Almost two months after the arrival of Operation Twin Shells, fans are already looking forward to Year 9 Season 4. While knowing more about future operators and maps is always exciting, the player experience is also crucial. With the war against cheaters and toxicity still being well-alive, transparency is a must.
On October 25, Ubisoft released a blog post including an update regarding the game's anti-cheat, the amount of cheaters banned, and the next steps to follow. Additionally, Ubisoft also included an insight into future anti-toxicity measures.
Here's everything you need to know about Ubisoft's player protection update:
Anti-Cheat
Ubisoft's most recent blog post reports a decrease in cheating overall compared to Year 9 Season 2. While lower ranks may be safe from cheaters, the game's higher ranks (Diamond and Champion mainly) are still consistently affected by them.
We're aware that cheating continues to affect high ranked players in most cases, however with the launch of Y9S3 seeing a decrease in cheating overall compared to S2, we know that we're finding the results needed to provide safer matches, more often.
According to Ubisoft's report, following the release of Y9S3, cheats were "down for nearly an entire week." Players also felt this, as Ubisoft's team noticed a "stark decrease in cheater reports being submitted."
With the launch of the Siege Cup on October 9, Ubisoft has admitted having "implemented further security fixes ready for Siege Cup, to help us maintain a fair and competitive environment, which is a top priority for us."
Additionally, Ubisoft released an update regarding the QB System. In the report, Ubisoft admitted the team is testing the next QB System Expansion prototype. Unfortunately, no more details have been shared about it.
Ubisoft's anti-cheat report for October 2024 also included a look at the Mouse and Keyboard detection system on console, also known as MouseTrap.
According to Ubisoft, the most recent update released to MouseTrap has increased its "detection performance" while also reducing the "false positives." The team is now running tests for "devices that aren't yet being recognized."
Finally, the team is also working on releasing PC-Console crossplay in Year 9 Season 4, a feature that Ubisoft wants to include in MousteTrap so confirmed Mouse and Keyboard players are placed into PC matchmaking.
Anti-Toxicity
Ubisoft is working on improving the user's experience while using the Reputation System and a deep update will be introduced in Year 9 Season 4. According to Ubisoft:
The focus of this system is to fulfil and stay true to our core pillars: transparency, understandability, and clarity. We know the system is already very complex, and we want to be sure to control its fairness before adding additional parameters, and so our mindset for this refresh is to "do less but do better", resulting in a system that's easier to understand and interact with.
The update expected to be released in Year 9 Season 4 will completely change the Reputation System as we know it. However, the Reputation System will remain in its beta phase until, at least, after Year 9 Season 4.
The changes that will be introduced in the next season will stop "drastic standing drops" from happening. Therefore, changes to the parameters used will be introduced, including the following:
- ACTIVE PLAYLISTS: Ranked, Standard and Quick Match (leaving a Quick Match will not impact Standing).
- REPORTS: Unverified reports will NOT have an effect on your Standing, only YOUR actions will.
- PENALTIES: Reverse Friendly Fire (RFF) and Abandonment Penalties will continue to be handled in the same way.
- COMMUNICATION: Negative communication-related actions will cause a player to be automatically muted for a predetermined number of matches.
- UI: We are redesigning the Reputation Center to further provide all information related to Standings and any problematic behaviors.
- STANDING IMPACTS: Impacts based on your Standing alone will only go live once the Reputation System leaves BETA
Automated Text Chat Moderation
In Year 9 Season 4, Ubisoft will introduce Automated Text Chat Moderation. This means that "your in-game messages could be flagged or removed" according to Ubisoft's "acceptance threshold."
While this could start a discussion about what's good to type in the chat, Ubisoft is encouraging players to think twice before typing.
What will the threshold be? If you're unsure, ask yourself, "is this something I'd feel comfortable saying in a room with 9 other people that I don't know?". If it's something that's going to clash with that, then the chances are it could be flagged or removed. Remember though, your messages can also have a positive impact, so you can affect your Standing this way too!
Unfair abandonment penalties
Ubisoft is also working on differentiating intended from non-intended abandons to reduce the penalties received by players who aren't purposely leaving a match.
According to Ubisoft, the team is "finding success in helping players" as it has been able to successfully "reduce the number of unfair abandonment penalties by two-thirds with our latest update."
Teamkill deactivation
In Year 9 Season 2, Ubisoft decided to deactivate the feature that kicked players who repeatedly teamkilled players in a game. In this month's report, Ubisoft included data to explain how the deactivation of this feature has affected the game:
- Quick match: +0.6% of rounds impacted by at least one teamkill.
- Standard: +0.5% of rounds impacted by at least one teamkill.
- Ranked: +0.3% of rounds impacted by at least one teamkill.
While the increase is minimal, it's still an increase. Therefore, Ubisoft has admitted to be working on "future initiatives which are focused on decreasing these numbers."
Abuse of Down But Not Out (DBNO) to remove Reverse Friendly Fire (RFF)
In Year 9 Season 3, Ubisoft decided to deactivate a trigger that would result in the removal of the Reverse Friendly Fire (RFF) after a player affected by it revived a teammate in a Down But Not Out (DBNO) state. This happened because players affected by RFF would purposely down a teammate to get rid of the penalty. According to Ubisoft's report, "the RFF activation box is now triggered for the teammate when you down them."
Privacy Mode
While the Privacy Mode is helpful for some, a large number of players use it to play under "offensive and unacceptable names."
"At the beginning of Y9S3, we updated our validation of nicknames making it much more robust, and this resulted in 12% of all nicknames in use at the time being removed from the game and reset to 'Recruit'."
Keep in mind that sending feedback to Ubisoft is crucial so the team can improve not just the game's anti-cheat but also the game's anti-toxicity features. One of the tools that players can use to report bugs and other issues is R6Fix.