Please do something about the cheating.

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by TrojonKing 1st, May 8, 2020.

  1. TRspy007


    a fire-team, whatever. You say there was more than one, which is extremely unlikely. Which is why if you remember their names, link them, and in the future, record a video of it if you can, as it's something that's extraordinary: a very incredible scenario.

    That's all, not saying it's totally impossible, but considering the amount of people who see "hackers" everywhere, try to understand that it's hard for some of us to believe that without some sort of reference(s).
  2. Johannes Kaiser

    Not if they were a group of friends/associates who ran the same cheat together for an evening or somesuch. I agree that 4 random and unaffiliated hackers being in the same place is too unlikely, so if we take the observation at face value for a moment and look for other explanations, there are.
    • Up x 2
  3. TRspy007

    Considering in the game's largest wave of bans, where after months of extensive investigating (because people back then were also complaining hackers were everywhere), the team banned a total of 20 people, and took legal action where they could. Almost year later, they did a second wave of bans, the number was down to 6 - and that was at a time the game was actually doing pretty well, and had almost 10x the current playerbase.

    This would suggest that almost every hacker that currently roams around Planetside 2 decided to form a fire-team and troll a server for the night, like you mention. It's possible - it's just extremely, extremely unlikely. There are hundreds of more plausible scenarios.

    It would have been nice to have some sort of "proof" (names, recordings) associated to this accusation. Otherwise it is just too difficult to believe.



    Not to mention these numbers are almost ridiculous when we check out how many cheaters some of the current popular games have banned; it shows cheating is less of an issue for PS2 than some people try to make it seem.
  4. LurkingHorror

    Now these questions seem interesting and relevant, so please allow me to try some answers:

    insufficient resources
    a) insufficient logs,
    - because forgetting to monitor something important (like values in an easily accessible textfile that set hitbox sizes, hey, can happen, we're all only humans after all)
    - or because of performance reasons (can't copy a players whole installation or system everytime they log on)
    - or to limit data volume to what you actually can process with available manpower, skills and tools.
    b) insufficient manpower, analytical skills or tools

    hackers are not impossible to detect. But that doesn't mean that all get detected. Just like tax fraud isn't impossible to detect, but it still happens, undetected, sometimes on pretty large scale.

    To catch more hackers, you need to invest more resources.

    Experience
    Seven+ Years of playing, fighting players from the worst to the best, give you a reasonably good understanding on what should be legitimately possible and what is not. If suddenly players appear casually doing stuff that even the previously best were unable to do, and a large part of them even quickly disapears again getting purged from all statistics, the likelyhood of cheating being involved is somewhat higher than assuming an invasion of pro gamers who want to teach the ps2 community how aiming and shooting really works when you do it for a living.

    Canceling your membership is unreasonable as it lowers the available resources to fight cheaters even more. In a way, cancelling your membership is actually adding to the cheating problem.



    Some further thoughts:

    These discussions often get completely overblown, because players keep misunderstanding each other. 'The game is full of cheaters' vs 'the re are hardly any cheaters at all' is useless to argue about, as the statements don't really contradict themselves. It takes only very few cheaters to have at least one in almost any fight. 2.3% would already mean one per platoon worth of players. Go below 1% so you are at every 3rd platoon, sounds better at first unless you realize that the two platoons without cheaters are probably ghostcapping down some undefended lane, still leaving every actual fight with an average of one cheater.

    Now one cheater might not sound too bad, unless you look at the scoreboard and realize that excluding regular top players he is likely getting just as many kills as the rest of the fight combined, so a very noticable effect. Then to actually perform this well, he has to quickly identify and eliminate all threats to his streak, like for example cleverly positioned snipers or flankers. However, doing that also eliminates those threats for everyone else on his side, allowing his allies to also perform better than usual. For inexperienced players, this alone will make the fight seem somewhat dodgy, especially if they compare performance when the cheater was on their side with performance when the cheater is on the enemy team.

    If you consider this, it should be easy to see how 'hardly any cheaters at all' can still result in seeing cheaters or the effect of cheating in almost every fight. How much you are or even just feel effected by it personally, can depend on your playstyle, skill and personal way of dealing with it. And that alone is why it's unreasonable to expect any two players to agree on how 'bad' it really is, as that is based on pretty subjective perception.

