[HEXTEK Announcement]

I wasn't a fan of the building personally but, also wasn't totally against it. I see this as being NQ's fault for not Aphelia-ing all tiles within that 2KM airspace the rule mentions.
There's nothing we can do about that though, especially now that those tiles are player owned.

I said in discord, that I think a happy little compromise to this would have been to include a very large hole or area of empty space into the building's architecture at flight/landing level (about 150-250 metres from ground), which points directly in the mission path, large enough that at least S or M ships could fly through the tower itself at decent speed, without worry.

I think as a compromise this would be the best of both worlds. You get your tower, and the mission runners get to fly the most efficient path.
If anyone crashes into your building and complains after that, it's on their piloting skill.

[Will you continue playing after core changes? & Will NQ do a better job when they announce next nerf: Power System?]

I agree their reasoning for this sudden change needs to be explained, however until they do explain it I think it's unfair to assume we know what that reasoning is.

Assuming that their reasoning is cutting server costs, I think adding a shop that sells skins for items would be the priority long before a change like this comes in. I really would like to see the game steer clear of Pay2Win, so I really wouldn't want to see T6 items or other unacquirables in there. Skins, pets, fireworks, even special voxel types (that dont have insane resistances) would be fair game.

AN ALTERNATIVE: Once which seems fairly obvious to me, but one that should have been looked into long before this change was brought forward. Why don't you allow people to place miners on a single core that straddles two or three tiles? The same way that territory scanners work. That would cut every mining operation's core count by 2/3rd's on average, WITHOUT impacting anyone negatively.

To NQ, it seems like you are trying to funnel people with your gameplay. Most people that play games like this are into crafting and resource gathering. Both of those aspects of the game are effectively offline, and there's no actual gameplay to be had doing those things. The only things we're left with are building and PvP. We all know PvP sucks atm. It's not engaging, it's not fun, it's not rewarding. And you just kicked all builders in the nuts with this patch.

I'm not really sure what your goal is, but it seems like you just want people to pay you and not actually get any gameplay in return.

As a solo player that has done fairly well for themselves since starting to play the game, I already have well over the amount of cores deployed than this limit will allow me once fully talented. Even if I train talents on my alt account and donate the cores to my personal org, I'm still looking at getting rid of about 15-25 cores.

But what will I do after that? I can't build anything, cause I can't place any more cores? PvP is not worth engaging in. Resource gathering and crafting are offline. What gameplay is left for me now that building is off the table?

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

14 hours ago, FerroSC said:

OP, I'm sorry if I derailed your post.  I'm sure you have put every bit as much time into this game as I have, if not more.   I disagree with your assessment of exploit usage and I used way too many words to say that.  The ideas of  buffing elements is a good start.  Realistically, new elements are part of the fix here.  Why does the thrust end of an engine and the power generating end of an engine have to be the same element?  Combustion chamber and burner, linked somehow maybe?  Who knows.  I think more complex systems and additional tools would be a great discussion without the caveats of the exploit usage.   In my opinion the rationalization of the exploit usage detracts from the constructive discussion of "where do we go from here".  Again, sorry for derailing.  Hope our next exchange goes better.  I'll try harder next time.

Now, this is a discourse I'm willing to engage with.
All is forgiven, and for what it might be worth I apologize if I came across as hostile to you at any point, I usually try to steer away from that.

I think you hit home with the separation of the engine "combustion chamber" and the thrust nozzle - separating thrust generation into two halves which can be independently invested in, is quite close to, certainly on par with, the first suggestion in the OP. +1 for wording it that way, which is something I neglected to do.

I understand you have a very strong position on stacking - and as I said previously you've every right to feel that way. As stated, my point in making this post was to talk about the "why" - specifically when people abuse exploits in games, yes they do it to push the boundaries, but that is not always the case - especially when something such as stacking is so widely used. In this case, with the game being a Beta, I felt that the usage of stacking was more leaning toward a compensation of sorts. It felt to me like people were simply accommodating for something the game ought to allow them to do - even though the way they went about it was "wrong".

