Account cloning/impersonation

[uberknarf]

After a couple of rounds in the community map servers, one of the players took offence to having been beaten soundly (and repeatedly). He's decided to take up my nickname. Given his general attitude and demeanor, I'm not too happy about the effect it could have on my reputation within the game.

Is there anything that can be done about this?

My usual tag is [FN]uberknarf; in game, I now have (5065978) appended when he's in the same server and using the same nick. He gets (11671062) appended. I wouldn't normally be concerned, but given that his comments are often racist or offensive, I don't like the idea that they're associated with my name.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[Carbon]

This happened to me before and theres nothing you can do. He just got bored of attempting to troll me/dying to me repeatedly and eventually just left the game.

[Pillars]

I've had this happen as well.

[ZidaneTribal]

happened in summers league, ingbo tried to play as flbss andy but was caught

[Fatknacker]

I’ve also seen this, It worries me that these kids having nothing better todo than ‘Troll’ within Altitude. I can understand in chatrooms and the such but not within’ a chuffin game.
Doesn’t make me angry just spoils the game a little. Would love to ban this ***** though!

[Rechtschaffen]

Changing name in game is useful, e.g. for registering clan affiliation.

However, you could make people choose a unique ID to go along with their login email address. If this could be viewable and kickable from the console then you can discriminate against trolls easily.

[michael]

I had this happen to me as well. The funny part was that it was in my server so i just banned him

[combat]

this has really bothered me, people seem to be impersonating others and just sticking team tags ie [fLbss] and not having any respect for those who run teams...

they should really implement a way for team captains to MAKE a team inside the Altitude game and have people sign up there

[nesnl]

I agree with this. If you want Altitude to be taken seriously there needs to be some way of having some type of identity in game. I know you always shoot down any ideas of having unique user names (even though communities like starcraft with millions of users seem to have no complaints). It would be nice to be able to register a team as a captain and then use the same mechanism as right clicking and doing "add friend" but instead it could say "add to team." Then the person could click accept or reject and it would place the team tag in front of their desired user name. Maybe make the tags a different color or italicized so if someone was named xxx.player (with a team tag) then if someone tried to just change their name to xxx.player it would look different. This would also give more legitimacy to players who are playing in tournaments.

Outside of the whole team tag problem , it would be nice if a player changed their name to the same as someone in game that only their name would include a number. It is annoying when someone is named Player and then someone else names themselves Player and then they both become some variation of something like Player(100393499) and Player(00043989834). It would be nice if the original just remained with the name Player and the other person became Player(349898324) or whatever. If you don't pay attention when it happens then you lose track of which one was the original. So the system currently in place really doesn't work for the most part as you often are left trying to remember who was who.

But in the end i guess it's just a question of how seriously you want the game to be taken. Do you want to have serious competition with dedicated players or are oyu catering more to the casual player who doesn't want the slightest hassle when dealing with a user name? In running this tournament I have already run into issues with names and dealing with legitimacy of players, but if this type of tournament is the extent of competitive play that you are interested in then I guess just leave it as it is. But for me I guess I just want to know one way or the other what direction of player base you are looking for in the game going into the future.

[lamster]

We are catering both to casual players and to serious competitors. We will continue to improve the experience for both groups over the coming months. This is a case where there is an apparent conflict, but I'm pretty sure we can resolve it without harm to either party.

At the moment I'm leaning towards unique but modifiable nicknames. This will make it easier to screen out unendorsed 3rd party impersonators, but it doesn't fundamentally resolve the issue of impersonation in serious tournaments. For maximal identity verification the server organizer should keep all server logs (which include IP addresses and unique unmodifiable Vapor IDs), and -- if you really want to rule out all internet impersonation hijinks -- require webcams or site-local (LAN) play to verify identities.

Until we get a chance to address this issue, I would encourage all clan members to add each other as friends. This makes it very easy for them to identify impostors (press tab and check that everyone on your team has a friend icon) before the match starts.

