Deeuss
Active Member
Hello everybody!
Welcome to my post, where I will be arguing for why cheaters, specifically cheaters with illegal cheats to their client such as Jump Reset or Triggerbot, Kill Aura, etc...
Should NOT be allowed to ever appeal their bans.
Please keep the post civil, as I don't want it to be nuked.
(I would not want this to be applied for illegal mods such as per example Radar, Minimap or Mouse tweaks because some people do not know about the illegality of these in Loka and should, in my opinion, be given a second chance)
For those who do not want to read the whole thing, I will be adding a TLDR at the very end of it
I will be basing my whole point on 3 different pillars that, in case of a counterargument or denial of the suggestion, should optimally be argued against.
These pillars are:
-Evolution of cheats
-Lack of monitoring after a ban
-Consciousness
Afterwards I will explain the consequences of the implementation of this suggestion, and why the benefits outweigh these.
This doesn't mean that the addition of this suggestion would NOT provide extra benefits such as:
-Offloading work for staff and the few amount of screensharers that we have had
-Creating and molding Loka into a far more trustworthy and trust-based community
-Killing the incentive/business of cheats (Something which I will develop upon a little, in the explanation of my first argument)
But these are straight forward arguments that wouldn't need that much explanation.
Lets begin with the first argument
-The evolution of cheats.
Cheats have always been a thing in Minecraft, obviously, since the creation of PvP servers. But the development of these cheats has intensified in the recent years with increased focus on PvP like the creation of the tierlist, and the solidification of Loka as THE Diamond PotPvP server. This has resulted in a lot of wealthy or renown players to request the coding and creation of new cheats, constantly evolving over the Screensharing tools and the bypasses. What does this mean for PvP communities? It means that cheaters and their clients will always be one step ahead of bypassing tools due to the simple high demand of these over the demand of screenshare tools.
It is completely undeniable that people who code cheats earn far more than people who are asked to code screensharing tools and improve them due to the sheer massive amount of demand for cheats. Think of other servers besides Loka, do they have active screen sharers to clear out cheaters, professionals who sit down and know what to do? Obviously not, and this goes for almost any server, characterizing the lack of demand and therefore, profit, that screensharing tools have. They are outmatched, and if any breakthrough happens in screensharing development, cheating development will immediately evolve due to people requesting it and simply be able to bypass again.
As you can see, it is a never ending cycle, and by not acting upon it with this suggestion you are simply feeding it. We know that bans on Loka are also connected to the Diamond Pot PvP tierlist, and a huge source of the demand obviously comes from this renown entity, so people who play the tierlist more than Loka will be afraid to cheat on the server (Because at the end of the day, this is for Loka's interest not any outside organizations or entities).
To sum up this pillar, cheats will always be a step ahead of screensharing tools, so by constantly providing unbans be they after a year or so, with the right amount of money spent they will never get detected for years, killing the enjoyment of the community who actually play fair.
This directly goes to my next point,
-Lack of monitoring after a ban
For this argument I would like to establish the following thought:
Cheating is an addiction, if its not within Loka it will be everywhere else they play if its a competitive server, meaning that they obviously have not learnt their lesson, and that they are not freeing themselves from this behaviour.
Cheating bans are peculiar due to what I have mentioned earlier, other servers do not have screen sharers or active anti-cheating policies, more so, the ban in Loka is also directly connected to the tier list. This means that after a ban for cheating in Loka, you would not have any vision on the banned person for the rest of the time, you don't know what he is doing in some random Towny servers or whatever they play, they could quite obviously still be cheating feeding their own addiction, and nobody would know because of the lack of anti-cheating policies, screen sharers, or just people with knowledge in those communities to call them out, feeding the cycle and process. And when they come back to Loka what happens?
"I will cheat on every other server besides this one!"
Let us not kid ourselves. People cheat for the prestige of being in the top, for the ego of being better, for the higher tier or for the higher rank, convincing themselves: "This new cheat has been improved! There is no way that it gets detected right?".
Do you really believe that after being unsupervised for a year, having a few of his friends saying "+1 he changed" has any meaning? Obviously not, Loka is the most rewarding server competitively and if anything, it makes more sense that they would cheat here instead of any other place.
They have already been found guilty first, so it is obvious that the burden and responsibility of proof, lies on them. And that is not something that can be checked. So what is left? Pray and hope that they have changed their ways, let them in, ruin people's experience for 6-12 months and then get re-banned? And this re-ban is made far more unlikely due to the evolution of cheats?
