tips plz : How can I know if someone is cheating (in fight)?

SOoooooOOoooo many times something a bit glitchy happens, something a bit out of the ordinary, and you go down way faster than usual (or some LA flies straight to where your not-moving-and-crouched-stalker is and shoots him down without hesitation), or for some reason, even though you're hitting the enemy like usual, he's just not dying.


I get that there's L2P issues, I also get that there literally are bugs and glitches, also, I get that there are really good players.

So I don't want to "/report" and be wrong about it.

Soooo many times I'm like "THAT MOTHER****ER IS CHEATING" but, .. I'm not really sure, it's just that I think it?


So guys (and gals) please, have you got any tips that may help differentiate a cheater from a good player, and so on?

many thanks !

Actually, you should /report about anything you consider fishy. It's good, responsible etiquette. Whether you are correct or wrong about it is someone else's problem. What you shouldn't do is then become obsessed about it.

It's almost imposible unless they're obvious or stupid enough to upload their gameplay where you can see them looking through walls, hitting shots without aiming correctly and stuff.
Most of the time it's bugs and connection problems though if you understand how the game works. Connection problems can cause teleporting enemies, taking multiple shots at once, taking damage when you're already behind cover. If you have high packet loss your shots won't register so you won't do damage and many more things.
After 5000+ total hours in this game i'm only 100% sure about 4-5 people that were cheating and i've been accused of cheating multiple times even when i had very bad stats.

Well a few known issues that are just part of the game are:

Players spawning at a sunderer from far away are immune to damage until they load in but they'll be standing there, sometimes for quite a while.

If someone is going quite fast, eg falling from a height or using a jump pad and they hit a solid surface the game mechanic will stop them on tyheir screen but the predictive lag compensation will show them enter the solid wall/floor before snapping back, this leads to them having a moment on their screen where you think they're in the wall but they're already shooting you.
Not cheating but an annoying mechanic if it happens against you.

Another one is dying when you're around the corner/in cover, same as above the lag in the system means they can still see you dashing for cover (and kill you) a fraction of a second after from your perspective you're already in cover.

An instance that happened a few times in one battle and never again I suspect was cheating was my lightning suddenly exploding despite not having seen any incoming fire or taken any damage from the tower that supposedly had 100% damage on me. This may have been a one off bug that got patched quickly or it could have been one or two of my enemies using a cheat that let their damage ghost build up before landing all at once. I reported and I've never seen it since so who knows.

Unfortunately you can die very fast in this game. a weapon that does 167 damage and double on head-shots needs a mere 4 of them to drop you.

If a skilled player gets the drop on you, especially from an elevated position that slight lag in your system registering that you're taking damage means that you're almost certain to be dead before you can react. I'm an awful shot most o the time but one week last summer I was on fire and got accused of aimbots 3 times in that week. I was using the TR Cougar on a LA and keeping moving to different locations to ambush where I predicted they'd try to push next.
I also use a couple of other TR as bait once or twice, I'd be in and overwatch position and the NC would reveal themselves by attacking my ally and I'd either save my ally or finish them off as revenge. Either way they clearly didn't consider it a fair fight.

There's so many issues in the game that it's very, very hard indeed to tell what's cheating and what's just the game derping up. For instance, I've had a person tell me that they reported me for surviving four Commissioner shots to the head- on my client, he'd missed every shot.

Your engagement alone is a bad metric by which to judge a cheater. Is this guy getting multiple headshot kills with a weapon poorly-suited for the fights he's in? Is he racking up kills at an impossible pace? When you see a guy getting six kills in half as many seconds with the Magshot, then you probably have reason to suspect cheating.

Since first playing Quake DM online the thing that upsets me the most is the redefining of what it is to cheat....

There's a plethora of things, utils, mice, etc you can use perfectly legally. Legal only in so much as game makers can't detect or would cost too much to police.

Asus Sonic Radar being a fantastic example of this stupidity!

No game maker has or would design a game around the use of these utils. One mouse press should equal one bullet....

If you are not-moving-and-crouched-stalker then you cannot be sure if you have recently been running, as there are motion spotters you may not have known about that detects you from 50m. Especially if near a vehicle column you can bet one of them have a scout radar that detects you from 100m and broadcasts your position on their minimaps. So sprinting while infiltrating/approaching a concentration of enemies with vehicles nearby is quite noobish.

When you see someone running off rambo style, mowing down guys to the left and right, then see them snap 180, aim up and place 4 headshots perfectly between cover at someone shooting at them, they're cheating.

When someone is using a weapon with bad bloom/CoF, especially at range, and you hear ding-ding-ding-ding (headshots), they're cheating.

When you see someone teleporting around, or you're killed by someone around a wall before you see them, they're a lag-wizard, aka, a cheater. In many cases the last one is DBG's fault since they allow people with 300+ms play all the time, you can't tell if they're just playing with what they got (bad IPS, or Asians/AU on NA server) or are lag switching.

Getting shot up by a spitfire turret in a rock or a tree? Getting wrecked by an engine on a mana turret in a rock/tree? Glitching/Exploiting.

So basically if you're a good player you're cheating.
Good situational awareness = cheating.
Good reaction time = cheating.
Good aim = cheating.
Packet loss and ping spikes can happen even to people with amazing internet connection so everyone is a cheater according to you.

Some aimbots fire so quickly the player body doesn't orient fast enough. Looks like shooting from their hiney.

Cheating is real in this game. Since I don't see it taken seriously, I remain completely free to play.

I've witnessed people admit to aimbotting indirectly in chat, after they repeatedly headshot everyone in sight myself included without fail, over and over again, never missing a shot ever. People called them out since it was beyond absurd.

Also witnessed someone with a pistol hiding inside walls killing the whole room nonstop, medics resurrecting each other only for the same thing to happen again and again, nobody could see them anywhere. I get there's map glitches where you can still shoot out, but this was deliberate, at the biolab in the generator room.

Also been 1-2 shotted from far away down corridors by certain players repeatedly without them using sniper rifles of any kind, also at the biolab.

There's also the ping wizards (cheaters) who don't even show up on screen and they shoot you, then they simply appear next to you. Hard to tell them apart from genuine lag where player positioning jumps around faster than strafe speeds should allow, making aiming at them much harder.

I suspect seeing through walls to at least one mossie, who would appear at the exact random door I'd pop out of, again without fail.

There's a lot of shots not registering on certain players. They walk away with minimal or even no shield damage despite having pumped a lot of hits into them, and they don't have an implant that gives shield for kills.

Bullet trajectories are estimated on your own client, so that whatever you see isn't what's actually going on. Makes it hard to know when you're taking damage before it's already too late. Dying behind cover is normal as it's a constant. Peeking a split second at a random place only to be 2-shotted instantly from long range, over and over, is fishy.

With infils, there are quite a few times when the infil has been stationary, but glowing. Not sure why, but I am sure the infil thought I had some type of aimbot or something. Also, experienced players can track an infil in cloak by the barely visible distortion.

I am nowhere near an experienced player but I can see infiltrators cloaked/crouching. To be precise I can see the distortion effect (running at 4K UHD resolution) and that is good enough.

Other than that, I have seen only once a cheat: someone firing from outside through the forcefield and score tens of kills since players kept espawning over and over.

I haven't suspected anyone in quite a while. Not since that major situation on Emerald and Cobalt(?).

I'd wager it has a lot to do with the fact that I'm familiar with the game mechanics. By all means I think high-skill heavy mains are cancer, but I'm aware that it's not impossible to chain headshots and always be in the right place at the right time. I've had those rare days where I'm unstoppable for a short while, though nowadays I don't really have the twitch skills that I used to.

It sucks, but whether we like it or not; there are young + caffeinated people with beefy PCs playing this game, and they're gonna wreck your face with crazy reaction-time and accuracy. It happens. So it's best to not bang your head against a wall and find a way around it.

Remember:
There are a lot of ways someone can be aware of your position without your knowledge. Wearing headphones and turning off in-game music makes it pretty easy to locate someone if they make a peep within a certain range. Also be aware that Flashes, ESFs, Valkyries, and ANTs have access to 200m Scout Radar, which tracks your movement for all of its allies in the area. Note that the lesser version, Proximity Radar, only benefits the vehicle occupants.

Disclaimer: I do not think there are zero cheaters in the game. But a lot of things can be chalked up to game mechanics, poor hit detection, or other server nonsense.

You need to understand how the latency system works.

In short: everything you see happening, is actually something happening a fraction later than in other games. This is caused by the latency system and is the only reason why PS2 can pull off the world-record of most playing characters at any one time, even beating a super-simple game that was build specifically to achieve that world-record.

So if you take cover behind something, your enemy will see that a fraction later. Before he sees you jump behind cover he can still shoot you, and because damage is calculated client-side he will damage you. This is better for the game experience because the alternative is that you would see someone, hit them and then the game would tell you "nope he's already behind cover all damage you did is now neglected".

This does create some discrepancies. While on the opponents player screen he's shooting you and taking an aweful long time to kill you (that experience you have), on your screen because of the latency system it comes in small waves, making it seem like the player almost insta-killed you. In the meantime if you or the other player shoots you it seems like it takes forever. It also means you can be killed behind cover simply because of the ping difference and the latency system.

This is very important in order to keep your sanity in online games, esp PS.

This video explains it extremely well:

thing is, if it was just a couple cases every now and then .... but I'm starting to get the impression that I'm seeing cheaters everywhere, that can't be right .... or maybe I am right, that's why I'm asking, nothing to do with obsession !

That happened to me many times and I realised it could only be a glitch with the kill screen.

Cause, same as you, I'm driving around full health in my lightning and boom dead, killscreen shows a infiltrator killed me with bolt action?

Most likely mines or c4 + glitch !

(P.S the first few times, I reported the snipers )

THIS, omg, when this happened I rage "***** CHEAZTER".

Question though, do all headshots make that sound? And does that sound always mean headshot?

Cause often I feel I've been headshotted without that "ding" sound?

I've had that happen so many times, I asked around with my friends, and also on these forums and basically I was told that it had to do with FPS and lag. That higher FPS seemed to (i'm guessing here) improve how your hits get registered or something like that, or that you think you're shooting and hitting someone, but on his screen he's a bit to the left and your missing.

I don't know, to be fair, I've heard of hitbox reduction or otherwise just bugs and glitches due to lag and so on.