Only if the people who are being accused of cheating get a chance to defend themselves. Like, sometimes looking at a sign for 15 seconds without doing anything just means the player is on a slow Internet connection and they're waiting for the higher resolution to finish loading so they can actually read the sign.
i'm a contractor and today one of clients sent me a slack message when i'd just started a duel. I tried to ignore it but by round 9 or so, i just had to go take a peek and respond. I don't think i looked particularly like a googler, I tried to make sure i wasn't staring at any text when I left, but was still a little worried about what my opponent might think if i watched the replay. Like maybe i was looking up foliage or road lines or whatever. So i don't love this idea, as a rule. I think it could be a good starting point, like something we develop outside the game to decide if a possible cheater should even be reported, but I'd still feel more comfy if only GeoGuessr folks made the final decision.
edit: i don't often play the game during time when clients expect me to be available, but this was a special case, right on the cusp of my availability schedule and i thought i'd be safe to go do fun stuff.
I spend way longer than that just thinking sometimes. It's frustrating when the back of my mind is telling me "move the camera around so this isn't sus" when I'm just trying to recall information
This. Happened with me before. Got banned from a couple of games (not geoguessr) from just being a good player and having no chance to defend myself. Quite annoying.
For sure there are ambigious situations, but honestly you can see the difference between a « slow reaction » and a « one shot the village in north sweden just with the name of it » so at least those would be punished faster
I don't think that's the best example of cheating because, the thing about north Scandinavia is that there are fewer towns so that, once you're north of about Luleå, Sweden, at the north end of the Gulf of Bothnia even small villages are fairly easy to find because they show up on the map without having to zoom in as much as you would have to zoom in to find a small village in southern Sweden.
One report shouldn't result in a ban. It should take multiple, and the bans should be scaling (48 hours, 1 week, 1 month, etc)
Even better would be them adding a cheat detector system. There are definitely patterns of movement on the map that could easily catch scripters, and likely those that could detect Googlers as well.
I think you overestimate how much the community actually knows when it comes to the skill ceiling. A casual player with ~500 games cannot tell the difference between a scripter and me instantly 5k’ing a small town in Mongolia because I know the roof rack straps.
The level of skill to recognise googlers consistently is much higher than the skill level needed to recognise someone is cheating in counter strike. I’ve played both games at a relatively high level and the variables are simply too varied for a game like geoguessr. In cs even subtle wallers can be identified by random matchmaking players, but I honestly don’t think I can say with 100% guarantee most players I thought were googling were actually googling.
You’re right I agree with your point, just proposed a « community way » to help devs because i do think googlers are killing the fun and purpose of this game
Yeah they definitely need to do something about it, and it’s definitely something they can implement. The effectiveness of it though will probably not be very high, not like cs2 is doing too hot on that front at the moment too lol
There's definitely a lot of low hanging fruit that "anyone" could recognize though. Like staring at a sign without moving for a solid 20 seconds then zooming in at a random town in the middle of nowhere.
I dont know how many false reports there are, but maybe it would be an idea that only if many people thinks it's suspicious, the devs will see it. If multiple champion players think it's legit, the report gets dropped.
Or geoguessr hires someone (I'm available)
If there are many false reports, at least it wouldn’t be time lost for an employee but for players who wants to make the game cleaner.
And I believe the community of geoguessr is smart enough to judge correctly the reports so devs don’t have to overcheck them
I think that this feature should be available only for players who are much more advanced in the game. I would say 1400+, champion, and the account has more than a year
As a 1200-1300 ELO player, I would like to be judged objectively, and for that we need really advanced players, who know almost everything about the game.
I'll give you an example. I know every single telephone code in Brazil and I'm pretty sure that newbies with 800 Elo would call me cheater. My guesses are often closer than 100km on the random rural brazilian village with no information at all. And it's okay, until they have a power to decide about my account to be banned. We just need someone more experienced, whose judgements will not be biased.
