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Comedy called "multi theft auto"


bmat

Question

I'd like to share with you my deep analysis about MTA scene and its community.

Who am I? I'm 22 years old programmer from Poland. I'm learning on Technical University (3rd year) and I'm working in small IT company as frontend/backend developer. I play MTA since 2009 and develop Lua scripts since 2010. My the most famous script is called "Call of Duty 2 Mod". I've made also many other scripts for other servers.

Why do I write this? Because I'm worried about MTA. Although I have a paid work, girlfriend and stable life situation, I'm still member of MTA community. You may say: you have new life, you don't need that. Yes, that's true, but I can't leave this all, leave my plans for scripts, my unique ideas and... dreams. It's too hard for me. But unfortunately this would happen, I may leave MTA soon. Why? Firstly: Call of Duty 2 Mod is used without my permission. It never been OpenSource, first version was publicized for free usage, but not any of newer version. Secondly: recently I was making scripts for Race server. Person, who cooperated with me, has stolen all my scripts. He changed the author of scripts and say everywhere around that he made this all. When I broke the cooperation and I demanded removing those scripts, he started laughing at me and insulting me. I was saying about law results of that situation, but it didn't help. While ago he uploaded my resources: Call of Duty 2 Mod and City of Racers… Thirdly: more and more of my friends leaves the MTA. There are a few main reasons, why they leave:

- they don't want to play on servers full of agressive players, who insult each other, do a spam, abuse votekick and think they can do everything,

- they have been cheated by some other player,

- other clans cheated on their clans, e.g. false match results,

- they have been impersonated by somebody and this person did many wrong things, what results that my friends lost their good opinions in local community,

- their scripts has been stolen,

- their client-side scripts have been modified and used without permission,

- their servers has been attacked,

- their servers, which have own scripts have less players than servers having stolen scripts,

-they can't develop their projects because of no money.

We can't change behaviour of players. And you may say that players of other games are the same. Yes, that's partly true. For example: CS and COD2 players are much more agressive. In that case they would choose games, which are played by calm players. They can also leave games at all and find other things to do in their life.

Short research of MTA scene:

- average age of players decreases and for now MTA is full of 12-14 years old kids,

- today kids are much more aggressive, have more freedom and their parents allow them for more; join the server where admins are offline and try to clean that mess, when noobs rules the server,

- scripters are becoming worse and worse, they are also more and more lazy, they would like to steal instead of do something creative; this results in that people mostly playing always the same modified gamemodes, like race, stealth, basemode. There are innovative servers with own scripts, very good scripts, mainly RPG and RP, but it's not much,

- many owners of servers allow noobs to do everything they want, some of them sell moderator accounts, what lets noobs to kick/ban normal players; everything out of control.

Actors of that comedy:

- players - they are most important in that comedy, their role determines the future, but I don't have anything to say about,

- scripters - their laziness/no experience and skills/no willing to learn/ignorance, results in worse and worse quality of scripts,

- server owners - they steal the scripts and allow noobs to do everything they want,

- mta community on that forum - some of you are still here, because some of you don't try to make own server or weren't robbed. Yet. I have a respect to many of you, because you're good people. But until you won't waste months of work on scripts and get robbed, you won't understand what I mean. In my situation many people would give it up, really. You're correct people, to help clean that mess,

- MTA Team - the director. Without them this comedy wouldn't exist. But for now without their intervention this production becomes a low-budget drama. Everything on correct place, but intelligent people don't want to watch that.

I'm disappointed of global situation of MTA. I hope everything will come on correct way, but I’m losing that hope. MTA Team needs to take some actions to eliminate those behaviours. Otherwise good scripters and well players will go away. They have other games, more popular. They would play CS or COD, LoL, Minecraft... But they're still here because they love innovations, which MTA provides. But they won't play forever. Innovations are the things that keeps many people here, don't let noobs to destroy that beautiful game. If we lose valuable players and scripters, there will stay only destructive group of kids, whose fake servers, spam and stolen scripts will throw out the rest of good people. Apocalyptic vision? I don't think. Don't let to waste all your work, that you did on that awesome multiplayer!

I know you don't want to be censor or control servers and players. But we need that! Nobody is anonymous in the internet, shouldn't be in MTA too.

My ideas:

1. Servers having stolen scripts should be banned remotely.

2. Each server visible in internet should has serial number, something like cd-key. This doesn't have effect on local servers.

3. Any reported server should lose the serial and shouldn't work anymore. Without serial server shouldn't be visible outside of LAN network.

4. Players should have global accounts. Servers should have implementation of global authentication.

5. Client-side scripts should be protected against stealing.

6. Authors of scripts should get a tool allow them to digitally sign their works. Something like patent, with unique identifier given by MTA Team for each script. MTA server software would scan resources in order to find and report each violation of copyrights.

This is the end of this comedy. Thank you for watching. Some of you wipe the tears and know that good comedy may become a drama.

