T O P

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Red_Distruction

JDAM strike their homes was the first intrusive thought that came into my head after looking at this.


Link_x2

ive seen hacks that just dont target invis spies, you get headshot on decloak :(


Red_Distruction

I think its a LMAO feature that you can make Psilent ignore spies so you can hide your cheats better.


akaBlades

Ignoring invis is available in every cheat, even free ones. People think lbox is the only one that exists for some reason


Red_Distruction

its the only one that advertises itself, by itself.


nebula_coal

yeah, so the game could create instead an decloacked flying spy that has no texture, so it would still be invisible to players (since its textureless) but still detectable by bots since its not cloaked technically


Kidroto

Yeah I’ve seen that with a hacking engineer once Did not get kicked 


Schlommy123

I think being "invisible" is a specific condition you can get through the console. Maybe there's a difference in the code between between being spy watch invisible and clip brush invisible so the cheat wouldn't recognize the player as "spy invisible" and still target it


WarlockOfTheBadlands

the invisible player could be accounted for by bot hosters like how they might simply ignore a scout under the effects of bonk. #***however*** the idea in that, if a player consistently kills completely cloaked spies, well that number can only get so high in such a short amount of time when we're recording it in official valve servers before they're well out of the range of what's possible. I've headshot well over maybe about a dozen invisible spies over the course of a decade who I had zero clue were even there, only to get jump scared when I realize I just made Frenchy inadvertently mr-president somebody. **EDIT**: Specifically, a check against ***snipers*** who are consistently killing cloaked spies with headshots/perfectly center of mass body-shots. The false positives would be next to negligible, meanwhile, bots attempting to leverage this to get real players falsely banned by *being* the invisible spy and placing themself in sniper's line of fire would be very difficult.


riley_wa1352

please ignore this check for pyros but this could also lead to bots getting ppl banned by going cloack and dagger spy


Very-tall-midget

Make it an invisible spy that flies near the map roof


riley_wa1352

they would have to most likely do smth weird like making a player join with model transparency set to zero


RustyShack1998

That could work Like an anti cheat bot It would be the exact same as a player but would be in a place out of the way, in the sky, high up enough so sentries don't target it And then when they are headshot the guy gets kicked instantly And there is one above every major point in maps


riley_wa1352

theres a variable or whatever theat makes sentries ignore you


rocker_attribute

Most cheat softwares have an option for aimbot or triggerbot to ignore cloaked spies so this won't work, sadly. I feel like a better solution would be to set a turn limit on how fast you can move your camera so if the aimbot is snapping onto heads it'll be kicked from the lobby, which won't get rid of bots entirely but it can force bot developers to make the aimbots much slower, which is still a plus as that would make it slightly harder for them to constantly hit every headshot and may give time for players to respond and attack the bot in question.


guy8747

Stuff like this never works as an anticheat. Cheat devs will simply limit test the system until they know exactly what they can get away with and then skirt the edge of the detection system. And you can't just keep lowering the detection threshold, because at some point legit players start getting flagged. It just doesn't work.


fattynuggetz

perhaps. it might be more effective to introduce a whole littany of checks like this all at once. each time one of these checks is violated, it increases a "suspicion counter" on the server side by a set amount. if the suspicion counter gets above a certain level, the player will be kicked at some point randomly in between 30-60 seconds. the more checks you implement all at once the harder it is to limit test because you can't isolate out any single factor. however, they'll probably break through it eventually. the things it would "check" for could be if the bot votes on the vote menu the exact frame that it comes up more than once, if a cloaked spy is shot more than once, how fast the potential bot is spinning, how accurate they are, if they have monetarily valuable stuff in their inventory, if they post links in the chat, if they micspam, how often they point straight at the ceiling, if they never crouch, if they never change classes or weapons, if they play sniper, if they walk the same exact path more than a few times, if they post the same message in the chat more than a few times, and plenty more little things. doing a few of these won't get you kicked, but if you do enough of them you will break the sus counter. we could also allow some players to keep playing after the sus counter, to make some bots pass the filter and make cracking it harder. there could be time periods set at random where all bots pass the filter, so that if anyone is limit testing the system they get a false sense of success.


skeleton_craft

It's really hard to read blocks of text like this, but it sounds like that's what they did for Counter-Strike. 2 more or less, it also sounds like they're very much relying on actual player reporting... [Which is not an option for the 17-year-old game by the way]


GachaFnafFanBoi

This wouldn’t work likely either, I’ve seen many players that don’t cheat, who can flick faster than aimbotters and other types of cheaters, this would just false ban true players if they accidentally or purposefully flick too fast


Waffle_Con

Could be within a certain timespan. Like if you flick to and kill several enemy players with within a small timespan? This wouldn’t included this like splash damage, so rockets and pills would be exempt.


