My gut (and reading what others have said) that when one reports a suspected cheater with via the in-game "/report" function it just disappears into the digital ether never to be seen or read again. Does anyone know if the report function in game is now useless as it's not monitored or checked? I've heard the only real way to get eyes "on" a potential cheater is to record footage in game constantly then manually send a clip of the suspected cheating via a customer service ticket via the DbG/RPG website as that will get a like human to see the ticket. If this is true, why have the /report function in the game at all? It's frustrating to think the dozens of peeps I've reported nothing will ever come of it, let alone the 100's of others who probably reported them at other times as well. I'm only posting this in the hopes of getting some company eyes on the issue, though I can't imagine they are not aware of the issue. Signed: "Salty & Frustrated"
It works a bit. They definitely err on the side of letting the *suspected* cheater slide, but you can check it yourself - a few days after your /report, go to your character sheet on the planetsite website, and check your killboard - if someone was banned, the times they killed you will be gone, or will say 'undefined' or something - the player that was cheating will be gone. I think you can also do a character search, and see if they still exist. I reported one tonight, even sent a video. Will check tomorrow.
I did the same tonight but as it was so blatant I sent in a Cust Serv Ticket about them. Good points though on checking a few days or week later to see if action was taken.
People are being deleted all the time - just check your killboard, they appear as 'n/a' and hovering over the associated '?' will say "The character has either been deleted from the game or not yet saved". This appears whether you killed them or they killed you (but lets face it - they probably killed you !) Personally I think this is related to internal detection (like modified assets) rather than /report - if they are going to delete a character, they best be absolutely sure they are cheating. I wish you could see the /report stats on some of the characters though !
It's weird, I've reported people and they're gone fairly fast, And on the total flip side there are idiots like that LA on Emerald who abused the rocklet reload bug for A FREAKING YEAR, Flying around nuking MBTs in seconds, he must have been reported daily, and was never punished in any way.
I guess it's the opacity of the process that is the most frustrating part of it all. I get they can't just go willy nilly ban players and they need to be sure, but it would be nice to get some sort of automated message in game if they do get banned. Like the way Call of Duty MW does.
PRG/DBG (or rather - SoE) did this way back when. Often with funny comments when they deleted them. It made you feel like some progress was being made. They are still deleting loads - but they just come back en-force. Rinse and repeat.
I guess DbG/RPG/PS2 has no way to check hardware ID's with it's anti-cheat. Sure there are hardware spoofer's out there but implementing that would cut down allot on the cheaters returning. I'm guessing the game is just to old to take advantage of newer anti-cheat software? Also allot of it is client side. It (from what I understand) is just a really cheat-friendly engine. I want to e wrong but I've reported 3 egregious cheaters just today (bad day) and even found a Outfit full of cheaters with their name having "Hackers" in it. No fear of being banned it seems.
hardware IDs can be changed fairly easily, it's been a thing for a long time and it's well researched by cheaters. the biggest problem is the fact the game is free to play. in games where you have to buy them again and then buy a subscription it slows down the cheaters unless they can throw away lots of money on a whim. as for modern anti cheat, people tend to get upset by the more invasive ones, especially the ones that try to get root level access to your system, which can damage your operating system.
Here is a pic from my killboard history, is this what you are referring to in the above? I ask as I don't see a name so I can't tell what character has presumable been deleted. It also shows the weapon type for that kill as "unknown (magic)" so maybe that's what the killfeed shows for a falling death? Another one from my Killfeed. This looks like a deleted/banned account, but no name so no way to know who it was.
In my own personal experience over years and years: /report does nothing. I have never seen results from using it. A customer service ticket with video to Daybreak Games customer support is 100% effective. If harassment, a vacation happens. If cheating, a ban happens. Usually results within the hour. I've seen it within minutes on primetime. Never longer than a day. /bug DOES work. This stuff gets read as well as a bunch of telemetry that gets sent along with it. You can stay "I'm stuck in geometry here" as a /bug report for example and your coordinates are sent along with so they can fix stuff. On the PTS servers Dev is highly reliant on /bug.
Yep that's exactly it - reckon most if not all people can check their extended killboard and they will see at least one now 'gone' ie. n/a. Confusingly - they also appear to ban people, maybe for a period of time, yet leave their character stats for all to see (and indeed feed stats into the likes of fisu). Like I said - if they categorically know someone is cheating as they have detected it - reckon they are in for a 'delete' unless they've spent some money on the game. We usually see an uptick in dodgy activities following a major update (people showing their discontent) but the latest update has encouraged an extended period of such activity. Guess they don't like carrots after all
I am going to assume that RPG/DBG has no capability of spending at least 1-2 hours a week to do this, but I'm going to suggest it anyway. If /report does anything well, it at least paints a trend of who is getting /reported the most. This is really important because even though most people can't see s****, most people can smell it. Take your top 5-10 /report offenders each week and have someone in QA directly monitor Determine a trend for this character. What they being reported for mostly? What are people actually saying? Use whatever development tools available to root out foul play. Create new tools if necessary. If no foul play is detected, whitelist the player from /report for 1-3 months If after whitelist period the player is still there, repeat investigation While people care about those guys that come in and 100% headshot an entire platoon while teleporting through the sky, those are the obvious ones, they get banned eventually, sometimes the same day. What we should be concerned about are the people who are trying to fly under the radar. People that we know are probably doing something rotten, but do it to such a degree that you can't prove it with a video, where maybe they got people in their pocket that might also be cheating that are vouching for them. I know it's a lot of tinfoil had stuff, but this is probably one of the biggest barriers for new players. Like I said, you might not be able to see the s*** going on, but you can usually smell it. Having a process that creates regular checks for top offenders is going to be a big help to keep things clean and fair.
Being a paying customer should in no way keep a detected/identified cheater from being banned. Though, sadly I suspect this definitely makes DBG hesitant to take action which is a real shame and if true a slap in the face of paying customers who play honest.
