How will this program interact with Custom Kick?

[Zechs]

Although I have never downloaded Custom Kick hack, nor do I intend to, I am curios as to how it would react with DotaArank. If a host finds your skill level unsuitable, is in a bad mood, or just simply wants to uneven the teams and he kicks a random player out of the game, while another player, or himself is using DotaArank he just gave that poor fellow -10 points. Is there a precautionary measure to prevent this, or does Custom Kick work in some entirely different way and won't effect this program at all?
-Thanks in advance.

[wO_ot]

well the kicked player could contact the one with .Arank, but the more .Arank is in use the more game with "rank6+" in the gn will be created, and such a host should however not kick a player

and blizzard(not sure if that is final) announced that 3rd party tools like CustomKick won't be tolerated at the next patch - whatever they mean by this

[Brutalisk]

With custom kick it is very easy - if DotArank user kicks or get kicked with custom kick we will get automatic report of a cheater and he will be banned.

[Zechs]

Ah I see, so Arank detects Custom Kick?

[Brutalisk]

Not now. This feature is being developed.

[MrJag]

Well the sad fact is that it isn't possible to stop this style of abuse. Sure you could put in some code that will check for a known application like custom kick, but you can't actually stop the technique used by the programs. When it comes down to it, if the client can no longer communicate with the host then the client gets dropped. There are so many ways to accomplish this that it cannot be completely prevented with 3rd party tools. Only an effort by Blizzard to overhaul how the clients and server interact with each other can remediate this issue. Even from Blizzard's end, there is no good solution.

[Sir Rogers]

Custom kick is using a specific technique that can be prevented. I don't want to go into details, but I think if they announce something like that, they found a solution to the problem. Although it's not an easy way, it is codable.

[MrJag]

Currently, when a user gets disconnected during a game -- whether legitimately or via drophack -- it is because one of two reasons:

1. The client (player) have become out of sync with the server (host). You might notice this when the lag screen pops up but the user can still talk in chat. If they manage to resync then the lag screen goes away, but if they can't within the alloted time then they'll get dropped.

2. The client (player) can no longer communcate with the server (host). When this happens the client is instantly disconnected.

I won't talk about method one as I do not think any programs currently take advantage of it. Method two cannot be stopped from happening because it can occur anywhere along the communication path between the client and host. While customkick executes locally on the host machine and stops wc3 from talking to a particular client, nothing prevents this situation from occurring further up the network stream. Between any two computers are a series of routers relaying the network traffic. Most are owned by ISP's but you will also find home users running their own routers. If abusive player A wants to kick player B from their game, all they have to do is tell their home router to ignore player B. Voila, player B is no longer able to communicate with host A and gets dropped.

The best Blizzard can do is modify how the game reacts to a dropped player so that the remainder of the gameplay is treated in a different manner.

[Sir Rogers]

Well luckily the programmers of .Arank can detect if a host is using customkick. It will take some programming and is codable.

If .Arank detects that a host is using customkick, that host will be banned from all further games.

[swimking]

If a feature that is implemented that allows replays
to be downloaded onto the site for review, this would
make the process of banning cheaters much simpler.
Yet another reason for this feature.

[Garadin]

While I find that hack/cheat detection coming into a mod extremely useful (I've wanted a maphack detector forever), custom kick does sometimes have, in my opinion, legitimate uses. It has saved many games I have been in when one person has been afk for the entire game, or trying to intentionally feed, etc. Is there any way that "legitimate" use of custom kick could be preserved through some means such as team voting? For instance, if 4 players on the other team all say a particular phrase, it disregards the kick of that player? I personally haven't seen custom kick abused much, but I host 90% of my own games, so maybe the loss of the ability to use this tool fairly is worth getting rid of rampant abuse that is occurring.

I simply dislike the idea of putting power back into the hands of people who make a new name every time they log on and find it hilarious to grief other players by doing nothing but ruining games by feeding/leaving. With the upcoming change, they'd force everyone to either leave and restart the game or suffer through it rather than being able to remove them and continue playing.

[Sir Rogers]

You will be able to request bans in future in such a case.
We will try to implent a feature to prevent these abuses from happening.

[Garadin]

Yeah, features to stop it(such as a team vote) would be ideal, bans do nothing for people such as this, because unless I'm mistaken, you can't access CD-keys, so only the name which they recreate almost daily is banned. This does nothing. As it is, I kick almost anyone with names like Xx_Destroyer_xX or bob192 etc. from games(before they start).

[Sir Rogers]

we have the possibility to ban ip-adresses, but also that is limited.
I'm pretty sure our bright guys will be able to come up with a system.

You can never have a community free of these people, but we're going to try our best to keep them out.

[cypheir]

I absolutely agree with Garadin...

I'm not sure if I'm shooting myself in the foot with a new community (i.e.: .Arank community) by saying this, but I admittedly DO use Custom Kick. It is essential these days in pub games.

Not everyone plays clan or SIG games, but that doesn't mean you should be destined to be screwed when joining Pub games... thats the whole point of apps like .Arank and banlist.

Now I think I should explain my usage of Custom Kick. I only kick players who are...
1. OBVIOUSLY intentionally feeding or doing some other game ruining practices
2. Afk's for first 7 minutes of game, or afk for 10 minutes straight, later in game
3. If I list game as Pro/Godlike/Undefeated and someone in the game is OBVIOUSLY completely new

...in addition to these conditions, they MUST be voted off by their entire team.

I DON'T kick players that...
1. Are not doing well (having a bad game, random hero they don't know, etc.)
2. Are being ganged up on by their own teammates due to performance, or just pure hate
3. Are requested to be kicked by players on their team for illegitimate reasons
4. Are doing better than me


Can this sort of practice be condoned in anyway? Or are we simply forced to remain at the mercy of re-namers?

