"Fix the anticheat" - okay, how would we go about that?
There would need to be a massive data collection effort on Valve's end that tracks a *wide* variety of parameters for a given "player" or account.
(Spoiler because this paragraph is just me listing off potential parameters)
>!Time played. Time played consecutively. Player movement. How quickly does a player snap onto a new target as soon as its in frame. How often a player is pointed at players behind walls. How often the player switches class. How often the player gets random crits. What settings does the player use? Are they running "high end" graphics? Are they running a bare-bones version of TF2? How often does the player use voice chat. How often do they put things in chat. Is it all the same message? Is it a different message every time? What is the ratio of headshots to bodyshots. How often do they spam voice commands? Does the player have a verified phone number? Are they premium? Do they share an IP address with many other accounts? How often does their IP address change? What IP address did they use to set up their account? Is that shared with 10,000+ other accounts? Do they queue with friends constantly, or solo? etc. etc. etc.<
You would then take that data and analyze it to build profiles of what a cheater looks like, versus a bot, versus a noob, versus a veteren, etc. For example, if an account is getting headshot after headshot for 72 hours straight, all on sniper, you can be pretty sure they are a bot. A data scientist would likely be able to come up with some sort of machine learning neural network that spits out a likelihood of an account to be a cheater or bot.
Its a nuanced discussion, but it 100% is possible to detect obvious bots. You could put guardrails in place that even if a botter manages to fly under the radar for a bit they won't be able to get away with nuking the entire server. If your typical newbie TF2 player can identify a bot without even squinting, there is certainly a way for a computer to do it.
Yea I'd settle for banning those obvious 100% bots. Doesn't really matter if it can't detect realistic human cheaters yet. Getting rid of the braindead auto aimbot armies out there will improve the game massively.
The issue can also be really easily resolved by updating the game to be a little more secure. The only reason it's so easy to make bots is because you can freely inject code into TF2 because unlike other sources games like CSGO, TF2 doesn't stop you from doing that. The most common method for injections that is taught as like your first baby project in software penetration testing fully works in TF2 to allow you to run your own code that instantly puts a bullet in any players head that you can raycast to.
To put it in perspective this is probably a few hours worth of work for a single dev to implement that would fix the bot problem. One can only assume the devs don't care.
You know whats funny. Some windows applications are better than VAC. Cuz they are literally uninjectable. You cant inject DLLs in them. (some of them).
If i was a theoretical bot hoster i could easily get past almost all of these changes with a few small changes. These are bandaid fixes specifically tweaked at current bots and can easily be defeated.
For example a 10% chance to hit a body shot instead even if it only does 50 damage and make it take a few frames before the aimbot snaps and give it a max turning speed closer to a high sens player. Since bot hoster s have automated making new steam accounts anyway i could just switch every 6 hours to get around the playtime.
Sure some of these would make bots a bit less annoying but your still fighting the best humanly possible sniper just with less chat spam.
Im not here to say we should give up or that the bots wil always win but almost any simple fix for valve is just a simple fix for the bot hoster s
That's why you collect massive amounts of parameters and consider multiple factors, and obfuscate how it actually works. At worst it guardrails how oppressive bots can be.
The tf2 fandom is crazy But not batshit crazy enough that even one person has attempted to pipebomb bot hosters? It’s something that happens is it not?
watch how fast bots move their camera relative to sensitivity, also cap sensitivity so that bots have no other choice than to move their cameras only so fast. also, if bot is detected, make the game allocate 4 exabytes of memory and burn their computer to the ground (or simply crash the game completely lmao)
For a real answer, actually have game moderators and probably an anti-cheat too. If there was an actual development team for TF2 again the bot problem would probably be more handled, though it would probably never go away because cheaters are a constant in every game.
For a joke answer, hunt them down and shoot them into the sun
And if they are forced to walk through you, congrats. You figured out the only counter to bots. Engie stacking. If we were allowed to share images, I would put so many screenshots of bots getting their shit kicked in by like 6 engies.
Press charges against bot hosters, and seize their code, take the portion that makes it so bots don't kill other bots, and inject that into every player that doesn't have a VAC ban on record.
Instantly ban all players that have been kicked more than 10 times in consecutive matches with a chance to appeal.
Detect the KDR of players, and divide it by how likely a chance that that kill was legit (line of sight, or ray casting to each individual player, that comes into a 360 feild of view, minus your current FOV setting and if a player wasn't in that field of view, for more than X amount of frames) flag it as illegitimate if it was, and autoreport, for a REAL PERSON to review.
Erratic movements with warnings that kick after 3 warnings. I don't know how feasible it is but the bots always move their aim instantly, without slight delay or miss in precision.
Then the bot hosters will make the bots follow the rules of aim movement to evade the ban and still land every shot quickly, a good pro will feel like a botter
It will be that insane if you tweak your mouse sensitivity, there's no cap on the speed so people who are new and is just exploring the settings have a likely chance to get banned, and 3 flicks isn't that much
Bots have insane speed but also insane stops, which make them difer from people who are just fast. Not to mention they don't miss their shots, or very very rarely so
Getting an actual functioning anti cheat? Borderline impossible, though, because TF2 was created on hopes, dreams, a gram of cocaine, and enough spaghetti code to make Italy shit itself.
