Connecting Accounts Across IP and other means to detect pre-teamers and dishonest gaming.

[sealman]

Ever since I played https://entgaming.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=67304&p=271460#p271460, and was victimized by two dishonest players who pre-teamed and rigged the match, I've been on the look out for shady behavior from these two players and other players. I've managed to track them to a few new accounts, by their own re-use of a single forum account for multiple bnet accounts, but also by looking at game histories and searching for common allies and common foes.

Its hard to know how much a problem this is truly is here on ENT, but I have a couple suggestions that will help cut down on smurfing, pre-teaming and other means of stat inflation and cheating.
On a given stats page list the following:

1. Link to every other account name that shares the same IP address.
2. List any other accounts which the players has regularly played with as an ally,
3. List any accounts regularly played against as an enemy.
4. List a complete history of all bans and violations.
5. List a record of how often the player disconnects from a game.
6. List a record of how often a player joins a game, but leaves before the countdown begins.
7. A count of how many times their heroe was killed after they left a game. (see if they are being intentionally fed to their foes).

I realize not all of this information is direct evidence of cheating. I know I've played many games with the same accounts, over and over, without me having any personal connection to the other player. And dodging games before they start isn't cheating either. Its merely information one would use to begin to search for cheaters.

A clever algorithm would need to be established, it should look at both the frequency in which people are in games together, but also streaks of games in close succession, say on a given night. Connecting stats accross an IP would also be important to this metric.

Once we have this information freely available, it will be easier to determine how bad smurfing is here on ENT, how bad pre-teaming is.

[RadiantCrystal]

lol smurfing and preteam is not against our rules and it is perfectly understandable that friends want to play together ofc, that comes with all the problems or trolling and etc. But we cannot fully eliminate smurfing/pre-made teams and probably never will.

Also sometimes people want to play unnoticed so your suggestion basically kills off that.

I have to also mention that smurfing/preteaming is NOT cheating

[sealman]

lol smurfing and preteam is not against our rules and it is perfectly understandable that friends want to play together ofc, that comes with all the problems or trolling and etc. But we cannot fully eliminate smurfing/pre-made teams and probably never will.

Also sometimes people want to play unnoticed so your suggestion basically kills off that.

I have to also mention that smurfing/preteaming is NOT cheating

Ah, I should be more clear. Pre-teaming on OPPOSING TEAMS. The game I linked to. players on opposing teams were friends and just farmed hero kills and didn't go after each other. Sniper killed fountain and fountain farmed, while Naix killed off all of snipers allies over and over and over. In this instance they got their records deleted.

Sure, I totally get that people want to play with their friends. I do that too! Still, linking accounts by IP and frequent allies/enemies could allow a more informed choice of matches. It would help make it obvious when some really good player has a friend with a low ELO account to help inflate his ELO. This isn't cheating, but allowing some transparency with this will make for better matches and fewer "noobs stomped by pros". Of course, whether true noobs are aware enough to be checking stat pages is a other.

Not sure I think people should be able to "play unnoticed". In any real sport, you don't get to put a mask on and use a fake name. Why allow that here when the ENT server is capable of tracking IPs?

[nabo.]

So, you are talking about multi-boxing. This offense is bannable by ENT's general rules already.

You can report those who you believe to be multi-boxing and a mod can check their game history, ip, games played together, etc to evaluate whether your suspicion is correct. Even if two players are on same ip, they can play on opposite teams. Often doing so, is ill-advised and usually there is little reason to play against one another, especially when playing on the same network. If there is a pattern where one loses to another on purpose to rig the game, we will take action. Post a ban request.

In regards to your suggestion with the stats page extra info stuff, those info are for mods. As a user, you just need to report these players, not moderate.

[Mercy]

I feel this suggestion should be denied.

Mods have access to this information- pretty much everything that you said, short of leaving at countdown & heroes deaths after player has left the game.

Either way, all of the information should not be public- perhaps someone wants to build up stats on a new name and disregard their old name- which I do quite often.