Built-In Anti-Cheat Toggle

[SoraShiunin]

Feature request

Short description

Option in config to disable the built-in anti-cheat of mobarena.

Implementation details

Could be a global option to toggle the anti-cheat(preferable and easier) or a per-arena toggle. It helps alot with the compatibility with certain plugins that give Powers such as flight and such and has it as a main gameplay feature of the server and is included in mobarenas.

[garbagemule]

MobArena doesn't have a centralized concept of anti-cheat, so it doesn't make sense to talk about disabling "it". Way back when MobArena was first launched, its only protective measures revolved around the arena structure, and that was mostly because I found it harder to learn WorldGuard than to just implement some form of region protection myself (the region was already there for monster containment).

Now, for this issue to ever get anywhere, we need to explore MobArena's protective measures (I won't call it anti-cheat, because not all of them have to do with cheating). Let's break it down into in-session and out-of-session categories, as well as a category for the transition phase (lobby):

In-session During an arena session, MobArena tries to keep track of the players and monsters that it manages and manipulates:

• The arena structure is protected from explosions, block breaks, and various types of block changes. This can be disabled with the protect flag in the config-file.
• Monsters that fly or wander out of the arena region get instagibbed to make sure they don't lock up the arena session.
• Players who somehow leave the arena region get kicked with the infamous "Leaving so soon?" message to make sure they don't hide out and camp for free rewards.
• Monsters can only take damage from and target players and pets in the arena to make the session "isolated" from the rest of the game world.
• Natural monster spawning in the arena region is cancelled, also for the sake of "isolation".
• If the clear wave settings are enabled, waves (and therefore rewards) don't accumulate/advance.

Out-of-session When an arena isn't running, MobArena tries to lock down the arena region so it stays clean for the next session. Not a lot happens outside sessions:

• The arena structure is protected the same way as in-session.
• Monster spawning is cancelled to prevent "pollution".

Transition phase (lobby) The glue that binds the two states together is the transition phase leading up to a session starting, i.e. the join/leave procedure and the lobby. Let's start with the steps of the join/leave procedure:

• If an exit region is set, the player is assumed to "come from" the exit warp.
• Surrounding pets owned by the player are ordered to sit to prevent them from warping into the arena with the player.
• The player is teleported to the lobby to bring them into the context where they can pick a class and ready up.
• The player's gamemode is set to survival to make sure they can take damage and not build arbitrarily and bring unwanted items into the arena.
• The player inventory is saved and then wiped to make room for class items.
• Any existing potion effects are saved and wiped to bring the player to a clean state.
• The player's flying-related flags are saved and set to false to bring the player down to the ground if they are flying and to prevent them from flying back up.
• The player's health, hunger, and level/experience are saved and then reset to bring the player to a clean state.

All of these steps are hardcoded and there is no way to manipulate them. On death/leave, the procedure is reverted by playing it back in reverse to make sure everything happens in the right (inverse) order. For the longest time, there were inconsistencies in the procedure that resulted in a lot of different kinds of inventory bugs. That's no longer the case because the procedure is well-defined and predictable. It does lock things down, though.

In the lobby, players are protected from damage and can't build or break blocks.

In the arena, upon dying/leaving, the player's inventory and cursor are cleared to prevent them from bringing arena items out of the arena.

Finally, with the addition of the join interrupt timer setting in the config-file, it is possible to prevent players from exploiting MobArena's ease-of-joining as a way to escape PvP or other tough situations.

Summary Of all the protective measures and steps MobArena takes with players and monsters, only the following can be classified as anti-cheat:

• Players can't leave the arena region without getting kicked
• Players can't have outsiders assist them, because they can't interfere with the session

If using MobArena to exploit bugs, glitches, incompatibilities is also considered cheating, we can add the following:

• Players can't bring items out of the arena, because they are wiped on death/leave
• With the join interrupt timer, players can't /ma join out of a pickle
• With the clear wave settings, players can't find a hiding spot and rack up rewards without fighting

The rest are essentially just "good form" in the spirit of making the minigame an isolated experience that doesn't interfere with the outside game world.

So with all of this in mind, does it make sense to talk about "disabling the built-in anti-cheat"?

[SoraShiunin]

I generalized but mostly I do mostly mean the anti-flight, yes, as it keeps un-flying the player. A toggle to turn that off would be great to improve compatibility with any plugin that would add gliding, flight and other things related like hooks that would use the flight flag.

I do consider anything that doesn't interact with the "player VS mob" directly more of an anti-exploit, such as the player leaving the arena area.

[SaitDev]

Just my opinion, allow flying while fighting pure vanilla mobs would be so OP unless your arena is fullfill with bosses that have skills / wither / ender dragon :thinking: