. As a result of the rules not taking that into account I think more regular players get banned by this rule than hackers. Hope it gets removed.

 

[BlitzCometITU]

Back in the old days, I had a 3 day ban for "admitting to hacks". I didn't even know what they were, someone asked me "BlitzCometITU do you have BSM" and I said "I think so."

 

[Teaches]

Back in the old days, I had a 3 day ban for "admitting to hacks". I didn't even know what they were, someone asked me "BlitzCometITU do you have BSM" and I said "I think so."

Lol you didn't know what BSM was?

 

[Krafty]

Yeah imo dumb rule

 

[FAMILYMONSTER]

haha I didn't even know what nodus was until I joined this server

 

[BlitzCometITU]

Lol you didn't know what BSM was?

it was like October 2012, no.

 

[roguehh]

The rule is there for a reason. Some hacks/modifications like chest finder, gamma alteration and damage indicators can only be caught by having a look at the hackers' screen. This isn't usually possible (unless they upload a video of themselves playing). Therefore, to detect these hacks the staff relies on the next best thing; their own admittance. If the 'even jokingly' part of the rule was removed everyone would be able to dispute their ban by saying that they were joking. This would practically render the rule useless and would make some hacks impossible to detect.

I can understand that some players think the rule is harsh. But that's what it needs to be if we want the staff to be able to enforce the rules effectively. For example. If someone says 'Yeah, I'm the hacker...' you could think he was being ironic. At the same time, he might be serious. This probably wouldn't lead to a misunderstanding in a normal conversation. But the thing about text messages is that there's no intonation like in normal speech. The things you say online could be interpreted very differently than how you intended them to be. This is something to keep in mind in all communication via text messages.

For the staff to have to decide if an alleged hacker was joking or was being ironic would usually be very difficult and would lead to very inconsistent outcomes. I think it's better to have a clear policy so everyone knows what to expect. And honestly, how hard is it to refrain from joking about hacking?

This is not to say that the staff are robots and just ban everyone who seemingly admits to hacking. Before taking any action the staff always reviews the context in which the statement was made. When the context shows that the user wasn't actually admitting to hacking the staff will obviously not take action against him. But when there is no context and the user just says that he's hacking, they will. As well they should.

 

[I_love_desk]

The rule is there for a reason. Some hacks/modifications like chest finder, gamma alteration and damage indicators can only be caught by having a look at the hackers' screen. This isn't usually possible (unless they upload a video of themselves playing). Therefore, to detect these hacks the staff relies on the next best thing; their own admittance. If the 'even jokingly' part of the rule was removed everyone would be able to dispute their ban by saying that they were joking. This would practically render the rule useless and would make some hacks impossible to detect.

I can understand that some players think the rule is harsh. But that's what it needs to be if we want the staff to be able to enforce the rules effectively. For example. If someone says 'Yeah, I'm the hacker...' you could think he was being ironic. At the same time, he might be serious. This probably wouldn't lead to a misunderstanding in a normal conversation. But the thing about text messages is that there's no intonation like in normal speech. The things you say online could be interpreted very differently than how you intended them to be. This is something to keep in mind in all communication via text messages.

For the staff to have to decide if an alleged hacker was joking or was being ironic would usually be very difficult and would lead to very inconsistent outcomes. I think it's better to have a clear policy so everyone knows what to expect. And honestly, how hard is it to refrain from joking about hacking?

This is not to say that the staff are robots and just ban everyone who seemingly admits to hacking. Before taking any action the staff always reviews the context in which the statement was made. When the context shows that the user wasn't actually admitting to hacking the staff will obviously not take action against him. But when there is no context and the user just says that he's hacking, they will. As well they should.

Well, firstly there's the fact that not everybody reads the rules. Probably the majority of people that play haven't, and it's an obscure rule. So while a lot of players who know the rule may get banned, most players don't actually know that they have to refrain from the rule. And it's not exactly an obvious rule either - sarcastically joking about stuff is a pretty normal thing to do.

Secondly, the staff being unable to pick up on gamma etc: Yes, of course that's a problem. However, the truth is that most of those players are using those because they know they won't get found out, so they almost certainly won't admit to it. The players that say stuff like that in chat are almost always joking. To put it in another way, this rule is not an effective way of banning them since they are unlikely to admit to it anyway.

And lastly on your point about the staff taking them into context, I've seen 2 or 3 of my friends get banned by this rule, and in all of those cases it's pretty clear that had a mod looked at it for more than a few seconds, or taken it into any context, they would not have been banned. One got banned for saying "Oh yeah, I'm obviously the hacker here" or something along those lines.

Basically the rule gets a ton of normal people banned and barely any real hackers since they always say stuff like "no youre hacking" if you accuse them.