 

Untactful as it may be - understanding this "why" I felt was unfortunately integral to making the decision about where to go, from here.. So it had to be done. I'm just trying to throw my own opinion out there and get people talking. Its pretty difficult to openly discuss something that has such a strong negative connotation and get a useful result - But someone has to have that nitty-gritty discussion for NQ, cause they can't really do it in and amongst themselves. There isn't enough of them, I'm not sure they all play the game as much as we do, and besides.. That's what they "hired" us for ?
 

5 hours ago, Bobbie said:

The irony is that it may not be possible for NQ at this late stage to implement a satisfactory power system that does all the balancing that we need it to do, without it becoming the next 0.23-gate. Nobody will be able to do all the same things that they're used to doing, and everything becomes more complicated and tedious. Even if it's what the game needs, how many players really want it.

 

Personally, I hope that NQ simply buckles down and does whatever needs to be done. I will be here to support the game regardless of how many 0.23's we end up having. I want to see the game flourish and become what it promises to eventually be.

I agree, that ramping up complexity in the ship-design arena could be quite offputting to a number of players. I disagree, however, that it would have the same kind of mass exodus that 0.23 came along with. For the simple fact that the schema change genuinely disenfranchised a lot of people, specifically nearly every solo player - and the reason is because before then, they were thinking they'd be able to simply mine stuff, and craft what they need. With 0.23, that was largely no longer the case without huge up-front investment that solo players are generally not capable of making. It also put casuals at a fairly severe disadvantage, too, 'cause mining is a pretty solid timesink and missions turned out to be garbage for anyone but chinese alt-farmers.

Personally I am lucky in that I hit the ground running - even as a solo player I didn't skip a beat when 0.23 came out, it affected me very little, and I still manage to produce what I need/want, and buy the rest. Not everyone was that lucky.

This change I feel would have significantly less of that sort of impact. Everyone will need to make or buy new ships more than likely - I doubt many designs will live through this change and remain optimally functional. However I also doubt these ships would run the kind of pricetag the schemas run - it would be quite easy for any solo player to pick up where they left off, by comparison. If anything most solo players could even reuse components from the now-broken ships they have, simply buy a power generator (whatever element ends up generating power) and make a new ship of their own.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

On 9/23/2021 at 7:02 PM, FerroSC said:

But tigers ARE Orange and black.

Says everything that needs to be said right here.
You don't understand the thread or the idea being posited here, nor have you made any attempt to do so.

I will not be conversing with you any further. I could have a more productive conversation with a brick wall, an insect outside, or the bottom of my shoe.

 

9 hours ago, Atmosph3rik said:

So in my opinion the first thing NQ needs to do is decide how much thrust, lift, brakes ect they want each core size to be able to handle.  Then they need to make the elements powerful enough that you only need one or two of each type of element to reach that level.  Because having a thousand elements is bad for performance and it looks like crap.

 

Then they need a new way of limiting the number of functional elements that we can put on a ship.

 

I am uncertain that having any hardcoded maximums or limits to the number of elements would be the right way to go here. It certainly would address the problem, but also create a few of it's own - remember that we are looking for ways to maximize creativity and uniqueness between ships while also eliminating the cubemeta. This shouldn't be something where we just instantly place all ships on the upper limit of performance. There needs to be trade-offs and a wide variety of ways a ship can end up performing.

Having one or two engines max per ship, would make the ship-builder life quite drab and boring, since you almost never would be required to put any real thought into how you're designing your ship.

I'll hark back to my example of having ships with high-thrust yield but low cargo space, versus ships with moderate thrust yield and moderate cargo space. If you only needed two engines you're not sacrificing anything to reach max performance. And to reach maximum performance for a given core size you should definitely be required to give something up, be it cargo, warping capability, pvp capacity, or something else. (all of the above?)

 

In discord it was mentioned that this might create a few issues when it comes to docking, and after some discussion, we landed on a few potential options for mitigating those issues.

Namely the diminishing returns for significantly larger cross sections might need to be amplified or adjusted in some way. Hopefully in a way that would prevent you from making two craft (one that is max performance, and one that is max cargo space) and docking them together to easily circumvent the thrust limitation.

[NQ contradicts their own Code of Conduct with new construct announcement.]

I'm sure that if any one single person is found to be abusing stacking in PvP, that they would probably just be banned entirely after about the second or third time.
No mercy on repeat offenders. Sounds like it would solve the problem quite swiftly to me.