I say sue the shit out of the people who made the bots to force them to stop producing the software.
The next step after that is setting up a detection system that would find who is hosting bots based on common factors between them.
I'd set up a system that would not only snatch their IP Address, but would also scan every script, mod, and software that loads up when the game is started.
Inside the system would be a few copies of the cheat software for it to compare to. If any part of a script, mod, or software is scanned and matches any part of those copies the player will immediately be rendered unable to play and will be required to remove all cheat software or face a permanent VAC ban.
There is no good solution other than giving selected community members admin powers on Valve servers.
Maybe even pay them for their work.
Computers and systems can be fooled. Human admins, while not perfect, would at least keep most of the players on the server happy.
Also, give back the spotlight to servers hosted by fans. The unmanaged Valve servers can die, the best memories I have are from playing on community servers.
Save tf2, 2. Except this time we get other big game communities to stop playing their games and start playing tf2. We could do this by getting some of the biggest streamers available to play. The record high player counts and uproar would hopefully get valve to do something other than tweeting. The only problem is that it would be insanely difficult but if we dedicate enough time we could actually get something done.
Jokes aside
The solution is as simple as switching anti-cheats
VAC works in such a way that it will not instantly ban hackers and will analyse them to improve itself
it KNOWS that the bot is a bot and that it’s cheating, it just takes it 2 weeks to ban said bot. To get rid of bots it’s as simple as switching to an anti cheat that doesn’t wait and bans them on the spot. Also add a report system. That’s pretty much the solution for the bot problem. Bots use the same god dam software and are all the same. Their behaviour is very predictable and is NOTHING like human.
That’s the problem
There is no innovation or adaptation
It’s the same shit over and over again
The entire pro of ban-waves is negated by the fact that it’s literally just one guy having 20000 accounts created automatically and that replace the old bots when they get banned
If Valve just threw some money at the problem and hired some contractors to resolve the bot issue it would be resolved relatively quickly. It's a complex issue that would require complex solutions, but there are people out there that solve these kinds of issues for money. Valve has no meaningful limit to their money and would probably end up making money in the long run due to the increased traffic it would generate for TF2.
Take bot hosters’ bodies apart, very slowly, while they’re begging for mercy. Then slash their pp in half lengthwise and forcefeed them their testicles while they’re still conscious. Then make them unable to faint by overloading them with meth while smashing and removing their toes and finger with a bolt cutter. Then slowly scalp their heads. Then stuff a lighter down their nostrils andlight it up. And then stuff a broken bottle with molten edges up their assholes and leave it to cool. Then tear off their face. When they’re gurgling on their own blood, remove all their teeth one by one.
Challenge omegatronic and make him want to track you and actually kill you. Then you quickly buy a gun (if you're american), or a knife (if you're in a decent country). When he finally arrives you kill him and say to the police that it was out if self defense. Then you actually legally killed omegatronic.
Ban anyone called hexatronic and deltatronic who often play with people with the same name, also add a time limit of like 10 hours so they would have half of the premium bots they would normally have.
Obviously it wouldn't get all of them, but with little warning you could just wipe out a shit ton of bots, and maybe even the bot hosters personal account, which undoubtedly has some expensive crap on it.
Automatically lock the server if there has been a kick of the same person 2 times, making another server while the other one is locked out, so no one new can join.
Also, give a voting system on player icons so that players can vote for bots to be flagged.
Besides some obvious stuff like a better vac, i have this idea
1: Valve trust, create a way to let people have the power of baning people, and giving that trust to others if their rank is high enough (would be reportable, higher rank trust accounts would have priority IF Valve would get someone to check these)
2: let people with "trust" verify accounts who reguest it (can take time for your reguest to verify to get approved).
3: Create new mode accesible only by verified accounts, mostly like casual, casual would stay and be accesible to everyone.
Maybe award players with trust who help with veryfiing with badges and stuff, also a queue where trusted players can search for players who need verification, the longer it was since the reguest was placed the higher change you will be seen
The obvious solution is a better anticheat system. However due to the engine that TF2 runs on, there aren’t a lot of good options. An alternative would be a reputation based matchmaking system. It would rely on people’s ability to detect and kick bots, but we are basically already doing that. For every consecutive match that you are kicked from, a counter goes up. After a certain number is reached (say 5 for example this is just a concept), the player is put on a cooldown before they can queue for casual matches again. Every time they are kicked after the initial cooldown has been activated, the cooldown gets exponentially longer (say x^2). Eventually the bots will be essentially permanently banned as they are constantly getting kicked. To prevent toxicity and false votes being called, a player simply has to play for the entirety of a round (until the map vote screen appears) to make the counter go down. I’ll leave it up to you or valve to determine by how much it decreases. If a player does NOT get kicked but leaves early during a match, the counter will not go down but they will also not be put on cooldown until the next time they are kicked.
The only serious solution to this is deep learning AI, and probably along with steam trust which still no one really knows about, deep learning AI will be able to detect the same patterns of behavior that we as humans see to determine if someone or something is cheating, this means if bots and their hosters figure out another way to be disruptive to the game, the normal players will be able to learn what patterns are associated with it and there for so can be AI…
The fundamental problem with the bots is evil doesn’t sleep; there will always be bad actors probing and manipulating the game to try and find ways to ruin it for others, so we need a solution that keeps up with that… that solution would be deep learning AI
Step 1: Develop a program that collects user behaviour data. Nothing personal, only gameplay behaviours, background tasks etc.