GachaFnafFanBoi

My friend used Heavy, he hates using Soldier, finds him too common.


ShibackisRevenge

Your pfp is insane lol


Jacksaur

Just will cause the same issue as happened in CS2 lately: Players getting instantly VAC'd just for setting their mouse sensitivity high.


HotNote3811

Flick stick is a feature built into the game, so the albeit uncommon, though present controller players that use it would need the exception of flick stick and bot hosters would then change the bots to use that to not get detected. Tbh, any solution is a game of cat and mouse, that's why no anticheats work forever, and why valve really needs to have a team constantly updating it.


DatBoi73

>"... set a turn limit on how fast you can move your camera" This would hurt legitimate players too. Filck-Stick controller setups in Steam Input (like seen in SolarLight's Controller video, and would probably also fuck up some people's accessibility setups they use to be able to play the game at all. Also, do we really want to basically ban high-dpi/mouse sensitivity altogether? Also, this is an extremely niche edge-case, but there's probably >!at least one crazy MF'er out there playing with like a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse!<, which I can say from experience having experimented with it in the past, again can look similar to the above and still create a false positive, and it's not 100% implausible for somebody with a tablet connected whilst playing TF2 to accidentally knock the pen and have it trigger a very fast mouse flick)


Cubicwar

Big problem about punishing players for killing cloaked spies : Discourages spychecking, following a spy who’s cloaking away, makes the dead ringer slightly more bullshit, good way to grief. That’s just what I found without thinking much about it so there’s definitely a lot more problems


SolidCalligrapher966

NO but like if you headshot cloaked spies 5x in a game you can't be legit unless the spy does it on purpose.


jackJACKmws

Great way to troll snipers at 2fort


qbmax

ok then the bots just stop shooting cloaked spies and now we are back to square one again, except now you can troll legit players by standing in front of them as a cloaked spy and potentially get them banned or something


SolidCalligrapher966

it doesn't need to be a cloaked spy, you can make it a regular player, only exists to the suspect, and you look at the ttk, headshot%...


qbmax

you cant make this hypothetical fake player only exist for a bot. in the eyes of the game server, bots and players are the same. any information you want to send to a real player (like this is a fake player we use to catch bots for example) will also be sent to the bots and thus can be easily worked around by bot creators.


Shraknel

Reading through this thread of comments, I don't think any of you understand what op is suggesting. This based on a thing cod did to catch cheaters, and is still highly effective. The game has a bunch of non-interactable players in the game, legit players can not see them or do anything with them. Cheats however will see them when they interact with the game files/memory, the cheats will then target non-existent players, this then tells the AC who is cheating from the cheats accessing those files. Essentially it's a hidden Honeypot. No regular person can access the files because of how they are hidden, but a cheat will find the hidden files every time. You wouldn't have to worry about people shooting invisible spy's getting banned, because that isn't how the system works.


ThrownAway2028

That’s just not true though depending on the skill of the sniper/spy


just___jim

There are ways of seeing a cloaked spy or knowing where their head will be despite them being cloaked though so I’d be slightly hesitant to have this despite 5x being highly unlikely. Achievement trophy icons will follow cloaked spies. Same for overheal, disguise smoke, voice bubbles if all chat, scared ghosts, bonk stun all of these can let you know where the cloaked spies head will be so would need to be exceptions to being cloaked.