    This also explains why fighting cheaters is such a frustrating exercise, because no matter how good a job DBG do, catching almost everyone is likely to still leave enough slipping through the nets to have a noticable effect on the game for a relevant part of the player population. Also, even catching all cheaters will probably be a so unspectacularly low total number that for marketing reasons, you are better of investing the time and work into developing new shinies, because those actually bring players and thus revenue to the game, while reporting 'this week, we finally caught all 42 cheaters in this game' will for obvious reasons never have quite a similar effect.

    What the complaints really boil down to is how much of their limited resources should DBG invest into fighting cheaters. And I guess that's a difficult balancing act that unfortunately we players don't have enough data and information on to really be able to offer useful advice.

    I do believe that they are doing a reasonable amount of work and are fairly successful. I also believe that catching all cheaters, while theoretically possible, is not feasible practically. I do see that the effects cheaters have in and on this game are still fairly noticable. Is it too much ? Depends on your very personal tolerance level. For me, I accept that you cannot eliminate it completely, but it's not that bad that I can't play successfully (for my, again very personal, definition of success in this game).

    So I'm fine with the state of the game in regards to cheating. And that is the really important point to convey if you're worried about new players. Don't try to tell them that there is no cheating or that it is not an issue, because noone who's done any amount of online gaming is likely to belive you anyway. Yes, there is cheating. Yes, it's bad enough that some players are unhappy about it. But that is unavoidable, and there is also still a healthy part of the population that is happy enough with the way things are, and everyone needs to figure out themselves to which group they belong.
    • Up x 3
  5. Towie

    Ok so let's get this straight. There is absolutely no way I would have used my job / background / knowledge to 'beat' you in the curriculum vitae stakes, but you asked for it (in every way - including literally).

    Now let me give you some free advice from an 'oldie'.

    Learn some tact, diplomacy and manners.


    There are people around who would probably support some of your comments but frankly they do NOT want to be associated with you. You come across as a tempestuous kid in the playground.


    WinterAero is right - I should not continue to engage - and on that note, i'm bowing out of this thread. Lessons learned all around I hope.
    • Up x 1
  6. TRspy007


    Leaving all our questions unanswered. You're either a king of ********, or just mad you've got absolutely no way to prove anything once I stated I don't give a flying rat's *** about comparing CVs to discuss something as silly as this


    I asked if you had any knowledge on the matter, because you sound like one of those 4 year old who get mad every time they die and throw "haccusations" around like it's candy on Halloween. You've made statements that are flawed, and would suggest you have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about. You said hackers were "impossible" to identify.
  7. TRspy007



    Thank you for replying instead of the other guy.

    Now I've mentioned before back when the game was "thriving", hacking was considered a massive issue. The team invested tons of resources and conducted months of investigation in order to finally ban 20 individual hackers. They did another wave of bans a few months later, and banned 6 people. Sure, a few hackers may have escaped the radar, but numbers don't indicate anything major.


    Now over the year's population has dwindled, the dev team has actually gotten back to near it's old size, and most resources from DBG are focused on Planetside 2. There's no reason to believe everyone started hacking, or that the person in charge no longer takes hacking seriously.

    Encountering a hacker sucks. Statistically though, it's very improbable. I did the calculation earlier, even if all the hackers that were banned came back, that would currently amount to barely 0.5% of the current active player-base. I understand that not many people are prepared/want to hear the truth, and saying: "we've banned one cheater this month" is less impressive than saying "here's a huge tank for zergfits to play with". However, it doesn't mean the team isn't doing anything, the rare hacker is often quickly banned (as in a few hours into his cheating spree).

    Is that bad - it's up for personal debate. Realistically, I think banning hackers in under a day/week is pretty good for a game like Planetside 2. It's been the same 3-4 hackers screwing with the game, unfortunately the game isn't always able to prevent them from playing the game, the team can only ban each of the new characters/accounts after a cheating spree. Suck if you're caught into that; as you mention, it happens in every game, and it remains a pretty rare thing

    There's many weird things in the game as a new player. Vets with years of experience, crappy netcode, bad servers, high ping/low ping players, guys with certain hardware advantages...it's really hard to fall into the trap that everyone is hacking because they can kill you before you even damage them, or that ambusher light assault just merged with the floor. We all are familiar with these moments after years of playing, we can tell when it's just the game's crap or when something is fishy for real. New players can not. That's why I don't really like people making statements like "hackers are impossible to identify", "hackers are everywhere", "everyone at the top of a leaderboard is a hacker"; basically all the nonsensical bs some people come up with to justify why they lost to the same dude 12 times. New players can get easily confused, I'm not going to tell them they'll never encounter a hacker, but it is highly improbable, and they can refrain from accusing every ASP 100 or other guys that kill them from being a hacker.