[uberknarf]

I'm glad to hear it's on your radar, lam; and also comforted to know that the community is aware of the issue too.

I enjoy the system's current flexibility. Being able to change your name in jest is actually an appealing feature (I still laugh every time I'm killed by "a frail old lady", and was a happy participant in Beagle's assorted deli items wing). I suppose the only addition/change I'd make would be to add a unique profile page for each player, so that people can verify their identity to stats, purchase date, etc. Even a single identifiable code would do the trick.

Alternately or additionally, it would be nice if a user holding a certain name (e.g. "[FN]uberknarf") would have first right to that name as long as they didn't change it, thereby preventing any other users from holding that exact name. This would leave open the possibility of "[FN]ubreknarf" or other variations, but at least those differences would be instantly recognizable to players, friends and the general community.

[edit: Speaking to Maimer's point, I think you're right on the money: it's going to be a balancing act for programmers and community, with the founder's intent directing the outcome. Personally, I'm pretty happy with the current balance between casual and competitive/serious atmosphere. I tend to fall in the former category. I'm not concerned that people see a weak player using my name; it's more a question of the player's behavior. Again personally, I'm happier to be recognized as a friendly guy with marginal skills than as a douchebag pro. Others, like Maimer, manage to be friendly pros. I like that we can both find a comfortable spot in the game.]

[Vi*]

I think having the ability, but not the requirement, of making yourself a unique player handle and profile page would be good.

Everyone loves profiles! Just click on a name to see the user's unique ID name, stats, and a couple other fun categories like favourite plane, a/s/l, relationship status... ;]

[michael]

Originally Posted by Vi*

Everyone loves profiles! Just click on a name to see the user's unique ID name, stats, and a couple other fun categories like favourite plane, a/s/l, relationship status... ;]

I lolled.


However, in my opinion, Iamster suggesting that we use webcams to confirm our identities is a pretty lame fix for people impersonating people, pretending to be on a team, etc. Having some way to have actual "teams" in game, and to be able to identify people when they change their screen name are things that, in my opinion, are pretty important to a online game such as Altitude.

[combat]

i agree with michael that in game team making and sign up is a must, all "tags" should be reserved for those on a team

[DiogenesDog]

Originally Posted by nesnl

But in the end i guess it's just a question of how seriously you want the game to be taken. Do you want to have serious competition with dedicated players or are oyu catering more to the casual player who doesn't want the slightest hassle when dealing with a user name?

Meh. Competitive games aren't affected by this at all, it's ONLY casual games where it's an issue. In competitive games, you have very defined teams who have unique reg keys, and the person running the server can easily check if the real players are on. It's also silly to act like a game can't be competitive with this system since there are plenty of very successful ones that have a similar system (the biggest being CS).

Personally, I think people overreact to this on both sides, but whatever. It's a minor inconvenience/annoyance either way.

[nesnl]

I realize that there are tools available to ensure the legitimacy of the players on each team in a tournament, but I hardly think that it can be considered convenient. If you are suggesting that I verify the IP address and Vapor ID of everyone who plays in a tournament and then compare those to a registered list of players, I want you to remember that in the current tournament you are looking at 14 teams. This means cross checking 140 players who are playing a total of 2 games per week. So that means cross referencing 240 different pieces of information. Information that I must know exactly when teams started their match and when they stopped because they use the servers for scrimmages or teams reschedule their games throughout the week. So you can see how that system, while effective on a small scale, becomes almost unusable. However, it sounds like Diogenes' Dog is volunteering, so maybe I will send him the server logs each week and he can let me know.

The problem has two sides, which I think got confused in the post. I don't think teams are worried about a player showing up to play in a tournament that is pretending to be on their team. It is the other way around. A team is either short a player for a game or they convince a really good player to play a game for them. All that person has to do is change their name really quickly and then jump in the game. Unless I catch that in game you are basically telling me that I have to search through server logs or require webcam identity confirmation.

