Blogs Thoughts on Cheating in Multiplayer Games

infinite awesome is spelled incorrectly. Infinite FAIL

 

Nih... so it is. My bad, I'm at work on my lunch hour so my cheese sarnie takes up a large percentage of my thinking power >.<

 

I used to cheat In counter strike, with my friends, and they knew it. They would be walking by the pool and I appeared from a wall. It was mor for the laughs of me being a ghost, or everyone flying without gravity or taking friction off. Anyway if we played fair and squar I used to 5x the amount of frags they did altogether.

 

Unfortunately from what I have seen everybody does cheat on MW2. It doesn't seem to be as tightly integrated with VAC as the source engine games are and doesn't seem to enforce some type of sv_pure 2 mode which most TF2 servers these days run.

 

I started playing MW² a few weeks ago and although there often are outcries of " ### cheats! ### aimbot! ### hax!" and so on, I rarely have personnaly witnessed clear cases of cheating.

Truth be told, at first I thought there was a lot of cheating going on, but now that I start to know the maps pretty thoroughly and I've unlocked most of the perks / weapons and upgrades, I realize that a lot of those times when I thought the kill was shoddy were in fact just good knowledge and skill.

Nowadays, I even get people screaming that I'm wallhacking/aimboting whatever while I juste use ninja pro, a good headset and FMJ for exemple.

So, no, I don't say there is no cheating going on, I've seen some people who just chain headshooting people from half a map over, or grenading / tubing when there was positively no legitimate reason to do so, but it doesn't seem that rampant to me.

As for the motivation of the cheating I guess it's the same that push people who steal... I can't really say since I guess using cheats removes all the fun of most games... kinda like shooting rats in a barrel...

 

From what I have seen, very few people cheat on MW2. There are the occasional stat pushers that come on in pairs, one person killing the other repeatedly and then pushing the nuke button, but that is fairly rare now. It's pushing stats but is it cheating? They aren't modifying any code, they're just not playing the same game you are.

Actual cheats like wallhack or aimbot, I've not seen more than a handful in 300+ hours of MW2.

 

Seriously?? You count bunny hopping as cheating? Back when dolphin diving was being used, I would agree with you but now?
Next time, I will make sure to stand very still so you can shoot me.

Running a cham or hack is a great blight on gaming but HOW IS jumping CHEATING again???

 

I have to admit its great fun teabagging cheats especially if said cheat hates being teabagged that fact alone makes it more fun

 

You know the funny things is that a lot of low class players accuse everyone of hacking. It' like hey, your better then me, you must be hacking.
I was accused of hacking so often in Crysis that at least 2 clan members left.
If someone is flying around the map in a FPS game, call them a hack, but until you know they are hacking for sure, assume it's possible someone has more skill then you.
I think the majority of people know that hackers are losers, so there is no way you can help them understand that what they are doing is wrong.

 

Sorry to quote such a long post, but you have hit the nail so very squarely on the head in my opinion.

The problem with the internet is that it is full of real people, and just as in real life a lot of people are idiots. I am afraid it is a social disease that can not be solved by anti cheat systems.

With regards to the technical elements, when a game is produced with multiplayer as a major component then it should be a design priority from day one to code the game with anti-cheating in mind.

I can not believe that technically speaking it is unsolvable, it merely requires the appropriate resources to be dedicated to it.

 

For me the worst aspect of cheaters is that:
If you are much better then the "average" player every one thinks automatically your are cheating. Especially when you use "non standard tactics" and methods of winning people have not seen before.

 

Like tracing people through walls and turning to look straight at someone who was silently approaching. xD Sorry couldn't help but finish off your post.

 

we used to run a german made admin mod.. there was an alliance setup (cs server admins mostly) that concentrated on improving the anti cheat detection in the mod itself

the guy who wrote it had aimbot detection written where if a person was so far off the mark before firing a headshot- or any shot really it would trip and he would be kick banned automatically

the problem with that was.. some really good players- including myself were getting caught on occasion because we would flick shoot a lot.. so I suggested we put in a counter over the sensitivity tweak he already had in it

it worked so well.. could almost leave the server without an admin to police- so let's say a guys good and he can do 180's and get headshots.. it would flag- now if he did that 4 or 5 times (however many the admin wanted to set), then the server would auto kick ban his key and alert everyone

the chances of someone pulling off these shots to trip the detector over 4 times a game was very slim and we considered it a good way to catch aim bots.. I'm not sure what they run today- but that used to work well.. I know what your talking about.. I used to stick to my own servers because I'd get banned and wasn't cheating

it's been like that for quite awhile.. admins in servers can serve a role still in catching the wall hackers.. remember punkbuster had a way to capture screenshots of a players screen- so the player would be kick and temp banned by an admin.. could review his screens later for a permanent.. what a pain in the ass though

 

I have never cheated online and never will. I can't understand the point and have quite a lot of personal hatred against all the damn idiots who have ruined the fun from a match over the years.

That said, luckily it isn't such a huge problem if you just choose a good server with admins and/or vote kick. In MW2 this obviously won't work, but the online of that game is going to suck anyway even without cheaters,so just switch it to something else.

I also share some hatred towards the idiots who keep calling everyone better than them cheaters. Also the admins who've KB'd me for wallhacking.

 

my personal theory is that a large number of gamers are literally terrified of dying in a game
this explains many mp gaming behaviours such as camping, sniping and cheating

 

You don#t have to, you want to.
ONLY YOU know you're cheating the bus company when all thirteen of you ride but to an outsider you look like just one person.

I've got voices in my Head! and they don't like me

 

Came across a server in Pirates, Vikings and Knights II that would automatically kick people who were banned from a certain amount of other servers. Ran a little check on a person's Steam ID I suppose. Myself and two friends try to join... 10 seconds later only one is still in the server.

 

oh yeah blacklisted keys.. I never did that to my servers- there was a universal database of keys you could add of known cheaters that was updated regularly.. if you know what your doing you don't need that

and it looks like it has the same issues with banning good players still.. surprised I would have thought they would have implemented a lot of the ideas from admin mod into other anti cheat by now.. guess some things never change

banning by key works because they have to buy another key to get back in.. not just change ips.. problem is like you just said- a legit player gets banned for whatever reason- he's lost it on other servers

 

You do have some negatives on random admin'd servers but that's not where the real advantage lies in dedicated servers. You don't go to random servers, you get some servers you know and trust on your favourites and play there. After a while you start to get to know the regs, then you might find they have a community forum/irc which you join. Then the game is even more fun as you know most of the people playing. You then meet at lans, have a pint. I still frequent forums for games I stopped playing years ago just cause I know everyone there.

All of this is missing from MW2, it's more then just cheat protection, it's taken the soul out of gaming.

 

Yes, that's what I do, I have my list and I play on them.

On the other hand, it's not what your typical CoD player does - they click join game and want to be in a game, able to do whatever they want - they're casual gamers, and they form the bulk of CoD sales - it's one of the reasons why matchmaking is used so much on consoles.

Some dedicated server games are different - in BFBC2 you aren't allowed to limit the use of (say) the Carl Gustav in ranked matches, and there are all sorts of rules to prevent stat padding and the like - server owners or gsps can lose their licenses/servers if they flaunt the rules, and this is good. Nevertheless, for the casual player who just clicks play on the lowest ping server with people in (me to an extent in some games) and who wants a no-holds-barred match, the way that admins are allowed to basically just remove anyone they want for any reason they want is a pretty large barrier for numerous people I know.