    As you can tell, I mostly share the same satisfaction as you towards the team's actions towards cheating, it's one of the issues they've actually taken very seriously, probably because for all the reasons I mentioned above some people are paranoid that every good player is a "subtle hacker" and pressured the devs to do something about it. I don't think there's much more they can do to deal with the problem, they don't have the resources to ban people even faster than they already can (and as you mention, it wouldn't even be noticeable for the people demanding that), and it's not really possible to ban the guys before they cheat.


    I not once said that cheating is not something that happens; it is something extremely rare, dealt with fairly quickly, and the people who cheat consist of a near insignificant portion of the community, as was released by the team after their "huge" wave of bans. It is usually the same guy(s) creating new accounts whenever they can to pull off a few hours of cheating. It can totally ruin a fight, I understand. Is it going to ruin outfit wars, or is it even a frequent occurrence you will have to worry about? You would have to be very, very unlucky to actually encounter them enough to make them something that's not extraordinary, and cheaters will likely have little to no impact on OW. I would inform to new players that cheaters should be the last thing they think of when someone kills them - not the first.
  8. DarkStarAnubis

    Let me try once again:

    No company (much less the small RPG) takes the road to detect and punish EVERY hacker: it is not economically viable.

    If you take Microsoft (pretty big huh?) they accept that copies of Windows and Office are out around, as many as you wish (Google "KVM Activator" to understand what I mean).

    Why? Because it would cost more money to fix the problem than the potential revenue loss.

    A corporation does not seek justice but profit.

    Back to the small RPG: do you think they have the manpower and budget and the inclination to monitor hackers actively? You dream bro.

    They just install BattleEye and hope to detect tampering once in a while (not in real time obviously it would cost too much computing power).

    Other than that, they act upon /report and investigate the most serious reports.

    Do you seriously think RPG investigate EVERY report? Have you any idea of the costs?

    And if nobody reports? Nobody checks.

    Do I report every player who kills me? Of course not.
    • Up x 1
  9. TrojonKing 1st

    I only asked a simple question and expected a simple answer like " yes it happens rarely, strange you saw 4 of them as that's even more rare. Not to worry they will be banded with in 24hrs ". But No you TRspy007 insult me and miss quote me instead.
    But never mind I got my answer in a round about way so I forgive you.

    Just to put thing's straight " As you have been in this industry for a while You should know the difference between a Hacker and a script kiddie and that the cheaters caught here on planetside 2 are in fact script kiddie's Not Hackers."
    • Up x 2
  10. TRspy007



    Look, back in the day, the game was pressure into doing an extensive sweep of the player-base to eliminate hackers. They banned 20 individuals. Did they get everyone? Maybe, maybe not. Did they get a majority? Yes. Another sweep after and the number was down to 6. Did they get everyone, maybe, maybe not. To say they didn't get a majority is pushing it. This gives you an rough idea of the extent of the problem. Since you're so smart and can inform me about how Microsoft works, I'm sure you can do the math and find out how much that amounts to compared to the playerbase.

    They investigate after around 50 reports from what I've heard. Considering a majority of people in the game know how to distinguish between a hacker and the game's usual crap, they investigate most (if not all) of cheaters. Planetside 2's playerbase is not astronomical, it's demanding and does take time, which is why some take a bit longer to get banned, but it's done. Once again, even if they do not get all of them, they nail the majority.


    " A corporation does not seek justice but profit." Microsoft is pretty big, and they have taken some measures to prevent illegal copies of the software around (btw, I don't know what a "KVM" activator is, so I followed your advice and Googled it - Google does not know either - did you mean KMS?). The problem is no one is going to complain about that, and it's not a significant loss in terms of revenue, as you say. The difference between copies of Windows and a game is that hackers ruin games, which in turn has an affect on profit. Once there are hackers, and people bring attention to them, the game MUST react. No one wants to play a game infested with hackers, which is why it's an issue almost even game takes extremely seriously, because it does cost them revenue. If people think they can't play the game without getting cheated left and right, people will leave. That's why the team spent months investigating into cheaters after it was significantly overstated as a major issue. That's why PUBG banned over a million players in a month, that's why Planetside 2 still takes cheating seriously - because in the end, every guy that logs off because he gets killed by a cheater is a potential loss of revenue for the game.