So as you can see the problem for casual players is more on the side of impersonation. Someone takes your name and then starts calling everyone racist names or something. The other side of it is the more serious players having to worry about player on the opposing team being played by someone else.

I agree that allowing server admins to check the server logs and cross reference Vapor IDs and IPs against a registration list is definitely a valuable tool in a small enough setting. However, for Dio to say that "competitive games aren't affected by this at all" is just ridiculous to me. As the competitive side of Altitude grows it will quickly become evident that the current system won't work. I don't think there is a debate right now that the current system is totally geared towards the casual player. There is absolutely nothing unique about anything available to players in a game, outside of an invisible Vapor ID that is available to server admins only. I just wanted to bring the issue to the front because I think it will be important to address if you want Altitude to have a competitive community going into the future.

[Karl]

maimer,

What if there was a whitelist config file for servers and then when you typed a console command "listPlayers" it showed:

maimer - Account ID (whitelisted)
ferret - Account ID (not white listed) <-- imposter ferret!


Would this help?

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by Karl

maimer,

What if there was a whitelist config file for servers and then when you typed a console command "listPlayers" it showed:

maimer - Account ID (whitelisted)
ferret - Account ID (not white listed) <-- imposter ferret!


Would this help?

I am not exactly sure what you mean. Do you mean register player IDs with the server so that if someone else connected with the name of a registered player that it would alert me when I typed a console command?

I think that whatever the solution is it needs to take into account that not everyone is going to have the same access to the server logs nor are they going to have the same technical know how. The tournament i am running now is hosted on servers that are provided to us by tec27 from Team Liquid. Doing anything with the server logs would require me to coordinate with him in that effort. It also means keeping track of yet another thing on top of rosters, game results, rankings, etc. I spend enough time as it is just managing the whole league outside of trying to figure out if there are people cheating.

I am not sure what the ideal solution is and I am not saying something needs to be done right now. I am just saying that going into the future, as the population grows, I think there will be need to be some method for one player to be able to identify another player.

[combat]

I don't care about the main menu, this "nickname" business needs to be fixed ASAP.

I see people like "navy seal" all the time. He's a level 34 flying around with the name [flb] NavySeals, he probably has no idea what flb is, he's just putting on the tag because lots of people are teams and he doesn't know how to get on one.

Either pretending to be on someone's team or just impersonating another player is something that I hope there is an easy solution to stopping.

The picture might not work below, how exactly can I (on a mac) post a pic on here if its on my desktop?

[eth]

Yeah unique nicks and/or ingame clans you could join would be nice. Especially for clans I see a lot of idiots who put on a tag even when they have absolutely no idea what it is(I smell 10yo kids -_-).

[DiogenesDog]

Maimer - basically every PC FPS ever made basically uses this system, and many of them have had thriving competitive scenes. Yes, if some team is retarded they can try to cheat the system, but it's easy to catch and the downside (basically getting blacklisted from any reputable league) is way too high to risk.

I dunno, I see the problem, but I really don't forsee it ever being an issue in competitive play simply because it never has been in any game I've known of that uses the same system. It'd be pretty shocking if Altitude had the most corrupt playerbase of any of these games.

but then again, I wouldn't care if we had unique names either. I'm not arguing against changing it, I just think this isn't the reason to do it.

[nesnl]

I guess I just remember playing Q3 and you could check the GUID (think that is what it was called) of anyone playing in the game (which I guess is equivalent to the Vapor ID in Altitude). This not only allowed the server admins to check the logs but it also gave the player base an opportunity to police itself. Teams could check other team's GUIDs in game and compare them to the registered lists. The GUIDs were tied to the CD Key so that even if you changed your name it still had the same GUID.

I just think that if there won't be a system of unique usernames or unique team tags then there should be at least some way of identifying people for all players in the game and not just server admins. Leaving the task of cross checking server logs is no way to have a community police itself.