No one is going to risk their irreplacable ship and their entire account they have paid for and invested talent points on - just for a few wins in PvP.
And if they demonstrate that willingness then just ban them. Simple.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

Did you notice that this post is not in the suggestions board?

I tried to refrain from suggesting any one single course of action because I am not here to fix this problem, that is NQ's job if they decide this is something that needs fixing, which they clearly already have. (See linked external thread)

 

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all shapes could be meta if conditions were different

 

This is actually exactly my point, there are some simple changes that could be made to the game that would allow nearly all shapes of ship to be near-meta simultaneously.
From a balancing perspective I fail to see how that is an undesirable thing for anyone. Unless you are a ship creator who profits from making cube haulers.

 

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If dont mean shit.

 

You are quite a cynical being, this is a forum where feedback is regularly reviewed and looked over by NQ. On a topic that NQ has asked for opinions on. If actually means quite a lot in this scenario because changes are incoming, whether you like it or not.

 

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and then you made an attempt to rationalize being able to keep the exploit based on some hypothetical metrics that could exist in the game but don't

 

Jesus christ, you're still on the same useless trope as the first time you posted. You claim you read the post but yet you probably understood less than 5% of it.
At what point did I ever advocate for stacking to be kept? Never once. Lol if you think you can I would like to see you quote the exact place where I say "stacking should be kept". I'd love to see it bud.
Stacking is already gone, it's over with, done. Get over it.

 

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Then you came and threatened to report people who disagree with you

 

But that's the thing, you weren't (and still really arent) disagreeing with my idea, because you don't even understand it in the first place. You've made this much clear.
You're just posting useless tropes of your predetermined opinion on stacking which you have every right to have - but your opinion on stacking has no relevance here. This is about shaking up a meta not a thread about whether you liked stacking or not.

 

Same as I said to Arch - If you disagree that this meta needs changing that is one thing - but that isn't something you've even intelligently voiced here. Instead you came in here whining about "Exploit x is an exploit!" No duh, pretty sure everyone knows that already.

 

To allude to a simplistic metaphor that someone with even your limited attention span should grasp:
Your reaction here is the same as if I asked the question "How would one go about breeding a new color of tiger" and you come in and reply with "But tigers are orange and black"....

Yes, we all know this, that wasn't the question that was asked.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

I never got angry with anyone for disagreeing with my opinion - in fact I came here to get the opinions of others. As my last line in my OP would suggest, that is what I am looking for. For the record, I actually agreed with a number of the points you made.

I think you may have misconstrued my reply to Archageo as being towards yourself. I quoted you in a reply above, that was the one intended for you - Not the one directly following Arch's post which was directed at him, not yourself. You do seem to have read the post although there seem to have been some key points you have missed. Which I discussed in my reply that was actually to you. The one where I quoted you several times.

Someone who clicks on the thread, and only reads the title, then resorts to diatribe like "stacking was an exploit, it had to be removed eventually" is not productive to this topic since I am not discussing element stacking's removal, only why it was used. People like Arch or FerroSC make it obvious they didnt even make it past the title before spewing out a predetermined opinion that has nothing to do with the actual suggestion at hand here in this thread.

I do have a tendency to use formatting like bolds and underlines to emphasize points but that is far from anger, quite the opposite really, and its not up to me how you or anyone else interprets that - if you interpret it as anger that is your problem not mine.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

Chalk another mark on the "people who replied without reading the OP" tally

Stacking is gone/going away and this is NOT About keeping it around. It is over, done with. At no point have I advocated for stacked ships to be kept, here or anywhere else. If you disagree that something needs to be done to allow for more space inside a ship to be usable for performance that is one thing but that's not even something you voiced here. Your comment is completely unproductive to the discussion point.

Do you consider a non-stacked atmospheric cube hauler ship, to be one of these "OP ships" you are talking about? These can be built currently without the use of any exploits and no other designs come close in efficiency or power. It is the current meta.

What I am proposing is to allow more, varied form-factors of ship with the appropriate volume, to potentially reach the same level of power - by making appropriate sacrifices of space. All this does is make cubes unnecessary. It's not bringing back an exploit or "making engines more powerful" - it's just changing a distribution of where thrust is provided from.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

17 hours ago, Feriniya said:

I totally agree with FerroSC

Yet another person that does not seem to have actually read my initial post in its entirety. You gave it a partial skim, at best.