    Could Planetside 2 be doing a better job at dealing with hackers? Well, if they make the battle-eye too tough, it bans good players (this was proven, it's the reason battle-eye is currently a bit lenient). If they dump more of the team to deal with hackers, as someone else explained, they would get little bang for their buck. They would be banning players faster yes, but not significantly enough to justify investing more resources in that sector than in development. It's really just a matter of preference: would you rather we get new content or the game punish the occasional cheater a bit faster? Currently, I think they found a good balance, they are dealing with the few cheaters fairly quickly while still releasing new stuff (even though I really don't like the updates).



    There could very well be 1-2 cheaters that go around unpunished. If they aren't noticed enough to get reported, then there's not much of an impact they have on the game anyways.
  11. TRspy007


    I don't recall insulting you lol, my bad I guess.


    I said I had a basic form of education on the matter (which apparently I don't), I've attended courses, lectures and hack-athons touching on cyber-security, to compliment my interest in programming (yes, there was a time I wanted to do some hacking like in the movies, that's no longer the case :D) . I have also been playing the game practically since launch, I like to think I have a basic understanding of how stuff like this works.


    In a way, that's what I said (you quoted basically exactly what I was saying from the start :) ) Understand I spend my day dealing with idiots, I go to play the game I'm greeted by the usual noobs who scream "hacker" after every death, demanding they ban OUTFITS - that's right, not just players (because why stop there), and I open the forums to see a post I interpreted as 'help, there's cheaters everywhere!'.

    It's already a pain to provide people in game with explanations for "why did that guy just walk through the wall"; "why did that dude just hop into the floor to pop a medkit"; "how am I dying so fast but he doesn't take damage"; "why did the 48 of us lose to these 10 guys from ___ (outfit)", "how did you knife me through the spawn"; the list goes on. I don't like to have to explain on the forums to everyone that hacking is a very minor issue, a rare encounter(s) that most players could count on one hand.


    If you aren't telling new players that there's hackers everywhere, and don't believe so yourself, then my bad. As I said, next time though, post a video and/or link if you can, because like you admit, seeing 4 cheaters at once would be beyond abnormal/exceptional.


    You're absolutely right, almost all of the game's "hackers" are absolute morons that probably wouldn't even know how to declare a variable in main. The more accurate term to call them as you say is "script kiddies". Since most people chose to call cheaters hackers, for the sake of simplicity I refer to them as such - but technically, you are correct; a majority of these "hackers" have no clue what they are doing.
    • Up x 1
  12. TRspy007