I do not think it is worth it whatsoever and a change has to be made, which is what I am arguing for.
One of the arguments spouted commonly by cheaters has been "I was not in a right state of mind! I was simply mad and enraged, I was young!"
"Give them a second chance!" The nice empathizers say.
These reasonings are, in my honest opinion, laughable and I will explain why in my next point, which proceeds to explain why cheating isn't a one time thing that you do out of rage, or simply because you are angry, but a conscious decision leading to my next pillar
-Consciousness
The process of beginning to cheat varies and is different from other ban types like Harassment or Hate speech. These last ones can be argued for in the sense of "It was in the spur of the moment, I did not mean to, etc..." Because it happens to everybody and im not talking about in-game, but also in real life, sometimes it isn't your day and you have to attend the consequences of what you say in that day.
This is not the case of cheating. Cheating is a premeditated action that happens throughout a long time, not something that you say and regret within a second, everyone doing it obviously knows what they are doing and the consequences of it. Sometimes the play down the consequences with "I won't get caught because of this new client!" which plays back into my first point or with "Everyone else in my group cheats anyway", "Its fine, if I get banned I will just appeal in X amount of time".
It is ridiculous to appeal to the fact that you are angry when it comes to cheating, its something that everybody goes through anyways and they cope in different ways. But cheating is a pre-meditated action. For you to begin while you are "Angry" you have to quit the game, find and buy/download a client, install it and go on playing on it for months while ruining everybody else's experience, while exactly knowing what you are doing.
And I believe what Loka is doing is quite unprofessional by allowing these unbans constantly.
Now, I am not saying that people cannot change, that would be an extremely cynical point of view that is clearly false, but here is the issue:
A competitive system like Loka or the Ranked ladder, now with the amount of widespread cheating, can NOT function in a fair and correct way with the assumptions of "Personal Growth".
How can Loka support something as basic and objective as competitive integrity, protecting the trust of the players or reducing the community's subjectivity in these issues through simply assuming that somebody has changed?
Yes, people can obviously change, but Loka's integrity can not rely on believing that they did.
Change is social, not competitive.
For the community to be kept healthier people need to believe in it, how can this happen when there is a constant stream of players who are accused of cheating before and after they get banned? Clearing suspicions is impossible and the count of people relapsing into cheating is immense, the drama never ends and the cycle simply repeats again and again.
To close my point so it is more easily understood; besides it being an addiction, cheating is also a calculated risk at the expense of months, sometimes even years of people's time in Loka, the risk of giving a known cheater a "Second Chance" under the subjective assumption of "Personal Growth" and in exchange having a great chance of destroying people's times through new, undetectable cheats is far too high, and I think as we can clearly see:
Not Worth It
With my points done, I will proceed to explain how the consequence of doing this would be okay, compared to what is currently happening.
Many would argue that the consequences of implementing this change would be huge, because cheaters would begin ban evading in stead of cheating, starting alt accounts and more, but here is the response to that.
Alt accounts that are instantly and suddenly good out of nowhere are 100% easier to detect than somebody that has been closet cheating for months or years... And the damage that the second one can do is far higher than what some random alt account can do. Remember, this post isn't about being vengeful against cheaters, but instead, to protect legit Loka player's time, and conquest/ranked PvP's integrity, which, at the end of the day, is the core of the server and it is deliberately under attack by the constant influx of cheaters, who aren't easy to get rid of as I have mentioned in the earlier points.
It's hard to make a decent TLDR since my points go as in depth as I can, but I can sum it up to-
TLDR:
Cheat developers are always on top of AC developers, so as time goes they are harder to detect, cheating is an addiction and you cannot monitor cheaters after they get banned when they play on other servers because of the lack of AC or screen sharers there so they just feed on their own addiction, making it far more likely for them to cheat upon their return to Loka. And also, cheating is 100% a conscious decision that takes a fair amount of time and a lot of the times, money. It's not something you do "Out of anger" or while "Enraged" it is a pre-meditated action.
As for the final words of this post:
I completely understand that the addition of this suggestion goes against the philosophy of Loka, but I also believe that the constant defense of the "Second Chance" philosophy will, throughout time, eat the server out and with the development of new cheats make its experience more miserable.
This suggestion might be labelled as cope from my part, but I believe that to be a worthy sacrifice in exchange to addressing the elephant in the big Loka room that nobody is actively talking about.
If you fully read this, thanks and have a great morning/evening/night.
