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Cheaters Under The Microscope
1up.com has a piece up examining the reasons and rationale behind the online gaming cheater. From personal pride to pure cynicism, the realm of the cheater has many ways in. From the article: "Using grenades and jumping on friends' shoulders can help you get ridiculously high and reach far-off boundaries in Halo 2. Players like Joe32 call it creative thinking. Victims of sniper fire that seems to come from another world call it cheating."
To lose consistently to people who got better than you by playing six to eight hours a day while you're at school or worksome people cheat just to even the playing field.
Cry me a river. Perhaps you should try playing with people who are your skill level instead of wanting to be the Rambo of the higher leagues.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Cheating happens for many reasons. Because you can, it's "against the rules", getting enjoyment out of pissing other people off, and just plain wanting to win. It's a bit easier to do these things in online games since you can be anonymous (as opposed to real world games).
http://skelman.com
you call them cheaters?
I call that bad map design.
My stance on cheating in video games is that its only cheating if you modify the client app or take advantage of something that other players can't take the same advantage of.
Simply put, if the game allows it, it is part of the gameplay. It may not be the most obvious way to play, nor may it be how the manual TELLS you to play. As far as I'm concerned, anything allowed by the engine is totally fair.
There is no such thing as an unfair advantage.
The "hey, I'm just exploring new parts of the map that I have to glitch to get into explanation." Except that there's nothing stopping you from setting up your own game to play around with people of a like mind-set WITHOUT running roughshod over some other players.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
The problem of cheating is one reason that I tend to like consoles a bit better for online gaming than PCs. I know, console games can be hacked too, but usually with a much greater effort required than a PC game. But I wouldn't call using unusual in-game tactics cheating. Knowingly modifying the code in some out-of-game fashion, that's cheating. Exploiting game bugs in an in-game fashion is grey at best, but at least all players would have equal access to said bugs until fixed. If the game masters rule that exploiting said bugs is cheating, then players should abide by that.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
and stay there. For the games that I play, I find a couple of servers that are almost always full and have PLENTY of admins. So when you play, there is a good chance of an admin to be on. Once you find a server you like, stick it in your favorites and play there often.
Cheating because you don't have time to compete with the people who play 6-8 hours a day is a LAME excuse.
Some people have natural skill and are gonna own you no matter if you are one who plays 6-8 hours a day and they only play it once a week.
I find that in-Game features can reduce cheating in addition to providing better gameplay.
The article mentions Halo 2 on Xbox Live, which as everyone knows uses a Ranking system to match teams up. Thus you are much less likely to be playing in a game with people 100 times better than you. I find that playing in games where the teams are evenly matched can be fun and thus reduces the "need" for people to cheat. Games that somehow balance the teams are much more fun to play in. Yeah we all like being on those teams where you completely own the other team... but you are also going to end up on the other side of that sometimes, where you are the team getting destroyed. And that's no fun.
Another Game Feature I think helps reduce cheating is in Call of Duty. There is a feature that can be enabled in multi-player games called the 'kill-cam'. It shows you the last 7 seconds or so before you died from the point of view of the guy that killed you. I find that watching the kill-cam from time to time reduces the perception that it might have been an 'unfair kill'. "He couldn't have possible seen me!" "I shot him a thousand times and he didn't die!". etc.
In addition the kill-cam helps reduce camping (since you now know where they were when they killed you) and it might even give you some tips on how to play better.
I used to spend a ridiculous amount of time playing Urban Terror , and frankly, some of the 'cheating' he mentions actually kept the game interesting.
I understand nobody wants to play against wallhackers and aimbots, but what is wrong with using avatar pyramids to gain access to higher levels? If the devs didn't want people to get there, why the heck did they leave it as a solid surface?
Good sentiment, bad execution.
This guy isn't talking about cheating, he's talking about exploiting holes in the engine. Thats not cheating, thats taking advantage of the world.
;p
;p
If you, or anyone with enough practice, can do it, then it's not cheating. If you have to modify the client, or the datastream (in a netowork game) then thats cheating. Outside influence = cheating, finding logic holes = exploring.
Sounds to me like he just can't do that grenade jump exploit, and is crying about it
Personally I love looking for glitches in games, just usually they aren't too useful when I find them.