    In conclusion:
    1. During the game's biggest wave of bans, 20 individual hackers were banned, 6 in the following ban wave. This would suggest that even if some did not get caught, a majority did. That would mean that even in the wildest of scenarios, the number of active cheaters in the game would be less than 40, which amounts to less than 0.5% of the active player-base. Leaving roughly 8 cheaters per server, in the worst case scenario.
    2. That means cheaters are an abnormality. Cheaters are extremely rare, and realistically most players who have been playing the game actively for years can count their encounter(s) with hackers - if any - without getting into the double digits.
    3. Hackers are a reality; yes, they can ruin fights in the rare instances they appear. The game still takes action against them, usually in under a day. Is that a fast enough response? Can they do more than just ban/suspend the guy's account/IP? That's up for debate. Personally, I'm fine with it -as I mentioned before, it's something extremely rare. If you don't like it, that's your right; give us an idea of what you would like to see - to say the devs do nothing - is as inaccurate as claiming hackers are everywhere.
    4. Most players in this game are "bad". Accuracy above 30% is considered really good in this game. This would suggest that people who are "good" will get reported by a majority of "bad" players, and therefore investigated by the team. Assuming "subtle hackers" exist, for them to avoid raising suspicions within the community and not get mass reported, they would have to play like the majority of players - "bad". That means these "subtle hackers" everyone fears is constantly killing them in reality have little to no impact on fights, because to not get noticed/reported by a community of "bad" players, they'd have to be playing to mimic a "bad" player, which doesn't really do much to ruin a game. Many good players have been pressured/bullied by the community to post footage of their sessions, in order to prove that DBG was not incompetent, and that the 6-KDR heavies were legit; for this reason, many of the "elite" players have YouTube channels.
    5. Cancelling your membership because of a near insignificant amount of "hackers" you're not even sure exist, and would have little to no impact on fights even if they did, is not a reasonable way to approach the issue - neither is blowing it out of proportions - like what was done in the early days. The devs need resources to catch cheaters, cutting funding is not going to help them deal with the problem, it will simply increase the time/work it takes to deal with cheaters and/or slow development.
    6. If in doubt of a hacker/cheater, ask the guys at the fight for their opinion. Report the guy, take a video of it, save his profile if you've got no doubt the guy is cheating. The video will not only help CS, it will give people something to work with when/if addressing it in the forums. As mentioned above, considering how rare it is to encounter hackers, it's a good idea to have some sort of substantial evidence something is fishy with the guy.
    7. Like in every game, cheaters exist. Accept that you may have a rare encounter with one of them, multiple if you're really unlucky. Before blowing the issue out of proportion, try to provide some sort of evidence so others can trace your conclusion. Especially if it very "questionable".
    • Explain how much of an impact cheaters have in your daily Planetman life.
    • What measures taken by the team would satisfy you?
    • What can the team do to ensure they are taking the issue seriously?
    • What makes you sure the people you encounter are hackers that have been overlooked by the team (link videos, players, stats)?
    • Are you willing to sacrifice development for catching cheaters faster/more effectively?
    Personally, I think they could be a bit more transparent on the matter. I understand privacy is involved, and the numbers of accounts banned weekly/monthly may not align with other's view of how many cheaters are in game, but it would be nice to have some sort of tracker to inform the community of the issue. Otherwise, IMO, it's something that has already been addressed many times, and too often exaggerated. After years of playing, and validation from the past information released on bans, I would really be surprised if the total number of "hackers" in the game is in the double digits; if I had to throw a number I'd say maybe 3 still roam the servers from time to time. A major issue for some, but realistically what more could the team do?
  13. Johannes Kaiser

    Statistics are nice and good, but aside from obvious cheaters who can easily be identified and banned (as soon as someone gets up from their behind and goes about it), there are a lot of edge cases. People that are suspiciously good, but might actually just be that good: Yesterday I had a run-in with a HA who was clearly a twink (over 4k directive score but only BR 32), and he was able to land what felt like 100% HSR, even when attacked and being headshotted from behind, he turned and lined up perfect headshots while I was partially covered by a doorway, surviving (somehow) with most of their HP still intact. Given that he's a twink of someone who has obviously invested a lot of time and effort into the game, I'm wiling to believe this person is just very good, but when three people jump him from behind, start shooting first (and yes, also hitting, we made sure of that) and he still gets all of them while emerging virtually unscathed (one of ours reported in another case that he dumped half a magazine of hits on that guy, and on the death screen he had not even taken shield damage), that is a bit odd.
    And then there are the usual clientside problems, server hiccups etc. Was all said already - here and elsewhere - so little point in repeating. But they can make a usually normal situation quite abnormal.
    • Up x 2
  14. gunnner10

    the problem is some players cheat subtly, so yes, it is difficult to differentiate skill from cheats. Since this game does have BLATANT cheaters, I'm inclined to also believe it has subtle cheaters that never get detected
  15. BorgUK1of9

    We have a bucket load of low BR players who play like BR100's with amazing skills at the moment, this is clearly because either.

    1. Someone has released a hack for free out into the domain.
    2. One of the hack sites has started selling their hack cheap (lets face it, old game, low margin needed).
    3. The flood of new players with the new updates invariably attracts the losers who pay for hacks even on a game like PS2 because they are just crap at life in general, nerdy virgins who still live with their mommy.

    Best thing to do is flood DBG with Bug reports and reports until they decide to act.

    Or bugger off and play another game until they realise there player base is leaving and again they react.

    Planetside 1 and 2 are easy to hack and avoid detection doing so, but just in case create a new BR character and then if it gets bammed whatever.
  16. TRspy007


    ......or the more logical scenario based on what you said: a bunch of BR 100s have made alts (to join in the zergfit wars for example).

    Please, test out the hacks on these websites. If you actually manage to get one to work, see how long you last cheating in the game before you're banned.

    I understand getting a few more hackers due to the population spike (which has already returned to normal btw), but lol this seems to wander outside the realm of reality.


    Note: the servers have been extremely bad for a while, causing very weird stuff in larger fights.
  17. TRspy007


    Would it be possible for you to link a few of these subtle cheaters, maybe even a video or two of your encounters with them? I'm sure you have a few names in mind.

