How bad is the cheating, and what is done?

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Awal305, Apr 30, 2021.

  1. Awal305

    I've recently come back to the game after some time off playing other shooters. Compared to so many other games on the market, this one seems to be lack luster about hitbox info and cheater banning. I get that some people are just really good (ive been playing fps games for 25 or more years), but it just seems like so many people these days can land triple to quad headshots from any range. I feel like a little too often all I ever hear is tink tink tink tink and I pretty much instantly drop dead. I'm not talking 5m fights or 1v5, these are like 25m+ fights where 1 person did 100% of the damage.

    So not to go into a big rant, but is anything ever done? Does the game track stats and flag people? Does the game run any anti cheat software, do people get hardware banned? Or is it like most f2p games where even if someone is caught, they just make a new account and go right back at it. i guess at the end of the day it's not that big of a deal outside of having a crappy kdr.
    • Up x 1
  2. RabidIBM

    The dead obvious cheaters get dealt with fairly promptly. The potential cheaters who are either being subtle enough to be difficult to prove, or who may actually be that good, the resources don't get committed to investigating them.

    There are also latency issues. If an enemy freezes up for a second in front of you, you're going to take the shots same as anyone else would. Because there was lag, the shots you fire arrive on his end all at once, instead of at the rate of fire which you delivered them.

    Another thing which causes people to think others are cheating is that the post death view of the person who killed you often has wrong information about their heath and shields. I sometimes run with advanced targeting, and if I lose a close duel, where I saw low HP on my opponent, after seeing their shield break, the review will display him still having all his HP and most of his shields. People see that after they know they scored hits and think they've caught a cheater.

    So, tldr, obvious cheaters are taken down promptly, potential cheaters don't get investigated much, but there are other factors which make cheating seem far more common that it actually is.
    • Up x 2
  3. JustGotSuspended

    Lol.

    There are very few cheaters. Even less that actually modify game files or run whatever scripts to cheat. No it's just a different genre and likely less polished than the other titles you play. Keep in mind this game relies heavily on clientside hitdetection and it's effects are greatly exaggerated due to the mmo nature of the game and combined with certain mechanics will leave you dead before you are even able to react by the time the play/damage registers on your screen. You will get used to it if you stick around.

    I mean headshots are greatly rewarded, and after playing for almost 8 years, is it surprising that people get good at the game? I mean I don't sweat or anything but if I want to I can maintain a 70+ hsr on my lmg for a session (usually 200-300 kills over the course of 3ish hours).

    There is the battleeye which works to stop petty cheats. Otherwise action is taken by cs which responds pretty quickly to such things. Cheaters (that "hack") are often gone in a matter of hours. Rarely has a "hacker" been cheating for over a day. If you think someone is hacking, screenshot and report through the website: https://help.daybreakgames.com/hc/en-us

    Unfortunately I haven't heard of hardware bans in a while. As you said, the game is f2p which means it's very easy to create a new account, you even need to do so if you want to contest a ban/suspension.

    That said I wouldn't worry about cheaters, they are such a rare occurrence it's not something you'll be encountering in your daily gameplay. Just focus on improving your movement and aim, and you'll see soon enough you'll have people thinking you're the "hacker".
    • Up x 3
  4. Awal305

    Nice to hear, I look at my kill log, and most of the people that killed me have low KDR like mine lol, but every now and then you see a guy with a 5 kdr. So far for me, the only way I can get a bounty going is on infiltrator or light assault, everything else I just suck at i guess lol.
  5. UberNoob1337101

    I'm interested in the weapons they used to 3-4 headshot kill you.

    If it's the Tanto or the NS-11/15, it isn't much of a surprise as they have virtually no recoil with foregrips and compensators.

    If you're getting constantly headshotted from 50m with a GD-7 or Serpent, that raises some eyebrows.


    A lot of seemingly very suspicious behavior is server or connection-related, like getting one-bursted by a guy who just peeked out of cover (peeker's advantage, latency and reaction time favors aggressive play) and somehow an enemy landing impossible shots (in reality, you barely moved on his screen because of the Raspberry Pi DBG uses for a server).

    Then there's the post-death information, which only accounts in enemy HP after they have killed you from their client's perspective.



    In reality, 'subtle cheaters' don't exist, or if they do they're not nearly as prevalent as people think and it's mostly just the server painting a messy picture. Obvious cheaters are banned very quickly.