/discuss
Welcome to my post, where I will be arguing for why cheaters, specifically cheaters with illegal cheats to their client such as Jump Reset or Triggerbot, Kill Aura, etc...
Should NOT be allowed to ever appeal their bans.
Please keep the post civil, as I don't want it to be nuked.
(I would not want this to be applied for illegal mods such as per example Radar, Minimap or Mouse tweaks because some people do not know about the illegality of these in Loka and should, in my opinion, be given a second chance)
For those who do not want to read the whole thing, I will be adding a TLDR at the very end of it
I will be basing my whole point on 3 different pillars that, in case of a counterargument or denial of the suggestion, should optimally be argued against.
These pillars are:
-Evolution of cheats
-Lack of monitoring after a ban
-Consciousness
Afterwards I will explain the consequences of the implementation of this suggestion, and why the benefits outweigh these.
This doesn't mean that the addition of this suggestion would NOT provide extra benefits such as:
-Offloading work for staff and the few amount of screensharers that we have had
-Creating and molding Loka into a far more trustworthy and trust-based community
-Killing the incentive/business of cheats (Something which I will develop upon a little, in the explanation of my first argument)
But these are straight forward arguments that wouldn't need that much explanation.
Lets begin with the first argument
-The evolution of cheats.
Cheats have always been a thing in Minecraft, obviously, since the creation of PvP servers. But the development of these cheats has intensified in the recent years with increased focus on PvP like the creation of the tierlist, and the solidification of Loka as THE Diamond PotPvP server. This has resulted in a lot of wealthy or renown players to request the coding and creation of new cheats, constantly evolving over the Screensharing tools and the bypasses. What does this mean for PvP communities? It means that cheaters and their clients will always be one step ahead of bypassing tools due to the simple high demand of these over the demand of screenshare tools.
It is completely undeniable that people who code cheats earn far more than people who are asked to code screensharing tools and improve them due to the sheer massive amount of demand for cheats. Think of other servers besides Loka, do they have active screen sharers to clear out cheaters, professionals who sit down and know what to do? Obviously not, and this goes for almost any server, characterizing the lack of demand and therefore, profit, that screensharing tools have. They are outmatched, and if any breakthrough happens in screensharing development, cheating development will immediately evolve due to people requesting it and simply be able to bypass again.
As you can see, it is a never ending cycle, and by not acting upon it with this suggestion you are simply feeding it. We know that bans on Loka are also connected to the Diamond Pot PvP tierlist, and a huge source of the demand obviously comes from this renown entity, so people who play the tierlist more than Loka will be afraid to cheat on the server (Because at the end of the day, this is for Loka's interest not any outside organizations or entities).
To sum up this pillar, cheats will always be a step ahead of screensharing tools, so by constantly providing unbans be they after a year or so, with the right amount of money spent they will never get detected for years, killing the enjoyment of the community who actually play fair.
This directly goes to my next point,
-Lack of monitoring after a ban
For this argument I would like to establish the following thought:
Cheating is an addiction, if its not within Loka it will be everywhere else they play if its a competitive server, meaning that they obviously have not learnt their lesson, and that they are not freeing themselves from this behaviour.
Cheating bans are peculiar due to what I have mentioned earlier, other servers do not have screen sharers or active anti-cheating policies, more so, the ban in Loka is also directly connected to the tier list. This means that after a ban for cheating in Loka, you would not have any vision on the banned person for the rest of the time, you don't know what he is doing in some random Towny servers or whatever they play, they could quite obviously still be cheating feeding their own addiction, and nobody would know because of the lack of anti-cheating policies, screen sharers, or just people with knowledge in those communities to call them out, feeding the cycle and process. And when they come back to Loka what happens?
"I will cheat on every other server besides this one!"
Let us not kid ourselves. People cheat for the prestige of being in the top, for the ego of being better, for the higher tier or for the higher rank, convincing themselves: "This new cheat has been improved! There is no way that it gets detected right?".
Do you really believe that after being unsupervised for a year, having a few of his friends saying "+1 he changed" has any meaning? Obviously not, Loka is the most rewarding server competitively and if anything, it makes more sense that they would cheat here instead of any other place.
They have already been found guilty first, so it is obvious that the burden and responsibility of proof, lies on them. And that is not something that can be checked. So what is left? Pray and hope that they have changed their ways, let them in, ruin people's experience for 6-12 months and then get re-banned? And this re-ban is made far more unlikely due to the evolution of cheats?
