A Fair Fight in Battlefield 4?

Perhaps I'm clairvoyant, clued in or it's all just a coincidence...

Whatever it is, this week Dice published an article on its Battelog webpage on the topic of cheating in Battlefield 4.

What makes it interesting to me is the timing.  Coming almost a week after I posted a video exposing the ongoing problem of blatant cheats available and prevalent in Battlefield 4 comes Dice's renewed commitment to combating the practice. 

Touting its "FairFight" anti cheating system as central to its efforts Dice claims to be administering a Heavy Hand to cheaters. 

So what is this "FairFight" all about?

Simply put, it's one part snitch and one part stat tracking.  In other words it's a whole lot of nothing.  It showed up around the release of Battlefield 4 and was supposed to address the rampant cheating that was going on largely unhindered in Battlefield 3.  FairFight relies on user reports, PunkBuster Bans (aka: PBBANS) and "unusual" player statistics gathered during gameplay.

One of the improvements in Battlefield 4 over its predecessor is real time statistics tracking.  Meaning if you get disconnected from a game you still have your unlocks, kills and other achievements up to that point.  This also allows Dice to monitor gameplay via those same real time stats. 

The theory is that nobody should be able to get say 30 kills with a sniper rifle in as many seconds without a cheat involved. 

Dice has been adamant about the system being largely immune to false triggering due to the performance of a "skilled" player. Ugh...that whole "skill" word in the context of video games drives me nuts.  Yeah I suppose I'm a "skilled" web surfer and toilet flusher too.

Anyway the official line is this...

"Our policy on banning cheaters is very strict – we only ban a player if there’s evidence that he or she is in fact cheating as we don’t want any false positives. I’m not saying that no evidence = no cheating, it’s just that we can’t ban anyone if there’s no solid evidence of it. Suspect players are being monitored a bit closer, and we look for other ways to prove their guilt." (from the Battlelog article)

Which still doesn't address the real problem with online multiplayer gaming on PC's and consoles.  That being the very real disconnect between the online host and the player.  It's the same issue that's caused the failure of cloud gaming services like OnLive except it wasn't lag or price.  Rather it's the layer of abstraction between what you think is happening and what is actually happening.  Real time gaming isn't possible over the Internet, there's always a delay and until Terabit connections happen you can't call it negligible.

As such most online games rely on having as much information about what's going on preloaded on every client.  It lessens the burden on the servers and it's why you rarely see FPS titles with more than 64 player slots available.  It's just too much data to keep track of which provides the perfect opening for cheats.  All a cheat has to do is expose information that's already present but normally hidden from a legitimate player.

Unless someone is dumb enough to upload a video bragging about their exploits to YouTube exposing the hack there's little chance of getting caught.  Meaning we're all on the honor system.  Unless a developer creates hooks into DirectX that monitor for specific changes to the display output they can't possibly know about a hack when it's being deployed.  That would involve a level of coding that would be akin to adding a virus scanner into every game's code.

The only thing FairFight does that even comes close is to monitor certain areas that are considered "off limits "on multiplayer maps.  Off limits is defined as areas that allow players to hide and slaughter their opponents with impunity.  That includes infamous map glitches, "holodeck" walls you can shoot through and areas that can otherwise give an unfair advantage.  A player that enters these areas can be banned instantly but remember that we're still not operating in real time.  It's only the local interaction with the loaded map and not the other players that comes into play here.  You can be sure that every game "update" will have these areas defined in the local map cache on the client.

So what's the answer? 

FairFight isn't it.  I can't see it as anything more than PR tool.  After all, the cheating industry is a multi-million dollar business built on circumventing these types of measures.  Reason being, the technology to combat it is too cumbersome and expensive from both an economic and resource point of view. 

Not to mention the uproar that would result from the ever present eyes of some draconian "Big Brother" watching your every move.

Meaning we're pretty much stuck with a halfhearted attempt. 

Perhaps the problem really doesn't lie with the developers, however.  Perhaps we just need to remember that just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. 

It's human nature to gain the upper hand but as children we're often told that cheaters never prosper.  But it all rings hollow in the face of an easy victory doesn't it.  I can excuse the 12 year olds in the crowd but the rest of you, well...

The only fix for cheating is to resist the temptation to do so.  If you take your gaming seriously then you should also take anything that threatens it seriously as well.