Please do something about the cheating.

I remember that, the guy was killing us all as we were spawning in the bio. Thankfully it didn't last very long

I'm not saying it's a *lie* (and I'm not interested in suing anyone), I'm just saying I don't believe that number is (or was even meant to be) an exact count of all players who modified their hitboxes in any way for any length of time. It's entirely possible they only counted a specific configuration that existed after a specific patch, for example.

I don't wanna try it out! Hell, I still feel bad if I play aggressively, kill someone looking at me, and they don't shoot back. I just assume the game didn't even give them the chance to retaliate, and that isn't enjoyable for me.

Also you don't seem to appreciate how difficult security like that is. There's no guarantees "the system" is getting truthful information from a player. Zero. Absolutely none. 'Course, it's not *easy* to lie to it. If you had to gamble, always bet the system would catch a change. ...But that's why people are generally willing to spend money on hacks; part of what they're paying for is a user-friendly way to lie to the computer.

Exactly, it's all about the perception and not the actual situation. (Only 20 cheaters.) If it's very rare for a player to leave due to cheating, there's no real incentive to get rid of the cheaters - they might think they're sneakier than they are and start investing in the game, too!

Bro weren't you reading? If the examples still plagued my daily gameplay I would be playing something else right now! (And back when they were a regular problem for me, I couldn't get Shadowplay to even run with my GTX 760. I'm 99% sure I actually complained about not being able to get Shadowplay to work on these forums a few years back (In fact, I still can't, but I have OBS now.))

Thing is, it's dangerous to be too dismissive. It's that perception thing again, 'cause it's a double edged sword. If everyone thinks cheaters are extremely rare, the devs profit but so do the cheaters - who can continue to cheat without scrutiny.

(Course, it's dangerous to be paranoid, too. Or you'll start getting players who think every LA who is above them shooting down is an aimbotter getting too many headshots. But if I had to put the overall forums on a scale where 1 is "dismissive" and 10 is "paranoid", I'd argue we're at about a 3 or so...)

The game has done a lot against cheaters (they've also banned paying cheaters), especially because back then the community pushed the devs so much to take action, and when they did some people realized everyone was just being paranoid. As I said, it's an issue every game takes seriously, because they want to make money.

Unfortunately, they're takling the wrong issue, because while there are very few hackers, it's very easy to get the impression there are more (thanks lat, netcode, etc..).



You confirm cheaters are a rare occurrence. What more would you like to see the devs do about it? I've killed people on characters that didn't even have a 1 KDR or above 20% and got accused of being an aimbot cheater.

i try to revive my old accounts and get accused of hacking, I'm not even an average player.

https://www.planetside2.com/players/#!/5428161003960598657/killboard

it's fully understandable that the better portion of the community has become dismissive, because a significant portion of the hackusations that fly around everyday are just inaccurate. People have cried hacker so many times, it's just really hard for some people to believe them without some sort of proof, which many, many of the people who act like cheaters are everywhere can simply not substantiate.

I get it, you can't run shadowplay. Apparently, you may not have the best hardware. How can you be sure some of your problems aren't caused by hardware/ping/experience and instead are caused by hackers? Not aiming at you in particular, just trying to help you understand some people's point of view.

You must admit, the very few clips/"hackers" linked very weakly support the idea that everyone cheats. it's no wonder it's almost impossible to take some claims seriously. We reached that 3 for a reason. Most people don't even bother replying in the forums anymore, you've seen how silly most of these "debates" can become.

Yeah, you can force lag with a net limiter, lag switch, whatever you want to call it. He was not 'hacking' though. It can also happen randomly, though it looks like this dude abused it either way.
Exploiting under the ground is not hacking.
Your invincible vehicle was not hacking.
Putting the aux spitfire in objects is not hacking.
Putting routers underground is not hacking.