 

Quote

With the proper shipbuilding skill and creativity, it is possible to create good design and balanced performance even without stacks. The stack of elements was an exploit that sooner or later had to leave the game.

For the fifth time this thread is NOT a debate about whether stacking should have been kept, or anything related to the dev's current decision on stacking, whatsoever. What's done is done and I am not looking to debate the decision that was made. I am only looking to provide clarity as to why the exploit itself was used so commonly throughout the universe.

 

I agree with you that its currently possible to make decent designs that have good performance. My gripe, is that its still cube meta. And cube meta has its own gameplay problems that have been explored many times in the past, for PvP. Do note specifically that most of this thread is about atmospheric craft only as virtually none of the restrictive mechanics that would cause you to build a cube apply to space-only craft.

 

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And so the race of the one who makes the stacking more and more compact started. And it's not about beauty.

 

This is correct and I'm pretty sure you're agreeing with my actual initial point, you're just speaking it differently. As I stated, stacking allowed for a smaller surface area to generate larger thrust metrics. This helps to reduce cross-section, and increase maneuver/accel/decel. So while yes there were uses for stacking in PvP, I am currently ignoring that as a specific topic because it will attract degenerates in here to shitpost. Regardless, their reasons for using stacking still amount to the exact same thing that someone would use it in say, an atmospheric hauler for. Better performance from a smaller rear surface area of the ship.

What I am positing is that your ships performance shouldn't be directly tied to the rear surface area of the ship. Rather it should be based on how much space in the craft as a whole, you have dedicated to your engines and performance elements.

But as demonstrated, in a rocket-type design, it's impossible to utilize any meaningful space inside the craft, since you only get about the bottom 6 to 8 metres to place elements in. Everything above it will be obstructed. It's fairly limiting on creativity.

 

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If you give people more powerful engines, they will not install them less, for the most part they simply replace 50-100 current engines with 50-100 more powerful engines in order to drive more and this is a fact. If there is no framework, people always want more and more .. But there are limitations, both technical and balance.

 

Yes, and I agree with you which is why in the very first suggestion I specifically state:
"Let's say we were given a way to use more volume of space towards the center of the craft, to produce thrust or fight-control. Let the maximum volume of this new "thrust space" be inversely proportional to the surface area of the face at the thrust angle."
This is a logical limiter and in case you don't understand what that means judging by your response, it means that the more surface area at the back of the craft that you use, the less area toward the center you get. Sort of like a cube where you can change its aspect ratio but never its total volume.

 

This is not "making engines more powerful", it's just allowing you to get similar performance from a ship that would be shaped like a rocket, as to what you could expect from a wide flat hauler or a cube. The difference being that you sacrifice a larger amount of the space you could use for anything else.

 

Quote

And the fact that you have to install wings and donate space is reasonable, this is the balance .. look for a combination of equipment that suits your goals and objectives as much as possible, taking into account the engineering design of the hull for this.

 

This is just proof that you didnt read my OP. I never mentioned anything about changing wings or it being "unfair" that we need to use them? The only mention I made of wings was specifically in the context of a rocket-shaped ship, where your potential options for placement are very far and few between. Again an example of the current mechanics being limiting on creativity.

 

My first suggestion itself actually stands to increase overall balancing between all craft designs of virtually all types, since having the total amount of thrust you can produce being tied to volume instead of surface area with an upper maximal limit - allows for craft with smaller surface areas to more adequately compete with large craft with higher surface areas, but in different ways. See my example about haulers considering the type of cargo they are hauling compared to how their ship is built.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

1 hour ago, NQ-Pann said:

The forums are for everyone. 

For everyone, sure, but this thread has a purpose and a specific topic at hand. This person's replies make it evident that they have not even read the original post, since his replies pertain to a completely different topic, one that was not and is not being discussed here. (Stacking being an exploit and that he thinks it should be removed immediately with no grace period)

 

So I can just post in random threads that have specific topics, about my cats or start bringing up topics that have nothing to do with the discussion?

If that is the case this is a useless discussion medium as there is no way to keep things productive, and I don't think I'll be using it any further.

