Mitigations and Detections
Polar aims to detect every slight player behaviour abnormality that may be advantageous to a suspect. Below is a list of checks Polar contains.
- Auto Clicker
Polar is able to determine unrealistic click patterns
- Heuristics
Polar analyses player behaviour in combat to detect anomalies
- Invalid Protocol
Polar analyses packets to detect anomalies and irregularities
- Movement
Polar is able to detect any movement abnormality and apply mitigations as needed
- Tick Speed
Polar is able to accurately detect and mitigate time-based cheats
- Inventory
Polar is able to detect any behaviour that interacts with inventories in a suspicious way
- World Interaction
Polar is able to accurately detect and mitigate any world-based cheats, such as Scaffold
- Latency Abuse
Polar is able to prevent cheaters from gaining an unfair advantage through network pauses and other methods of connection tampering
What are mitigations?
Mitigations are limitations that are applied to a player instead of a kick or ban. This will make it harder for the cheater to move, fight or interact. Cloud checks might issue a delayed kick or ban after a random amount of time.
Types of mitigations
Movement mitigations are applied when a player is failing a movement check. Polar mitigation strategies include velocity adjustment, hit cancellation, setbacks and others.
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Combat mitigations are applied when a player is using a combat-related cheat or if they've failed a Heuristic check.
There are different types of combat mitigations, but the most common are damage reduction and range reduction.
If a player is detected by Polar Cloud, mitigations will be applied to the player until the player is kicked or banned.
Frequently asked questions
- A player's movement was mitigated, yet they are not cheating
Mitigation notifications have to be taken with a grain of salt.
Polar may adjust a player's position whenever they have glitched in a block or if a movement event was cancelled by a 3rd party plugin (such as WorldGuard). This does not indicate that a player is cheating.
It is also possible for false positives to occur due to bugs, even though these are rare.
- Does Polar issue punishments (bans/kicks)?
Movement and reach abnormalities do not account to punishable VL and are mitigated instead. The suspected cheater is simply prevented from executing their movement/hit.
Other checks such as Heuristics, however, do not mitigate a suspect's actions, but account for violation level.
Upon reaching a certain violation level, the anticheat automatically punishes the suspect. Violation levels cannot be adjusted in config and are optimized out of the box.
- Can I adjust the leniency of the movement check?
Yes, this is possible and can be adjusted in the configuration. Polar has 5 leniency levels:
SEVERE - zero tolerance for movement abnormalities, may cause undesired mitigations
MODERATE - similar to SEVERE, but provides a tiny margin of error
BALANCED - rare undesired mitigations, but may create small movement bypasses
PERMISSIVE - significantly reduces undesired mitigations, but may create movement bypasses
LENIENT - the risk of undesired mitigations is greatly reduced, but it may result in significant bypasses
For minigame servers, we recommend to have a moderate tolerance for abnormalities. For Survival or Factions servers we recommend to have a balanced leniency.
- 'Fighting suspiciously' alerts
These alerts indicate that the suspect has failed a combat or Heuristic check.
The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.
- 'Clicking suspiciously' alerts
These alerts indicate that the suspect has unrealistic clicking patterns and may be using an auto clicker.
The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.
- 'Looting items suspiciously' alerts
These alerts indicate that the suspect is looting inventories (such as chests) in an unnatural or impossible way.
The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.
- 'Suspicious game protocol' alerts
These alerts indicate that the suspect is sending illegitimate packets or that their client isn't following the vanilla protocol correctly.
The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.
- 'Building suspiciously' alerts
These alerts indicate that the suspect is bridging in an unnatural or impossible way.
The alert accounts to the suspect's punishable violation level and may cause them to be punished.