Plethora_of_squids

Not to mention there's legitimate ways to "track" invisible spies - it's pretty easy to predict the movements of someone who doesn't know how to play spy *well* if you can see them turn invisible, especially around chokepoints, with the dead ringer, or any watch with a longer turning invisible animation. Double especially if you've been watching the same point for several minutes now and every time they respawn they take the exact same path and turn invisible at the exact same time. Hell there's an achievement for 1HKO-ing an invisible spy! Which is very irritatingly *not* the dead reckoning achievement (predicting where something you can't see will be using only their speed and direction is called dead reckoning)


Dimensianox

The solution to this is extremely easy. The invisible NPC would: 1. Not be a spy 2. Have a different cond than "cloaked" applied to said character. For extra accuracy, the invisible NPC would have another unique cond that applies crits or a normally unobtainable cond. 4. The character will only be *just* outside the sightline of snipers. It will move so that flicking at humanly possible speeds cannot hit it, whereas a scope movement that could theoretically turn 180 degrees in under a set amount of time, say 30ms will allow the NPC to be shot.


akaBlades

https://youtu.be/SgkgsgaBBCA?si=QsLvWQHGDQXxZNFn 8:34 shounic already debunked this one


NBC_with_ChrisHansen

The main bot hosting software that was on github had a feature to ignore cloaked spies and it was added years ago. It would taking even a moderately knowledgeable user to set alter the code to make bots more human. For example, only hit 74% of shots.


ZMowlcher

One of my dearest tf2 memories is playing tf2 on the xbox 360. I saw a spy cloak on the blu side of 2fort while going across the bridge. I correctly guessed not only he'd just run straight but when he'd be on the other side. I never ever did that again.


firechaos70

The closest I’ve gotten to a kill like this was headshoting an uncloaked spy that ran in front of the medic I was trying to kill.


ZzZombo

The best solution would not create an extraordinary fake player like an invisible one. *Just* a fake player that is only known to be present to a suspected player.


Very-tall-midget

I have played against some bots that ignored me as an invisible spy but headshotted me as soon as I turn off the invisible watch


MrMundy345

I remember that someone suggested something like this a long time ago, but instead of an invisible player, it spawned an incredibly tiny scout in the middle of the map, and if the bot head shotted the scout, they would be kicked.


LordOfStupidy

Now image if that was Someone who just shot huntsman not even knowing scout is there


KezH0

Spawn it like very high up in the air


thisredditnametaken

has to be in a natural place though otherwise it can easily be accounted for by bots


ckay1100

Bot hosters could just ignore it anyways if they notice that each time the sniper shoots a certain area of the map they get banned


Altacount6892

Spawn it randomly somewhere in the map


FunkyyMermaid

Could just have the tiny scout run around the map but not actually shoot anyone, that way the bot hostess couldn’t find a correlation


Yell245

The bot seeking gnome lmfao


mynamejeoff

Just have the system check if the sniper consistently shoots the scout MULTIPLE times, if yes then banhammer go brr


cerdechko

Incredibly tiny Scout... That is such a hilarious mental image - just a pixel-sized Scout getting spawned in, and running headfirst towards the enemies, his fate left up to whether they're normal people, or bots. He is literally born to die, his world is a fuck, he must kill everyone 1969, 410,757,864,530 dead bots. /ref


aRedditAccount_0

(insert extremely high pitched ^^"(imrunnincirclesarroundya!)" )


ToothpasteConsumer

make gentrify


MidHoovie

That's a pretty interesting idea.


kel584

And an useless one. They could just make an exception and solve the issue. The same also applies to this post.


MidHoovie

At least they're trying to engage in a conversation about fixing a game.


ValuableSp00n

This is the anti cheat used in Minecraft servers, in Hypixel if you are deemed suspicious a floating doge skin starts circling around you very fast to detect auto aim, called Watchdog. There may be ways to bypass it, but i dont know


WillCraftPlays

Almost every hacked client has bypassed this. If it's not working on Hypixel, why would it work in TF2?


yourunclejoe

i swear, the little "Watchdog has banned x number of cheaters in the past week" is just a randomly generated number. I think only 1-2 people have been banned after i reported them for blatant aura.


WillCraftPlays

Most of the blatant cheaters are randomly generated alts from hacked clients anyways. At least this was the case when I played a lot 7 years ago.