 

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

8 hours ago, FerroSC said:

*Elements Stacking is a bug, there’s no way around it. As a bug, especially one generating a lot of gameplay imbalance, it has to disappear at some point. *

NQ Dev announcement, 20 Sept 2021

Yeah, do you have a point?
This thread is about why stacking was used by players, and ways of alleviating those reasons.
This thread is not about stacking itself or any discussion related to keeping it around.

Take your personal gripes and whines elsewhere, not in my constructed feedback thread. This is the last time I will warn you, every further post you make here will be reported.

[NQ contradicts their own Code of Conduct with new construct announcement.]

Go ahead and use one in PvP then lmk how it works out for you, nothing stopping you apparently so why not?

[NQ contradicts their own Code of Conduct with new construct announcement.]

Stacked elements will not work as of the Demeter patch going live (The patch after Ares). Thats at most maybe another 3 or 4 months out. In the meantime, you still can't use them at all in PvP. Quit your whining and go play something else if you're that salty about it.

No one is at an advantage from this, at most all you could do is haul something in the meantime, whoopie. Such benefits, much gainz, wow.
You're forgetting that all those people also have to figure out what they're going to do about a new ship, in the meantime. So it's not really an "advantage" so much as it is a give and take.

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

There is no unfair advantage here. Don't saltpost in my constructive feedback thread, just because I used logic to actually counter your ragethread.

[NQ contradicts their own Code of Conduct with new construct announcement.]

DU as a game, markets itself as a persistent, single-shard universe sandbox.

 

The persistent part kinda goes out the window when you just delete things players made willy-nilly, and that's what people got upset about. So they clarified and said that no automatic deletion would take place, only if you push the envelope. For now, the constructs are allowed to exist for persistence - Yet they will still be largely non-functional what with all their elements being disabled or obstructed.

Can you explain to me, how that is a bad thing, in any way shape or form? How does this negatively impact you? It doesn't. It only positively impacts those who may be around you.

[NQ contradicts their own Code of Conduct with new construct announcement.]

i think you should re-think your ragepost. specifically the part that says:
 

Quote

and will allow people to keep their unfair advantage in PvP

 They clearly and specifically stated, in the very announcement you clearly saw and read because you already mentioned that you know they are backtracking a bit on their initial decision:
 

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we will limit the Construct deletion to Constructs with stacked Elements which meet both of the following requirements: • The Construct has been involved in PvP after Ares release. • The involved Construct has also been reported to the Customer Support which will address the situation accordingly.

Construct deletion will only happen in the case that the said Construct with stacked Elements has been reported for participating in PvP (and proof has been found on our side).

 

So you won't find anyone PvP'ing in stacked ships and if you do, report them and their ship goes poof. I'm willing to bet that if you get your salad tossed by someone using a stacked ship, and you report them, NQ will probably fix your ship for you if you ask nicely. NQ are cool like that. Stop being such a whiner.

[@NQ you need to provide a warning/tool to notify users before deleteing constructs for element overlapping!]

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you need to provide a warning/tool to notify users before deleteing constructs for element overlapping

They did its called discord, you clearly saw it cause you are here talking about it

[Analysis of Element Stacking Popularity and Potential Methods of Alleviation]

In wake of the removal of Element Stacking, I feel it is necessary to discuss the impediments placed on builders by the current design of the element and voxel systems.

Specifically, I would like to pinpoint the why it is that players so heavily used and depended on this bug, and the repercussions of its removal.
At the end, I will discuss a few potential options for alleviating these symptoms. Feel free to post your own if you have any ideas.

This can also stand as a response to:

Whereby Deckard has posited the possibility of buffing engine output. However, my response is a little on the long side, so I decided it should get it's own thread.

 

Why stack elements?

The reason is obviously based around performance. It allowed essentially for a smaller surface-area on the rear of the construct, to provide a larger amount of thrust.

The issue, is slightly more complex than it seems on the surface. Let's think about what this means. I have provided a few poorly-drawn visuals to aid the discussion-point.
 

In the attached image, the blue box is the core space, the black represents the voxel of the construct, and the orange boxes represent areas where elements can be placed.

Assume each core has the same x and y cross sections. Core 1 is a cube, and Core 2 is a tall box, longer on only the z axis.

 

Note that Core 1 and 2 are diagrams of the current possible areas where elements could be placed, in a given core space, under the current mechanics.