This thread started with 3rd party cheats, and the overall tone of it has been 3rd party cheats. Aimbots, wallhacks, chams, auto triggers, no-recoil/any scripts, modified hitboxes (though I guess this isn't really third party), etc, etc.

Yes, abusing a bug is exploiting, which is technically cheating if the developers say it is. Lumping the two in together as the same, however, is pretty disingenuous.

If you say that the word 'hacking' is incorrect to refer to any of that - i'd agree. They are not hacking - they are cheating, pure and simple.

A cheat is someone who - by definition - acts dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage.

As for the lag switcher - I might have forgiven him if he hadn't been doing exactly the same thing for the last 17 minutes of his playtime on 12 separate occasions. In my book he was cheating full stop but you appear to have a differing opinion - and that's fine, we can agree to disagree. We just have a different moral compass.

Well here is a surprise.

If anyone wants to see what shooting from under the ground looks like, watch this from 2 weeks ago:


So this is Sexywolf - cheating (in my book - others may disagree apparently). You can read the reactions of the unfortunate victims in the chat.Stuff like this really annoys people.


By amazing co-incidence - our lag switcher Rej just happens to be a friend AND in the same locked squad of 3 as Sexywolf ! Fascinating stuff don't you think...

No, I don't, and every single one of them deserves a ban, temporary or not.

That doesn't change the fact that you've broadened the category to now include exploiters, when this thread was primarily (if not entirely) about 3rd party programs - and then used these exploiters to claim that there are tonnes of cheaters (whether on purpose or not, implying there are tonnes of 'hackers').

Firstly, no. The link you've provided is an article referring to the survey. The link I provided is the survey's host. Here's a direct link to the survey results: https://resources.irdeto.com/irdeto-global-gaming-survey/irdeto-global-gaming-survey-report-2

And here is a direct screenshot:

Now, considering the aforementioned quote "While 57% of gamers globally stated they have never used third-party tools to cheat in multiplayer games online, a substantial proportion of 12% admitted to being cheaters: regularly taking action including modifying game files and/or using hardware tools to cheat," we can easily verify the speaker's claims based on the data. Using global averages, 3% (always) + 9% (Often AKA regularly) = 12% regularly cheating. That's an average of 12,000 players who cheat all or most of the time, not the players only "sometimes" cheat.

BUT!! Even if it where only 3% that cheated and the remaining 97% never did, that would still blow your figures out of the water regardless. 12% is a practical minimum, the "maximum" number of cheaters on average given the data would be 43%. Personally the probability of having 43% of all players cheating seems quite low, but that's likely because it is given 25% of them do so infrequently. I'm telling you this because you keep shifting the goalposts to "insane" amounts of cheaters and strawmaning that I claim "everyone" is cheating.

Now, as for the survey's sample & size: Firstly, in statistics a sample assumed to be normally distributed when it is large. A sample is considered to be large when the number of data points is equal to or greater than 30. Every time I tell someone this I add the personal caveat that I think 30 is stupid, as though unlikely it wouldn't be statistically impossible for extremes to skew the data unfairly. However, the sample size is 9436 adults, the 5911 your referencing are those who self-identified as "gamers." Regardless, both sample sizes are significantly large enough to be normally distributed and are therefore representative of the larger overall population. Suffice it to say, you've failed again to discredit the source as it obeys every requirement.

And no, I don't think one could make the argument of bias with regards to the survey given all the information available. The questions posted are very neutral and don't indicate any kind of moral or immoral suggestions or hostility in any way.

So no, in our hypothetical scenario that's still magnitudes higher than your objectively false proposal.

DBG has every reason to lie about the numbers. Not only have you still failed to provide a citation for your "20 players," DBG has only reasons to lie about the numbers. Saying few cheaters were known and higher numbers were caught is better for business than the unpopular truth. Which once again you suggested was spouted on Reddit, the highly unofficial source where statements have no strict consequence. I have provided empirical third-party evidence without a direct financial interest to the well-being of PlanetSide 2 which indicates that you simply must be wrong. You have asserted your original statement.