    This is the BattlEye website :
    https://www.battleye.com/about/

    In PS2, it does autoban egregious cheaters, but unless you're reported a lot or have bonkers stats it doesn't react, and suspects aren't persecuted in any way unless you have video evidence and submit a support ticket.
  6. Johannes Kaiser

    It's not all about kills. When you die near an important location (attacking or defending it) you are worth more than two sweaty kill-lords in the outback in my eyes.
    • Up x 3
  7. Awal305

    I have noticed quite a few people that I have put like 8-9 bullets into, only to kill me and it shows like a sliver of their shield was gone, or those times I peek a corner then die behind a wall to the guy I peeked. I didnt know if that was hit reg or lag. Anyways it makes me feel better knowing its not abnormal for those things to happen.
  8. Demigan

    Some people will see a cheater on every corner. Others will ignore even blatant cheating behaviour when it is shoved down their throat. The truth is in the middle: there are cheaters in the game, if you are unlucky you can hit a few blatant one's in one session or it could be weeks or months before you see one.
    Subtle cheaters are exactly that: subtle. It's hard to tell which one's are cheating but there can be tell-tale signs like people who interupt their internet for a moment or who literally build an image with youtube video's where you can see them miss a shot by more than 1m and still get a headshot.

    What you describe however is the latency system. Everything you see is actually what happened a fraction of a second ago, your PC keeps guessing what an enemy does based on the last actions it received.
    If your PC receives a message that your enemy hasn't fired yet and that is the moment your enemy starts firing, then your PC won't show you being fired at until the next packet arrives. When it arrives your PC suddenly has to simulate several hits in a row and guess the next actions (more gunfire). While it might have taken 8+ bullets to kill you, on your screen only 3 or 4 shots were shown and the headshots primarily. This means you hear "dink-dink-dink" and you are dead.
    Rest assured that there are people who experience getting killed by you with a quick dink-dink-dink. In the meantime for you it took the full amount of shots and hits.

    You might ask "why is this a thing?". Well it's the only way you can achieve higher than 64 player matches on large scale continents with a somewhat reasonable gameplay.
    • Up x 1
  9. OneShadowWarrior

    Even as modernized COD is they ban people in droves with such a modern game you would expect they had a handle on it, but the reality is, cheaters will always exist.

    All you can do is try your best to /report or /bug what you do see. I know they try. No game is perfect.
    • Up x 1
  10. JustGotSuspended


    I would go with light assault to start with. Infiltrator is mostly just a crutch class, you won't improve your gunplay with it. As a light assault, you'll learn to make use of positioning, and the fundamentals of gunplay you learn to master with the light assault class can be used as engineer, medic, heavy assault. It's definitely the most fun class to play and one with a lot of potential that always leaves room for improvement, for new players as well as vets.

    check out this channel he's a very good light assault player you can look up to:




    Oh yeah it's perfectly normal. Don't trust the death screen, it's usually not true. Due to clientside the health bar often reflects much more hp than your target actually has. So if you shoot a guy a lot (and get hitmarkers) but the guy seemingly is intact, it's likely untrue.
  11. iller


    No, your observations are pretty even handed and accurate. It's not WIDESPREAD on Emerald & Connery like it is over on Soltech... but it does tend to rear its head a lot more depending on what time of night you're playing and which faction you're playing against. IE: you'll be hard pressed to find even 2% of the constant/core players on TR and NC using VPN-Lagswitching in combination with Triggerbots or Hold-to-Aimbot features because frankly they just aren't Try-hardy enough outside of Goblins-whatever-it-is outfit. ...Also b/c acquiring those additional "features" is a real pain in the A S S to track down or find anyone who's even willing to keep shifting around the Memory Locations to keep those cheat-bypasser Hooks going.

    But no, to answer the other question... they don't do any sorts of Accuracy-Datamining, especially none that properly correlates where a target's relative position was to the Cone of Fire vectors the server is recording in order to figure which client is "Snapping" straight to Brain-Cases faster than should be humanly possible. Nor is there any Instant-Replay or demo-recording feed which obviously should have been their FIRST STEP years ago (delayed of course ...to keep from completely breaking the tactical advantages a longer distance sniper may be trying to maintain).

    Oh yeah also... it's not full of them anymore, but the Forums still have a couple Cheat Apologists in them who will Gas-Light every thread even asking innocent questions about the issue. Do your best to completely ignore those people. They're only still here, because the Developers won't perma-ban them and their cheating friends. Just ask yourself the question: "If it's just a matter of lazy netcode? ...well it's been over 8 years, why haven't they fixed that yet??" ...it's not... Especially when we know indie devs and modders have come up with stuff like GGPO and Parsec which solves tight-latency netcode problems in so many other games. It's not the Netcode. It's the fact that Whales and Dolphins who can afford additional Cheats on the side, are part of the official Business Model too and this company can't afford to lose all of the more "Subtle" ones. ...there's no clear cost-benefit advantage for them.
    • Up x 2
  12. RabidIBM

    @ iller Yes, the replay would be good, and with a delay. I would even take it as far as a half hour delay. You click that the death was suspicious at the time, then at the end of your play session when you've had time to cool off, and hopefully be more objective, you can review your suspicious deaths and see if you still want to fire off a report.