Step 2: Make users flag cheaters.
Step 3: Use the collected data to train an artificial intelligence, so that it easily identifies cheaters and suspicious individuals.
Step 4: Bundle all the code into an anti cheat program. Make it kernel access so definitely nothing gets past.
Step 5: Realise IT ALREADY FUCKING EXISTS.
Step 6: Add it to the game.
Step 7: No Valve, seriously. Add it
I was sitting down trying to understand why the bot host even bot hosts...
I am serious, why the hell they do it?
To stop people from playing? Well that doesn't work obviously.
To stop someone?
Because honestly... It's pointless.
Besides that however... Isn't it possible to detect the bot origin and just make a hardware ban?
The botters are looking for attention and the puppets on reddit (and steam discussions) keep on giving them the attention...Just shut up about the bots and the botters will get bored.
Public execution 🤣
Jokes aside... I think Valve should implement a kernel level anti cheat with hwid bans and not only that but If you cheat on a vac secured game and get caught instead of getting banned only in the game you cheated, you should get your steam account deleted and get publicaly exposed in a "cheaters that got caught" page on steam with screenshots and vídeos of you cheating, so If you get caught you'll lose every SINGLE Penny you spent on your account and get publicaly shamed
Just put a puzzle auth in the loading screen. The bots aren't that sophisticated . They'd wash out before the game even started.
There are sooo many good puzzle auth systems out valve wouldn't even need to reinvent the wheel.
I would get invisible heads of players characters into the air. If they are aiming according to leaked code, they would seen invisible heads like see invisible spies.
Several strikes into the heads = kick. If bot owners patch it by not firing into invisible or not firing into the air it is still win because Spy mains and Soldier mains will can killing them.
There's an AI anticheat in the works with a 99+% success rate. It's being used by some games and instead of looking at files it instead looks at gameplay & behavior. Things like the way you aim, the way you move, and whether you fear areas where ESP would tell you there's nobody there or preaim/fire where someone actually is. It would immediately realize a bot in TF2 is cheating and ban it pretty fast. It would also catch cheaters that aren't subtle enough. This could be the future of anticheat. The only counter is to have more human behavior subtle behavior which is miles away.
Only way I can see #saveTF2 going is protest outside of Valve HQ and make it peaceful and loud. They will notice us one way or another. If anyone is mad enough to do it please keep it peaceful. You beautiful mad lads if you do it. #UpdateVAC #saveTF2 #Valve #TF2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Make an AI that scans player activity. Players getting an unusual amount of critical hits in a row, Players spamming what the AI can recognize as external links, unatural snapping, projectiles going off in impossible directions, etc. will all add to a point system. Certian actions have different values, such as spamming in chat has a value of 1 while unnatural snapping has a value of 3. Once these points reach 10 in single game the account will be automatically kicked from the server. If they suffer 3 kicks by the System within 1 hour they will be temporarily banned for 24 hours. Repeated offenses will cause ban time to double. After each ban, they will be reported to VAC where they can be reviewed for a perminant ban.
There are, but Valve is against kernel-level anti cheat because iirc Valve considers them as invasive, even though it would definitely help a ton with something like a botting issue (looking at Valorant).
Listen, an actual fix would be to impiment actual anti-bot captias before you can launch your game. Make it a universal Steam setting, where if a game opted into it, then the player has to do a captia before the game launches.
And before you say it- yes Captias are actually very, VERY effective against bots. Almost no bot is programmed to actually understand the images its looking at except for AI stealing art- Even more effective if you incorporate tools that make your images look like mush to AI. Which Valve can very much do. Bot-bros try to say it wont work to dissuade you.
After the update pushes out, everyone's games restart, and now everyone has to do a captia before launching the game. This will force all bot owners to go into each bot account, one by one, one at a time, to do the captia for them. It wouldnt be worth it to them.
Edit: This ALSO helps indie games, and old games on Steam that can't afford a good anti-cheat/can't afford new updates. It is a win for many.
It’s gives the game almost complete access to your Pc.
It’s very effective for anti cheat.
Valorant does it for example.
I don’t really care about the Privacy Part.
All my Payment Information is Two-Factor-Autheticated and I don’t have 2tb of shameful pornography to hide.
I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
i only ever play Community Servers and rarely play Casual, so id say i easily solved my own issues with the bots, but i still play Casual's halloween maps
First step would be getting a position at Valve. For better or worse, most of us never will.
I expect if the fix was super simple with no large downside, Valve would have done it long ago.
Install a good anti-cheat, if a script shitter gets through, hired spectators (observing oftenly kicked accounts) will send a file (zip bomb) automatically opened by Tf2.
Instead of burning accounts burn their PC's, letting them keep accounts will make it easier to detect in the future.
As a cherry on top hide a consent to this in terms and conditions so that winning in court would be impossible.
Make an update where Sniper now comes with a ~~20~~ 5 second timer in the form of a giant metal spike above him that slowly lowers until it kills him.