For example, when the maps in halo 2 seem to expect you to get out of your vehicle (say when you go from a street to a hotel), try fighting your way in. You'll probably have to bash your ghost just right, but it can fit though those tiny doorways. Then you can enjoy trying to take down a scarab walker by jumping a ghost onto it
Oh crap, I'm on fire again.
I was never fond of the cheaters. Before stuff like PunkBuster, some of the codes for games would work in Multiplayer mode as well as single player... and there would be idiots who would use them.
We used to tell noob's about a "Super-Secret Cheat Code that everybody uses" in Delta Force 2... look straight down, and press 9-ctrl. Eventually, curiosity would get them, and you'd hear a grenade go off and see a message that joe_noob fragged himself (9 = grenade, ctrl = fire). They'd either take it good-naturedly, or they'd get mad at us and leave. The ones who took it well usually ended up playing fairly. Good times...
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
From TFA:
"It's impossible to anticipate all of the cheats that will be used in an online game,"
Yes and No.
As long as you know what kind of action is considered hacking or cheating, there are ways to detect it. A most fascinating project called Hack-Cam run by a fellow named OutOfAmmo operates on this principle.
Most anti-cheat software just looks for installed cheats on the harddrive, in the memory, etc. This is good, but new cheats come out all the time that then bypass the filters for a few days. HC only looks for what a hack will do, not what is installed or not. Using visual image scanning, the came decides what the player can see and cannot see. If he aims through the wall at a player, the system recognizes this as an unknown stimulus and alters the player's "score" as is appropriate. The more suspicion the program sees in the player's gameplay, the higher his/her score gets. Once the 85% mark is reached, the player is deemed a cheater. About 95% of players scored below 50% in-game, so this line is actually (almost)impossible to reach without cheating.
Can't wait until it comes to CS:S!
If a game provides a snipper rifle and hiding spots to use the sniper rifle effectively, why does everyone still call me a cheating camper? It's not my fault that you're using your head armor to cover your ass.
Did it seem odd to anybody else that they talked about these cheaters as though they were robbing convenience stores or running drug rings out of their basements? Like cheating in Halo 2 is the new drive by shooting. The whole thing seems a little over the top.
I know some people value their game rankings, but please. They're not taking anything from anybody and they're not causing harm beyond the tang of frustration (although, believe me, I know how frustrating even the illusion of cheat can be). They didn't even touch on the people who use hacks to steal your account or personal information, or anything else that's actually illegal or harmful. Do we really need an "expose" on people using cheat codes? Come now.
You can do better than that.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
For those who like to track their progress, there are already medals in Halo 2 to designate in-game accomplishments, and you can go back to bungie.net to check them out after you're done playing.
Between glitchers and cheaters a bit better, because, quite simply, what they wrote isn't really what's going on at all.
.
/dev/null.
First off: there a huge number of "glitches" in halo 2 maps that are there on purpose. Things like jumping onto a person's shoulders in order to make it somewhere higher is partially what makes it so fun. Bungie tweaked these levels unbelieveably well, and there is a lot of skill in perfecting seemingly impossible jumps.
The article is quite outdated. The new fad in halo 2 cheating is rather astounding. The new map pack that was released in the spring downloads maps from xbox live to the user's hard drive. People realized that while the maps were signed to prevent people from copying maps from xbox to xbox (this weakly protecting bungie's IP) they weren't really signed to prevent modification. So if you do something akin to deleting the signatures from the map the game defaults to letting you play the maps on xbox live. The result? People can use standard halo 2 modding tools to mod their maps, add autoaim, jump higher, etc..
Which brings me to the second, much larger and impossible to fix, issue with xbox live. You'd think that xbox live is a dedicated service providing servers for playing halo 2, right? Wrong. In every XBL game, a user is chosen to be host. That person is the server, and as such has much more control over the game. For one, it's essentially "their game or the highway". This is what allows people's modded maps to have an effect on the game, in many circumstances.
The modem-delay people do in games on purpose, as mentioned in the article (known as "standbying") is a direct result of xbox live offloading the hosting job to a client. Now the person who is host can filter the packets from an opponent, the game keeps running while that person is lagging out, and the host can run around lag-free killing the people who's packets are being routed to
The cheaters have added a new level of complexity: they get a routing program that can route by MAC, and selectively filter out specific players during matches (as opposed to the all-or-nothing pull-the-plug-on-the-modem approach.)