    I'm sure the reporting mechanism receives an avalanche of bogus reports, based on my experience with certain individuals who create one man squads just so they can complain about cheaters on command net. It's sad that there's even one of those, leave alone more than one.
  13. vonRichtschuetz

    Today when I logged in, I couldn't see any enemy vehicle projectiles, because the game decided to not render them. At the same time I facetanked some shotguns at point blank range, even heard the bullets impacting on me, but had a good chance to not take damage anyways. An hour later I got 2-shot by a cyclone from full HP while my overshield was active. Why? No idea. Might be spaghetti code or server issues.

    With stuff like this happening, the weird deathcam, and at the same time battle-eye not even being able to keep out the (exceedingly rare but existing) blatant cheaters, it's impossible to know as a player if someone plays legit or not.

    If you have the option, record your gameplay, rewatch the weird stuff, and if you're certain enough something is wrong, report it via the website, because the ingame report feature is possibly just cosmetic from what I've heard.
    • Up x 3
  14. DarkStarAnubis

    You should really record and watch the outcome of duels later on.

    I am nowhere a good player but I have been playing for a few years. I can "feel" how an engagement is going to end pretty much before we start shooting (I will for sure win/I may win/it is hopeless).

    Sometimes it is an iffy result resolved by a lucky HS but most of the times the outcome is clear.

    HS at range are something I will never understand - sometimes I think "huh?" after killing someone with a Tengu at distance. Sometimes I am HS at range with some shotgun... Odd.
  15. CauseRedGoezFasta

    I don't think these are just very very good players .. They shoot too well, they see everyone around too well, and through the textures too. I have repeatedly met with these, they never look for a target, they are already aiming at you when entering the building.

    It's funny, but the player named "Chiterr - Cheater" couldn't get more than these two offenders.

    [IMG]
  16. JibbaJabba


    Probably good to ask what server you're on. I'm told the Euro servers are problematic and Soltech is supposedly a cesspool.

    On emerald cheaters are few and far between and really obvious. They are usually chain-banned along with the alts they spin up over the course of some hours or a day. It will be stuff like warping to you, flying through air, or "the terminator" style bot that racks 100 kills in a farm in 5 min. You can go months without seeing them though.

    In general those guys that are utterly dunking on you are the real deal. The clientside nature of the game exacerbates the experience on the receiving end. Like a solid true quad-dink can appear as a one-frame death in the right conditions. But yeah, they are that good.

    Others have suggested: Record / Shadowplay. Review it. Post it here if you want. Turn it into DBG if it's a cheater. Customer service usually nails them in about 30min to 2hrs. (for comparison I'll "go to the replay" maybe once a week or so. It never turns out to be a cheater but man, some of that stuff seems sus at the time)
  17. Grandizer

    regardless of client sided issues, which are easy to detect, as in seeing bullet tracers go to the side of you at a millimeter and hit you as you're just entering a corner, there are some obvious other issues that have to involve hitboxes.

    The ones I see a lot are players who flick fire from a distance of maybe 20 yards, standing sideways to me, focused to their front and just turn and fire and plink off 3 perfect headshots in succession, no misses. There wouldn't even be enough time to ADS and aim for the rate at which this happens. Another are players with 1x scopes doing the same with LMG's from even further distances where you would need a 3.4 or 4x scope to single fire shots.
    • Up x 2
  18. JibbaJabba


    Post a vid. Also what server?
  19. JustGotSuspended

    you're not entirely wrong sometimes the hitboxes are funky: I knifed a friend that wasn't anywhere within knifing distance, he was a good 20m running towards me and I accidently hit melee instead of secondary (I have both keybinded close together on my mouse) and I swung, got the kill on him even though it didn't visually hit on either screen. His body skidded to the position I knifed him moments later.

    There's also a bunch of times where my headshot clearly misses but lands anyways, most noticeably on revolvers and bolts.

    And then there's always those one or 2 laggy bois that have 200% accuracy facing the total opposite direction while jumping or whatever. I'm guessing this is what you're encountering. There's not much you can do about it but take out the full auto ambusher and try to clientside him before he cliensides you. Also try to run towards hard cover such as walls and such, because it might protect you from damage if you go through on his screen. Keep in mind you're moving in linear (predictable) trajectories on a laggy person's screen. Super easy to track and land shots on your head. Then all the damage catches up at once and it seems like he didn't miss anything although he likely did.
  20. netBattler

    Honestly though, I don't get pissed when someone legitimately good pwns me.

    What pisses me off is when I'm pwning someone for like a week 1v1, and he's complaining and sending me angry DMs about me being a camper, and then boom. Overnight, the next day he is pwning me with almost no change in tactics and I can't get a single kill off on him. Just because his TTK got insanely low insanely fast.

    That to me screams hacking.

    Reported him... and nothing.

    Look - props to the real pros - but the guy I'm talking about is sus af.

    And the stupid thing is he's sucking nanites when he goes and plays regular games against regular people if you check his killboard.