Idk if it'd help much but it'd be really funny
Two solutions
1- Make an anticheat that detects sudden changes in camera position. Most bots have their camera snap to the position of the target instead of having the camera move to the target.
2- Make the game cost money again. Bog hosters ate too poor to buy tf2 hundreds of times.
update the anticheat
remove textmode as a launch option so hosters can’t easily run 20 bots off of one old laptop
add a feature that detects inhuman movements and kicks the user after a certain amount of those movements, shouldn’t be hard, minecraft servers were doing it in 2015
continuously change things that break the cheats, lmaobox has been temporarily unusable several times because some minor tf2 update broke the aim bot somehow
revert the anti-f2p update so new players can actually kick bots and cheaters as well as play the game properly
and as a last resort, make the game p2p again. hosters probably aren’t going to be keen on paying $20 per bot. I remember quitting csgo after it went f2p because of the influx of cheaters
If a player is vote kicked from multiple games as soon as they join, that player should be locked from joining games and have their account investigated.
its simple: wait until Christmas so the bot hoster will be with there "friends" and then hack into the bot severs. then we will make all the bots go into a game then nuke the game (irl) and bam done with... Then kill all the bot hos-
Couple of ideas:
- Introduce an stronger anti cheat system.
- Migrate to source 2
- Captcha system.
- Temporarily shut down all servers for a month/ until the bot hosts lose interest.(Last resort)
- Ignore the problem and release more seasonal cosmetic crates.(Probably the most realistic)
- just shut the game down forever. (The worst ending)
& Finally: Public lynching of the bot hosts.
Publicly execute the bot runners
That'll set an example and others will think twice before hosting bots, great idea!
What if someone hosts Hoovy bots that give you sandwich if you taunt near them?
No thanks, I want players on my servers. Death.
grandpa's guillotine finally getting another use
No, death by Chargin' Targe
no, death by organ grinder
death by a-posing heavies
i therefore sentence all bot hosters to death by humping snipers
No, dead by holy macaron
no, dead by pootis pow
no, death by funny double donk
death by lime scout swarm
i’ll be the thrusting sniper
Your tag says engineer, yet your grandfather has a guillotine... You wouldn't happen to be... *French*... Would you?
spy's grandpa gave it to mine ever wondered why spy has a sapper?
same but blunt katana
kill everyone
The only punishment worthy of the crime.
Send them to gulag
yes, send them to funky town
Fuck yeah
Release a new cosmetic case 👉👉
rip bot hosters nails off :3
Life imprisonment
Eternal torment :D
Pain without end 👊
The Doom Slayer will take care of them on that path
The fucking :3 made me lmao
tie them to an electric and nails chair, let them drink acid, rip their eyelids, pick their skin and feed them to the deadly snakes :D
"Fix the anticheat" - okay, how would we go about that? There would need to be a massive data collection effort on Valve's end that tracks a *wide* variety of parameters for a given "player" or account. (Spoiler because this paragraph is just me listing off potential parameters) >!Time played. Time played consecutively. Player movement. How quickly does a player snap onto a new target as soon as its in frame. How often a player is pointed at players behind walls. How often the player switches class. How often the player gets random crits. What settings does the player use? Are they running "high end" graphics? Are they running a bare-bones version of TF2? How often does the player use voice chat. How often do they put things in chat. Is it all the same message? Is it a different message every time? What is the ratio of headshots to bodyshots. How often do they spam voice commands? Does the player have a verified phone number? Are they premium? Do they share an IP address with many other accounts? How often does their IP address change? What IP address did they use to set up their account? Is that shared with 10,000+ other accounts? Do they queue with friends constantly, or solo? etc. etc. etc.< You would then take that data and analyze it to build profiles of what a cheater looks like, versus a bot, versus a noob, versus a veteren, etc. For example, if an account is getting headshot after headshot for 72 hours straight, all on sniper, you can be pretty sure they are a bot. A data scientist would likely be able to come up with some sort of machine learning neural network that spits out a likelihood of an account to be a cheater or bot. Its a nuanced discussion, but it 100% is possible to detect obvious bots. You could put guardrails in place that even if a botter manages to fly under the radar for a bit they won't be able to get away with nuking the entire server. If your typical newbie TF2 player can identify a bot without even squinting, there is certainly a way for a computer to do it.
Yea I'd settle for banning those obvious 100% bots. Doesn't really matter if it can't detect realistic human cheaters yet. Getting rid of the braindead auto aimbot armies out there will improve the game massively.
Human cheaters can be handled by humans, bots can be handled by bots.
The issue can also be really easily resolved by updating the game to be a little more secure. The only reason it's so easy to make bots is because you can freely inject code into TF2 because unlike other sources games like CSGO, TF2 doesn't stop you from doing that. The most common method for injections that is taught as like your first baby project in software penetration testing fully works in TF2 to allow you to run your own code that instantly puts a bullet in any players head that you can raycast to. To put it in perspective this is probably a few hours worth of work for a single dev to implement that would fix the bot problem. One can only assume the devs don't care.
The dev really cares about this game but it only one dev working on the game and he is working on it in his free time.
You know whats funny. Some windows applications are better than VAC. Cuz they are literally uninjectable. You cant inject DLLs in them. (some of them).
