Cyrious made a video about Skilled Players

In a small outfit where prospective members need to be "approved of", the moment one of the members is cheating, the outfit's approval carries over to the cheating. It does not take more than a few "S+" CQC snipers that instagibs for this to be particularily noticable when representing a smaller outfit. While it may be hard to believe that the "hivemind" learns the association between the outfit and the cheaters, this is what seems to have occured and why we are having this discussion.

After the Bastion was released I don't really see the zergs anymore. That is the 100+ vehicles traversing the path of least resistance to the enemy warpgate. Instead most players tend to get stuck in an endless fight on T.I. alloys. To be fair you sound more like a sore loser than a skilled player when complaining that zergfits and their leaders minimize the odds of your skillball.

That's arguable. It's always possible for someone to deceive an outfit, or even suddenly decide to break the guidelines of why they were accepted. Most outfits will ban such players as soon as they notice. For example, today a guy from a dead outfit apparently made a scene and was being extremely toxic in game. Well despite the fact that the outfit is practically dead, the leader logged on and kicked the guy.

At the end of the day, humans will be humans. No matter the selection, its impossible to completely control people. Just because a guy engages in toxic/cheating behavior while part of an outfit doesn't mean the outfit approves of it. Obviously, it taints their image, which is why they react, but it doesn't mean they welcome these types of people. That's just silly. It's like saying you approve every single decision of your president just because you voted for him.

And again, it would be cool to see the grounds of how you can assert someone is cheating. Especially if it's one of these "subtle" hackers no one is able to notice asides from you.

LOL

I don't know if you even play but zergs have never been more present (at least on connery and emerald). The bastion and these outfit assets literally fuel zergs.

And RIP T.I.. Fights don't really start/last there anymore since they deleted the rock bridge....

You are heading to insane territory now.

You've already openly defended the idea that even the people that actually do subtle cheats have to somehow be A-OK. You are now telling me that FPS, netcode, "luck" and lag could influence the result in a clientside based game? Then tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about?

It's fairly simple: In a clientside based action, like shooting someone on the head, it doesn't matter what happens or is seen on the PC of someone else. The only thing that matters is that the bullet intersects the hitbox of the target on your screen, a hit is registered by that PC and then send on to the server which validates it and sends it off to everyone. If you miss, you miss. If you hit, you hit. The only way anything could go wrong is if the server and netcode fail to receive and compute the action of hitting, meaning that a hit is turned into a miss instead. There is no such thing as "luck", FPS, netcode or lag could turn it into a hit if your client did not see the bullet intersecting the hitbox, which again is all clientside based.

I could go on and on, but you can do that too. Unfortunately you are going off the reservation more and more so there doesn't seem to be a point to it. Just think about how you just tried to use "luck" as a factual method that an obvious miss in the game could be turned into a hit.

You're begging the question.

Assuming someone actually cheated. We're going in circles.

If they actually cheated and are not kicked from their outfit then the outfit 100% deserves a cheating reputation. Period.

But we're not talking about that. We're talking about *accusations* of cheating. Should they kick their members when accused? What if widely accused? I don't think so. Proof or ****.

NO. The hivemind has learned an UNPROVEN ACCUSATION driven predominantly by hearsay.

They share it to new players who become disenfranchised with the game. The thing we all love gets destroyed by lies.

THIS is what has occurred, and is what the video is talking about.

I do not confine the definition of a zerg solely to 100+ vehicles.
One way to tell if it's a zerg: When there is a 48-96+ base capture and at the end of it not a single score on the board was double digits.

The zerg sat around chewing gum waiting for base cap certs. The defenders got spawned camped with no option. No actual fight happened. No "planetside" occurred. Vehicles optional in this experience really.

Reading comprehension, gotta call you on it. I didn't say that. Don't strawman me.

Zergfits and leaders do not minimize the odds of my skillball in the slightest (that's cute). We are already making adjustments in our game to handicap ourselves. We would rather lose multiple simultaneous 30/70 than "recombine the Voltron" to win a 50/50.