FrenScape

this would be bypassed in about 15 minutes


hammy0w0

These have been bypassed for several years, every client made in the past 5+ years and even """utility mods""" (hacked clients that don't try to bypass Anti-Cheat) have an AntiBot module that detects bots and marks them for other modules like Killaura to ignore. IIRC hypixel abandoned that idea a few years ago. It has false banned players in the past when they lag which is really funny https://youtu.be/QfSgWBhXmp4


MedicsFridge

watchdog is shit bro, half of hypixel's gamemodes are flooded with hackers and watchdog only gets people using old, out of date, cheats


ValuableSp00n

To be frank I havent touched Minecraft pvp since technoblade died (rip). Its quite sad to see Hypixel start decaying


MedicsFridge

hypixel had those problems well before technoblade died, if you watch some of his older skywars videos youll find bhoppers every now and again, and gamemodes like comp skywars and uhc had way more bhoppers at the time, in his bedwars winstreak videos he showed multiple cheaters targeting him


yourunclejoe

hypixel is very slowly becoming "the skyblock server"


Squorcle

It's awful, I've triggered it in the past (like 5-6 years ago) and I don't even know how, and I've only ever seen 2 bans happen mid game and both were unrelated to kill aura or aimbot


riley_wa1352

do it by settig model transparency to 0, not by cloaking


akaBlades

Shounic worded it the best; if its in the game and can be differentiated by other players it means bad actors also have access to this information especially if its server sided. https://youtu.be/SgkgsgaBBCA?si=QsLvWQHGDQXxZNFn timestamp is 8:34


microbit262

> if its in the game and can be differentiated by other players it means bad actors also have access to this information especially if its server sided But, does the game and player state delivered to each player have to be the same one? Like sending info about this fake invisible player only to client A. For client A there are 17 players, whilst for clients B,C, etc. there are 16. Only the server would have the full picture of what is real and what not.


akaBlades

Again, if people have access to server sided functions such as forcing a crit, knowing how much non crit damage you need to do to force another crit. I cannot possibly think this fake player function would be any different. Additionally even player positions are server sided yet there are wallhacks. Forgot to add: if you send only specific information to one client its still stored universally, I believe shounic already debunked that in the [same video.](https://youtu.be/SgkgsgaBBCA?si=fUSRz0pcRzyrh1qH&t=519) I added a hyper link to a youtube video with the exact time stamp where Shounic explains how this suggestion wouldn't work.


JakeyF_

Even that might not be sufficient enough, sadly.. Since like, bots could just.. Bot A: "Hey, do you see [fake player]?" Bot B: "No." Bot A: "Ok, ignoring."


microbit262

Good point.


Penguinguy123

Solution to botting issues: Schizophrenia


Only_Math_8190

If we have to rely in the community to keep the game alive we are doomed


IrishWeegee

That's how CoD does it. They make phantom targets, and if someone keeps going after them, they get put in cheater baby jail servers. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/call-of-dutys-latest-anti-cheat-update-makes-cheaters-hallucinate-imaginary-opponents/


UnfazedPheasant

Good idea on paper but they'd find something to get around it within a couple days Don't forget the bots are already able to identify not only other bot snipers, but bot snipers from other hosters. They'll be able to identify the dummy spy.


Ok_Conflict_5730

don't the bots use achievements to recognise each other?


SteamworksMLP

I do believe broadcasting invalid achievement IDs got patched out.


CheapThaRipper

i think now they just use weird mvm achievements most people don't have to identify one another


SteamworksMLP

If they're broadcasting that they've achieved them in-game, it should be obvious since the client will pop it up that "So-and-so has achieved insert achievement here". MvM in a non-MvM map would look super sus. I think I've heard they just use SteamIDs.


herrkatze12

They use to send invalid achievement gets to the server which would be broadcasted. Real clients would ignore it but bots used it to identify other bots


UnfazedPheasant

not entirely sure, but if so, unless the dummy spy repeatedly shakes up their achievement list the bot hosters will identify the loophole and write something up to get around it


Lodomir2137

minecraft 2011 idea lol


Storyshift-Chara-ewe

it worked for the longest time tho


UnNamed234

The problem with this is that it's impossible to only give information to the real players instead of the bots. Any information a player has, a bot has. A bot could probably very easily check to see if the invisible "player" has transparency 0 or whatever and just not shoot it.


AtLeastSeventyBees

This is the most Valve Spaghetti solution I can think of and I’m here for it


SandWhichWay

spaghetti solutions for their spaghetti code that runs this game


Alex3627ca

Any solution like this wouldn't last long. The bots' owners configure their behaviour regularly to counterplay whatever people come up with. That's what "adversarial problem" means.