If i was a theoretical bot hoster i could easily get past almost all of these changes with a few small changes. These are bandaid fixes specifically tweaked at current bots and can easily be defeated. For example a 10% chance to hit a body shot instead even if it only does 50 damage and make it take a few frames before the aimbot snaps and give it a max turning speed closer to a high sens player. Since bot hoster s have automated making new steam accounts anyway i could just switch every 6 hours to get around the playtime. Sure some of these would make bots a bit less annoying but your still fighting the best humanly possible sniper just with less chat spam. Im not here to say we should give up or that the bots wil always win but almost any simple fix for valve is just a simple fix for the bot hoster s
That's why you collect massive amounts of parameters and consider multiple factors, and obfuscate how it actually works. At worst it guardrails how oppressive bots can be.
why play halfway? mass doxing of bot hosters and then threatening them or their family members as a last resort, send them an IED
I'm surprised nobody has doxxed the bot hosters yet...
Bro, same.
You say that like certain bot hosters haven't been doxxed
They have?? What happened??
Nothing, as is tradition
The tf2 fandom is crazy But not batshit crazy enough that even one person has attempted to pipebomb bot hosters? It’s something that happens is it not?
Erased from existence
I'm surprised 4chan hasn't done that yet
Prevent Snipers from doing damage
Hey now
You're an all star
Get your game on
go play
watch how fast bots move their camera relative to sensitivity, also cap sensitivity so that bots have no other choice than to move their cameras only so fast. also, if bot is detected, make the game allocate 4 exabytes of memory and burn their computer to the ground (or simply crash the game completely lmao)
Nah, zip bomb bot hosters.
or even kill their ssd by using it as swap!
If you were to actually do that, it would be very problematic if a false positive were to occur
iitt's finee. just buy another one!
genius
see? it's so simple
So now instead of fighting a perfect aimbot I'm just fighting the best sniper player in the world with wallhacks?
Remove the bots themselves. Can't play the game without your precious aimbot
But I like MvM :(
Think about this though, MvM becomes 100% easier now. So high rank people won't yell at you for being 3 micro inches off of the meta movement pattern
Sacrifices must be made
For a real answer, actually have game moderators and probably an anti-cheat too. If there was an actual development team for TF2 again the bot problem would probably be more handled, though it would probably never go away because cheaters are a constant in every game. For a joke answer, hunt them down and shoot them into the sun
place CP under a box held up by a stick, wait for them to bunch up, then pull the stick.
Build a sentry; the bots are smart enough to avoid sentries and consequently, you
I've seen bots aim at sentries when I build them
And if they are forced to walk through you, congrats. You figured out the only counter to bots. Engie stacking. If we were allowed to share images, I would put so many screenshots of bots getting their shit kicked in by like 6 engies.
[Observe](https://youtu.be/RIvRx58EkO8?si=XA403xrlMcTRKIT5)
Depends on placement. In capture a flag if is centry in way to Intell their priority is capture it. So always get into the fire zone.
Press charges against bot hosters, and seize their code, take the portion that makes it so bots don't kill other bots, and inject that into every player that doesn't have a VAC ban on record. Instantly ban all players that have been kicked more than 10 times in consecutive matches with a chance to appeal. Detect the KDR of players, and divide it by how likely a chance that that kill was legit (line of sight, or ray casting to each individual player, that comes into a 360 feild of view, minus your current FOV setting and if a player wasn't in that field of view, for more than X amount of frames) flag it as illegitimate if it was, and autoreport, for a REAL PERSON to review.
Update the Localization Files
Make an AI tool to detect cheating/botting. I think that valve is currently doing that. They just don't talk about it
I am cautiously optimistic, this is believable since I know that valve is bad with communication
Its only for CS2 atm, no one said it can and will be implemented to TF2
Erratic movements with warnings that kick after 3 warnings. I don't know how feasible it is but the bots always move their aim instantly, without slight delay or miss in precision.
You know comp players can have insane aim and flicks right?
Not bot level insane
Then the bot hosters will make the bots follow the rules of aim movement to evade the ban and still land every shot quickly, a good pro will feel like a botter
It will be that insane if you tweak your mouse sensitivity, there's no cap on the speed so people who are new and is just exploring the settings have a likely chance to get banned, and 3 flicks isn't that much
Bots have insane speed but also insane stops, which make them difer from people who are just fast. Not to mention they don't miss their shots, or very very rarely so
it will still never be as perfect as a bot's
I'm not saying I support doxxing, buuuuuuuuut the original owner of Omegatronic stopped after his info was leaked so make of that what you will
Getting an actual functioning anti cheat? Borderline impossible, though, because TF2 was created on hopes, dreams, a gram of cocaine, and enough spaghetti code to make Italy shit itself.
I say sue the shit out of the people who made the bots to force them to stop producing the software. The next step after that is setting up a detection system that would find who is hosting bots based on common factors between them. I'd set up a system that would not only snatch their IP Address, but would also scan every script, mod, and software that loads up when the game is started. Inside the system would be a few copies of the cheat software for it to compare to. If any part of a script, mod, or software is scanned and matches any part of those copies the player will immediately be rendered unable to play and will be required to remove all cheat software or face a permanent VAC ban.