I really try to be the most polite, respectful, and legit host I can... I just really think Custom Kick is a part of that.

Comments?

[wO_ot]

there are some good ways to solve such a problem:

-votekick as a dota-map function


and as a second: b.net users should have something like a "steam-id" for the battle.net - so that creating a new account won't help - but as they get banned they will be rank1 after creating a new account, so you don't ave to join their game if you don't feel secure playing with rank1 hosts^^

[MrJag]

b.net has an auth-id which is similar to valve software's steam-id. You used to be able to query a player's auth-id with a b.net command but that was removed because of the extra load all the bots were consuming when spamming that command for everyone joining a channel. Auth-id still exists and is stored locally so it is possible for a local application such as dotarank to look up *your* unique id. I say *your* because you cannot look up anyone else's without having local access to their machine as well.

This could be used to confirm that the playername used by someone with dotarank is indeed authentic and not just spoofed, but it wouldn't help with anyone that isn't running dotarank (or similar program with access to the auth-id).

[kugek]

Perhaps, do the scripts for vote kick system in dota games (like the ark tower defense). Each players will vote if it's needed.

[Sir Rogers]

A DotA map will never have a kick function.

Not a votekick, not a host-kick command. Nothing. At least not as long as Icefrog is in charge of the map.
It stands against his principles.

[webhappy]

Do you know why icefrog is against such a votekick command? What does he say about griefers intentionally ruining a game?

I don't see an easy way for dotarank to allow custom kicking since it's so easy for the host to exploit it. One way would be to kick everyone if he himself is doing poorly, ending the game prematurely while guaranteeing no penalty. The goal, I think, is for enough people to use dotarank that you will rarely find people with 0 rank and so you don't have to play with newbies.

I don't think voting by dotarank is foreseeable in the near future since people could conspire to screw with the system (ie, the same reason why dotarank uses a straightforward scoring system).


It's definitely possible for someone to complete games while screwing around the whole time. As I commented in a previous post, that's the intrinsic flaw with dotarank right now, since it's not a ranking system but just a measure of how many complete games a person has played. I don't think this is a huge issue, though, since most people value their time enough that if they join a Dota game and play to completion, then they are probably trying to win (or at least get a nice k/d ratio).

[HollowSnarl]

im sure that blizzard's patch will not help
shad**f***** beaten the patch(1.21) for the mh in 15min remember?

[[sFs]Prophet]

Dotarank and custom kick don`t interract ;) i used both same time :D there are certain private dota maps with -mhall -checkmh or smthing like that ;) they worked i tryed them :D one time the host got kicked =)) i was rly funny =))

[megak]

The only way to deal with custom kick is to have a natural host to create the game which preferably a bot.
Custom kick can be done not only on the host PC, with the help of some tools... it can be intentionally breaking the communication path between host and the desired to be kicked player(s).

[Pestilence-]

I Really like the idea to stop the customk abuse. I mean i got the know how so i could kick ppl without if i wanted to, but actually i dont think its worth the effort^^ I mean DOTA is just a silly game at all. But since i doubt all ppl know how to drop players w/o the help of 3rd party tools whose are made for dropping only i think it really help. The second possibility would be to make Arank only work with Listchecker. Since using Customk in a lc game would end kinda silly i guess^^ + lc games are more fair cuz the hostadvantage gets minimized ---> less ppl complain bout lag ----> less whine and finaly ---->>> LESS LEAVERS
and a better gaming experience. Isnt that all we want?

[megak]

LC actually quite helpful in preventing script kiddie from kicking players with sf custom kick.
But as i said earlier, there are other ways to break the communication channels.

[Wrathbring3r]

i got kicked after 22minutes because i was too good or host just wanted to keep balance, because 2 players from scourge left.
When i get -10 points i will stop using dotarank, i mean SENSE?

Not leaver ruin the game now, host do with customkick.

Im pissed.

[cr33pstalk3r]

when will dotarank implement this so-called "custom-kick" detector?? its good to have this as well .. cos how do we differentiate if you actually "lag-out" or whether you have been kicked by host ?? lets say IF i have been kicked .. how would you know?? maybe its just an excuse for me to get the -10 points removed? rite ??

*off topic*when will the new patch be coming out???

[dT.Skippic]

Custom kick is a clearly positive thing when used correctly.

Rather then working on a way to get rid of it I would suggest making the possibility to vote for the kick of a certain player who is not behaving as is expected (for this there is no need to do any modifications since if someone gets kicked to stop destroying the game, they where doing worse than leaving).

Another completely different issue is the leaving of a game to make it worthwhile. A 5v3 or a 4v2 could usually be saved by a leaver on Sentinel. The problem is, that nobody will leave because of -10 points. My suggestion would go both to IceFrog and to you guys:

Dota should automatically kick 1 player from a team after all players on that team type a certain command eg.: -kill

On the other side DotArank should recognize this and award a +1 maybe even a +2 to the leaver (if after all the game lasts 30min).

[HollowSnarl]

well the kicked player could contact the one with .Arank, but the more .Arank is in use the more game with "rank6+" in the gn will be created, and such a host should however not kick a player

and blizzard(not sure if that is final) announced that 3rd party tools like CustomKick won't be tolerated at the next patch - whatever they mean by this


blizzard don't care about custom games; after all, they're custom

[HollowSnarl]

there are some good ways to solve such a problem:

-votekick as a dota-map function


and as a second: b.net users should have something like a "steam-id" for the battle.net - so that creating a new account won't help - but as they get banned they will be rank1 after creating a new account, so you don't ave to join their game if you don't feel secure playing with rank1 hosts^^


if a vote kick is to be implemented, the vote must be
1. unanimous
2. from same team

anyway, icefrog won't agree