As long as the hosting is not done by microsoft themselves there is no real way to fix this issue. The maps issue is stupid; they aren't checking their own content sig's properly, but at least that's not an architecture issue and will probably be fixed relatively soon.
In all honesty the free portals such as xboxconnect and xlink kai are better, if you can handle not having an elitist rank next to your name...
twitter.com/gravitronic
The article seems to lump a lot of things into cheating, I'm not sure I agree with all of them.
Modifying client code, stream, etc. Obvious cheating. And the offeners should be banned for life.
Using a USB keyboard and mouse on a console. Not sure this is really cheating. Obviuosly the console is designed to utilize these pieces of hardware, and a controller sucks for FPS games. Though, some way to check and filter for this would be good. Still, I don't think that this is going to be cheating.
Gernade jumps, rocket jumps, stacking. These are not really cheating by themselves. If you are using it to get to a hard to access area on the map, fine. If you are using it to get outside the game world, then there is a problem. I don't play Halo so I'm not sure what the article is saying exactly, but using a friend and a gernade to get on top of a tall building hardly seems like cheating. If it's putting the player outside the world and allowing them to fire without receiveing fire, then ya, it's cheating. But if it's in the game world, it should be fair game.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Other gamers give themselves an edge by using a mouse and/or keyboard with today's USB-friendly consoles, which increases accuracy and cuts response time--it can be an insurmountable advantage. But, as one anonymous cheater explains, "It's not illegal--it's just using the best equipment available. Anyone can do it."
People who have been playing games since Wolfenstein 3D know what the best FPS controller is, and it's the keyboard and the mouse. If no console manufacturer chose to pay attention to what PC gamers have known for over 10 F-ing years now, tough shit.
As I've read in a review of Quake for the Dreamcast, which online could pit computer players against console players: "Playing with a controller versus people playing with a keyboard and mouse is a soul-destroying experience."
It's not my fault people want to use a shitty controller.
There is an article over at sirlin.net that discusses this. http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_PlayToWinPa rt1.htm
Here's a small snippet.
"You're not going to see a classic scrub throw his opponent 5 times in a row. But why not? What if doing so is strategically the sequence of moves that optimize his chances of winning? Here we've encountered our first clash: the scrub is only willing to play to win within his own made-up mental set of rules. These rules can be staggeringly arbitrary. If you beat a scrub by throwing projectile attacks at him, keeping your distance and preventing him from getting near you...that's cheap. If you throw him repeatedly, that's cheap, too. We've covered that one. If you sit in block for 50 seconds doing no moves, that's cheap. Nearly anything you do that ends up making you win is a prime candidate for being called cheap."
-- If you rocket jump of your friends shoulders.. that's cheap!
Personally, I hate all snipers in games, I don't think they enhance the fun of a game for anyone but snipers. Once upon a time, people sniped by increasing their mouse sensitivity and narrowing their Field Of Vision settings of the game engine. That was even lamer. I do accept that this is an opinion, and I respect that people disagree, but I despise snipers.
I have no direct objection to snipers per se, but I've played games of CS that end up being a 10 man team using the AWM, versus a team that can't get enough cash to have anything more than Mac-10's or TMP's. One idea to combat this is if they put in a weapon limit, eg. 10 players = 2 snipers + general infantry for each team. I can see problems with the implementation of this style of system, but I honestly believe that it'd assist game balance, especially on maps that (by pure nature of their open plan layout) encourage whoring with long range artillery.
A cheater dislikes the feeling of losing to people who are better than him.
So he cheats.
And gives that same feeling to even more people.
Some of whom get frustrated and cheat themselves.
My, what a cycle.
Just like there's nothing stopping you from setting up your own server and only giving access to friends
You mean other than the Blizzard v. bnetd ruling?
Rape. . . this whole cheating thing is just like rape. . . its a consent thing, if everyone playing agrees that you may use map exploits then it is fine, the same with cheats. If everyone is using their own cheat, and everyone agrees to play by these rules then it is fine.
So basically, when you don't have consent, you get to go to "jail" and get "butt raped" by 6' 450lbs Bubba.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
The idea is good, I will admit, but from my experience with online players and MMOs (which have exactly that kind of levels)... well, let's put it like this: Some people will then see that level number as representing their e-penis in inches. So you start getting:
1. people cheating to get that number up at all cost.