You can predict that I'll call you out for strawmaning me? Who are you, so wise in the ways of science?

Also STRAWMAN. SHIFTING GOALPOSTS. We are not discussing me or my non-existent play sessions, you are quoting statements I never made and generally it's obvious you're trying to just chum the waters. I'm more than happy to keep going with you but at this point I have a moral obligation to inform you I enjoy this.

So my 12 Year old son was telling me that Client side games are easy to hack, because your PC tells the server when you get a kill. I thought this made sense. He knows more than me about coding, as I work on HVAC for a living. but I know how the game feels, and to me, It has a lot of unexplainable kills and Deaths

Your 12 year old son is well taught and displaying more knowledge than many.

PS2 along with many similar online games is client-server based - where the server is basically collecting information from the clients (your PC for example) and sharing it with people in your vicinity. The client - your PC - is doing very much of the heavy lifting, calculating how things are moving - even estimating where they would be to counteract dodgy connections - telling the server who you killed - carrying all the voice channels - the list goes on.

Doing all of this in a small 8*8 shooter is a challenge, doing it where potentially hundreds or more players are all in the same vicinity - mind boggling. There are drawbacks that we see every day - warping players, things disappearing or suddenly appearing, death by lag, this list also goes on.

Doing everything server-side (such as Stadia) is fundamentally more secure although not immune to cheating. Everything else such as PS2 has a significant weak spot - DBG doesn't control your PC, it doesn't give you the client as you might receive in an organisation filled with quality endpoint-detect-response or closed controls or controlled applications - after all, it's your PC.


This weak spot is exploited by cheats. If you can manipulate the client - the world is your oyster. In PS2 this takes the form of modded assets files (the infamous head hitbox, explosive vehicles, ESP) through to manipulating the data stream (lag switch, in-between servers) through to injected code (the classic 'hack' - often with many functions, teleport, aimbot, ESP, etc etc)


So we're all doomed ? Not quite - DBG has done an awful lot in the past to counteract the innate weakness of the uncontrolled client. Introducing Battleye hands-down made the biggest improvement, all of the common free / paid-for cheats were dead. A glorious time in PS2 history. They changed the asset format and packing making it much harder to manipulate, although i've said before - an asset decoder arrived in 2012 and published on this very forum - DBG didn't close the loop (sorta) until 2018/9 ? I forget but it was a long time afterwards.


Sadly these efforts are now a dim and distant memory - DBG or RPG are a pale shadow of their former self (regrettably) and people are visibly exploiting or outwardly cheating with seemingly no / little / slow recourse. Even posting videos of their 'prowess' on youtube.


I do hope they get on top of the situation but cheating in online games is an industry wide phenomenon as demonstrated by the myriad of articles on the subject. It's going to take an industry-wide solution - Denuvo is another step-up from BE but had a massive retaliation from the Doom folks - but something like it is, I fear, necessary.

Yeah, I'm very glad they eventually started to do something. For the first half of the game's life, SOE essentially just said "lol we don't need anticheat we'll just have a ton of mods online 24/7 watching for suspicious activity" then proceeded to... not have a ton of mods online 24/7 (and any time the community started to believe there wasn't enough action taken against cheaters, they would have one dude broadcast messages for a few days before going silent again.)

It's good the devs were actually pushed to take action. That's something they should have entire employees dedicated to doing. But it seems they've thrown up battleye and stopped worrying about it, even though cheaters have had quite some time to figure out how to circumvent it.

