Despite everything that Dewsy has said, he still has not put forward a way to solve the problem. Lets put it this way, the current system doesn't work. The current punishment for hacking is what? a Tempban? then they are at it again just like before. If the punishment doesn't stop the crime, it isn't SEVERE enough.
exactly , in other servers i been to , successful ones with over 1000+ players, 1 hacking incident = permanant ban -_-"
Possibly a longer temp ban? If a temp ban is addressed, say like a month? And the second offense would be 2 months and the third would be a perm ban? It's a harder crack down I believe.
I have just searched for 'hacked client' in the Complaints/Appeals forum and gone through all the ban appeals dating back to 1 November 2013, so 6 months. I found 20 successful appeals, of which 18 received a 3 day temp ban or less indicating that they were first time offenders. So it appears that the bit I have underlined in your comment isn't strictly true. The vast majority of people who have been banned for using a hacked client haven't re-offended. If they have, and have been banned, then the fact that they haven't appealed shows that our currently policy is working/that they are no longer an issue. In my opinion having 18 players who have been able to rejoin the community as a result of our policy is worth the 1 or 2 which re-offend. You may argue that the 20 figure would be lower if our punishments acted as more of a deterrent. This is conditional on the offenders actually knowing what the punishments are. Quite a few of the people who posted appeals were relatively new players who would most probably not have known what our policy was, in which case it is irrelevant what the punishment is. It could be a 1 day temp -> Permaban - It wouldn't have influenced their decision to use a hacked client. For the other players who have been around longer and would know the punishments for using hacked clients, I think it is important to find a balance between allowing players to return and have a second chance and punishing them. I feel that roughly, the right balance is struck at the moment and I wouldn't change it too much. One thing I would like to say though, is that we are an economy server - SG is a secondary part of the server. I think we are distinguishable from other servers which PermaBan on the first offence (As mentioned by @AtomBlizzard above). Often those servers are predominately focused on mini games/PVP in which hacking has a more significant impact on the purpose of the server. EcoCityCraft's purpose is an economy - to earn money. I appreciate that people make money in SG, but I would imagine you would find it is only a relatively small number of players who make any significant money from it in comparison to the number of players who make money farming/mining/trading etc. EDIT: I'd also like to add that ECC has a different element that acts as a deterrent. We are small enough community that being accused/banned for hacking is extremely detrimental to your reputation amongst the player base. Unlike the huge servers where people are lost in a long list of players etc, you are remembered here. A bad reputation can have significant impacts on things like trading, popularity, trustworthiness, applying for Staff etc. When considered along side what I mentioned above, I think the balance is pretty much struck right as it is.
If you are good at SG, and have the kits, you can make over 100k a day. Personally, I don't because I'm not nearly as good as some other people. The amount Georgie makes from SG in a day is honestly ridiculous. Just because they haven't been banned again doesn't mean they aren't hacking. Everybody knows who is hacking, it isn't difficult to tell when playing. It's the difficulty of getting the evidence and it being sufficient enough to ban the person. Hackers know this and once unbanned continue to hack. Not all of them do this, but a large amount do. They continue to hack because they know that being banned again will result in... a 6 day temp ban? Whatever it may be, they don't care because they are hacking because they want the money. Everything else you said was perfectly fair to me.
While SG is now a viable way to make money, there are only a handful of people that are able to actually make the amount of money you are describing. It takes a lot of investment in terms of kits, and hours of your day. On another note, personally I believe that while the way we are currently handling hacking complaint isn't perfect, but it seems to work to an extent. Of course there are always ways to improve upon ways we do things in terms of handing out harsher or more lenient punishments, but as Dewsy said in his post, our system seems to work.
I appreciate that people can make that much, but only a handful of people actually do. It is limited to a few of the top SG'ers who make significant money in comparison to the other 200+ people on the server making money by mining/farming/shops etc.
As Georgie said, it is really tough to make that much in one day. Personally, I have made around 30k+ in a single hour of fSG, but that was against inexperienced players who had no kits, while I had quite a few. Also, if you spend 10 minutes or more in one SG and you lose, it can really effect how much you make in an hour or a day. As for the suggestion, I think there should be a balance wipe but NOT a permaban. In SG cases if the stats are actually reset then it does matter if you have only hacked for 1000 points or 100000 points, they get reset, which is why I'd like to see the balance reset in effect. Additional info: let's face it, SG is one if the most popular things to do and brings in a lot of money from kits, people who die constantly to hackers are pushed away from the game and the server, which is why if this was implemented there would be a severe drop in the amount of hackers.