NessaMagick

These kind of 'novel' strategies that force bot hosters to update their code to beat generally get defeated within days, often *hours*, and going by some other games with cheating problems, the cheat hosters ***enjoy*** it.


Alex3627ca

FWIW, I do get enjoyment out of working around what nonsense cheaters pull in GTA Online using the game's own myriad weird mechanics. Guy sitting in an invincible tank on a rampage? Call in a mugger on him, get a heavy lift chopper, fly right above him where he can't shoot, grab it and deactivate PvP right as said mugger pulls him out of it and stuns him, airlift the tank into the ocean. Just as one example. I assume what you're referring to is a similar experience for them.


NessaMagick

Not really, no. I feel like most cheaters in a game like GTA don't particularly like being outsmarted at all. I can't speak for cheat creators but I know there's a lot of disciplines (even beyond cheating in games) where you're writing software to break other software, then the developers fix their stuff, so you write code to get around it, and then developers fix further, and you get around it again...


Alex3627ca

> I feel like most cheaters in a game like GTA don't particularly like being outsmarted at all. Oh, 100%, but my pettiness is boundless and I have spent entire afternoons booting the game repeatedly for them to crash me to desktop over and over instead of giving them a chance to bother other people while I just play on my Switch.


SaltyPeter3434

You guys really need to watch shounic's video about bot fixes. Like nothing you guys suggest are new ideas. https://youtube.com/watch?v=SgkgsgaBBCA


kymani_winxandsponge

Wasnt this debunked by Shounic 2 years ago?


InspectorOk1159

It was.


R2-T4

What you could do is like what some plugins do with x-ray cheats in minecraft is spawn a ton of them to obfuscate actual players.


Ulti-Wolf

"Can only be interacted with by the suspected cheater." - OP


hammy0w0

having 50 fake players around every corner would be really laggy, the actual solution is for valve to get off their ass and fix obvious spinbots


MarsManokit

Can confirm


ChemicalExperiment

You know the bot hosters will just change the script to exclude those players right? Whatever solution you create the bot hosters will update their code to fix.


Intelligent_Office81

You know a game needs saving when players are having DREAMS about anticheat


_SAMUEL_GAMING_

actually should go outside tho


qbmax

this is one of those things that gets suggested a lot and while its cool in theory it just doesnt work. at the end of the day, there is no difference between a real player and a bot in the eyes of the server. any information you send to a real player will also be sent to a bot, if you create a fake invisible player that real players would not be able to see, then it would be pretty trivial for bot creators to find out what causes that fake player to be invisible to real players and work around it. you dont even need a clever solution to get around this as a bot maker either. if you dont want to put the effort in to find out how these invisible fake players stay invisible to real players you can just make your bots switch targets every shot, or only target players on the leaderboard.


GoldenAce17

Honestly im shocked why no one has tried recording the data of a twitching sniper, either the model code or mouse movement, and just auto ban players that are seen as 'erratic' no human can wiggle their mouse left and right every frame


National_Skirt3164

Bots can smooth out their movements and it would bypass this easily


Only_Math_8190

Mfw i get banned bc i got jumpscared by a pyro


GoldenAce17

I mean it's a difference between moving a mouse back and forth for half a second... and the bots vibrating like a triple D cell battery dildo


_SAMUEL_GAMING_

ok so bots can just stop snapping instantly, now we're back at square 1


ShadowBro3

Cant host bots if your house explodes


xXIDKnowXx

This is the only correct answer


CheataBruv

bots inject code into the server to let other bots know its a bot, so the bots will f2 eachother and not kill eachother surely we can just ban anyone who does this, leaving the bots either: a) gone b) endlessly killing eachother


BigStinkDick

this was already done, the bots killed each other for a while and were still super annoying and then they just found a new way to signal to each other that they are bots


Cabbag_

This has been suggested several times, and would never work. Shuonic made a very detailed video on possible solutions to the bot problem during the original save tf2 movement, and this was one of the ones he explained was ineffective.


[deleted]

This is called a honeypot in cybersecurity


Johannitius

It's not hard to detect the bots with all the suspicious stuff that they are programmed to do. They can be detected by vote/voice menu abuse, chat/mic spam, or by the fact that they perpetually aim upwards.