Partially also because:
2. people with a huge ego, treating you like you're an insect if your number is 1 point less than theirs.
Don't get me wrong, I'm willing to give some respect to a more experienced player and listen to what (coherent) advice they can give. But some don't just act like a more experienced player, and often aren't a better player, they just expect everyone to bow and grovel because his number is bigger. Sorry, nope.
Especially when, again, they're not a better player to start with. Some people in MMOs reach mid- to high-levels without even learning the bare basics of the game. How? Like this:
3. people being power-levelled by someone else, with no effort or skill required on their part, just to drive their level higher.
For example in City Of Heroes (the game I currently play), an older player can get a lot of experience to a low level player, while the low level player is sitting and watching at the mission door. Get someone to sidekick the newbie, leave them at the door, proceed to clear a huge mission by yourself while the newbie does nothing whatsoever. They just sit in a safe place and watch the "You gained x experience and y influence" lines rolling by in their log.
Now to COH's and Cryptic's defense, it must be said that they did do a good job of making this more work than it sounds. The xp and money that the newbie gets is scalled down to their natural level, so they won't get xp as fast as you'd expect from that exercise. So it'll take many hours to bring someone to any reasonable level like that.
But, still, regardless of how long it takes, said newbie did nothing whatsoever to actually learn the game. You end up grouping with people in the 30's levels (and that's a lot in COH) who don't yet even have a clue what to do and don't have the bare minimum survival or team-work skills.
Either way, to cut a long rant shorter, I'm willing to bet that the same would start happening in any other games that keep track of levels. Maybe not in the same form, but don't underestimate the inventiveness of people when it comes to undeserved ways to increase their e-penis.
But, eh, even that required Bob to be logged on while being power-levelled. An even more sad case are:
4. People who just _bought_ a high level char on ebay, because they too want to brag about being high level. And there are a _lot_ of them in any MMO.
And I'm willing to bet the same would happen here. When you see "Player: Bob, Level: 10", it can just as well mean that the real Bob played until level 10, got bored, moved to another game. And the person you're really teaming with now, is really Jake, who just bought Bob's character.
You may see that Bob had 7 victories in Team Death Match, but you're playing with Jake. And Jake can't even aim, isn't yet sure how this team thing works, and hasn't yet digested fine points like "if they're dressed in your team's colours, don't shoot them."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Compare to Real Life people - when the English archers made and used longbows, was that "cheating"? No way, that is exploiting the technology they had to hand in order to get an advantage. When the Nazi rounded up non-Aryan people, was that "cheating"? No, just misguided bigotry and zealotry. (And before I get flames, I'm Austrian born, just like Adolph...)
When the world put a moratorium on nuclear research a while back, did any country really stop? Probably not. And nowadays, with GM technology being alternately boycotted and boosted, is anyone going to stop using it?
No, because there is no such thing as "cheating." There's only exploiting things to your advantage, although of course there's a scale of "sportsmanship".
In every game I've ever played where someone has used cheats or unorthodox procedures, I've learnt to either deal with it, learn it, or avoid them. Because online, you can do that. It's not like someone's bringing an Uzi to a paintball skirmish...
So - it's not sportsmanlike, but it's not cheating. IMHO. EOF.
-- ted russ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/mydynes/ http://www.arach.net.au/~ted/myblogs/
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, Bartle divided MUD players into: socializers, explorers, achievers and "killers". The twist being that "killers" doesn't mean PvP players, but people who actively seek to harrass, humiliate, annoy, and even hopefully drive people out of the game altother. (Others call that type of player a "griefer".)
Basically long after "online gaming" ceased to mean only MUDs, we're basically stuck with a signifficant portion of any online game's potential player base being "killers". People who _will_ go to ridiculous extremes to get you pissed off.
E.g., people have been known to blow real money on a new Ultima Online account just to scam some newbie. Reading some of the UO griefer sites was downright surrealistic. People were actually _planning_ to eventually get an account banned (i.e., also the money it cost) just to play it as disruptively as possible and cause as much grief as possible until they get banned.
So personally I wonder if there aren't better way to deterr griefers than even banning hardware ids. Like, if it's possible to make a game that isn't attractive to griefers in the first place. My theory, supported by my limited observation in all these years of online play, is that games can (and _do_) differ vastly in how attractive they are to each of the categories.
