Team Fortress 2 is going through a nasty bot invasion right now (mostly on EU servers) and the community has been using the vote kick in a very good manner.
Most cheaters/bots are really easy to spot since they don't even try to be sneaky about it. You will see their view port instantly change, they never miss a shot, their cross hair always stays on a player model even behind wall, ...
Most people recognized the difference between a cheater and a good player fairly easily. It is even more blatant in a game like TF2 were most shots are actual projectile and not hitscan which mean that most cheater use a specific class/load out that is compatible with a basic aimbot.
Another way to see it is with cosmetics. Most cheater use throwaway account, they don't want their account with valuable items getting banned, so they only rock the basic cosmetics.
All of these combined make it so that I never saw an actual good player getting kicked. I don't know if Battlefield V has similar system, but making player care more about their account actually provide a good filter for this kinds of situations.
> Most cheaters/bots are really easy to spot since they don't even try to be sneaky about it.
This could very well be a case of selection bias. I think there is a significant portion of cheaters who just want to get a leg up, rather than ragehack and pwn everyone.
When I was 13 trying to play CS, for example, I used a multihack with crappy 'humanizing' aimbot and wall/esp hacks. I could still barely get a kill, but it changed my gameplay experience from "run across them map, instantly die, wait for next round" to something a little more fun. I actually feel like it improved my gameplay because I could learn what to expect from other players, what routes and timings were common, faster than I could through regular play. Of course, now I would just watch demos / pro play to get the same value.
What I always did since cs 1.6 is, follow the best player and don't get in their way. They know the map layouts better than anyone. You don't have to cheat to kick it.
That and you're actively helping/backing-up an already skilled player. The definition of teamwork. Everyone plays a role, and they don't necessarily have to be rockstars to do it.
Vote kick is only effective against cheaters that make it obvious. For the 5% of cheaters that are more subtle about it, there's a good chance their team won't vote to kick them. And since the TF team disabled spectating players, confirming that a player is skilled vs cheating is nearly impossible right now.
Thankfully, the number of cheaters (in US) is low enough that I can requeue if things get out of hand. Hopefully it stays that way.
When they become indistinguishable then it isn't so much of a problem anymore. Because there's no effective difference to you, the other player, between the opponent being a cheater and the opponent being really good. When they're hard, but beatable.
This goes out the window when there are tangible rewards for winning a match, both getting killed, etc.
That is not abuse. The vote kick feature is not an "anti-cheat" mechanism only, it is a general self-admin. If the rest of the players feel that someone's presence is not fun, they will vote kick that someone. It could be because they are a cheater, it could be because they are much more skilled and outplay everyone else or it could be the opposite where they are unskilled and burden the team they end up on.
A really good player can find a server where they can compete at their skill level instead of repeatedly noob-stomping others. A new player can find a server with other low skill players where they can compete at their skill level without being a dead weight.
In a game like BF5 which has no match making for skilled players to verse each other this would not be an option. And even then it doesn't stop it.
I use to play a lot of counter strike and every once in a while I would get accused of hacking. This was at the highest level of matchmaking available (Supreme/Global). In some games where I was popping off or the enemies were having a bad day I am certain the enemy team would have kicked me if they had any power.
And in that game your teammates have the option to vote kick. They do not kick hackers, like at all. I have over 2600 hours in the game and I have seen exactly 1 game where a hacker was kicked by their team.
I tried to play "Sea of Thieves" and gave up entirely after about an hour. They have a feature where the majority can vote to send someone to the brig, where you can't do anything, except apparently drown if your teammates sink the ship. Then you get to come back to life, in the brig still. I never even got a chance to play the game, so there was no reason to vote me out other than just to troll. And this happened repeatedly with every crew I was matched up with.
There may be valid cases for these "vote to kick" features, but they do get blatantly abused as well. I don't think they're a good replacement for more intelligent matchmaking.
Sea of Thieves had an issue in the past where you couldn't _lock_ your ship, and it's a forced-multiplayer game. Which, the way I see it, made this brig thing get abused.
Basically all you wanted was to play with your close friends, but you had 3 players not 4, so you can't go with the small ship (2 players) but the big ship (4 players) had one extra slot (and forced public). So you would just end up sending said extra unfortunate player to the brig since said player could just well go and cause havoc by several means (turning the ship/setting sail to somewhere not related to where you wanted to go, firing on "allied" ships (or even just at everyone), etc..).
Not saying this was your case, but it surely happened with me and my friends. Things changed however, nowadays we have a 3-player ship and you can lock your ship to private mode only, so you can also go 4-player galleon with only yourself in it.
It's an awesome game (that keeps getting more awesome) and hope you can have another go at it!
Was going to say this. I recall getting regularly booted from Day of Defeat games for alleged cheating. Nope, I just happened to be pretty dang good at that game.
In the ancient Athenian democracy, they had the ostracism [1]: once a year they could hold a vote and whoever got more votes was sent to exile for 10 years. No bad feelings, shaming, etc., they simply had to go, because people just though the city would be better without them. I think this mechanism would work as well for game servers.
In my experience, it generally turned out those "really good" players were taking advantage of a glitch, and were kicked for that.. not for being really good. (server rules generally have a "no glitching" rule). Again, this is all anecdotal experience
