feature req: anti-griefer measures

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spoon
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feature req: anti-griefer measures

Post by spoon »

Howdy,

As King Jackal pointed out in his thread on stuff he'd like to see in ETPro, one of the problems a server admin faces are intentional TKers and bleeders. While I agree it's a silly feature for ETPro, I still would like to see something that could help out with the problem for pubs in BayonET as the team damage counter seems to make a diff on shrubet pubs.

Another option might be to ressurect WAB and get it setup for ET, so I'm curious as to what the developers' (bani, Rain) thoughts are on the matter: would it be a huge pain to implement in the server code, or is this type of functionality best shoved off onto some 3rd party software?

Or maybe I'm a day late and a dollar short and this stuff's already planned/implemented? ;)
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KingJackaL
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Re: feature req: anti-griefer measures

Post by KingJackaL »

spoon wrote:Another option might be to ressurect WAB...
Don't suppose you could elaborate? I'm not familiar with that term?

Yeah, I too am curious to see what they put in BayonET ( and BAH!, I should have put my thread in THIS forum :oops: ). The complaints system is definately better than nothing, but it's old and it isn't particularily effective against people whose sole purpose is to ruin the game.
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Post by <AMW|PickleWeasel> »

A Zap feature would be nice for refs or admins.
spoon
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Post by spoon »

WAB is the Wolfenstein Admin Bot. More info here.

Basically, it's a perl script that opens up the logfile for reading, and then hooks up to the server's console for writing. It sees stuff happen whenever the server gets around to logging it, and then issues commands to the console based on certain events. The author took a stab at integrating it into the Wolf SDK, but never released a working version (that I'm aware of).

One of the features it had was a complex TK tracking system... the weak spot is that you actually have to kill a teammate (and do it several times) before the algorithm can make any decisions. That made it possible not only for bleeders (folks who pump a couple of rounds into their teammates) to slip through, but led to a couple of false positives (ie, 4 newbs running into the pretty purple smoke was misinterpreted).
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KingJackaL
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Post by KingJackaL »

spoon wrote:WAB is the Wolfenstein Admin Bot. More info here.

Basically, it's a perl script that opens up the logfile for reading, and then hooks up to the server's console for writing. It sees stuff happen whenever the server gets around to logging it, and then issues commands to the console based on certain events. The author took a stab at integrating it into the Wolf SDK, but never released a working version (that I'm aware of).

One of the features it had was a complex TK tracking system... the weak spot is that you actually have to kill a teammate (and do it several times) before the algorithm can make any decisions. That made it possible not only for bleeders (folks who pump a couple of rounds into their teammates) to slip through, but led to a couple of false positives (ie, 4 newbs running into the pretty purple smoke was misinterpreted).
Ahh, thanks. Yeah, that's what I like so much about the Shrub implementation - it kills of team wounding as well as team killing - a phenomina that's actually possibly MORE annoying than teamkilling, because:
- you don't get to complain
- they don't get penalised
- normally other players never see it happen, and can't see it in console
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Post by bacon »

The Shrub method doesn't really work for medics. If you have a medic who doesn't get much shots off, but does the kill + revive technique a lot then he could be kicked for having over whatever percent team shots.
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Post by KingJackaL »

bacon wrote:The Shrub method doesn't really work for medics. If you have a medic who doesn't get much shots off, but does the kill + revive technique a lot then he could be kicked for having over whatever percent team shots.
Nope, doesn't happen - remember, you TK-raise somebody with ONE, maybe TWO bullets. You wait until they're not under fire ( duh ), which means they're still, which means you can hs them ( if they don't have a helmet - which half-dead guys normally don't have ).

I've never seen a medic kicked this way.

That is why the Shrub method uses HITS, not KILLS.
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Post by Chairman Kaga »

Sorry, but I hate the team damage kick in Shrub.

A couple of my clanmates play field ops, and they invariably get kicked within five minutes due to idiot teammates running through the pretty smoke.

I've also seen someone run in front of a panzer shot, causing it to take out three or four teammates, and the panzer gets kicked.

If you're going to put this in BayonET, have some sort of weighting factor, like TKs from airstrikes are weighted 25% of if he'd shot them with SMG.
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KingJackaL
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Post by KingJackaL »

Chairman Kaga wrote:Sorry, but I hate the team damage kick in Shrub.