This is due to the obstruction mechanics in combination with the limited ability of engines, and lack of engine customization, specifically when it comes to form-factor.

Because of obstruction, maximum thrust, is currently proportional to the amount of flat surface area at the rear of the construct, and because the cross section is simply a box, there's no reason not to use the extra space you have already taken a huge performance penalty for.

This is why haulers and anything that flies in-atmosphere, is usually flat and rectangular, or box-shaped. Anything else is really quite wasteful under current mechanics.

 

Core 1, is the current meta for an atmospheric hauler. (borg cube is back)

Core 2, is a perfect example of a ship that is at a severe disadvantage performance-wise, under current mechanics. If you wanted the ship to fly nose-first, as in toward the upper part of the image, there is minimal space in the rear for the placement of engines. In case that wasnt bad enough, you still need to sacrifice some of that space to wings, as they cannot be placed in the upper portion of the craft due to being obstructed by the engines at the rear.

 

So, what can be done about this? (opinion time)

 

Let's say we were given a way to use more volume of space towards the center of the craft, to produce thrust or fight-control. Let the maximum volume of this new "thrust space" be inversely proportional to the surface area of the face at the thrust angle. (the bottom face, on Core 3 and 4)

 

Core 3 is what the current meta would look like, post this change.

Core 4 is what the disadvantaged "rocket" like ship, would look like after this change.

 

The performance looks a lot better for the slimmer Core 4, and it is now able to compete with and easily out-maneuver Core 3, as should be the case. Because of the additional space used by the engines to achieve this, there is less space to be used for cargo and a cockpit. This might cause the hauler, to consider what they are hauling - large, wide constructs might be better at moving lots of really light things, while ships with a "rocket"-like profile, would be better equipped for hauling small quantities of really heavy things.

 

Overall, I think this would go a long way toward eliminating the cube-meta and making ship builds more varied, allowing for more creativity and uniqueness between build styles.

 

Another option, could be to further refine the "cross-section" metric and the related aerodynamics calculations for constructs. I believe this option would have a similar effect to the above on builds, depending upon how it was done. I do not know the systems complexity so I fail to have an idea of what could be done to improve it.  Perhaps simply having it be higher resolution than a simple box.

What do you think? Did I ramble? I'd love to hear what you all think of the current atmospheric hauler meta and the nuances to ship design.

I'd especially love to hear from you if you're a ship builder. What do you think about the current mechanics? Do you feel yourself being forced towards building a cube? Let me know!

[AvA ideas]

https://corexbox.com/the-terminator-of-fps-hacks-ai-cheating-tool-exposed/

https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/14607/machine-learning-undetectable-hack-console-end-online-fps

 

With the current goings-on in the world - Emerging tech like AI becoming more prominent and accessible to the average player - I think putting AvA into DU anytime within the next year or two would be a foolish move. There are many people speculating that FPS games and anything point-and-shoot could become an entirely obsolete game-model, because there's no longer any possible way to ensure fair play and that you have human versus human combat taking place. In most FPS games currently available, around 10% are currently not even real players, they are bots or AI programs playing the game autonomously.

These "hacks" or Bots (they are bots, there is no real "hacking" required since nothing is injected into the game client) are completely undetectable for the simple reason that they use screen-capture to see the game world the exact same way a player would. All the bot does is send input signals to the HID drivers (your keyboard and mouse). It looks no different than a real player, aside from their ability to react.

Some form of AvA that is *not* point-and-shoot might be something that could be considered. But aside from that I think that until a viable solution to this problem is found, AvA should be scrapped entirely or at least put on a very long, indefinite hold. Allow NQ some time to observe what ultimate solutions bigger comapnies like Activision and Take Two come up with to solve this problem.

Post-mortem edit:
Right now, Battlefield 2042's only "solution" to this problem was to kill the official online servers in favor of what they're calling Portal - Which is basically just a private server browser. So the only way a major company like Activision can see to fix this problem, is to quite literally get rid of official online servers and replace them with local private servers where players can ban whoever they want, if they suspect someone of hacking/botting.

Activision, with their millions of dollars, has looked this problem over and ended up admitting this was not one they could solve. I think that should really drive home how cautious we should be with this, because it could quite literally destroy the game.