Honestly how bad is aimbotting (even subtle) in this game?

I don't think its very bad at all, most of the aimbotters are bad players to begin with and realistically the aimbots just make them overconfident. Bad positioning, bad tactics, perfect aim? that's an aimbot usually, but still someone you can easily kill.

APB runs punkbuster.

This sums it up. I suspect there are quite a few ESP hackers with how prevalent radar already is in this game. It would be a subtle hack that could be covered under in game mechanics. I logged off tonight after sitting in a hiding place, not moving to stay off recon darts, and was confident no radar was in the area and some guy just ran around the corner, spinning directly towards me (at night in the dark no less) and just unloaded on me without a second hesitation. Things like that make me suspect ESP hackers.

<1% even possibly <0.5%

Google search for "Hack for planetside 2 forum" brought up a forum where every post had at least 200 views.

Top post has over 115,000 views and nearly 2000 replies. Other posts have over 200-600 views.

This is every post on the first page of this cheat forum.

Cheats not very popular... maybe those using the cheat says so, but trust me, there are a lot of cheaters in every free to play shooter. Why do you think, Planetside 2, with one of the highest populations of any shooter, would have such a low number of cheaters?

Because you don't see many people running around getting 100% head shots? Guess what, the programers do not want their clients, who pay money, to get caught. It is bad for business.

Higher than a lot of people think. If it was say 1%, why would people bother making cheat programs for the game.
I think people reassure themselves of their own ability by denying the existence of cheats in anything but a tiny scale, as they have come to see people who admit to or claim the existence of cheats being a weakness, that they are bad at a game, unsklled, so they convince themselves of the opposite.

This.

I've seen quite a few but as Van Dax stated, they suck and still can be killed. If I had to put a number on it, I would say no more then 1% as well.

Nah, there have been quite a lot of bans since release. Most of the people who I thought were cheating actually DID end up disappearing forever (Afraa, rocket, there were a couple others). Beyond that, it's pretty rare that I actually suspect someone of actually cheating when they kill me. I might suspect they had a higher FPS, but that's a perfectly legitimate exploit right there too.

This is far more common than anyone admits. Planetside 2 must realize this as well considering how often they plaster anti-cheater notices on screen.

There isn't really anything anyone can do about a "good" cheater with judicious use of aimbotting.

Using an "on/off" tactic during a large battle would be nearly impossible to spot. This, and the problem that most people couldn't identify a hacker and his/her exploit if it smacked them in the face because of a limited understanding of the game physics.

Most folks in the game are far more willing to just chalk it up to skill and keep plugging along.

Blatant exploits such as "glitching" are readily identifiable and I see one every other day. Guys popping out of walls etc...

Now, I play this game quite a bit, hours at a time so I see lots of questionable events especially after midnight Pacific Time or on the weekends.

Dat speedhacking galaxy! Oh man, that gave me a good laugh! Those kind of cheats, including the crazy warpgate vehicle cheats, are really harmless. It's those ESP, No CoF, aimbotting "tryhards" that have always ruined any FPS they felt the need to insult with their presence.

APB, not APB: Reloaded actually didn't run punkbuster. They said they did but it was causing problems so they actually disabled it. The first incarnation was built on a huge tower of lies.... the second one in my opinion wasn't much better.

I'll play for a few hours, a couple days per week, and probably run into maybe 2 potential "hackers" per week.

There's a specific (and very well known) player on Waterson NC who was previously banned and then unbanned. I'm almost one-hundred percent sure that he's a hacker, mostly due to a small incident that happened on one of my NC alts.

So, I got tked by him on accident via a grenade, and I figured, "ah, what the hell, I don't like the guy anyway," and decided to go and TK him back. We were at Eisa Tech, and there was a Sundy deployed in the bay. I saw him repairing a turret, ran up to him, then blasted him with the Gauss SAW (he was watching me the entire time, probably because he knew what I was coming back for), and that was that.

As I was running back to the spawn room, he shot me (from behind) and killed me from near the vehicle bay. I decided to go try and get him back, and spawned at the Sundy in the bay, after which he killed me twice in a row the moment I spawned. Nothing suspicious, as he shot me in the back both times, but on the third time, I spawned in the actual spawn room, then ran back to the bay.

He knew I was coming, and I could tell since the blue chevron over his was strafing back and forth in the bay waiting for me. As soon as I got into the bay, we both started blasting each other... and I won. Quite easily, actually. I was like "...what?" When I'm on my TR account, this guy will mow me down instantly (and somehow instantaneously kill the 3 other people behind me with pure headshots using an EM6, true story), yet on my NC alt, he was pretty much another random scrub. What really set it in stone was the fact that I did it again. I went and stood upstairs near the capture point, then waited for him to spawn at the Sundy (which he did), and I watched him come running up the stairs, then slow down as he started ADSing to peak around the corner, and once he did, we went at it again and he ended up getting trashed, with me not even losing my entire shield. After that, I redeployed and went to Indar, and subsequently got a ****ton of hate tells from him (which were quite funny).

Anyway, I was always suspicious of the guy, but that incident was nearly unmistakable (in my opinion). For someone with a 9.1 k/d, he fought like crap, yet when I'm on my main, he kills me nearly instantly with his EM6 in pretty much every 1 on 1 situation.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

That speedhacking Galaxy wasn't irritating until it killed EVERYONE by ramming them. That's when I started to mind.

There's this one guy who keeps teleporting himself into the spawnrooms on Waterson and destroying everyone with his perfect accuracy Gauss SAW.

Haven't seen him in a while, must be banned.

about 320 houres ive seen one cheater.

Oh right, I can see now why there might be some inconvenience.

But, come on! He was never gonna last long doing those kinda shenanigans.

It's the subtle ones that are the real problem.

Yeah, the ones tat can be mistaken for being "good" are the real issue. If a player has obvious hacks he doesn't last long. But if he used aim-assist or something that can go unnoticed.

I personally believe the percentage of people that use different third party software to establish a unfair advantage is quite high...not everyone, by no means, yet quite high.

Just Google "PlanetSide 2 cheats"...if "less then 1%" was using those sites and what they offer...why would they exist? Somebody has to pay that hacker to write the programs or he'd certainly go do something else more profitable.

There has to be a market willing (and able!) to pay for those illicit goods...

But I'm sure everyone else is correct...my opponents are simply just more "skilled" then I am...and these third party sites are really starved for paying customers.

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