One thing I find interesting is I stumbled across a Twitch stream earlier, dude seems to have multiple BR 90+ accounts. Just has 50+ hours of video evidence of him aimbotting and nobody seems to care. His aim's pixel perfect and extremely algorithmic: it seems he always aims at the dead center of where a player's head was about 0.25 seconds in the past. If someone is strafing to the left, he ALWAYS aims a little to their right, if someone is jumping, he ALWAYS shoots their chest, if someone is falling, he ALWAYS shoots over their head, etc. He also holds down the trigger; never bursting or anything, but also seemingly having no recoil, so the aimbot misses more and he looks more "legit". The funny thing is: his aimbot doesn't pick up cloaked infiltrators. This dude will go an hour straight aiming perfectly how I described without missing a beat, then he sees a cloaked infil and he starts aiming at their knees and **** and when he shoots the recoil goes straight up and he misses 90% of his shots. I guess the git gud goddess giveth and taketh away Someone must've pointed it out, cause eventually he put up a diagram of a mouse and it shows you if he's clicking LMB or RMB, but he absolutely refuses to just use a webcam so we can see his hand!

Without a constant push and expectation for DBG to continue improving, cheaters are only going to continue finding ways around the systems they have in place. Y'know. Like for that streamer I mentioned, not all of his kills seem illegitimate you know? At some ranges, against some movements, with some RNG in the cone of fire, it can take him a ton of shots to kill one player. He also positions himself poorly, so when kills take a longer time he's more vulnerable and a legit player can kill him just fine. From the victim's perspective, his kills "very weakly support the idea" that he's cheating - but from his OWN perspective he clearly is.

(Ah. I just looked at the stream now. He's removed all the videos he's made in the past year... I wonder why! Maybe he's stopped being so blatant? Still, I don't want to be "name and shaming" or whatever. Anyone who's interested just has to PM me though I guess!)

They'd be rare in most shooters, sure, but not PS2. It's another case of the large scale working against PS2. Y'know, if only 1 in 100 players are actually cheating, in a 8v8 match based game that means you could: encounter someone with wallhacks in one match, go 11 matches against perfectly legitimate players, and then enter another match where there's a subtle aimbotter but they're on your team so you don't notice.

But in PS2, that means you could be in a 48v48 fight and get instagibbed through walls by a kobalt that's 150m away, so you leave and go to a 96v96 fight and keep repeatedly dying to the same person who literally knows where you are at all times 24/7 no matter what.

Same chance of a cheater existing, sure, but there's a higher chance that you'll encounter them!

That's my main concern, really. It's good to be skeptical about things but, more often than not, I get the impression people will try to combine 10+ rare occurrences/obscure facts about PS2 before they admit someone might be cheating, as if these crazy coincidences all keeping happening together more often than cheaters do.

Like when it was a lot easier to permanently auto-spot every enemy, including cloaked infils? People would say "Hey, stalker infil with 20+ hours of stalking here, I've died a lot of times thinking I was sneaky and I learned a lot but this death was more suspicious than all the other ones combined!" and instead of going "Hey yeah that might be a cheater no harm in having SOE/DBG check it out", the general consensus seemed to be: "Well on these graphical settings the texture you were up against is really smooth which makes it easier to see a crouched infil who isn't moving, but their connection could also be bad so they saw you when you were moving even though you couldn't see them on your screen, and they probably went to sweep the room cause they didn't know your exact location and their first shot just so happened to be a headshot but then their mouse got snagged on their mousepad and RNG was in their favor so they just kept lasering you in the head from 40m away. It's happened to me before." Sure. All those super specific things could have happened. Or they could've just been cheating, seems more likely.

But all these dubious "you can't be too sure" cheaters are the problem, really. I could throw about 5+ videos in here where it's absolutely impossible to deny it was cheating but I don't think you would deny it for funsies, you know? BR 30s melting an entire base without moving, etc. It's all the super blatant stuff, and they've all been banned. The concern is BR 90+ players who are top 1% in almost every accuracy and HSR stat but a few individual kills don't look suspicious enough so it's okay or whatever.