    I've also got a few questions out of curiosity; maybe you could enlighten us on the matter:

    1. What do you consider a "BLATANT CHEATER"?
    2. What do you consider a "subtle cheater"?
    3. You say it's difficult to tell the difference between skill and cheat; what makes you think that all cheaters aren't blatant?
    4. How do these subtle cheaters impact the game? By definition, if they are cheating to not get detected, do they even have an impact at all? Is there even a point of cheating if it's to be "subtle" about it?
    5. Are these subtle cheaters impossible to detect by other players, or by the CS team in general?
    6. I've shared numbers to get an idea of how many cheaters were in the game, at a time where population levels were much higher than this. Could you explain how many cheaters you currently think there are (estimates are fine, as you said you don't have any data), or why/how the number of cheaters has evolved since the time period of the bans (Reminder: first wave got 20 individuals, second wave a few months later got 6)?
    7. Is there anything you would like the devs to do about this? Or is it even realistic to ask them to do something about "undetectable" cheaters?
    8. You said it's difficult to differentiate skill and subtle cheating. Could you explain to us how we can identify "subtle cheaters" in game? How do we determine the guy was cheating subtly and it wasn't just his skill, hardware, ping/lat, clientside or the game's usual bugged animations - or a combination of those?
  18. Campagne

    None of this is necessarily true. A small ban wave doesn't mean anything with regards to the number of cheaters of any type, nor how banning practices are carried out by SOE/DBR/RPG.

    It could have easily been a publicity stunt of sorts, wherein those responsible don't wait for a group and just ban as soon as possible, or that they just don't announce bans or ban waves, or that they simply don't ban known cheaters for one reason or another.

    This has no suggestion on the quantity or quality of cheaters present in the game at any given time. A cheater doesn't even have to be doing particularly well to cheat and doesn't have to be bad without them. There is really no way to know how many people are cheating through one way or another, but it is safe to assume that most people who cheat do so with a degree of subtlety.

    There is nothing to suggest they are at all rare, only that the flying aimbot MAXes level of obvious are relatively uncommon.
  19. razor1360


    no only is their cheating on all factions the faction map balance is crap . i am sick of 5 to just me fighting over an - a , b , c tree . i have been on this game since beta to say there is no cheating going on is beyond blind . battleye is a joke as well punkbuster was better .
  20. TRspy007


    That was the game's largest wave of bans. Months of investigation, legal action taken. They published the numbers because the community asked for it; who the hell does a publicity stunt on Reddit??? That they missed a few hackers, sure I can believe that. However, the numbers point out the MAJORITY of cheaters got caught. It gives us a more fair idea of how present cheaters are in the game, more so than 'the numbers don't mean anything, I can't tell you how, but I'm sure cheaters are everywhere'. Sounds pretty far-fetched - silly almost - which would explain why half of the people I question further about the cheating suddenly vanish from the forums. It's almost like they know full well none of what they said makes any sense; I've yet to see anyone link a video/names of a few of these "subtle hackers" hackers they've encountered.

    A cheater is a cheater. It's always more or less easy to tell, because cheating implies something abnormal. Whether the dude is cheating so he can hitscan with his MANA turret from inside a wall or the guy programmed his aimbot to land 20% accuracy, it's noticeable - both by players and the CS team.

    https://www.pcgamer.com/soe-planetside-2-bans/

    They don't ban known cheaters.....I'll let you answer that one; does that sound like a logical statement? They don't announce ban waves anymore; the team has stopped focusing on communicating with the community. Between not announcing them and not doing anything about cheating at all, there's a difference.

    "There is nothing to suggest they are at all rare, only that the flying aimbot MAXes level of obvious are relatively uncommon."

    You've SURELY got some statistics, quotes, footage, links to "cheaters" to make a statements like this right? Also I'm quite confused, you're saying a majority of people who cheat in this game aren't complete idiots? That would be a very surprising trend, because usually it's the "obvious" cheats that are common, with a few "subtle" cheaters. You're claiming the opposite - which I have no idea how you can - because that goes against any trend observed in any game, and the little information we have from both playing in game and the old ban stats.

    I would really like for you to share what suggests that cheaters are not rare; this will surely open up a new perspective for me in game. Maybe after that explanation I'll be able to blame all my deaths on cheaters, instead of me screwing up. Please elaborate.