No. What my complaint is: The zergfits and their leaders are ******** on the new player experience. NOT the skillballs, and not individual skilled players. They are ******** on new players in a way the skillballs are not.. (I'm not a new player so even when solo I know how to deal with this)

If anything is unproven it is the argument that new players become disenfranchised by hearsay, as if they are lacking in critical thinking just because they follow the orders of a PL. Also I'm not arguing in circles my base assumption is that there are subtle and occasional cheaters in this game, a view held by many who has played the game long enough. From this I show how a small outfit with players that kill others in seemingly sketchy and unnatural ways may obtain a reputation as a cheatfit. You are welcome to call it a conspiracy theory or even demand proof, but most players won't put in the time and effort to expose cheaters. Again, kicking outfitmates because of unproven allegations is also dumb as there are too many trolls who would do that. One time when I was leading a platoon for example, a member A asked me to kick member B because "he is teamkilling everyone". Suffice to say I checked the killboard of member B and found out that it was only member A who was teamkilled, who I then kicked instead for wasting my time.

Those 48+ players are playing the objective and it is not their fault that the enemy faction forfeits the base without a fight. On the contrary, skillballs couln't care less if an alert is won or lost. They have the same amount of downtime when redeploying and pulling galaxies as the zerg has in waiting for the capture timer. When zergs go down a lane all captured territory is defended by their progress. Bases taken by skillballs are usually left undefended as the they redeploy to a different front.

Again, the "new player experience" argument is unsubstantiated if not wrong in this case. Keep in mind that we are talking about heavies without medkits, medics without nanoweave, and MAXes with only one anti-infantry weapon. By participating in a zerg they actually get to capture territory (play planetside successfully) rather than being murdered by players who are better both skillwise and implantwise.

.....yes....?

Isn't the point of cheating subtly to not get noticed? Cheating subtly in unsubtle behavior would appear to be quite and oxymoron, at least in my eyes. To say subtle cheaters have a massive/noticeable impact on the game means they weren't cheating subtly in the first place!

And then yeah lol dude, you have no clue what you're saying, and confirming it here once again.

While I reflect on probabilities and luck, you can take a step back and think about how you just claimed subtle cheaters have MASSIVE impact, and that you literally accuse anyone who lands a headshot or does something remotely non-skill-based of hacking. And ofc you should read up on how the game works.

Okay, I have something on the matter of kicking people from outfits. In another game, a guy from my online community is probably in the top 5 of people still playing (granted, it is a very small game now). He gets hackusations almost every match (the game's tiny community tends to be as toxic as the instantkill-water on Auraxis), and is even featured in one of the game's Steam revies (and maybe more, didn't check, was only told about the one). We know him well, vetted him, double-checked. Not a person for chating to begin with. He is legit so we stand by him. In the end, outfits will always keep valued members they know don't cheat even in the fact of torrential accusations. Simply because they like the person, and also it's nice to have a really good player or two, right?

Subtle cheaters could have a massive impact in the game, yes, if they appear in big numbers. An example that comes to mind is the head's hitbox modifier. If e.g. 10% of the player base would had used that cheat, likely the rest of the players would had quit the game, as it would be simply unplayable. Cheaters would also frustrate each other and, if left alone, the whole game would had been deserted. To me, this seems to suggest that the quantity of hitbox modifier cheaters : A) wasn't large enough to go from subtle to obvious B) the devs found out before their ranks grew and C) the problem was taken care of expediently.

This leads me to think that if a similar "subtle cheat" would exist, chances are A,B and C would happen again. What is reproachable, is the lack of openness from the company when intercepting and banning such pests.

I do, and I do.

You are going to offer neither, and you're going to keep promoting the idea with others I presume.

This is exactly the **** Cyrious made the video about.

This sounds like stupid zerg leader knowledge here. Allow me to explain.

Correct. It is their fault that they are allowing underpop somewhere else by standing around at an empty base. That is the stupid thing that zergs do.