Also nah, my PC normally gets around 90-120fps. It only drops below 60fps in 96v96 fights and that's fine by me cause my monitor's at 60 hz. My ping to emerald is actually 10% better than my ping to most games, too! There's *so much* weird stuff that I've only ever experienced in PS2 but have never seen in any of the other shooters I've been playing for 20+ years although, to be fair, the vast majority of it can be explained simply by saying "funky netcode". As for the stuff that can't be explained? Well, it seems you want me to believe the player is so incredible at shooters that they're playing PS2 and not one of the 10,000 other more competitive options

Thanks Towie for that informative explanation. I wasn't sure if anything could be done to detect cheats. You've made me feel better about DBG's effort to get rid of Cheaters. Thanks Dude!

Simply the truth, hackers are rare in the game. Most hackers go to those popular games that attract more playerbase. At it's prime, there were a few hackers in the game. Now, there's practically none, and that's evident in the gameplay. If peopel are honest with themselves, when is the last time they have actually encountered a hacker in the game? Can they say DBG didn't take action?

Really, some people blow the issue way out of proportion, and have little to no understanding of what hacking/cheating is.


Being good at Planetside 2 doesn't necessarily mean you're good at other shooters, because of how unique the game's mechanics are. Also, what makes you think they just play Planetside?

Again, you "could throw" proof, but you won't. Very convincing...

AS someone already pointed out, the very little videos that were linked were of exploiters. Sure, they're cheating, but for people who claim that others are running 3rd party programs and modifying this, modifying that, it's not evidence for their claim.

Even the people who abuse bugs are pretty minimal, it's always the same 4-5 videos circling around of the same exploit. Considering it's much easier for people to exploit than actually "hack" the game, the fact there's very little out there confirms the fact that "hackers" are from a significant portion of players.

Unfortunately, the game's scale means that a client side with server validation is the only way for it to "work", and this clentside will, depending on the players, cause some interesting issues. That doesn't mean people are hacking.

'Sure, the players who know the game and have way more experience could be right, but I definitely think that dude was cheating'

See what's wrong here? You've got the explanation from the community, but you still think the dude is hacking? Go ahead, report him. Don't be surprised nothing happens. And I don't see how cheating is the more "likely" scenario. Any evidence on that...?

Client side. It's not just about your ping, it's about the other dudes too.


If the dude is a high BR, he's definitely been investigated, and the chances he got there hacking are infinitely small. As I said, those guys usually have youtube channels you can check out f it amuses you.

Client-side games are easier to hack; however it doesn't mean that every other dude that kills you is a hacker. it's also not that hard to catch the guys "hacking".

As explained multiple times, it usually boils down to lag/lat, hardware and experience. Cheaters are an anomaly, that will account for an insignificant portion of your deaths.


Sure, making the game server-side would make it more secure, perhaps prevent some of the known hacks from being used. Unfortunately, on a game of this scale it's just not possible. The servers would melt; we already know how bad they can get sometimes, having the game run server-side is just an impossible feat, at least for the time being. t's already amazing they've managed to get the game to run, and the challenges are the main reason why Planetside 2 is unique in it's genre.

So yeah, most of the silliness is here to stay. Does that mean there's hackers everywhere? No. The "latest" number we got was there were 6, at a time when the game had over 5x the current population.

You really are an idiot.

3% of people always cheat. That's the number we'll use, because "rarely", "sometimes" "regularly" have nothing to do with the conversation, and are subjective.

The company provides cyber-security services to games. It's therefore in their interest that cheaters are a common thing in games, because that's how they sell their services. A little more than half of the population identified as gamers, a little more than half of the people in the survey said they never cheat....I'm a bit ********, but there seems to be a correlation here.

That said, can the survey apply to Planetside2, which is unique in it's genre? The little information we have would say no, and you've yet to link anything but your precious opinion to deny that.