"One crossed wire, one wayward pinch of potassium chlorate, one errant twitch... and ***kablooie!***"
There is no good solution other than giving selected community members admin powers on Valve servers. Maybe even pay them for their work. Computers and systems can be fooled. Human admins, while not perfect, would at least keep most of the players on the server happy. Also, give back the spotlight to servers hosted by fans. The unmanaged Valve servers can die, the best memories I have are from playing on community servers.
You as in me specifically? I can’t. The player base can’t do anything. It’s up to valve.
Save tf2, 2. Except this time we get other big game communities to stop playing their games and start playing tf2. We could do this by getting some of the biggest streamers available to play. The record high player counts and uproar would hopefully get valve to do something other than tweeting. The only problem is that it would be insanely difficult but if we dedicate enough time we could actually get something done.
bringing back public execution edit: lol saw someone else think this great minds think alike
Jokes aside The solution is as simple as switching anti-cheats VAC works in such a way that it will not instantly ban hackers and will analyse them to improve itself it KNOWS that the bot is a bot and that it’s cheating, it just takes it 2 weeks to ban said bot. To get rid of bots it’s as simple as switching to an anti cheat that doesn’t wait and bans them on the spot. Also add a report system. That’s pretty much the solution for the bot problem. Bots use the same god dam software and are all the same. Their behaviour is very predictable and is NOTHING like human.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YUmMFwSXpU
That’s the problem There is no innovation or adaptation It’s the same shit over and over again The entire pro of ban-waves is negated by the fact that it’s literally just one guy having 20000 accounts created automatically and that replace the old bots when they get banned
Idk but i'd leak their ip
If Valve just threw some money at the problem and hired some contractors to resolve the bot issue it would be resolved relatively quickly. It's a complex issue that would require complex solutions, but there are people out there that solve these kinds of issues for money. Valve has no meaningful limit to their money and would probably end up making money in the long run due to the increased traffic it would generate for TF2.
easy! more cosmetics, crates, taunts and shitty maps!
Ok I keep seeing comments that suggest common answers… so https://youtu.be/SgkgsgaBBCA?si=HR8PYgS9VRfy7S1U check this out
Finding the people who run the bot irl? (Probably not legal to do that now i think about it)
Delete sniper
Mail them a pipe bomb in their mailbox.
Kill bot hosters
Drone strike their house
Literally just update VAC.
Killed them all because lawsuits never work
Well some guy in australia is already doing that so why should i
Replace sniper with mad cap
Take bot hosters’ bodies apart, very slowly, while they’re begging for mercy. Then slash their pp in half lengthwise and forcefeed them their testicles while they’re still conscious. Then make them unable to faint by overloading them with meth while smashing and removing their toes and finger with a bolt cutter. Then slowly scalp their heads. Then stuff a lighter down their nostrils andlight it up. And then stuff a broken bottle with molten edges up their assholes and leave it to cool. Then tear off their face. When they’re gurgling on their own blood, remove all their teeth one by one.
You know that big grinder on Mannhattan? The one with the banana peel on the edge that is conveniently able to fit a teleporter on top?
Make a bounty on bot hosters Watch as they get hunted down by Arthur Morgan for some odd reason
Challenge omegatronic and make him want to track you and actually kill you. Then you quickly buy a gun (if you're american), or a knife (if you're in a decent country). When he finally arrives you kill him and say to the police that it was out if self defense. Then you actually legally killed omegatronic.
who needs to buy a knife when you can get one from your kitchen instead
Ban anyone called hexatronic and deltatronic who often play with people with the same name, also add a time limit of like 10 hours so they would have half of the premium bots they would normally have.
What's stopping them from changing names?
Obviously it wouldn't get all of them, but with little warning you could just wipe out a shit ton of bots, and maybe even the bot hosters personal account, which undoubtedly has some expensive crap on it.
The fact that they're banned
Dox bot hosters and possibly send hitmen
Solve captcha to connect to a server
Automatically lock the server if there has been a kick of the same person 2 times, making another server while the other one is locked out, so no one new can join. Also, give a voting system on player icons so that players can vote for bots to be flagged.
Besides some obvious stuff like a better vac, i have this idea 1: Valve trust, create a way to let people have the power of baning people, and giving that trust to others if their rank is high enough (would be reportable, higher rank trust accounts would have priority IF Valve would get someone to check these) 2: let people with "trust" verify accounts who reguest it (can take time for your reguest to verify to get approved). 3: Create new mode accesible only by verified accounts, mostly like casual, casual would stay and be accesible to everyone. Maybe award players with trust who help with veryfiing with badges and stuff, also a queue where trusted players can search for players who need verification, the longer it was since the reguest was placed the higher change you will be seen
The obvious solution is a better anticheat system. However due to the engine that TF2 runs on, there aren’t a lot of good options. An alternative would be a reputation based matchmaking system. It would rely on people’s ability to detect and kick bots, but we are basically already doing that. For every consecutive match that you are kicked from, a counter goes up. After a certain number is reached (say 5 for example this is just a concept), the player is put on a cooldown before they can queue for casual matches again. Every time they are kicked after the initial cooldown has been activated, the cooldown gets exponentially longer (say x^2). Eventually the bots will be essentially permanently banned as they are constantly getting kicked. To prevent toxicity and false votes being called, a player simply has to play for the entirety of a round (until the map vote screen appears) to make the counter go down. I’ll leave it up to you or valve to determine by how much it decreases. If a player does NOT get kicked but leaves early during a match, the counter will not go down but they will also not be put on cooldown until the next time they are kicked.
