[MC-190673] Spectator names in the player list do not follow team color

In previous versions, setting spectator names to white or some other color would remove the italics, this behavior is no longer the case and should be reverted. Better yet, spectator highlighting should be possible to disable entirely with a "highlightSpectators false" gamerule.

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Comments 14

Tez1010 2020-06-20T10:13:09Z

This bug is a huge problem for those of us running vanilla servers, and plays into the hands of the huge number of cheats that pervade our servers. Please revert to being able to remove the italics.

Ajay Ramjatan 2020-06-20T10:49:52Z

Confirming behaviour on 1.16 Release Candidate 1. In 1.15.X and previous versions, spectators on a team inherited the colour of the team and lose the italicized form in the tab player list.

violine1101 2020-06-20T14:15:22Z

plays into the hands of the huge number of cheats that pervade our servers

... How so? I don't see a correlation to cheating here?

Alex 2020-06-20T14:35:04Z

@violine1101 When players are able to see that a spectator is online they more cautious and harder to catch. If they have no idea that a spectator is watching them they are likely to slip up and get caught. As we don't have any robust anti-cheat that comes with vanilla Minecraft we have to resort to alternative methods. Removing the ability to hid spectators takes away our biggest advantage as vanilla server operators.

Tez1010 2020-06-23T08:56:53Z

Thank your for raising this to important. This issue is really important to all the vanilla servers.

4 more comments

boq 2020-07-02T09:03:04Z

I doubt it was ever effective way of hiding spectators, this is how it looked in 1.14:

[media]

Notice that slight transparency? It has been there since 2014.

Alex 2020-07-02T09:45:30Z

While it's true that the color difference is visible, its much better than the current italics. Setting the team color to gray or white helps close the color gap and if you have a bunch of players with gray names the spectators tend to visually disappear. Someone looking for it will know that they are being observed but the casual cheaters will not notice.

[media]

I think the real issue is that spectators have no way to be hidden, this takes away the best tool for vanilla server admins to catch cheaters. There should be a gamerule to disable spectators from showing in the list or at least from changing their color. This might sound like a feature request but I urge you to view this as a major security issue. If you do not agree, then let's call this regression from the previous behavior where spectators with colored names do not display in italics. Thanks for looking at this, it's important to us.

Tez1010 2020-07-02T09:57:33Z

I back up everything that Alex has said above. Since Vanilla Minecraft has no inbuilt cheat protection and many ways for players to cheat, the use of spectator is a very important tool for us. It was bad enough before but the italics make it blatantly obvious when we are in spec.

Why can it not be that simply placing a spectating player in a team will use the team colours and font style just as it does for any other game mode?

We urge you to at the very least reverse the recent change, but it is really important to us that spectators are able to be discrete to combat the vast array of cheat clients and vanilla glitches/bugs that allow players to cheat.

slicedlime 2020-07-02T10:31:36Z

The title is incorrect, the team color clearly displays. The rest of the bug is a feature request, not a bug.

William 2020-07-02T10:35:53Z

If it is a feature request then please add a game rule to disable it for those of us playing vanilla. Spectator mode is a staple of catching hackers for vanilla if you make it MORE obvious then you have made OUR jobs much harder without providing a workaround.

Ajay Ramjatan 2020-07-02T13:01:50Z

I operate a busy pure vanilla server using the Mojang server jar and I confirm this issue is impeding my staff's ability to go into spectator with some degree of being incognito to catch hackers and griefers. Granted that the spectator color is slightly translucent but we were able to have staff in spectator mode be less obvious while investigating player issues. This has been so since at least Minecraft 1.8.X from 2015 and its suddenly being removed.

Austin Healy 2020-07-02T16:05:57Z

As an admin on a popular vanilla minecraft server, spectator was our easiest disguise. It wasnt perfect, sure, but now it's basically useless for what we use it the most for. All you've done by changing it is give the cheaters an advantage. The only people that would of requested spectators be easier to identify are the cheaters themselves, the rest of us would rather be completely invisible. I'd say just give us the choice on if we want spectators to be easily identified or not, even if all we can do is switch back to the slightly transparent version.

Tez1010 2020-07-02T17:43:11Z

Please, please, please reopen this. You have input here from 4 separate vanilla servers. We are really desperate that you at least reverse the italics part.

Adrian Östergård 2020-07-02T18:01:56Z

Your feedback is noted, but what you're asking for is still a feature request, and this is not a forum for discussion. Please respect the rules of the bug tracker.

If you want to discuss this further, you're more than welcome to do so over at the feedback website.