A couple of my clanmates play field ops, and they invariably get kicked within five minutes due to idiot teammates running through the pretty smoke.

I've also seen someone run in front of a panzer shot, causing it to take out three or four teammates, and the panzer gets kicked.

If you're going to put this in BayonET, have some sort of weighting factor, like TKs from airstrikes are weighted 25% of if he'd shot them with SMG.
Agreed - good points.

I have to say I like the Shrub system - but it IS NOT perfect ( nor I believe close to perfect ). Shrub did put in some weighting factor on mines I believe, but you're correct to note that that isn't going far enough. When I say I'd like it in BayonET, I refer more to the fact that I'd like an upgraded system ( not just complaints ), rather than meaning 'I want the exact same system as Shrub has'. Obviously, your post pretty quickly shows that there are still some pretty big flaws in it.

Artillery is the big one, as it's pretty hard to intentionally TK with arty - possible, but it certainly wouldn't be a TK's first choice. Arty DOES need a weighting factor, as well as mines. Airstrikes perhaps as well, though less so. The smoke and the instantaneous nature of the damage make airstrikes both better to TK with, and easier even for noobs to move. The REAL problem comes with lvl 3 arty/airstrikes - hell, even I have walked into it a few times, when a teammate F-Op has just upgraded, but I didn't realise ( I normally count the arty shells, and go STRAIGHT after - the enemy are always the least ready straight away ).

Panzer's are tricky one to balance, because it's also the best TK weapon. And it really can often be very hard to tell apart a noob making a genuine mistake and a TK who's smart. Afraid I'm not sure how to balance the weighting for panzers - any idea's Kaga?
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Post by spoon »

Weighting's the wrong way to go. If you do, the griefers will just use whatever you weapon you put a higher threshold on to do their thing.

So if we're talking about it, then there's a problem with the premise somewhere... need to find something else to key off of.

Maybe just keeping track of damage streaks and just comparing the trends?

th = times player hit teammates over a period of time
eh = times player hit enemy over a period of time
ctr = counter for times player had more team dam than enemy dam

if (x-y) < 1
ctr = ctr + 2 // add one to counter for bad behavior
else if ctr
ctr = ctr - 1 // forgive past sins for good behavior, but don't forget

if ctr > some cvar
kick player to the curb

So. You're an FO and you nuke a bunch of friendly purple smoke breathers. No problem. Yet. Assuming the timing round is set to 45 seconds (like the battle sense timer), all you have to do is drop the smack down on the bad guys for the next 1:30, and it's off your record for good. You can even suffer a couple of accidental TK's on top of it... you just need to make sure you kill a few more badguys to offset the damage you did.

But if you consistently ffe on teammates (ie, an Axis FO dropping arty on the exit to the 2nd spawn on goldrush), you're in jeopardy.

As for the medic TK-rez, you can offset that give counting the revive as more "hits to the enemy", and hand out even more points for beneficial behavior (like handing out med paks).

I guess, basically, I'm saying you could possibly treat this like yet another "skill", except instead of getting a flak jacket when you hit level 4, you get your hat handed to you. :) Wipe the counter at the end of each map, and you should be good to go. In order to make it through a map, the griefer has to not only behave himself but be productive at least 2/3's of the time... the more aggressive the griefing, the faster he's likely to get booted.
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Post by wimpy »

Last week I ran a RTCW server for a day with a different friendly fire setting. Basically, when you shoot a teammate the damage goes to you. There wasn't a single tk the whole night although lots of people were killing themselves. Some of the players adapted quite nicely. Since you could not do a tk revive, players would shoot the medic to die, allowing the medic to revive them.

I am not sure that this is something you would be interested in. It can cause other problems. A player can arm dyno and be half-way across the map and die because a teammate was sitting on his dyno.

Maybe this can be combined with what you want. Possibly have certain things, like panzer, not hurt teammates. Instead, the damage would go to the shooter.
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Post by hiro »

That might make people think before they indiscriminatly fire into a group of players from both sides.

might want to disable it for coverts though, as panzer you usually aim for splash damage and don't have time to move the crosshair over a target to verify their status.
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