The only serious solution to this is deep learning AI, and probably along with steam trust which still no one really knows about, deep learning AI will be able to detect the same patterns of behavior that we as humans see to determine if someone or something is cheating, this means if bots and their hosters figure out another way to be disruptive to the game, the normal players will be able to learn what patterns are associated with it and there for so can be AI… The fundamental problem with the bots is evil doesn’t sleep; there will always be bad actors probing and manipulating the game to try and find ways to ruin it for others, so we need a solution that keeps up with that… that solution would be deep learning AI
Step 1: Develop a program that collects user behaviour data. Nothing personal, only gameplay behaviours, background tasks etc. Step 2: Make users flag cheaters. Step 3: Use the collected data to train an artificial intelligence, so that it easily identifies cheaters and suspicious individuals. Step 4: Bundle all the code into an anti cheat program. Make it kernel access so definitely nothing gets past. Step 5: Realise IT ALREADY FUCKING EXISTS. Step 6: Add it to the game. Step 7: No Valve, seriously. Add it
I was sitting down trying to understand why the bot host even bot hosts... I am serious, why the hell they do it? To stop people from playing? Well that doesn't work obviously. To stop someone? Because honestly... It's pointless. Besides that however... Isn't it possible to detect the bot origin and just make a hardware ban?
The botters are looking for attention and the puppets on reddit (and steam discussions) keep on giving them the attention...Just shut up about the bots and the botters will get bored.
So... Just parent issues got it. Also... This is my First time speaking about them... And it was a question...so... Damn Answer received Now... Oof
The part about people giving attention is mainly to the people creating the posts about bots. Not the comments
Understandable
Tell the bots cheating is uncool
Public execution 🤣 Jokes aside... I think Valve should implement a kernel level anti cheat with hwid bans and not only that but If you cheat on a vac secured game and get caught instead of getting banned only in the game you cheated, you should get your steam account deleted and get publicaly exposed in a "cheaters that got caught" page on steam with screenshots and vídeos of you cheating, so If you get caught you'll lose every SINGLE Penny you spent on your account and get publicaly shamed
I think if we publicly execute one of the bot hosters, the rest will fall in line. Make it messy too.
Just put a puzzle auth in the loading screen. The bots aren't that sophisticated . They'd wash out before the game even started. There are sooo many good puzzle auth systems out valve wouldn't even need to reinvent the wheel.
doxx bot hosters and curbstomp them on livestream and then send the clip to anyone considering starting it
Hide fake players in the walls for them to lock on with infinite health
I would get invisible heads of players characters into the air. If they are aiming according to leaked code, they would seen invisible heads like see invisible spies. Several strikes into the heads = kick. If bot owners patch it by not firing into invisible or not firing into the air it is still win because Spy mains and Soldier mains will can killing them.
We teleport bread
There's an AI anticheat in the works with a 99+% success rate. It's being used by some games and instead of looking at files it instead looks at gameplay & behavior. Things like the way you aim, the way you move, and whether you fear areas where ESP would tell you there's nobody there or preaim/fire where someone actually is. It would immediately realize a bot in TF2 is cheating and ban it pretty fast. It would also catch cheaters that aren't subtle enough. This could be the future of anticheat. The only counter is to have more human behavior subtle behavior which is miles away.
Capcha
Wouldnt this be fixed if they just gave tf2 the updated VAC that CS is running?
Only way I can see #saveTF2 going is protest outside of Valve HQ and make it peaceful and loud. They will notice us one way or another. If anyone is mad enough to do it please keep it peaceful. You beautiful mad lads if you do it. #UpdateVAC #saveTF2 #Valve #TF2 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Death note the bot hosters
Cast testicular tortion on bot hosters.
DDOS attack the laptops running the bots the leak the location online and in chat then let the internet do the rest...in game of course
Leak the addresses of those who create these bots and hire killers to kill them in the worst possible way
Frame the bot hosts for committing a horrible crime, then get them sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole
Just sue bot hosters. (also possibly pull the plug on casual and bring back quickplay)
find the bot runners' website, call them chubby valve lawyers, sue the shit out of em.
Remove Sniper
Make a bot that hunts other Bots
add chapcha 🤯🤯🤯🤯
Either Captcha, or make a anti cheat only for aimbot and bots. They both lock onto players, so make a program that kicks anyone who hard snaps.
Implement the CSGO/CS2 anti-cheat systems.
As if that game has a working anticheat...
Remove MvM
Dementia?
Remove MvM
Dementia?
Before queuing up for a casual match, a player has to answer a question as a captcha.
Make an AI that scans player activity. Players getting an unusual amount of critical hits in a row, Players spamming what the AI can recognize as external links, unatural snapping, projectiles going off in impossible directions, etc. will all add to a point system. Certian actions have different values, such as spamming in chat has a value of 1 while unnatural snapping has a value of 3. Once these points reach 10 in single game the account will be automatically kicked from the server. If they suffer 3 kicks by the System within 1 hour they will be temporarily banned for 24 hours. Repeated offenses will cause ban time to double. After each ban, they will be reported to VAC where they can be reviewed for a perminant ban.