I'm not leaving MTA yet. I will try to stand up and continue my membership in that community. But some of my friends already left, because of similar situations that I described above. My time from last 2 years has been wasted in one day. My scripts has been stolen and nobody will reverse the time. But it doesn't matter, I'm not thinking about myself, I'd like to help MTA, I'd like to help clean that mess.

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It sucks to hear that your stuff got stolen, but in reality, there isn't much the Team can (or should) do about stolen resources.

- No server should be banned remotely. Such moderation tactics are always subject to abuse and controversy, and are typically more trouble to implement & moderate than they are worth. However, a server 'verification' system would be a good idea, where servers can apply for a verification to protect their name in the server browser. That said, there should never be a 'verified' tab, verified servers should just get a discrete checkmark next to their name or something. Also, servers already have unique IDs assigned to them, but its only used internally.

- Global accounts are not necessary, that is what client serials are for.

- Client-side scripts are protected from theft already, look up the new protected flag that ryden added a while ago.

The place where the MTA Team could (and should) try to hammer away at these issues is on the community center. A proper flagging system and a stricter set of guidelines would do a lot of good there (such as not allowing resources containing compiled scripts or obvious luac output).

I really can't comment on player behavior, since I really haven't seen anything that bad. On the whole, I feel like MTA has a more sophisticated player base than, say, Xbox live. Or maybe I just don't hang out on the bad servers enough.

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No server should be banned remotely. Such moderation tactics are always subject to abuse and controversy, and are typically more trouble to implement & moderate than they are worth.

I meant the hidden implementation inside of server software, but I forget that MTA is OpenSource and things like that would be cracked and used by other people.

However, a server 'verification' system would be a good idea, where servers can apply for a verification to protect their name in the server browser. That said, there should never be a 'verified' tab, verified servers should just get a discrete checkmark next to their name or something. Also, servers already have unique IDs assigned to them, but its only used internally.

MTA needs more strictness. Verified server should be the only ones visible in internet. Other server would work only in local network or be visible maximum 6h or something like that.

Global accounts are not necessary, that is what client serials are for.

Serial isn't enough. Serial would be easily changed and you know how. Global accounts will help in case when more than 1 person uses the one PC. And other hand: people will have opportunity to play everywhere they are. When I developed Cod2Mod server, many appeals for unban started with "my brother/cousin/friend/grandpa played on my PC and get banned...". I saw the idea of global account in old versions of MTA, but as far as I know, this idea has been abandoned.

The place where the MTA Team could (and should) try to hammer away at these issues is on the community center. A proper flagging system and a stricter set of guidelines would do a lot of good there (such as not allowing resources containing compiled scripts or obvious luac output).

We must protect creators of software as good as we can. Good scripters are the treasure of that multiplayer. If we won't protect their works, they finally leave. I think this would be something like "author-id" and "resource-id", and special hash of author-id should be related to hashed resouce-id. The resource keys should be in MTA database and server software should scan resources in order to find illegal software.

I really can't comment on player behavior, since I really haven't seen anything that bad. On the whole, I feel like MTA has a more sophisticated player base than, say, Xbox live. Or maybe I just don't hang out on the bad servers enough.

You must play on "better part of MTA". Do you need examples? The most recent: I joined the server COD2MOD (this one, which uses my scripts without permission) and one guy keeped putting in chat "lol". Votekick didn't help, the rest of players have ignored my asks for pressing "1". Each time I killed this guy, he keeped insulting me. No admins on server, bad-behaved kids destroy my pleasure of game...

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Serial isn't enough. Serial would be easily changed and you know how. Global accounts will help in case when more than 1 person uses the one PC.

The MTA serial system is very reliable and can't be changed easily, unless you switch computers. An account system, on the other hand, would be easy to work around (just register a new account). As far as people claiming that "oh my brother played on my PC and got banned and now I can't play", 99% of the time they are lying. I speak from experience.

We must protect creators of software as good as we can.
MTA needs more strictness. Verified server should be the only ones visible in internet. Other server would work only in local network or be visible maximum 6h or something like that.

I agree with in regards to theft prevention within the actual software, and heavier moderation on the community page. Once you start scanning servers / removing server from the browser, you've gone to far. One of MTA's greatest strengths is the openness of the platform, and any attempt to protect content creators needs to keep that in mind. This is like the SOPA/PIPA debate, but on a much smaller scale.

I joined the server COD2MOD (this one, which uses my scripts without permission) and one guy keeped putting in chat "lol". Votekick didn't help, the rest of players have ignored my asks for pressing "1". Each time I killed this guy, he keeped insulting me. No admins on server, bad-behaved kids destroy my pleasure of game...

Well, people suck. Put a bunch of kids behind a monitor and give them anonymity and you'll always see stuff like that. It''s normal and to be expected. If there aren't any admins on the server and votekick doesn't help, then move on to a different server.

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