E.g., at one end of the spectrum, you have Counter-Strike. Now the game does have its merits, and there are some very good players playing it, yes. On the other hand, it also attracted arguably the highest percentage of annoying players. Why? Beats me. There is _something_ about its gameplay that suits the "killer" type very very well. (Maybe the fact that you can actually prevent another player from playing the game for a while?)
E.g., on the other hand of the spectrum you have games like the first incarnation of PSO, where it was pretty much impossible to harm a player in _any_ way. You can't kill them, you can't lead a train of monsters to them, you can't block their retreat, you can't do anything to them. So killers would come, whine a bit, spam the lobbies with pornographic "smilies" (e.g., I've seen some running around with a very graphic and animated representation of male masturbation), but pretty soon get bored and leave. So the average PSO player was a very nice and friendly person.
Other games, like the non-PK facet of UO, were also remarkably "killer"-free. Partially via not having much thing to do to other players, partially via Origin's policing the realm: the idiots who got creative and "tested the limits of the games and found new bugs" to harm newbies, found themselves banned to the PK facet.
And various other games fall at various points in between.
So basically that's what I'd like to see more game designers devoting thought to: how to make a game that isn't attractive to idiots to start with. Probably won't get past a publisher, though.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
This entire article simply reeks of halo fanboyism. Now no offense to the real halo fans, but if your going to go on a rant about cheaters you need to have more than about 3 actual cheats listed. Tampering with things outside of the gameworld to give you or anyone else an advantage is cheating. Getting a friend in spec to spy for you is essentially a wallhack and that's cheating. Zooming across the map .2 seconds to sword someone is an obvious exploit of the sword's dash function and therefore cheating. Jumping on someone's head to get to a high place isn't cheating at all. Combining this with trickjumps isn't cheating at all. Using this to get outside the map isn't cheating either. It's being a llama for exploiting Developer Error.
What i can't believe is that they spent several pages on this and completely failed to do anything but present what in the end seems like a popup wearing philosophy. They should have at least mentioned OGC or xqz2, even in passing.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Cheating is a minor irritant and its been around as long as multiplayer games have been in one form or another. What I find more of a problem is imbalance in games because it denatures the whole experience. For example, in BF:Vietnam the helicopter has a massive advantage. Hard to shoot down with the relatively limited anti-air units on the maps, its a veritable death machine exposing the pilot to relatively little risk of being hit. All the top ranked players exclusively helicopter about the maps. I got to about 300 in the ranking and couldn't move, its just impossible to get a high enough kill ratio on foot. This leads to a good proportion of open server play being about whinging, queueing and TKing to get control of a helicopter. Personally I don't really enjoy flying around so I don't get involved but that game imbalance means that my game experience is wrecked anyway. Coming to attack? I constantly ask only to turn around to see my entire side queuing on the landing pad. Cheating is a minor problem by comparison. An infantryman using, say, a radar and wall hack doesn't have anything like the capricious how-the-hell-did-I-die-then effect as a player legitimately buzzing around in the helicopter pouring lead upon me for the dozenth time that game seconds after I've respawned once more.
I'd much rather games developers spent more time ensuring the game experience they originally designed through play testing and level design than worrying about the cheats who will find ways to get an unfair advantage whatever happens frankly. And as an aside, Punkbuster has caused me far more grief than any amount of cheats ever have. The cheat might shoot me, but good old PB will reduce my system to crawling along or outright crashing on a regular basis.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
"Other gamers give themselves an edge by using a mouse and/or keyboard with today's USB-friendly consoles"
Can anyone tell me if you can actually use a keyboard and mouse combo with any of the existing (read available in stores) consoles in games? AFAIK you can't even though they have USB support...
In my point of view, the whole problem gets around gameplay and game immersion. As the article stated, difference between fair play and cheating ain't clear-cut. So, for what regards me, I put the line between what still makes the game fun and what totally destroys the gaming experience. For example, invoking continuous air strikes over the zones where the attackers are forced to pass, and hiding in the bunkers, isn't cheating at all. But it is BORING. You keep repeating the same action over and over and make a carnage, but to me it ain't fun. On both sides. I play a game to first be into an environment that isn't the real life, where I can think of being someone else (being a Rangers lieutenant ain't bad :D). And where I can have adventure and constant emotions... emotions that plain carnages and campering doesn't give me.
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet