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Is denial of Cheaters in competitive gaming, a defense mechanism?
Joker1977
Member Posts: 37
[mod edit]
I can only wonder, "Why do people deny the obvious?"
What benefit is it to them, to deny that there are more cheaters than they will ever realize?
Why insult others who point out this fact, as if they're complaining? It is not a complaint to simply say "Cheaters exist. It's a fact." yet you will be insulted by those in denial. Why?
For as long as video games have been invented, there have been cheaters.
Whether it's a gold-duping bug or buying from chinese gold farmers, players in MMORPG's have hoarded gold with little effort.
Whether it's an aim bot, wall hack, or retexturing of models, FPS games have had cheaters.
Whether it's the ever notorious Punkbuster or a custom built anti-cheat software, it is always 1 step behind cheaters.
Whether or not you ban someone, is nothing more than a joke ever since the idea of a proxy was invented. Cheaters who can recover back to their former glory with a new account, because they are cheaters and it's easy.
You cannot deny this fact.
Hell, you want to talk about cheating? Developers don't even care anymore.
Take a look at Payday 2, a game that just released. Players can literally press "INSERT" on their keyboard while in a mission, and instantly get up to level 100. A feat which often requires over 100 hours of gameplay.
Granted it's not as big of a deal as cheating in a competitive game like a MMORPG, but the inclusion of Client-Side hit detection with little verification in Planetside 2, is quite laughable. Yes, they did it to help with performance. However, cheating is quite rampant. I say this not from my own experience, but by the simple fact that certain games designed certain ways will make cheating easier: such as client-side game logic.
Yet even in "professional" tournaments, people cheat.
(Exerpt) "One team was cleared of all misconduct, three were issued warnings for unsportsmanlike conduct, and Korean team Azubu Frost was fined 20% of its winnings."
Comments
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
He has a point.
Back in my Quake days I was pretty good with the Railgun and almost every night I had to put up with people calling me a bot. There are two types of players - good players who can spot genuine cheating and bad players who assume everyone that beats them is a bot. In my experience there are orders of magnitude more of the latter which are the ones in denial.
I completely agree that banning MAC addresses would be much better than banning a changeable or spoofable IP address, it would not take very long for the cheating software to include a simple button to change your MAC address.
I fully understand cheating, and the fun or giggles you can have while cheating. However, I don't understand why cheaters in competitive games (like the FPS genre) would share their cheats. If I had to program all of that by myself, I would most likely not share it with anyone but my close friends.
Oh wait... money. I forget they probably make money from releasing the cheats. Nevermind.
What % of cheaters actually cheated and what % are the "defense mechanism" of the guy who just lost.
Cheating in mmos is about as common as lag causing a death
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I actually don't find it to be very common for people to be accused of cheating. Even when I have had or played with people who have scores like 60:2, it isn't a common complaint that they're cheating. If it is, the player simply accuses them once before rage quitting.
You're definitely right about there being a huge difference though. Good players can easily spot cheaters, because those players who are good can get utterly dominated by cheaters in a way that no real player ever could.
I can always tell if the person is a good player or a cheater, based on the extent at which they're better than me. Being someone who has played for so long and actually played against tournament players, it's a world of difference. Playing against a tournament player, you lose, but it's not a facepalm loss. In fact, a good player can actually geek them a few times even if they ultimately lose. That is because pro players are not enormously advanced beyond good players, they are just better than them by a bit, or if a great player maybe by double or triple at most.
Meanwhile, cheaters are not "twice as good" or triple the skill of a great player. They are 10x-100x faster, 10x more accurate, 10x more damaging, 10x more predicting, etc. When a great player fights a pro tourny player and loses by about 1:2, and then fights someone and loses by 0:10, it's pretty obvious. It is highly unlikely that the latter is the world's best pro player, and just happens to have never entered any tournaments.
What gets me sometimes though, are stealthy cheaters. Those who cheat, but do so intelligently so as to not get reported. They turn their cheating on/off. Sometimes you can tell, by how absolutely awful they are with their cheats off, while how amazing they are with them on. Once accused, they turn it off immediately and play normally, maybe even dying on purpose to avoid suspicion. I find it humorous sometimes when I discover how bad they actually are. "Wow, really? No wonder you cheat, lol." That, and sometimes they will tell you what program they use when you chat them up after becoming friends :P
I remember back in the 90's, everyone had cheats even if they didn't use them. If they spotted a cheater, they would turn on their cheats to compete with the cheater. It was kindof interesting, as the other cheater would usually leave because their cheats no longer gave them an advantage.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Lag is actually a lot more common than most people realize.
I remember a friend bragging about how "This server we moved to, is lag free!" and would always say things like "There is no lag LOL it's lag free."
Unfortunately, he just couldn't tell the difference between 50ms and 20ms. I however, definitely could. Hell, my scores could tell you. I tried to explain to him how it's similar to console games where the host has 0ms, because he admitted that the host always had a huge advantage in those games. It didn't work, as he still acted like there was no lag.
I read forums all the time about people saying stuff like,
"I don't have lag, and it says 300ms."
"I don't lag at all, it's super smooth. I'm running at 22fps."
That kind of stuff kills me. Unfortunately, they don't know how truly different it is when you run <20ms and >60fps. There is a reason that scores correlate strongly with latency.
So to you I say: You may jest, but you probably fail to realize how lag truly does cause death in MMO's as much as cheaters thrive in some games.
If you don't believe me, try doing some research. Log into random FPS servers (a genre where latency matters the most) where you can view people's pings. Now, record all of the data- K:D ratio, to Ping. If you want, include Score total or exclude camping snipers (outliers). It won't really matter.
After awhile the data will show that on average, those with lower latency will tend to have a higher score.
The only flaw with that is, your avg player thinks they're above avg. Just about every person you fight thinks they're avg or better. 70+% of them think they're better than avg.
So how does a "good" player judge skill when they can't accurately judge their own.
What research or study do you have that proves, or even suggests, that "just about every person you fight thinks they're average or better."?
From what I see, there are a lot of people who make statements like, "Wow lol, I really suck today." or "Sorry guys, I'm new so I suck."
In relation to my less skilled friends: When my friends do bad, they understand they're doing bad. When they do better than normal, they understand they're still not very good. They do not have this supposed "illusion of better than average" that you claim exists among "just about every person".
Also, how did you come up with the number 70%?
Once I understand the research, I will then be better able to form a rebuttal and answer your question. I'm a bit lost without it.
People do cheat, but its not very common, and its usually fairly easy to spot if you're an experienced gamer.
EDIT: Exploits are a lot more common than real cheating.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
I in no way think this is scientific or accurate, but I have asked it many many...many times over the years on forums I frequent and it's always the same basic trend. The above avg votes are always the lions share of votes. It's just human nature to think that way. If you ignore what people actually vote and look at above and below the middle point it's kind of funny to see the results, but not unexpected.
I've also asked the opposite question " what do you think the avg gamers skill lvl is " and it's always the same as well. Poor or below avg. ( it's a trick question of course because the skill lvl is...avg.
)
Avg is of course a meaningless term because I never give it any type of defining level. I just want to know what people think of themselves not what their actual skill level is.
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/399599/page/1
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
In any game with a ranking or tracking system, there is no confusion who's average and who's not. If your win% is less than 50%, you are less than average. If you are fighting in the bronze league, you are less than average.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Of course the companies dont like it cause its bad PR but the players in general dont mind talking about it.
Pi*1337/100 = 42
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
It's entirely possible only above avg people reply to a thread like that. There are ways to measure if an individual is skilled at something. It's even easier if a game has public stats. I was only expressing that in my experience most people think they're above avg...which they obviously can't be by definition
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Forums that allow only high-ranked and verified players are one example of this. That aside what most want to express is more likely "i think most people play not good enough" which makes sense if you assume avg skill is needed -in which case every second person would be not good enough.
Pi*1337/100 = 42
Next time I will for the laugh.
So that means I can call myself a pro SWG player /flex
I think most of the time it's not really a denial that cheating exists, but rather a denial that it exists in any significant amount. I've played like 6k games of sc2 and I'm pretty sure I've lost at least 5x as many games to my internet going down than I have to cheaters... and I have good internet.
I think complaining about cheaters is the real form of denial.