Anti Cheater Alliance

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The Anti Cheater Alliance
Zerg.jpg
Abbreviation: ACA
Group Numbers: People interested in fair play.
Leadership: Denzel Washington and Grim_s (Founders)
Goals: To bring murdery justice to cheaters.
Recruitment Policy: Anyone interested in fair play.
Contact: Talk page for now.

The Anti Cheater Alliance was formed in order to call attention to flagrant cases of cheating in Urban Dead, including bot use, zerging, and multi abuse (not having characters keep separate lives).

Initially, players opposed to cheating attempted to address misbehavior directly with the affected groups, including putting statements of observed behavior in the Group's NPOV section on the wiki. However, many groups whose members dabble in cheating defend all their members blindly and ruthlessly. When comments about cheating behavior are made on group pages or in group forums, evidence is rarely given an objective hearing. Antagonism rapidly escalates into revert wars and bans. What could well have started as an accident, ignorance, or a bad lapse in judgement by a single player, grows into institutionalized group policy, as group members bring in all their alts to PK their accusers, bragging that "there's nothing you can do about it...".

The Anti Cheater Alliance isn't going to solve the problem, or make cheating disappear. However, we do intend to provide a place for ethical players to present rigorous evidence of cheating behavior. In addition, ethical players who have been accused of cheating are provided with a place to explicitly describe what code of conduct they will adhere to in the future -- such as what types of interaction will occur between their alternate characters.

The Anti Cheater Alliance consists of:

  1. Clarifying statements detailing some activities that are explicitly cheating, and likewise, activities that are explicitly not cheating, and
  2. A list of individuals and groups for which formal evidence of cheating has been found, and
  3. A location for discussion of issues (currently, this is Talk:Anti_Cheater_Alliance).

Section 1: Policy Clarification

What is Cheating

We define cheating pretty much the same way as defined here (zerging) and here (multi abuse). It is cheating to have multiple characters operating in the same area (As in operating in the same theater of battle, which is a form of interaction), so if you had two characters, and they were living next door, you would get in trouble, but if your next nearest character was in another suburb and at least 5 blocks away, you would not. Bot use is also cheating, but is hard to confirm, however, but it can be, and has been done.

The most important examples include:

  • Operating two or more characters in the same building is de facto evidence of cheating.
  • Reviving another of your own characters is cheating.
  • Healing another of your own characters is cheating.
  • Barricading or tearing down barricades to assist or protect another of your own characters is cheating.
  • Intentionally scouting for target or safehouse information for another of your own characters is cheating.
  • Intentionally using two or more of your characters to attack a single target is cheating. If the target moved several blocks between attacks, then this could certainly happen by accident. To avoid the appearance of cheating, your characters should remain at least 5 blocks apart at all times.

Note: If you are an honest and ethical player and two or more of your characters are in the same building, it is strongly recommended that you (1) publicly apologize, (2) read the rules and FAQ of Urban Dead again, paying particular attention to the issue of separate lives, (3) move your characters several suburbs apart, with screenshots, and (4) publicly affirm that your characters will not interact in the future (for example, by agreeing to a probation). Please be sympathetic toward the fact that Urban Dead has its share of obnoxious unrepentant cheating trolls, and that your own behavior at this stage needs to clearly distinguish you from the trolls.

What is NOT Cheating

  • A zombie getting revived and entering a safehouse to report numbers is, while unethical in game, not cheating.
  • Combat reviving is not cheating.
  • Shooting zombies at a revive point is not cheating.
  • The use of the ?rise command in the URL is not cheating (Kevan has known of it for some time, and as far as we have been able to tell, has taken no action against it). Similarly, other command-line imputations, such as ?dump, are not cheating. (Kevan fixes imputations that are considered bugs: for example, you can no longer purchase Ankle Grab by command-line imputation after dying as a human.)
  • PKing is not cheating.
  • GKing is not cheating.
  • Crowbarring barricades is not cheating.
  • Putting lies in your profile or group or spraypaint is unethical, but it is not cheating.
  • Playing multiple characters in different suburbs separated by about 10 blocks is not cheating, as long as your characters do not cooperate with each other.


Section 2: Formal Complaints

Individuals confirmed to have Cheated (Multi Abuse)

This is a list of confirmed zergers, Please kill them on sight. Proof can and will be provided upon request. The list is still a work in progress as we harvest their profiles for listing.

If you are on the list below, you are encouraged to respond in the proper forum -- currently, the proper place for discussion is Talk:Anti_Cheater_Alliance. If you are an honest and ethical player with two or more alts, the best way to resolve the accusation is to move your Alts very very far away from one another.

In the past, there have been cases where zergers are "usually" played by two different people. However, if you've done something stupid like share the same computer, share an e-mail account, share passwords, log into and babysit each other's character while on vacation, etc., then you should move the zergs apart and keep them apart. If you want to enjoy Urban Dead by working together with a bunch of your friends, that's easy: DON'T CHEAT!

* Starred IDs have discussion on the Discussion Page.

As the talk page is obviously years out of date, I'm putting this here - a clear admission that kar98 and goathammer are one and the same: http://151st.aowc.net/forums/?page=post&id=369606&fid=432942. - salvatore


Other Instances of Cheating

  • Sentinel - Created a barricade bot program. Posted the link to the program on the desensitised forum. Kevan has stated that bots should not be used in Urban Dead. By distributing a bot program, Sentinel subverted the game mechanics in a way that could potentially unbalance and ruin the game.


Groups which have appeared to support Cheating

BME *

The BME has been accused multiple times of using zerg accounts to protect the mall and killing their enemies. The simultaneous presence of multiple DonnieBaker's and Wayne Smith's characters in the same building (as can be seen here), and the presence of characters Legend X and Logan X (Both belonging to the BME and having similar names, which is at least suspicious). Characters Willie B and Wayne Smith have been created within minutes. Furthermore, Legend X's account on the Desensitised boards uses the email of a certain [name removed], which is the "real name" listed under Willie B's profile. Recently, due to a revert war between us and them (they didn't want people to know about the whole affair), some players like Wayne Smith and Legend X decided to get Brain Rot, probably because they wanted to drive off the suspects. Various BME members are on the Zerg Liste on the Desensitised boards. The BME claim that the multiple Wayne Smith and DonnieBaker characters were created by others to trick bystanders into killing the originals, but this seems strange given the fact that the said characters didn't get added to their KoS list. Officially, they claim to condemn zerging, and have regularly accused their enemies of zerging (And accused some people of using multiple wiki accounts to edit their page) without any semblance of proof.

* Starred entries have discussion on the Discussion Page. Also discussed on BME Group page: "Officially BME has a zero tolerance stance against its members zerging and they will kick any member out who does such, as this is the very behaviour they are trying to stop." April 2006.

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