Fixing the recent chain-robbing rule loophole

[DasFroggy]

Short description: Make it mandatory that all persons participating in the robbery of someone, use the /rob command.

 

Detailed description: Initially undetected until someone pointed it out, I did some digging and discovered that there is in fact a loophole with the /rob command that makes tracking chain robbing difficult if not outright impossible. 

 

Robbing is now occuring in groups, during which the participants organize who uses the /rob command and when, spoofing the frequency tracking. By cycling through a large group of four or more, the act of chain robbing begins to look more like traditional robbing, as one person can still rob without having to use the command, because someone else in their group is using the command instead. This means Joey Stealsabunch can commit four or more robberies per use of the /rob command.

 

Either a command needs to be enacted that marks people in a group as participating in robbery, or to avoid writing script for a new command, every person helping commit robbery in a scene should be required to use the /rob command. This will allow more consistent tracking of rulebreaking activity.

 

How would your suggestion improve the server? 

 

Patching a bug that is allowing rulebreaking to go undetected would only serve to make the community more stable.

[Illusory]

Yes. Since the implementation of the /rob command the main change I've noticed is people committing robberies in larger groups (3 or 4) and cycling between who types the /rob command at every robbery to keep their daily robbery totals lower individually while still chain-robbing.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Sush

[Moonsong]

I wouldn't say this is a bug at all, more of an oversight. Devs trusted players to be responsible with the command, but naturally players found away to exploit it. Admins managed just fine finding chain robberies before with the methods at their disposal, so I don't know why they think they won't get caught by doing this.. this just makes things much much worse for players exploiting the script. Technically, I think this is bannable as they're exploiting a feature.

 

Additional checks could be added to the script, to see if players are in the same faction and perhaps sends out an admin alert if they're happening frequently and perhaps additional checks to see how often robbers interact with eachother. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

[DasFroggy]

2 minutes ago, Moonsong said:

I wouldn't say this is a bug at all, more of an oversight. Devs trusted players to be responsible with the command, but naturally players found away to exploit it. Admins managed just fine finding chain robberies before with the methods at their disposal, so I don't know why they think they won't get caught by doing this.. this just makes things much much worse for players exploiting the script. Technically, I think this is bannable as they're exploiting a feature.

 

Additional checks could be added to the script, to see if players are in the same faction and perhaps sends out an admin alert if they're happening frequently and perhaps additional checks to see how often robbers interact with eachother. Shouldn't be too hard to implement.

 

One solution that could probably be coded in, is a proximity check. If a /rob command is entered within immediate proxity of another that has recently used the rob command, it would then flag BOTH users as possibly chain robbing and in need of admin tracking.

[99]

On 10/27/2021 at 4:49 PM, DasFroggy said:

 

One solution that could probably be coded in, is a proximity check. If a /rob command is entered within immediate proxity of another that has recently used the rob command, it would then flag BOTH users as possibly chain robbing and in need of admin tracking.

This would probably be the best solution. People will always find a way to exploit anything they can. Trusting people to do the right thing was the first mistake lol

[Engelbert]

On 10/27/2021 at 5:20 PM, Sush said:

Yes. Since the implementation of the /rob command the main change I've noticed is people committing robberies in larger groups (3 or 4) and cycling between who types the /rob command at every robbery to keep their daily robbery totals lower individually while still chain-robbing.

This only proves, that robbers follow the simple GTAO routine, which has nothing to do with roleplaying.

[meself]

Why not, if that's an issue. 

[DasFroggy]

Looks like it's persisting. Another group of persons have managed to avoid detection while chain-robbing.

[ENDREAS]

+1

[joshua]

big +1