Blogs Thoughts on Cheating in Multiplayer Games

I can have complex opinions without being a hypocrite, thankyouverymuch.

...actually, this isn't even a complex opinion.

Cheating in singleplayer if you want : Fine, because only you are affected. Distasteful to some, but ultimately down to personal choice and actually occasionally useful.

Playing in a server of cheaters : Fine, because everyone is doing it together and that's the point. I.e. making human pyramids or just goofing around.

Cheating in a normal server : Annoying and stupid, because everyone else is trying to play fairly and you end up ruining the game for the majority.

Don't see how it's that hard to understand, frankly.

 

Wait.... they have dedicated servers now?

 

Spot on Joe,

I often cheat in single player games for two reasons:

1, I have never been a very good gamer, especially in situations where tricky parts have meant repeaig a large portion of that level or whatever. I have been known to give up entirely on a game I was previously enjoying due to getting stuck at some point.

2, I prefer the story to a challenge. For example, I used god mode pretty much all the way through Fallout 3 simply because I wanted to see all the story and everything else the game had in it without having to repeat any parts (see point number 1)

Cheating on a server where everyone else is and just doing things for S*&ts and giggles is fine, the whole point of playing games is to have fun and if that is fun and nobody is hurt/at a disadvantage then that has to get two thumbs up from me.

Chating in a multiplayer game where people are not using cheats however, is not on simply because it is unfair to those who want to play on a level field.

Having said all this, especially my bit about cheating in a single player game, what really annoys me is an attitude I often see in discussions about this topic and that is those people who insist that unless I play a game EXACTLY how they play it, be that no cheats or maximum-ultra-bleeding-eyeballs difficulty setting (for the challenge ) then I cannot possibly get as much enjoyment out of it as they can. It is something that has moved me away from a lot of multiplayer gaming, both things like MW2 and MMOs.

 

I do map and mod games. However, I never remember using any of my abilities to alter SP or MP game play. Not even playing on LAN at our parties with friends. There was never anything hidden so to speak. We always just "played" the game.
And the only way you'll know for sure if everybody has the same cheats is to be in the same room with them. And indeed I have been on many servers that do have cheats but not everybody does. This hurts the people who don't. I don't cheat and never had but to condone it isn't right IMO. Cheating ( other than monetary gains ) is probably one of the major factors in not allowing dedicated servers. Now the corporations want to run them. So far I don't see them doing any better at controlling cheats than you or I could. But I bet "we" could ban them quicker than what's being done now. Sorry to insult you but after many years of IDIOTS screwing with your games it really pisses me off to see a moderator say " AHhhh cheats, YES, they're ok.

 

Was this you?

 

The game designers try to get the games to be as close to reality as they can have you ever tried to hop while carrying a heavy weapon and ammunition, not to mention your backpack and what ever other equipment you have. Get real m8 hopping to avoid being killed in a game is lame and shows a complete lack of skill and no sense of fair play,and yes ive heard the there is no fair play in war argument for hopping rabbits that dont wash with me as I said try hopping with a heavy load of weaponry not possible I can assure you

 

too many cheats on GRID, i left it a long time ago, to go into real sim racing. I'm sure SIMBIN games are even easier to hack than Codemasters, but it does seem that the sim nature of the game puts potential cheaters off. You just have to deal with crashers and idiots - a staple of any online racing game.

cheating doesn't do anything but enrage people, and i'm sure the "fun" as they would put it, is in getting the reaction from people when they realise they can't beat you. Swearing, shouting or even telling them the ins and outs of why cheating is bad just fuels their laughter.

One solution. Don't even tell them you know, just leave and find another server. Not even worth trying to drum up support for a kick in the chat lobby, it really isn't worth it. Leave them there, go somewhere else.

 

Refer to my post

 

I never encounter a cheater in my single player games unless it is me after trying to get past a stage for the 60th time.

Back in the days I played European leagues TFC from 1998 till 2004 with my clan. Never noticed any cheaters. (or I did not care) On our own servers we left out the sniper character. What we enjoyed the most was TFC football and TFC puzzle mods. We invited other clans and most of the time these games lasted for 8 tot 9 hours straight from evening to morning just laughing our socks of. those where the days I can say.

I do not care anymore about MP games although sometimes i do play L4D1 and 2. I'm more a singleplayer guy nowadays. Must be the age or something....

 

Your argument is great because it clearly highlights the deficiencies in the typical cheaters mind.

I'm not challenging anything you say, by the way, it's all correct; just offering a mature/reasoned perspective on it, as you clearly are unable to do so.

Also, in RL there are indeed cheats, and you'll notice when you grow up and come across these people that they generally don't get that far relative to their counterparts in the same environment. The reason? Never underestimate the power of cheated people in redressing the balance in real life.

In the gaming world, cheats get away because they can, and can't be traced, and most mechanisms to deal with them don't work.

imo, cheats are just people that are weaker than the rest of us on many levels.

They deserve pity as much as a server ban.

May I recommend what I do when I come across a blatant cheat?

I hawk said player like a bad fart for the rest of the game. It's a game in itself, trust me! It's so much fun changing sides, finding said noob, and just standing in front of him for the whole match. Takes some effort too, so there's still an element of challenge involved, and the reward of seeing said chump going nuts after a while and swearing etc... makes it all worth it.

 

Seriously, no, most games are nowhere near close to reality and are not in any way designed to be. You're deluding yourself if you think they are. Play BF2 or CoD and then play ARMA II and you'll notice a clear difference in how realistic they are/aren't.