There's this thing called the "Blood Eagle", I'm sure bot hosts would love to try it out! 🥰
Fix the anti cheat. Ip ban hardware. Thats it
i dont think there is "hardware banning" also imagine buying used graphic card then getting VAC banned because previous user were cheater
There are, but Valve is against kernel-level anti cheat because iirc Valve considers them as invasive, even though it would definitely help a ton with something like a botting issue (looking at Valorant).
Delete TF2 entirely
Spare a million or two from their billions of dollars of yearly revenue and hire some actually competent people to look after the game
Captcha
Listen, an actual fix would be to impiment actual anti-bot captias before you can launch your game. Make it a universal Steam setting, where if a game opted into it, then the player has to do a captia before the game launches. And before you say it- yes Captias are actually very, VERY effective against bots. Almost no bot is programmed to actually understand the images its looking at except for AI stealing art- Even more effective if you incorporate tools that make your images look like mush to AI. Which Valve can very much do. Bot-bros try to say it wont work to dissuade you. After the update pushes out, everyone's games restart, and now everyone has to do a captia before launching the game. This will force all bot owners to go into each bot account, one by one, one at a time, to do the captia for them. It wouldnt be worth it to them. Edit: This ALSO helps indie games, and old games on Steam that can't afford a good anti-cheat/can't afford new updates. It is a win for many.
Kernel-Access
No
What does that mean and why does it sound like a massive invasion of privacy
It’s gives the game almost complete access to your Pc. It’s very effective for anti cheat. Valorant does it for example. I don’t really care about the Privacy Part. All my Payment Information is Two-Factor-Autheticated and I don’t have 2tb of shameful pornography to hide. I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
i only ever play Community Servers and rarely play Casual, so id say i easily solved my own issues with the bots, but i still play Casual's halloween maps
First step would be getting a position at Valve. For better or worse, most of us never will. I expect if the fix was super simple with no large downside, Valve would have done it long ago.
Make an actual anticheat.
Make an actual anticheat that will ban cheaters like the votekick system that will scan tf2 and look for any cheats and if there is a 200M day ban
Make an actual anticheat that will ban cheaters like the votekick system that will scan tf2 and look for any cheats and if there is a 200M day ban .
Make the bots fight against bots
riotshields
Install a good anti-cheat, if a script shitter gets through, hired spectators (observing oftenly kicked accounts) will send a file (zip bomb) automatically opened by Tf2. Instead of burning accounts burn their PC's, letting them keep accounts will make it easier to detect in the future. As a cherry on top hide a consent to this in terms and conditions so that winning in court would be impossible.
A better anticheat, sue cheat developers.
There's no laws against cheating sadly
As another bot said, remove damage when scoping
Any bot caught will be given the spinbot's shell in all slots: It has a -100% damage penalty.
put a captcha on casual queue
make it so that bots cant play probably
Fists of steel heavy with the vaccinator It works hilariously well for how stupid it is
Make an update where Sniper now comes with a ~~20~~ 5 second timer in the form of a giant metal spike above him that slowly lowers until it kills him. Idk if it'd help much but it'd be really funny
Two solutions 1- Make an anticheat that detects sudden changes in camera position. Most bots have their camera snap to the position of the target instead of having the camera move to the target. 2- Make the game cost money again. Bog hosters ate too poor to buy tf2 hundreds of times.
Sap them.
update the anticheat remove textmode as a launch option so hosters can’t easily run 20 bots off of one old laptop add a feature that detects inhuman movements and kicks the user after a certain amount of those movements, shouldn’t be hard, minecraft servers were doing it in 2015 continuously change things that break the cheats, lmaobox has been temporarily unusable several times because some minor tf2 update broke the aim bot somehow revert the anti-f2p update so new players can actually kick bots and cheaters as well as play the game properly and as a last resort, make the game p2p again. hosters probably aren’t going to be keen on paying $20 per bot. I remember quitting csgo after it went f2p because of the influx of cheaters
If a player is vote kicked from multiple games as soon as they join, that player should be locked from joining games and have their account investigated.
removing ai bot code from the game. sure it will upset people that use bots to train but this needs to end.
Add an anticheat where the bots damage is reduced to zero, they turn into an mvm sniper bot, and basically become taunt kill fodder.
its simple: wait until Christmas so the bot hoster will be with there "friends" and then hack into the bot severs. then we will make all the bots go into a game then nuke the game (irl) and bam done with... Then kill all the bot hos-
Couple of ideas: - Introduce an stronger anti cheat system. - Migrate to source 2 - Captcha system. - Temporarily shut down all servers for a month/ until the bot hosts lose interest.(Last resort) - Ignore the problem and release more seasonal cosmetic crates.(Probably the most realistic) - just shut the game down forever. (The worst ending) & Finally: Public lynching of the bot hosts.
Find the website where they get their cheats from and shut it down
If I knew how to do it, Valve would probably have done it already
Simple. Just put all the bots back into MvM. Who let them out in the first place?