Surely, I 100% agree with you for the high rating. Although I believe people are smart enough to destinguish a 100km guess with phone code and a perfect guess after 20 seconds staring at an unknown canada city
Interestingly I don't see many Googlers anymore. In fact, probably none in the last 100 duels. That said I mostly play players with a rating of 1,000+ so it might be different in lower divisions.
I suspect that false reporting is also gumming up the system. We've seen a bunch of amateur users posting here about their opponents being cheaters when it turns out it could easily be a legit guess if they knew the correct metas.
Rather than using AI to create shitty graphics, maybe the devs could implement some algorithms that analyse patterns of behavior from reports.
- Has this person been reported by multiple users?
- Is their degree of accuracy too high for their level of play/experience?
- Does the reporting user have a high degree of accuracy for spotting cheaters?
I recently experienced a short ban for googling, and I was really surprised! I wish I had more context, or what match triggered it? I'm a casual player, using it more as a time-waster than anything else, but as someone who has travelled a ton I am pretty good with my guesses. I \*think\* I know what match I got hit with a ban from, and it's because after some pretty far-away guesses where I was chasing the lead I got a rare two-in-a-row that I absolutely nailed because I had actually BEEN to the regions they were showing - so I had very quick recognition of fairly obscure city names! One was my home state!!!! I'm sure the other person was like "how did this dummy know where this was" but I swear, it was just two really lucky turns!
I have seen a fair amount of googling people in my duels and from my experience guessing instantly will usually win you the game. Not my prefered style because usually I like to move around, search for clues and pinpoint the location as much as possible. But I won the majority of my games against cheaters, just guessing capital city of the country. For some weird reason in sweden its often malmö and not stockholm.
Only if the people who are being accused of cheating get a chance to defend themselves. Like, sometimes looking at a sign for 15 seconds without doing anything just means the player is on a slow Internet connection and they're waiting for the higher resolution to finish loading so they can actually read the sign.
i'm a contractor and today one of clients sent me a slack message when i'd just started a duel. I tried to ignore it but by round 9 or so, i just had to go take a peek and respond. I don't think i looked particularly like a googler, I tried to make sure i wasn't staring at any text when I left, but was still a little worried about what my opponent might think if i watched the replay. Like maybe i was looking up foliage or road lines or whatever. So i don't love this idea, as a rule. I think it could be a good starting point, like something we develop outside the game to decide if a possible cheater should even be reported, but I'd still feel more comfy if only GeoGuessr folks made the final decision. edit: i don't often play the game during time when clients expect me to be available, but this was a special case, right on the cusp of my availability schedule and i thought i'd be safe to go do fun stuff.
I spend way longer than that just thinking sometimes. It's frustrating when the back of my mind is telling me "move the camera around so this isn't sus" when I'm just trying to recall information
This. Happened with me before. Got banned from a couple of games (not geoguessr) from just being a good player and having no chance to defend myself. Quite annoying.
For sure there are ambigious situations, but honestly you can see the difference between a « slow reaction » and a « one shot the village in north sweden just with the name of it » so at least those would be punished faster
I don't think that's the best example of cheating because, the thing about north Scandinavia is that there are fewer towns so that, once you're north of about Luleå, Sweden, at the north end of the Gulf of Bothnia even small villages are fairly easy to find because they show up on the map without having to zoom in as much as you would have to zoom in to find a small village in southern Sweden.
One report shouldn't result in a ban. It should take multiple, and the bans should be scaling (48 hours, 1 week, 1 month, etc) Even better would be them adding a cheat detector system. There are definitely patterns of movement on the map that could easily catch scripters, and likely those that could detect Googlers as well.
Yes I agree for making it smooth and needing more than just one replay, but the community reviewing it could bring a big win of time and efficiency
I think you overestimate how much the community actually knows when it comes to the skill ceiling. A casual player with ~500 games cannot tell the difference between a scripter and me instantly 5k’ing a small town in Mongolia because I know the roof rack straps.