If you want to argue semantics - all of the really realistic games I've seen have not so much as had a jump function in the game.

Bunny hopping is irritating, but it's no more than using the game engine to your advantage - rather like CoD last stand. Compare this to an aimbot, where you're just letting a computer play for you, and you can hopefully see why bunny hoppers and dolphin divers are probably not the target of this blog post.

In terms of 'complete lack of skill' again, skill is definable, but most of the high end competition players do use bunny hopping - and bunny hopping isn't some magical thing that places you far above your abilities - that's what hacks do.

 

And you wonder why we all made such a fuss when they didn't allow dedicated servers or proper admin controls in MW2 - as I remember you didn't think it was that important?

Well it's not exactly a surprise is it?

In every game you can get cheats. The best solution is to have some favourite servers which are well admin'd where the cheats get banned fast. Only in MW2 you can't have your own servers, people can't add them as favourites, the admin commands were missing too. You were told that the anti cheat software would *catch* all the cheats. Yer, right. It's a cheats paradise.

 

The only time bunny hopping annoys me is when it's done to reduce hit-boxes (I'm looking at you BF2/dolphin diving)

There is nothing better than gunning down said bunny-hopper and promptly tea-bagging their dead lifeless corpse..... mwuahahahaa

 

Killing cheaters in-game gives the best kind of satisfaction.

 

Spot on.

There's not a single bit of similarity between jumpers/divers and cheats.

If you can jump repeatedly and dive then IT'S BECAUSE THE GAME WAS DESIGNED TO LET YOU DO SO!

Complaining about this is no different to complaining about getting shot in an MP FPS game!!

It's ridiculous.

Furthermore, I don't jump/dive as to be totally honest with myself, I find it takes a fair bit of effort and thought to change my game style to d so. Also, given I normally end matching these players without jumping/diving, I'm not that bothered if one gets the better of me now and then.

If the game lets you do it, it's fair.

Unless of course said aspect of the game is clearly flawed and everyone/most agree.

By that last point I mean certain games with user-generated maps, normally, where certain balances and checks can be missed by amateur modders.

For example, some maps in Arma 2 allow enemy players to spawn camp home-bases in conquest/hold location maps when they should have a large enough perimeter boundary to prevent this.

 

Not entirely true - VAC would work fine - if it banned instantly. If cheat detection removed and blocked said player within a matter of minutes of them turning their hacks on, it would remove the vast majority of cheaters, who largely get banned anyway (though after a month).

What's worse than having your game ruined by a hacker is having your game ruined by an admin who thinks you're a hacker. It's happened before, and I'm sure that we've all had our games ruined by admins who just ban people because they feel like it, or they didn't speak the same language, or etc

Noone said that VAC would catch all the cheats - security is a journey, not a destination remember - but there are some deficiencies which mean that the banning process is not so legit player friendly as it could be.

 

I've never been strong at FPSs, but I'd rather be a poor gamer with low stats than a poor gamer with high stats who hacked his way to the top. If you feel the need to cheat for the sake of a few numbers, you need a new perspective on life. Usually my stats are low, but I still feel proud when I kill someone or progress to the next rank, knowing that I don't need cheats to do that.

 

I don't care anymore... I log onto our TDM CoD4 server, Log into Rcon, slightest notion of stupidity from someone and they're kicked. They come back and hack some more... they're banned simple.

While my clan is very much all forms of hacking, I despise logging onto certain clans servers because the admins will sit there and ignore the PUBLIC's plee's of hackers and even kick me for saying it publically... So I return armed with my own bag of intellegence tricks and troll the crap out of the admin's until a point where they have some strange internet disease, believe me I'm good at it. Got someone arguing with me about the M4 Carbine the otherday, until he realised I was trying to describe a motorway...

Either way, I'll stick to joining games where my clan mates are, introducing myself as the loving caring anti-hack-christ and dominate all cheaters and hackers with my t-bag of infinate awesome.

Sound good?

 

I hardly bother with MP at all anymore and would never buy a game for its MP element. If I do play then it would HL1 or Team Fortress Classic

I thought the game got a touch more interesting when you get to hell. I was, however, massively disappointed that I had saved up my ammo for hell, only to have it stripped away in transit. FML.

 

The thing is, different people define "cheating" in different ways. What one person calls as cheating, someone else just calls using game mechanics cleverly, and another thinks it's just normal.

Take for example the old bunny-hopping and dolphin-diving tactics in Battlefield 2. Some servers outlawed the practise, as demonstrated further up this thread, and kicked/banned people for using it. Other servers said using grenade launchers was cheating. Some even kicked you for using guns when they were having "knife-only" sessions, whereas others said "knife-only" was cheating. All are different variations on the rules of the game and what could be defined as cheating.

Now I present myself as an example. I'm 37 and I'm just starting out in Battlefield Bad Combat 2. I'm barely rank 8 so I don't have the unlocks that higher ranked players have. Their weapons do more damage than mine, their reactions are faster than mine, consequently my K/D ratio is less than 1. Would it be so wrong for me to use something to even up the odds, to help me play the game better?

I could upgrade my HDD - I could install the game on a SSD, so I would be one of the first to load each level, so I could get the tank or helo or get to a flag before the enemy. I could get a Killer NIC, thereby improving my reaction time through lowering my latency. I could improve my CPU, graphics card and speakers so I'd have better visuals and sound, making it easier to pinpoint the enemy using their shadows or footsteps. There's a lot I could do to improve my game using hardware. Would this be considered cheating?