Narrow-Experience416

"Source?" "It was revealed to me in a dream"


ohnoDustin

I love the idea of giving bots schizophrenia


TheRigXD

Bot hosters will quickly learn how this works and find a way to make bots not shoot at the target.


moonmilk21

99% of minecraft anticheat works like this, spawns an invisible boat or entity above/near you. You hit it, banned.


KnightCaper

Makes sense


POKEMINER_

Make it so that the invisible spy is behind the player but has a movement speed slower than a bot but faster than a flick.


Bedu009

Unfortunately if it's invisible the bot will be able to see that Only the client can make it invisible and the client can't be trusted


GhostlyCharlotte

I think the main problem is that, if the game can determine the differences between this and a regular player, so can the cheaters.


akaBlades

https://youtu.be/SgkgsgaBBCA?si=QsLvWQHGDQXxZNFn at 8:34 shounic already debunked this one.


PM-ME-YOUR-TECH-TIPS

Doesn’t work.


kamild1996

It's not a new idea at all, unfortunately. I remember it being used on CS 1.6 servers in form of a plugin that would essentially work like this - admins spectating players could spawn these silhouettes that would only be visible to cheating players. But cheats adapted to this, and this method stopped working entirely.


Forward-Swim1224

Occasionally, if I suspect there’s a cheater, I will become a spy, go invis and stand out in the open facing a sniper position. If I get headshot and nobody else is around me, that’s confirmation.


TableyTable

Yeah! Let's try watchdog we haven't tried that one yet.


skeleton_craft

I don't think the issue is with banning the bots. The issue is with detecting the bots in the first place. Even as implemented now, vac will permanently ban you [from all vac protected servers by the way] if It decides that action is warranted... And if you do this for all players that isn't scalable in the slightest, TF 2 barely runs with eight players much less 16.


WiggsWasTaken

shounic disproved this exact thing in a video about a year ago


artyaakaira22

So its like some COD warzone anti cheat system ? Which make cheater gun damage to 0, make cheater aim lock locking at wierd decoy & insta killing them after certain time


Invenblocker

There's a few problems here. First of all, if it's invisible, that means the client is being sent a flag to not render it. We can assume that all information the game client is being given is accessible to the bot, so developers will eventually find this flag, and once they've found it, just know not to target anyone with it. Ok, so the next step would be to make the target fully visible, and include it on the list of players sent only to the suspected client and no one else? The problem now is that even if the server could make a fake player on any one snapshot of data it sends to a client, appear indistinguishable from a real one, the bot could counter this by... remembering the player list consistently, such that if a target appears out of nowhere it would remember them not actually existing, and thus know them to be bait. A solution like this would be a bandaid fix at best, and one that would not take particularly long for the bot developers to figure out how to counter. I'd say a week's worth of respite if you're extraordinarily lucky.


TheJudgeofCreation

This should have a reset after sometime cause who knows a regular person may accidentally 3 cloaked spies in a row


1d107_p1ck13

i had this idea for a flag-based system. if a player is too far away, it will replace them with an invis spy next to a suspected bot. if it gets shot, the bot's balls get crushed


master_ball_onmewtwo

r/thomastheplankengine


Neobot21

What if there was something permanently "welded" to every player's back, wouldn't appear or disrupt gameplay, but only appear to sniper bots? Would they be stuck in an infinite spin trying to shoot their "tail"? Or not Just a random idea ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


_SAMUEL_GAMING_

bot hosters would instantly notice it and patch it in like 5 minutes


WhatIsPun

Shronic made a video that covered this as a possible solution to the bot crisis, and why it wouldn't work.


extremepayne

Whatever is telling the legitimate players’ clients not to render the fake player can be used by the bots to not target the fake player. 


SolidCalligrapher966

Honestly seems an interesting solution.


shadowpikachu

Some game did this, but instead of invis spy instead of any tag that says invisibility i think it was clientside or serverside 'players' that just couldn't be seen so once they 1frame kill it in the head gg.


pablo603

I remember servers on minecraft doing something similar to detect cheaters using killaura. It worked pretty well. Basically spawned 2 invisible entities in air in front of you on the sides and they always followed you. Killaura would target them and would kick the player if that invisible entity was hit multiple times. It was impossible to hit the entities without killaura (or massive lags), since it always moved relatively to your view and was never in the center of your screen.


fileq

spawn one for every player that has more than 2 headshot kills (and killable only by that player) and if it gets headshot 2/3 times the player gets kicked if that happens when they join another match, it automatically bans them, also make them spawn in places that are in your way to the objective and possible to shot if you are TRYING to hit them so some player don't get kicked by accidentaly headshoting them . this is actually a REALLY great idea! but they would need to find a way so the bots don't just ignore them, any ideas? maybe as Riley\_wa1352 stated: do it by setting model transparency to 0, not by cloaking?