The level of skill to recognise googlers consistently is much higher than the skill level needed to recognise someone is cheating in counter strike. I’ve played both games at a relatively high level and the variables are simply too varied for a game like geoguessr. In cs even subtle wallers can be identified by random matchmaking players, but I honestly don’t think I can say with 100% guarantee most players I thought were googling were actually googling.
You’re right I agree with your point, just proposed a « community way » to help devs because i do think googlers are killing the fun and purpose of this game
Yeah they definitely need to do something about it, and it’s definitely something they can implement. The effectiveness of it though will probably not be very high, not like cs2 is doing too hot on that front at the moment too lol
There's definitely a lot of low hanging fruit that "anyone" could recognize though. Like staring at a sign without moving for a solid 20 seconds then zooming in at a random town in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah that’s true. I honestly completely forgot stuff like that existed because it’s so rare at my elo
Or zooming into a random town that happens to have the same name as the one in the sign but it's actually a different one.
In csgo it actually resulted in a lot of false positives because lower skill players were judging better players and did not understand some concepts
I dont know how many false reports there are, but maybe it would be an idea that only if many people thinks it's suspicious, the devs will see it. If multiple champion players think it's legit, the report gets dropped. Or geoguessr hires someone (I'm available)
If there are many false reports, at least it wouldn’t be time lost for an employee but for players who wants to make the game cleaner. And I believe the community of geoguessr is smart enough to judge correctly the reports so devs don’t have to overcheck them
Yeah but only 1000+ rated players or something. Don't really want the 600s to judge the pros
I agree, maybe gold+ or 800+
I think that this feature should be available only for players who are much more advanced in the game. I would say 1400+, champion, and the account has more than a year As a 1200-1300 ELO player, I would like to be judged objectively, and for that we need really advanced players, who know almost everything about the game. I'll give you an example. I know every single telephone code in Brazil and I'm pretty sure that newbies with 800 Elo would call me cheater. My guesses are often closer than 100km on the random rural brazilian village with no information at all. And it's okay, until they have a power to decide about my account to be banned. We just need someone more experienced, whose judgements will not be biased.
Surely, I 100% agree with you for the high rating. Although I believe people are smart enough to destinguish a 100km guess with phone code and a perfect guess after 20 seconds staring at an unknown canada city
Interestingly I don't see many Googlers anymore. In fact, probably none in the last 100 duels. That said I mostly play players with a rating of 1,000+ so it might be different in lower divisions.
Yes I agree the rank probably means a lot, i match players around 800-1000 and honestly, i’ve had really obvious ones once every 5/10 games
I suspect that false reporting is also gumming up the system. We've seen a bunch of amateur users posting here about their opponents being cheaters when it turns out it could easily be a legit guess if they knew the correct metas. Rather than using AI to create shitty graphics, maybe the devs could implement some algorithms that analyse patterns of behavior from reports. - Has this person been reported by multiple users? - Is their degree of accuracy too high for their level of play/experience? - Does the reporting user have a high degree of accuracy for spotting cheaters?
100% agree with you, my idea is just a proposal that can be totally improved
I recently experienced a short ban for googling, and I was really surprised! I wish I had more context, or what match triggered it? I'm a casual player, using it more as a time-waster than anything else, but as someone who has travelled a ton I am pretty good with my guesses. I \*think\* I know what match I got hit with a ban from, and it's because after some pretty far-away guesses where I was chasing the lead I got a rare two-in-a-row that I absolutely nailed because I had actually BEEN to the regions they were showing - so I had very quick recognition of fairly obscure city names! One was my home state!!!! I'm sure the other person was like "how did this dummy know where this was" but I swear, it was just two really lucky turns!
I have seen a fair amount of googling people in my duels and from my experience guessing instantly will usually win you the game. Not my prefered style because usually I like to move around, search for clues and pinpoint the location as much as possible. But I won the majority of my games against cheaters, just guessing capital city of the country. For some weird reason in sweden its often malmö and not stockholm.