What's new in XonStat

I would like to point out one exploit, but I won't tell you what it is or who did it. http://stats.xonotic.org/game/34151

HAHAHHA Soelen dropping the flag on you while standing on its spawn point? Lol nice idea.

I wouldn't say that's an exploit per se, but rather Soelen....being Soelen

Oh oops. That wasn't an issue before (well, except for sound and text spam). But doesn't that game the stats now?

This might be a regression in terms of the point total, yes. IIRC we used to give +1 for pickups and -1 for drops so the net gain and loss evened out.

It games stats negatively, yes. In similar fashion I suppose you could jump off ledges continually throughout the game to achieve the same result, albeit more slowly!

It's a stat boost exploit. I'm sure there are many of them though, and this one is pretty tame.

yes, xonotic is full of "possibilities", I recommend that you auto log suspicious games (500+ score etc). You can't stop enemies cooperating with each other but you could find out easily who is systematically cheating. Although I doubt that somebody would waste time to get to the top on the ladder.

To play normally is much easier.

My approach to this is to rely on the community to flag such things. Coding heuristic-based functions to catch these scenarios is a fool's errand and also error-prone IMO. A simple update in the database can easily clear out the deviants!

This might be a regression in terms of the point total, yes. IIRC we used to give +1 for pickups and -1 for drops so the net gain and loss evened out.

It games stats negatively, yes. In similar fashion I suppose you could jump off ledges continually throughout the game to achieve the same result, albeit more slowly!

Jumping off the map doesn't give you points.

That is true, but I wasn't referring to the collusion there. I was referring to Soelen's record only.

Antibody - I don't want to start a new thread - widget on webpage (maybe for new Xonotic one) informing how many players are online in general might be good idea.


Cheers!

Antibody - I don't want to start a new thread - widget on webpage (maybe for new Xonotic one) informing how many players are online in general might be good idea.


Cheers!

Here's a site you can use for that http://dpmaster.deathmask.net/?game=xonotic

It would be a cool addition to the xonstats page though.

That integration might come in the future, but not right now.

Hi everyone,

Recently I’ve been notified of several instances of cheating within XonStat. By cheating, I mean gaming the scores in such a way that an individual’s score and/or rank becomes artificially inflated. In each instance I’ve been provided, I can see that two individuals (or one individual connecting on multiple computers) have colluded to create events not possible during normal gameplay.

I wanted everyone to know that I’m aware of these issues and am working towards a scaled solution. Here are the various options that I intend to implement. Some of these things are there today and some aren’t, but all of them are able to be built:

- Having the games in which cheating occurred wiped from player records (Elo decreased or increased according to how much was gained/lost during the match)
- Resetting the player’s rank and Elo to their initial values
- Permanently removing the player from ever appearing in rankings
- Permanently removing the player from the stats system

Note that none of these things precludes server owners from taking action as well. I’ll always recommend that server admins and owners to take a close watch on their servers, and this is no exception. I think if the server owners take action in conjunction with me, we can help to identify cheating and reduce its impact so everyone can continue enjoying the game and its integrated stats system. That being said, you can do your part by calling out suspected cheaters to your server admin, to #xonotic on Quakenet or Freenode, or via these forums. Thanks!

- Having the games in which cheating occurred wiped from player records (Elo decreased or increased according to how much was gained/lost during the match)
- Resetting the player’s rank and Elo to their initial values
- Permanently removing the player from ever appearing in rankings
- Permanently removing the player from the stats system

Sounds like a sensible plan to deal with repeating offenses, like first offense - not record stats, second offense - reset stats, third offense - wipe from rankings. Would be good if this could be a message sent in game with an information that action has been taken and if individual won't stop doing so, next step will be this and this.

But I do hope inflating scores doesn't include switching from winning to losing team to rack up some points for losing team and keep match going, does it?

No, he is referring to the common exploit that works with any ranking system that has a so-called "rating floor". And a rating floor always exists in a rating system for a free game - even if the rating system itself didn't have one, one can always just create a new identity to get back to the initial rating (of 100 in case of Elo).

These kinds of exploits however are quite easy to detect, which is what Antibody did. The most typical sign of them is that a player has high scores but only ever played against players with very low Elo. Even if he isn't doing that specifically to inflate the Elo, it should be punished somehow, as a player matching this criterion never plays ethically anyway (he might also be hunting newbies on a beginners only server, for example). So the best thing you can do to not make it look like you're inflating your scores is to play with players around your own level (easiest way to notice you're doing it right: you occasionally die). But the game is most fun that way anyway.

Switching teams on the other hand doesn't even inflate your score - in fact, it even may reduce your score, as typically, you can get more personal points while playing for the winning team, as the winning team tends to have easier targets to shoot

Note here that I'm not talking about a heuristic to identify cheating, but rather what I think should happen should cheating be identified.

I like the idea Antibody. Warning messages would be welcome as well. I have been guilty of changing from a losing team to a winning team at the end of a couple of matches , but do you know of a way to stop people from doing this?

Switching teams is no issue at all. Elos and ranking is all about score.

Switching teams is no issue at all. Elos and ranking is all about score.

Ahh, that's okay then. But win-swapping (or whatever the action is called) does affect the user's 'win' score, right?

Right - it does affect your win/loss ratio.

Meaning it kinda makes people look better than they are, so it's sort of inflating their score? Surely that's as bad as what you described in your first post...

Your win:loss ratio does not affect your score. What I'm really trying to prevent/counteract here is rank inflation. Artificially improving your win:loss ratio is possible, but completely harmless with respect to ranking.

The reason for worrying about rank now is because we wanted to use it for an auto-balancing feature in a future release. As div said, there isn't much we can do to completely eliminate gaming the system, but we can have countermeasures to limit their impact.

Your win:loss ratio does not affect your score.

Ahhh, I wasn't aware of this.

The reason for worrying about rank now is because we wanted to use it for an auto-balancing feature in a future release.

Brilliant! I mentioned this feature in some other threads and I'm glad it's being considered.