My own outfit (that does skillballs at times) plays the alert during ops.

I need you to think through what you just said. One group wastes time sitting around. The other group "wastes" time traveling. oooohh kaaayyy. When the first group gets done sitting around. they are gonna have to.... Travel!

Wasting time is not actively engaging the enemy in battle.

And I'm not sure you know how long galaxies take to load for some "skillball". Nearest airpad - don't even wait for the spawn to fully highlight. Soon as partially lit, select aircraft, spam the dot and it comes up before timer is done. Rest of squad is already at death screen (assuming someone didn't just ESF beacon the next base already).

And if we want capture points? You get those at the redeploy/death screen same as you do standing around with an ammo pack on the point.

The magic happens right in front of you and you don't see it. *sigh*

How do you attack a larger force with a smaller? You have to be in two places at once. We count on the stupid (STUPID!)behavior of zergs to stand around an undefended base

We'll even let them have the whole thing back at times. They stand around 3 minutes which means we can get our teeth fully sunk into a more important base (or several).

When they do finally react it's not like a fast break in basketball. It's sluggish and they trickle in, never overwhelming any one firelane.

"Concentration of forces and defeat in detail" is the crux of it.

While I can confidently say there is no such thing as "subtle cheating", I can agree with your post and thank you for admitting reality.

It does feel that SOE was better at communicating their efforts with the community, whereas DBG basically just ignores us. I would think that there are legal privacy matters involved with disclosing individual information, but I don't see a reason or obstacle that would deter DBG from at least sharing basic ban statistics.

I'm sure people would be disappointed though, because it's obvious cheating isn't as rampant as some people want it to be.

As I already explained to you, the point of a subtle cheat is that the cheat itself is easily masked, not the results.

The sniper I used as an example makes it hard to spot if he's cheating or not. His shooting method is plausible and helps hide irregularities. The regularities that are there arent denied but instantly blamed on that list of yours:lag, skill, luck, FPS, missing frames etc. How skill or luck can create irregularities isnt explained, they just wave it like a magic wand as explanation.

The effect is not subtle at all. 2 out of 3 kills are unearned, which is a huge impact on people's play experience especially since they are already using a controversial playstyle.

An unfortunate problem now is how easily people will protect the indefensible. You say you want proof for example that someone is cheating, but when presented with a situation where he scores a headshot where it shouldnt have been possible you instantly start reaching for explanations: FPS, lag and even luck, even though none make sense due to how the game works.
I could ask you the question "what would be enough proof to convince you they were cheating?" But you've already shown that even if the cheat is blatant that you'll defend it no matter what. You are not alone in this mindset, someone only has to claim skill in the face of a hackusation and instantly half a dozen people will defend them even if they havent even seen what happened.

Yes subtle cheaters have a massive impact because, get this, while the cheat might be subtle enough to fly under the radar its effects dont need to be subtle. Its an important distinction. Like increasing the hitbox size by a small amount already increases the actual surface area you can hit the target by a large amount.

And no I'm not litterally accusing anyone who lands a headshot of cheating, as you have failed to notice I investigate what happens, then try to see if it can be replicated or goes against the game's mechanics. I quite literally did that already in this thread, it was the very thing that set you off. If and only if there is something impossible going on will I say they are cheaters, or in the case of something lottery-winning lucky I'll level a suspicion. I dont randomly accuse people, you do. You randomly accuse me of not knowing how the game works while you name god damn luck as a factor that could turn a blatant miss into a headshot. Seriously I did not know that the developers had coded in luck to suddenly turn obvious misses on your screen into headshots. Just imagine that line of code: "if <impact on wall>,
Then X% chance of Change to <headshot>".

But since you were able to identify the guy as a cheater was it really a subtle cheat? And while it is possible to "mask" it in regards to other players by reducing the effects it has in game, it's not possible to hide a cheat from the backend. Scripted cheaters are easily identified, in that regard there is no such thing as subtle cheating.