I do not think it is worth it whatsoever and a change has to be made, which is what I am arguing for.
One of the arguments spouted commonly by cheaters has been "I was not in a right state of mind! I was simply mad and enraged, I was young!"
"Give them a second chance!" The nice empathizers say.
These reasonings are, in my honest opinion, laughable and I will explain why in my next point, which proceeds to explain why cheating isn't a one time thing that you do out of rage, or simply because you are angry, but a conscious decision leading to my next pillar
-Consciousness
The process of beginning to cheat varies and is different from other ban types like Harassment or Hate speech. These last ones can be argued for in the sense of "It was in the spur of the moment, I did not mean to, etc..." Because it happens to everybody and im not talking about in-game, but also in real life, sometimes it isn't your day and you have to attend the consequences of what you say in that day.
This is not the case of cheating. Cheating is a premeditated action that happens throughout a long time, not something that you say and regret within a second, everyone doing it obviously knows what they are doing and the consequences of it. Sometimes the play down the consequences with "I won't get caught because of this new client!" which plays back into my first point or with "Everyone else in my group cheats anyway", "Its fine, if I get banned I will just appeal in X amount of time".
It is ridiculous to appeal to the fact that you are angry when it comes to cheating, its something that everybody goes through anyways and they cope in different ways. But cheating is a pre-meditated action. For you to begin while you are "Angry" you have to quit the game, find and buy/download a client, install it and go on playing on it for months while ruining everybody else's experience, while exactly knowing what you are doing.
And I believe what Loka is doing is quite unprofessional by allowing these unbans constantly.
Now, I am not saying that people cannot change, that would be an extremely cynical point of view that is clearly false, but here is the issue:
A competitive system like Loka or the Ranked ladder, now with the amount of widespread cheating, can NOT function in a fair and correct way with the assumptions of "Personal Growth".
How can Loka support something as basic and objective as competitive integrity, protecting the trust of the players or reducing the community's subjectivity in these issues through simply assuming that somebody has changed?
Yes, people can obviously change, but Loka's integrity can not rely on believing that they did.
Change is social, not competitive.
For the community to be kept healthier people need to believe in it, how can this happen when there is a constant stream of players who are accused of cheating before and after they get banned? Clearing suspicions is impossible and the count of people relapsing into cheating is immense, the drama never ends and the cycle simply repeats again and again.
To close my point so it is more easily understood; besides it being an addiction, cheating is also a calculated risk at the expense of months, sometimes even years of people's time in Loka, the risk of giving a known cheater a "Second Chance" under the subjective assumption of "Personal Growth" and in exchange having a great chance of destroying people's times through new, undetectable cheats is far too high, and I think as we can clearly see:
Not Worth It
With my points done, I will proceed to explain how the consequence of doing this would be okay, compared to what is currently happening.
Many would argue that the consequences of implementing this change would be huge, because cheaters would begin ban evading in stead of cheating, starting alt accounts and more, but here is the response to that.
Alt accounts that are instantly and suddenly good out of nowhere are 100% easier to detect than somebody that has been closet cheating for months or years... And the damage that the second one can do is far higher than what some random alt account can do. Remember, this post isn't about being vengeful against cheaters, but instead, to protect legit Loka player's time, and conquest/ranked PvP's integrity, which, at the end of the day, is the core of the server and it is deliberately under attack by the constant influx of cheaters, who aren't easy to get rid of as I have mentioned in the earlier points.
It's hard to make a decent TLDR since my points go as in depth as I can, but I can sum it up to-
TLDR:
Cheat developers are always on top of AC developers, so as time goes they are harder to detect, cheating is an addiction and you cannot monitor cheaters after they get banned when they play on other servers because of the lack of AC or screen sharers there so they just feed on their own addiction, making it far more likely for them to cheat upon their return to Loka. And also, cheating is 100% a conscious decision that takes a fair amount of time and a lot of the times, money. It's not something you do "Out of anger" or while "Enraged" it is a pre-meditated action.
As for the final words of this post:
I completely understand that the addition of this suggestion goes against the philosophy of Loka, but I also believe that the constant defense of the "Second Chance" philosophy will, throughout time, eat the server out and with the development of new cheats make its experience more miserable.
This suggestion might be labelled as cope from my part, but I believe that to be a worthy sacrifice in exchange to addressing the elephant in the big Loka room that nobody is actively talking about.
If you fully read this, thanks and have a great morning/evening/night.
/discuss