Yup, you don't know what a strawman is, and think that yelling "strawman" refutes the fact you're completely delusional. Break it down, explain what the strawman is, and why it's irrelevant to the discussion. Trying to avoid your responsibilities by calling out strawman every-time you run out of BS to say isnt' a very smart or mature way of debating, and further demonstrates how wrong you really are. So yeah, predictable; you can't argue = strawman. I guess that's why I haven't been to call you out for straw-manning, because everything you type up is a tissue of crap.

once again, the deluded idiot who has argued nothing, and rejoices believing he's won. Good for you honey-boo, you feel accomplished for once in your life.

You directly quoted examples of how they were affecting your sessions, but never linked any proof of it. So yeah, don't think I forget about your crap just because you've filled pages with it. You argue cheaters are present in the game? Show them to us, quit trying to extrapolate this because that or whatever. SHOW US.

This was about you lol, once again, you can't argue = strawman. Keep acting ********.

Translation: 'I would upload proof, but I have NONE'

smells like total BS to me.

I guess if you're bad at the game, you find enjoyment on the forums. Glad I'm here to make you feel better, no need to thank me.

I guess compared to the proof you have to support you statements, hackers in game must be as common as stupidity in the forums.

Sounds awfully personal for something that was never about you. Yet to see any proof of hacker impacting your sessions, or anything that would contradict the fact they are uncommon in the game. Even the slightly relevant survey you linked would have them classified as uncommon.

You've even wrongly accused the game of not banning paying hackers.



In all this, you've been the one shifting goalposts, you've been the one not providing literally any relevant evidence to support your absurd claims, dodging the truth.....yeah, very impressive, I guess you have something to be proud of. You might very well be one of the biggest ********ters of the forums.

I usually agree with what you say - with the exclusion of this thread, I find your estimate a bit too low to be realistic -, but this here is just WRONG. Just taking "always cheaters" and equalizing that with "cheaters in general" is simply mindboggling.
That's like saying "there are only three diseases, because the others only occasionally infect people so it doesn't count". No quitoing that, please, because it is an example of a statement that is wrong in the same way and not backed up by literally anything.
While there could be the option of making a case for ignoring the people who rarely cheat, doing that for regular cheaters (usually meaning "not everytime, but more than half of it") completely lopsides the data. Like crime statistics only showing people killed by serial killers, because everyone else just so happened to be killed by an ccasional murderer, so that's all fine.

Ok after stripping out the insult's in this so called discussion and falsehoods like high BR mean's less likely to cheat! (really I started a new character 3 weeks ago and I am at Rank 60 and that's not playing hard also that's with the scoreboard bugging out on me and not recording base capture point properly). So it is clear that there is a problem with cheater's weather they be using 3rd party apps, A cut lan cable with a switch attached or holes in the map, They are cheating either way. So what is Planetside Doing about it? Now truthfully are they banning people when they are reported or just turning a blind eye? is there anyway we can check rather then looking at a old survey/pole of wishful thinking.

Cheaters who are always cheating are the core of the problem. Considering any people believe (without proof!) that some people are constantly cheating and never get caught, it seems fair to take the number of people who are "always" cheating.

The "regular" cheaters are likely the ones that get banned/have little affect of average gameplay. They are a part of the problem, but not the core. The guy I was replying to said he didn't want to report cheaters "little fish", he wanted to chop the head off. These people who are constantly cheating are the head of the problem. It's reasonable to assume the ones who are "always" cheating are the ones selling hacks to the rest of the "regular" cheaters. Keep in mind, the survey is about cheaters, not hackers. The discussion was about hackers, not cheaters in general. For this reason, I'll assume it's the guys who are always cheating who must be running some sort of "hack" without getting caught, or continuously creating new accounts when caught and aren't just exploiting a bug or whatever once in a while, or whatever they meant by "regularly".

I regularly go to Japan, at least once a year. I regularly go to the grocery store, at least once a week. The word "regularly" is subjective, as long as you repeat something following a general pattern (even over the scope of years), it classifies as something you do regularly.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/regularly

Considering the survey was done by a cybersecurity company, it's obvious they wanted their estimate to make it seem like cheating is a large problem.


