Cheater Almightiness

[nobbie]

The latest issue of the popular German magazine "Der Spiegel" ("The Mirror") has an interesting article about the current state of cheating in online-games, incl. Blizzard's Battle.net, which has somehow become a measure "standard" for these things. You can read more about killer-bots and bizarre wonder-weapons here:

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,308164,00.html

The article is in German, but an online-translator like Babelfish etc. should make most of the article readable.

[Munkay]

up to the fable realm "Everquest", where one half million Fantasy friends strike itself for approximately 13 dollar in the month with kites and robbery knights.

I love translation programs :)

Even in broken english, it was a good article. Thanks for the link. My only nit on the article is the end, where they have some one mentioning that there are people with very good reflexes that can "appear" to be using hack programs (In games such as Counterstrike). And they can be wrongly accused/banned by administrators/game companies. Am I wrong in thinking that bots will kill some one everytime, but a human will naturally miss from time to time? I've never heard of anything like this happening.

Babble fish doesn't like any links with comma's in them, so go to http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/ instead, and click down at the bottom on the article titled "Computer games: As Schummler would amount to with on-line matches" to find it.

-Munk

[Zarathustra]

You'd be surprised, Munkay. There are bots with a certain margin for error built in so as not to look like bots. People assume that a bot will never miss.

Back in my Quake 2 and 3 days, being called a bot was quite the compliment. <_<

[Swiss Mercenary]

It is safe to say that if you see the player's cursor snap to the target, in an instant motion (Without the target acquisition that players go through - if your cursor moves past the target, you snap it back to correct it), and you see it happen with every kill they make, that player is cheating. I have spectated a good amount of cheaters, and a good amount of skilled players that it makes it easy to figure out who is who. Unless bots have added those complex features, spectating makes it rather easy to detect.

Unfortunately, the rumours of admins banning people just for being good, are true. I have seen paranoid rcon users banning people for getting several headshots in quick sucession, etc. (The posibillity that those people just MIGHT have snuck up behind the unaware team, and shot them all at near-point-blank) could not possibly enter those admins' dreams.

From my experiences in playing both Cheater-strike, and playing in a very small niche mod community (200, 300 people at most), I see a surprising, but logical distinction. One of the reasons that CS admins are so trigger-happy, is that if you get banned at one server, there are thousands more you can play on. However, getting banned from the main server in a smaller mod, like Thievery (Especially considering that every running server almost completely shares the same ban list) means getting you effectively banned from the game - hence a lot of research is done into players before they are accused of cheating. For instance, of the five cheaters that had to be banned in the past 2 years, the first was using a radar hack, and every active admin at the time could verify that (And some of those admins are still running their servers today). The other two were descent players without their cheats, but turned into super-human machines with their aimbots - they were banned simultaneously, with about 20 minutes of video evidence presented to the community. The fourth, and most recent pair of cheaters was getting on the community's nerves for a while - his brother would give player locations in spectator mode for him before, they caused troubles on the servers, and when they were suspected of using an aimbot, that was the last straw.

So far, there have been people in the tiny community who were not convinced by the evidence - a small, but vocal minority. As an interesting note, all 5 cheaters have tried to sneak their way back into the community, through registering new forum accounts, getting new ISPs, posing as newbies, etc. Aparrently, the words "permenantly" and "banned" do not exist in their dictionaries. Of course, since they were repedeately banned, they have turned to taking cheap shots at the server admins from the mod's official forums, where they also are discovered, and banned on a regular basis.

Odd, but I thought, in my time, for all four of them to be allright people - a little eccentric, but allright. Most of the community shared that view. And as their "skill" grew, they grew more and more arrogant, and more and more careless.

[kandrathe]

I have some friends that are that good. They get banned and harrassed all the time, but never cheat. I swear one of them is too fast to be a human. His reflexes are unlike anything I have ever seen. He must have been weaned on high twitch console games. Nothing makes me as happy as out foxing him and getting the drop on him.

[Rhydderch Hael]

...some one mentioning that there are people with very good reflexes that can "appear" to be using hack programs (In games such as Counterstrike).&nbsp; And they can be wrongly accused/banned by administrators/game companies.&nbsp; Am I wrong in thinking that bots will kill some one everytime, but a human will naturally miss from time to time?&nbsp; I've never heard of anything like this happening. ...

I may guess you haven't played an online combat fllight sim for any long time. ;)

Sure, there are cheaters in such a venue, but I've seen for myself that, given the demands and experience neccessary in aerial combat (even when simulated) the aces really do work over the rabble with seemingly godlike proficiency.

[Crusader]

An interesting article. I can actually read German to some degree and had a good laugh at some of the translations.

I've seen cheaters too, and long ago I've been semi-regulary accused of being a cheater on counterstrike. I was pretty good back then with a constant 3:1 Kill/death ratio (playing 3-5 hours daily does wonders). Those glory days ended when I took a long break and found a strange entity called 'steam' when I came back. I still play now and then but stay around the 1:1 ratio now. I can see what attracts cheaters though. If they aren't good enough or just want a shortcut to glory, or just plain like to annoy others, cheats are the way to go. I've seen the same with diablo 2. oh, how easy it would be to use maphack or a bot, most people think. I got tired of people actually defending what they were doing as innocent, harmless acts, while the contrary is true. I love Blizzard for their relentless hunt for cheaters. Therefore I think World of Warcraft will remain virtually cheat-free, as opposed to Everquest, for one. Having characters deleted on world of warcraft hurts so much more than in Diablo 2. Go Blizzard! :D

[Munkay]

Aye, I'm very inexperienced in the shooter realm. I've always loved shooters, but have been limited in play time, due to my computer always seeming to be one step behind the latest shooter. Even now I'm running a P3 733 with an old Vodoo 3000 16 meg graphics card. So unfortunately I've been restricted to Quake 2 equivalents. My brother always let me play on his computer and I got very proficient. But the computer situation kept me stuck on games like Halo and Goldeneye.

I am happy to say when I logged massive hours on Quake II I never really saw too much rampant cheating. There were occaisional "bot" comments, but I ignored most players and just played.

-Munk

[Malakar]

Therefore I think World of Warcraft will remain virtually cheat-free

It is folly to think that ANY decent game will remain cheat-free. Virtually every game gets hacked, and the best/most popular ones get hacked the worst.

[Swiss Mercenary]

I love Blizzard for their relentless hunt for cheaters.

Funny. Last time I played, people maphacked, used any available exploit to dupe, bypassed the waypoint timer, etc.

[NuurAbSaal]

you said it, relentless my backside...


:(


Nuur

[Crusader]

Yes, but they try, at least. How many companies do you know ban tens of thousands of CD keys every few months, not to mention the hundreds of thousands closed accounts? They do try, yes it still happens, but they do a good job of it. Now look at counterstrike? Everquest? those are two I know that have a cheater plague that have free game apart from a new download every patch.

WoW will be a lot easier to manage to stop cheaters I think, as there will be far less characters to check on as opposed to Diablo2, for one, as well as a constant team of game masters keeping an eye out.

[Swiss Mercenary]

They try, hope for the best, and the result is the usual. Effort alone will not sell me another one of their products.

And what makes EQ so different from WoW? I mean, if cheating was such a big issue for those people, wouldn't they stop paying their monthly fee? Hrm...