[lamster]

Yes, Vapor IDs are functionally equivalent to GUIDs. We'll add a console command, listPlayers, in the next patch which prints every player's Vapor ID.

[DiogenesDog]

Originally Posted by nesnl

I just think that if there won't be a system of unique usernames or unique team tags then there should be at least some way of identifying people for all players in the game and not just server admins. Leaving the task of cross checking server logs is no way to have a community police itself.

This seems perfectly reasonable, but uh... you do realize that this is completely different from what you were saying originally? There's a pretty big difference between "without unique IDs Altitude can never have legit competitive play" to "hey if you added this small feature it'd be a lot easier for leagues to police themselves". Not trying to be a dick here, but yeesh. Relax a little and quit assuming that everyone else is an idiot. :/

[nesnl]

Originally Posted by DiogenesDog

This seems perfectly reasonable, but uh... you do realize that this is completely different from what you were saying originally? There's a pretty big difference between "without unique IDs Altitude can never have legit competitive play" to "hey if you added this small feature it'd be a lot easier for leagues to police themselves". Not trying to be a dick here, but yeesh. Relax a little and quit assuming that everyone else is an idiot. :/

First, I never said "without unique IDs Altitude can never have legit competitive play." I am not trying to be a dick here either, but you are welcome to review my posts and get a better idea of what I was saying and what I was asking for when you respond. As far as the small feature of allowing user to check vapor IDs, it will definitely be a step in the right direction and help remove some of the burden off the server admins shoulders when it comes to checking people's identity. However, I still think that there can be more done that would benefit the community as a whole and not just in a tournament setting.

[phong]

Taken from my suggestions post:

-Possibly a way to register / prevent duplicates / preserve nicknames until the persons vapor id currently allocating it changes their nickname to something else.

My suggestion to deal with this is both beginner/pro user friendly -- simply have names that can be reserved but not registered.

By this I mean when you pick a name, that name (after availability is verified) is inserted into a database with the corresponding vaporid. Now when someone tries to change their name to one that is taken, a message appears that the name is invalid (reverting it back to the previous).

Now, say maimer changes his name to remiam. Maimer is removed and is now available for anyone to use (assuming he could use remiam).

Advantages:

• Prevents people from constantly changing their name in game (unless they don't care if it's taken)
• Adds value to nicknames
• Prevents duplicates
• Prevents name hogging (people registering multiple names making it difficult to select an initial name)
• No passwords/identification system necessary
• Simple approach
• Easy to implement

While this does not address the league type setting, no game really does (you can give your user/pw to someone else to play for your team). League matches should be reffed anyways and vaporID's verified (still doesn't fix the user/pw flaw).

[michael]

Originally Posted by phong

... simply have names that can be reserved but not registered. ...

This is a very smart solution, as it prevents people from impersonating others. The only thing I would add, is make it so that team tags [fLb], -MH-,ACE, etc. do not count as part of your name, so if michael changes his name to "TEAM.michael" or "[TEAM]michael", someone can't jump on "michael".

The obvious solution is to have teams an in-game mechanic, so my name remains "michael" but the game prepends "[TEAM]" automatically, perhaps in a different color so someone can't fake being on a team by having their actual name be "[TEAM]username" (which is how things work right now)

[phong]

Originally Posted by michael

This is a very smart solution, as it prevents people from impersonating others. The only thing I would add, is make it so that team tags [fLb], -MH-,ACE, etc. do not count as part of your name, so if michael changes his name to "TEAM.michael" or "[TEAM]michael", someone can't jump on "michael".

The obvious solution is to have teams an in-game mechanic, so my name remains "michael" but the game prepends "[TEAM]" automatically, perhaps in a different color so someone can't fake being on a team by having their actual name be "[TEAM]username" (which is how things work right now)

See the clan suggestion I posted as well Unfortunately those are totally separate issues.