It IS possible for the many plausible/logical conclusions mentioned. You simply conclude that any non-perfect kill is cheating. It's absurdity. To further support that, I've pulled even sketchier things myself. Yesterday I actually quick-knifed a dude from 20m away on my screen (not using amaterasu). Now that by no means should have been possible. If it weren't for the games crucial flaws. I was as surprised as the other guy, and immediately validated that my melee kill on him was totally undeserved. Unless I ran my HAKZ.exe file without noticing, I scored what appeared on my screen (and the other guy's) to be an impossible kill.

You can try it in VR anyways, half the time you play sniper the shots magically seem to land in the other dude's head. Must be cheats I guess.

Not only is it no longer possible to modify hitboxes, just read the paradox you wrote.

No you don't. You don't investigate, or rather you can't, and on top of that you have very little understanding of the game's mechanics, as you've demonstrated multiple times. You're like my mom trying to explain why playing a video game for an hour made me sick a week later.

You shouldn't. What's impossible by your standards isn't due to various complex (recurring) reasons that people have already stated. You're not knowledgeable as you've demonstrated to bear the burden of identifying cheaters. As Cyrious said, unless the guy is a flying/teleporting banshee, that other players you think are hackers are accusing of cheating, then maybe you can try filing a report. Otherwise just let people who know what they're doing handle it. You're like a guy who doesn't know what water is trying to explain to others how to be a lifeguard.

You've made several glaring discrepancies that others and myself have pointed out. False assumptions and conspiracies that highlight your lack of comprehension on the matter. Just admit it.

That doesn't look like a feasible line of code, but I feel I should point out the concept of luck while not being hard coded in the game is a factor. Well timed disconnections, rendering, accidental shots landing unexpectedly or targets... You further confirm your lack of understanding if you think these scenarios don't involve a fair amount of luck. Attributing shots solely to skill or cheating is just nonsensical.

While there are some posts you make that I can agree with, or that I can at least validate you have a grasp of what is being discussed, it's clear you've stepped out of your league here. It's exactly what Cyrious was trying to address.

I'll just take this one and ignore the rest for now because it's useless talking about everything.

It was a subtle cheat because it required watching a lot of his video's frame-by-frame at the points of his shots. Only then was it truly noticeable. There were several kills that were more openly suspicious but few people picked up on them, the most noticeable was the one where he blatantly missed the target and still got a HS.

Again: "subtle" just means it is hard to notice, not unnoticeable. That's the entire point. An obvious cheat just lets you headshot people through walls without the need to aim or teleport to them and insta-kill them with a single shot and unlimited magazines. Subtle cheats are just that: Subtle in how they operate. You don't see insta-kills with a pistol on tanks or unerring aim but something that could be simple good skill... Until you find an edge-case. Like the edge-case of him obviously missing and still getting a headshot, and the fact that 2/3rd of his shots were off and still yielded headshots (even when he actually hit the shoulder).

This is easily hidden in the backend, because of how PS2 works. You don't send every pixel on your screen to the server who judges it all, you send smaller bits of information to allow the server and other players PC's work with it.
PS2's clientside constantly gives you an approximation of the positions of enemies and allies. Every time a packet comes in it combines all the information of position, direction and last actions and then extrapolates what would happen if that continues until the next packet arrives.
This is why if your connection is interrupted all allies and enemies keep moving in their last direction, through walls and into the air if necessary. It also allows you to shoot them even though they are obviously not in that position. When your connection resumes all the actions you took like shooting people in the face are still send. This is quite literally what happens in the backend, and it's not as easy to find out what happened. So someone who manipulated his files to increase the head hit-box would be impossible to track down unless your program is looking for that on the client itself when it's running, which didn't happen at the time because the devs didn't know about it yet.
That's basically the key point: Stopping a cheat you know is there is doable but holds no guarantees, stopping a cheat you don't know can happen is incredibly hard.

Why do you hate democracy and have no faith in the common man being able to tell when he's getting screwed?