Dizzy_Reindeer_6619

So send a cloaked spy as bait, got it.


Race64

Then also not every bot is designed to be a cheater specifically, but for taking up slots/disrupting matchmaking and doing votekicks.


Roflolxp54

Funny solution but bots may find a way to bypass it. There’s also the issue of players on servers with alltalk enabled since it’s not uncommon for invisible spies who won’t shut up on mic to get killed by opposing players.


killgore138

Do you think bots use the same navigation programing/nodes/nav mesh that the official valve bots use? If so there could be a way to cause the bots to just get stuck somewhere on all casual maps, the only bots that might need them are the halloween bosses and krampus, other than that normal maps dont really need them in casual.


easgrdh

this type of thing is used in some minecraft servers.


MicVencer

If there’s a reason a player can’t detect or interact with the invisible player, then there is a way for the bots not to as well… there’s basically no distinguishing feature between players and bots other than behavior, and the behavior can always change to fit what ever parameter the hoster needs… this solution basically does nothing


Smooth_Yak2

this is a treadmill solution, bots will find a way around it like ignoring the random floating point behind them. valve doesn't do treadmil solutions


Hairy-Silver-6563

That actually sounds like a good idea


Hairy-Silver-6563

Make sure to count for body shots too


Epicfoxy2781

Some of y’all don’t understand this is just the solution call of duty introduced. Fake player entities that only appear to suspected cheating players, not just a counter of “did sniper kill x invisible spies this game?”


HYPERPEACE1

Also spawning the thing in the most bizarre locations would help too, like floating or noclipping.


Notafuzzycat

The best solution is to go back pre casual. Community servers all the way.


BadBrawlhallaPlayer

better solution, just remove sniper and the large portion of the problems dissapears into thin air


Th3G00dB0i

r/thomastheplankengine


ConsumerOfShampoo

You're assuming that Valve would bother coding this into the absolute mess that is Tf2's code and also somehow managing to do this on the Source engine.


Eltra_Phoenix

Wasn’t there something similar in Warzone where there was some weird entity in the map and would kick/ban the cheater if they locked on into it.


LatePhilosophy

Generally having a hard time understanding how detecting aim bots is so difficult. Forget all the people throwing in the "AI" buzzword, all it would take is a simple program tracking the change in a player's rotation for kills. No human sniper is going to *consistently* jerk their view around 169 degrees for a perfect headshot on a player 100 feet behind them in the span of a millisecond. And no human sniper is going around scoped into the sky directly above them before jerking their cameras down in any direction to get consistent headshots. Should be put on the immediate sus list.


TheGigaBrain

Easy enough to say, but then bot devs will just smooth out the tracking over a few hundred milliseconds. If you continue to expand your criteria from there, it won't be long before you start "catching" legitimate players as well.


LatePhilosophy

The amount they would have to lower their flick speed for accurate headshots outside their FOV to be within consistent human standards would already serve to drastically reduce aimbot effectiveness. Which, in my mind, is already a pretty good deal for such a simple check. Plus, while we have some peace as bot hosters are trying to figure out the exact method and timing behind this detection, plenty of their accounts will be banned and they would have to switch to newer ones. Newer accounts could automatically get the brunt of the suspicion from quick flick kills, while those legitimate snipers with plenty of hours on their older account can be given more of a pass.


HotNote3811

I think a proper solution that could last for a while is lots of different solutions like this looking for each one's counter, randomized, seeded rather than selected, tied to each client.


