[2020] Dear admins, what can we as players do against cheaters?

The team that looks at and reviews the reports is extremely small.

Reporting the hacker/cheater is the right thing to do. It allows the team to see what is happening, determine if it is new or old, and confirm if it has been fixed in an internal build or is currently fixed in TestLive.

Even if you never hear back on a report, please continue to submit them. They will be looked into and allow them the time to do so. You are correct in that you will not get an answer/response concerning the results of your report.

Hey @Kyra (and thread),

We are continuing to fix and improve the measures against undermeshing and other exploits, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Until then, apologies for any frustration this can cause.

Let us break down the answer to address your points:

That draws the line between a fair player and a cheater, in essence.

Correct, it is one of our forum guidelines, which you can check here:

However, you can report those IDs with evidence other than a blind accusation by following the instructions listed here:

That is incorrect, unless you specifically refer to our volunteer moderators. In that case, they can’t help with handling player infractions. They are, as their role title implies, volunteers that voluntarily offer their help in moderating the forums and making sure the guidelines are respected using their free time and will.

This is incorrect.
Please refer to our server rules document:

Please make sure to report any possible infraction to us by following the procedures listed in that document. Last time you got in touch with us was in June, and sadly came to no fruition as we couldn’t hear back from you. Once more, please read our server rules and procedures and help us by providing the required information.

This is mostly incorrect, not only because of the estimation of the time it takes to proceed with this approach, but because of the approach itself. Let us elaborate.

The problem is the goal, not the specific tool used. We initially approached it by fixing every tool used as it was reported (and sometimes, those who knew about these methods were less than willing to share that knowledge), but just created a new tool to be used for the same goal to be found soon after. We have then set our focus not on fixing undermeshing per se, as it is most likely an unsolvable problem (at least 100%) in a free-form sandbox game, but to deter its use for exploiting purposes: the tool not only kills the character who accesses undermesh after certain parameters are met (to avoid false positives), but also at the same time feeds us data we can use on which spots are being used to undermesh, and by who. This data we can use to keep working on improving the tool and addressing specific spots in the map while building a pool of IDs potentially flagged for future banwaves if, again, a certain threshold is met.

The current anti-undermesh tool is not perfect, but it has shown dramatically positive results during its initial test run. On the servers it has been enabled (so far, PC PVP Exiled Lands), the number of received reports decreased by a 70 to 80% in internal telemetry -while the tool wasn’t active until recently, its detecting features have been for a while.Also, reports received from players on the servers while it is active have slowed down significantly as well. This has shown way more promising results than when we, for instance, fixed braziers when they were used as a tool. It took less than a week to have a new popular method to undermesh with.
In turn, this is also showing that it’s an approach worth investing for Siptah. Then again, the tool is not perfect, but it is proving to be an all-around better approach mid to long term, while private servers, which is where the majority of our PC players spend most of their time in (other than singleplayer), can also benefit from it.

Regarding other exploits, including the stats and server crashing, we have been working on fixing them and their potential fixes are now out on Testlive. Fixing them was not as easy as flipping a switch and come with other related fixes intertwined with them (for instance, the max stats fix came with 5 different internal tasks alone), which is also why we can’t just separate those fixes and release them as a separate hotfix without significant work. There’s still not been feedback coming from Testlive regarding this fix, for better or for worse, but internal testing showed promising results we’d love to confirm on Testlive.

Until those fixes are released live, we apologize for any frustration they will cause. Once again do feel free to report infractions by following the procedures listed in the server rules, which have been linked above. Response might still take more time than ideally, so apologies in advance for that. We have been taking active steps in improving that by doubling our staff, which we hope will start showing results in the upcoming weeks and months.

We will proceed to close the thread now, once the initial points have been addressed. Once again, please do remain respectful, most importantly towards each other, but also to our volunteers and staff. And please, stop abusing the moderation flags.

Thank you.