(in case it's not obvious, this is a facetious post, created to juxtapose the main theme of my last post)

Because the 'common man', in this case, has an average accuracy and HSR of ~20% and sub 1 KD/KPM.

Again, what you just wrote technically makes no sense. We're talking about the back-end and you're discussing stuff that happens in the front.

I'm fully aware of how the server functions, and based on what you've said you'd be the last person I grab information from regarding that matter.

It's extremely simple to find. Someone who manipulated the files in any way has done something "illegal" to the program. It might look like a simple decimal was added to a value, but it is noticeable. This is cross-checked automatically by the battle-eye, which works to some extent. It can and is also being done manually, which obviously leads better results, while it does take some time to process. Obviously, whether the guy bypassing battleye would be caught automatically without a cheating report is debatable.

But seriously asking the devs to ban the dude as soon or even before he tries to hack is just unrealistic. It does take a bit of time to process, usually under a say. Keep in mind in 99% of scenarios it's the same cheats, because it's just the same cheater making new accounts each time he's banned.

Deciding whether someone is guilty or not should have nothing to do with democracy, favoritism or whatever. It should be an efficient delivery of the truth, paired with a harsh punishment to deter such act from occurring again.

I have no faith in the common man being able to produce a vaccine. That doesn't mean I don't respect him, or that I wouldn't value his opinion. However if I have to pick between my ambassador neighbor or a doctor/med student for vaccine related advice, I'm probably gonna weigh the latter's opinion more. That's not to say my neighbor is stupid, but it's outside their area of expertise.

Here we have a bunch of people with no idea how the game work screaming that there's cheaters everywhere. What happened the last time the community did this? Oh yeah, we were all ridiculed because the devs wasted so much time and resources on 19 cheaters. Nice. So yeah, I have 0 faith in the uneducated common man to tell when he's screwed, and I've been proved right many times. And it's not their fault- we can't expect the common man to do uncommon things. That's why we train judges, politicians, etc.

In fact, if you've studied history you'd see that the common men are the easiest to manipulate simply because they are unable to understand what's going on, and therefore often get the short end of the stick. Revolts are stated by the bourgeois who incite the common men to revolt, promising a better lifestyle. The common men revolt, the bourgeois sit back, and take the lead once things are over.


The whole concept of the "common man" is that he has no specialized knowledge or title associated with him. I don't expect the average Joe to grasp enough of the game's complexity to correctly start making wild hacking accusations in game. This is exactly what Cyrious was explaining in his video. You know nothing, yet you try pretending like you do. Unless the cheater is extremely obvious, like Cyrious showed, then don't even bother trying to accuse him of hacking. It's just silly, and does more harm then good.

If it's not obvious that you can't entrust guys who play the game casually when they get home from work/school and don't try to understand how the technology functions to tell you what is and isn't possible in the game, then I'm sorry to say that you're setting yourself up as a fool.

yeah but it's only because everyone but him is hacking. In reality he's really good and has better game knowledge than us.

It technically makes all the sense. Once the frontend has send it's messages the backend cannot see what the frontend did to reach those messages, which was my point. So the backend cannot backtrack and figure out if someone was a cheat or not. This is the entire point of using BattleEye in the first place: It's on the frontend of the player's PC, trying to check for irregularities there because the backend cannot.

Looking at your wording there I would say you know you are wrong. You know that BattleEye isn't a magic wand that makes cheats go away, which is why you say "to some extend". You then make the ridiculous claim that someone is going through someone's files manually and looking at decimals and other value's. When were those files even send? Why are you focussing solely on the file-editing side of the cheating?

I don't ask the devs to ban a dude as soon or even before he tries to hack. You are making stuff up to justify yourself. Why don't you describe in as much detail as I did how you think the backend actually works, or how FPS, luck and lag could turn a visual miss into a hit? Because you've been throwing accusations at me that I don't understand how the game's mechanics work but besides vague and often blatantly wrong assumptions you've not done anything to show you understand what would happen in the cases I described to make obvious cheating a matter of FPS or something.