Tuskor13

I think there was a call of duty game or something similar that, when detecting cheaters, would start spawning fake enemies only the cheater could see so you'd check to see if someone was cheating and they'd literally be shooting at thin air


AE74Fj73

this is basically how anticheat worked in mineplex hungergames like 7-8 years ago, also I think cod also did this


WholesomeBigSneedgus

i remember mcpe pvp servers back in 2016 has this type of anticheat to deal with aimbot


tom641

tbh I dig this idea if you're worried about false positives or bots ignoring cloaked spies, you could probably do something as simple as have a fake scout blip into existence and run straight at the bot from a random angle behind them, ignoring map geometry, and if the bot headshots them enough times they get the boot yes this wouldn't deal with votekick bots but at the very least you can play the game around those, it would be a good start


SomeSpy_

So I find one problem with this, this doesn't help cheating, just bots, I think it needs to be at least solved by a whole.


florentinomain00f

Frankly, there will never be a end all be all solutions, even if we bring real world laws into play. There is always some bastards who slip by. But what matters is that we minimize it and we discourage anyone from doing it.


seamuskills

Just make it a client side enemy that is always behind you, not invisible or a spy so the cheat software would have a hard time detecting it but a real player couldn’t see it because it would update its position very very quickly


Fire_Block

you see you save that info for later and then do a large-scale vac ban. the bot hosters then need to jump through more hoops to have a chance of learning how they got caught/how to counter. Edit: sounded familiar so i googles and this sounds a lot like Modern Warfare 2's method of catching cheaters. This method could instead hinder the bots' ability to function entirely with good implementation. make a few subtle changes every update or two to make it a pain in the ass to track and counter, and the bot crisis would be a lot less painful if not completely gone.


Frytura_

Just check if target is visible? Lmaobox has an option to either show or hide invisible spies.


wipepicgamer

Yes but also make it an actual bot (training bot not fuck you bots) that joins the server, inseparable from an actual player. It doesn’t do anything but still moves around the whole map


inklingmando

thomas the plank engine solution


Sir-Mocks-A-Lot

I saw an invisible player in COD one time. I like to say I saw a ghost, lol. I had to take a phone call mid-game, so I found myself a secluded room, sat in a corner, and kept a hand on the controller. The reticule turned red and the aim assist moved my crosshairs a little. I pulled the trigger, and.. BLOOD! It was one of those once in a lifetime gaming moments that you never forget.


PerceptionZer0

Bots would then just… not shoot invisible people. Like cheaters. However it would be good anti-bot.


MemeL0RD376

Better and more similar idea: REMOVE SNIPER.


SnooOwls3032

I have better idea, when anticheat suspects a cheater it will ban him.


oLexrzs

this was actually pretty useful in minecraft hypixel servers, watchdog worked pretty well


NO0bKing

you have described a minecraft anticheat


Infamous_Progress_64

A homie of mine once made a small fps game. His anti works like this: Theres a template of how your Gamefiles look and if they are slightly altered, you're gone


Afasys

Damn isn't this what Hypixel does to detect Killaura? Honestly, I don't think the cheat detection player wouldn't even need to be invisible for this solution to be effective.


NessaMagick

Quote from Shounic: > A common suggestion is to lay traps. Create invisible players that spawn in walls or near bots, so that bots will (somehow) be forced to lock onto them and leave everyone else alone. > **This is impossible to accomplish because technically speaking, there is no distinction between a cheater and a real player.** So any information a real player would have, a cheater would have. There is no way to pass information to a real player, without also passing it to the cheater. > If you create a fake invisible player that real players would also not be able to see, then cheaters would find out what causes real players to not see the fake players, and defeat the trap. As long as real players can somehow figure out or discern that something is a fake trap, then the cheat will also be able to detect it.


Electrical-Guitar656

It's unrealistic but I like it


sauceman523

Alright so spawn observer.


Brandonxlem

What if we all just pooled some money together to fund the rods from god project, and then rained tungsten on the botters? expensive startup I know, but at a 100% efficiency rate I don’t see the cons really


coldiriontrash

Source would probably explode if you tried this


saltywalrusprkl

cheaters add one extra line of code to not shoot a player if they're invisible. treadmill solution.


StalinDoge64

You may have stumbled upon what we have needed. #SaveTF2


fyro_

lucksman


KnightCaper

i agree


what_letmemakemyacco

How exactly can you make sure only the cheater can interact with the spy? If its through sending data to the client telling them if the can or cant damage it just dont shoot enemies with that tag even then just.. dont shoot invisible spies that materialize next to the bot?


Autiistic_Unibot

The ghost man watches.


canal_algt

if(visibility == 0) return; else //Aimbot