Well, based on the little information we know, as I've stated again, my estimate of cheaters for this game is above the number of actual "hackers", and is actually pretty generous. I'm still awaiting any confirmation otherwise, apparently no one's shadowplay works, no one has any relevant information regarding the state of cheaters in Planetside 2, and no one can link videos of guys that are cheating that isn't a known bug exploit or just messed up latency.

I'm open to any evidence that would classify these types of cheaters are something other than an anomaly, that's quickly dealt with by the team in this game. No one has such proof, and no one will, because of the simple fact that hacking/cheating is a near insignificant issue in this game. As I've said, I've encountered less than a dozen cheaters having played since second week beta. If I don't see cheaters as an issue, don't expect me to get convinced by the few guys thinking they're everywhere, without being able to link a single bit of evidence to support what they're saying. Apparently none of them can run shadowplay. What an unfortunate coincidence! it's also too bad shadowplay is the only way of obtaining video evidence of your session's encounters with hackers! Really, how strange.


Please be the first to surprise me and watch this informative little video, I found he did a great job covering this issue.
The talk on hackers starts at around 7 minutes.

You still get your xp, it just doesn't show on the scoreboard for some players. Orignally this was eant for players who aren't in an outfit, but it seems some unlucky characters in outfits are affected. You still get your xp.

It took you weeks to reach BR 60, hackers get banned in under a week. t's reasonable to assume that the higher BRs are simply skilled, and did not get to their rank using 3rd party hacks or whatever. OFC, feel free to link any evidence of this to disprove me, assuming your rig can run shadowplay

Saddly, there isn't such resource. We only have the very rare Reddit posts about this issue from the SOE days, and whatever information is in the patch notes.

If you track the "obvious hackers", you see the little that exist are quickly banned, typically in under a day. So yes, I would say cheating is an issue that the game takes seriously, and one of the few things they actually do correctly (although who wants to hack a game like Planetside ).


I would like them to disclose more active information about this, even though I'm sure some people are so far in their delusion they would just find refuge repeating 'DBG is lying!!'. Unfortunately, the team we knew is gone, so good luck getting any information like this, especially since it can be considered sensitive and related to privacy issues.

Maybe if you join one of these "hacker forums" you could get more information about the state of cheating in the game? Most of the ones relating to Planetside 2 seem dead or are extremely well hidden, because I didn't find anything that would suggest there's a ton of people actively "hacking" when I was doing research.

Can't, or better, won't, since I have already watched that pages back and see no reason to repeat that now.
Now, varying concepts of the term "regularly" aside, for my post baove I applied my personal interpretation if the term in the context of cheating. It is absolutely valid that there are others, and quite likely some - if not most - of the poeple who answered that survey do not share mine. But since I can not know what their go-to definition is, I can only apply mine and use that as a guesstimate. Cheating approximately one or two ours once a week when one is playing every day, for example, would rather fit the "rarely" descriptor to me. Now, playing advocatus diaboli to my own concept, "regularly" could also mean "in one game constantly, in others never". That also makes sense.
Now, the ovious cheaters aren't many, but they have a fundamental impact on gameplay. However, it's easy to remove (read as: temporarily inconvenience) them. Hence the more intelligent ones who don't have a yolo-approach will prefer more subtle methods, and thanks to the clientside nature of the game and some other factors (all of that was mentioned before, little need to regurgitate) it can be really difficult to tell apart subtle cheats from the day-to-day oddities and antics of Planetside. That does not mean they don't exist. But really good cheat creators will most likely know the ways of this game and find a way to make their cheats appear like normal occurances to everyone else.

Little afterthought: Exploits, for me, are also a version of cheating, maybe a bit lighter, since those people don't make use of 3rd party programs, but they still do things they are not supposed to do. (Maybe controversial: getting a Magrider into bases where tanks clearly are not supposed to go is also a sort of exploit to me, even though it is exploiting an unfortunately completely legit mechanic called "antigrav-********tery".)