Popular online FPS's have been ruined by cheating

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butterfliesrpretty

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The problem has always been there but nothing like what it is today. Even lesser known games like Ark have now been plagued with this. I've outlined some factors which are contributing to the problem:

1. Pc's are cheaper than they've ever been. I can build a pc for $250 that will play any game and play it well.

2. Games also cheaper due to steam, these two issues allow for younger users to have easier access.

3. Competitive modes have made people extra competitive, tons of people can't handle losing and this makes it worse (although I love these modes personally).

4. No real cheat protection exists. Vac is only going after very popular cheats every once in awhile. A free cheat that can bypass vac is a google search away. This is the best cheat protection that exists outside of Esea. This is from a multi billion dollar company and mostly focuses on one game and even that is shit.

5. Esea isn't cheat free and has done so many shady things in the past I don't know where to begin. You also have to pay for it and you're stuck playing there servers.

6. Can you write 4 lines of code? Great you can make a wallhack or aimbot for just about any game and probably will never be caught. Tried it myself on an alt account (csgo) had a way to turn it off so I would use it just for the first minute let myself die on purpose so I wasn't affecting anything, and I fire up this account every month or so to see if I will get banned.... still not banned.

These days you can't even find a DM server in csgo without running into at least 1 usually. Played a competitive match with 3 the other day, 2 were on my team and we won, completely blatant. This isn't sustainable and if it's not fixed online gaming will never be taken seriously. For me, it's just not fun anymore. Something fundamentally has to be changed so this isn't just an issue with one game but all games. Encrypting game files that change dynamically perhaps?
 
The hardest way to cheat is if all the game files were not stored on the client's machine and executed server side. That would be even a more horrible life, in my opinion. I'd rather live with the occasional cheater than deal with that kind of lag.
 
Armenius said:
The hardest way to cheat is if all the game files were not stored on the client's machine and executed server side. That would be even a more horrible life, in my opinion. I'd rather live with the occasional cheater than deal with that kind of lag.
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Maybe one day when we all have fiber optic, I thought of this solution too, but you are right latency is a huge issue.
 
Cheating in online competitive games would not be an issue if AAA titles released today still allowed player hosted dedicated servers. Player hosted dedicated servers and their attached communities have enough of a constant admin presence that they can quickly detect and kick/ban cheaters.

The issue is that games today aren't player hosted and we have no real admins on servers to ban cheaters.
 
Mchart said:
Cheating in online competitive games would not be an issue if AAA titles released today still allowed player hosted dedicated servers. Player hosted dedicated servers and their attached communities have enough of a constant admin presence that they can quickly detect and kick/ban cheaters.

The issue is that games today aren't player hosted and we have no real admins on servers to ban cheaters.
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Partially agree and I do miss those days somewhat, but I feel like it shouldn't be up to someone's perception as that can be skewed. For instance I've been banned multiple times on 1.6 from server admins and never cheated.
 
You're over exaggerating. Not all shooters are plagued by cheaters. I really only play Insurgency anymore but I've never once felt like anyone was cheating and I've got a lot of hours in that game. Pubbing on CS? Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot. Even with CS the whole cheating/hacking thing is wayy over used as an excuse for other people sucking. I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of cheating and of course wasn't, even when the other people were "convinced" and it wasb"blatant". Just saying. Of course they're out there but still..
 
Converge said:
You're over exaggerating. Not all shooters are plagued by cheaters. I really only play Insurgency anymore but I've never once felt like anyone was cheating and I've got a lot of hours in that game. Pubbing on CS? Yeah, I'm sure there are a lot. Even with CS the whole cheating/hacking thing is wayy over used as an excuse for other people sucking. I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of cheating and of course wasn't, even when the other people were "convinced" and it wasb"blatant". Just saying. Of course they're out there but still..
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Well I did say popular. Insurgency might not be riddled with the problem but you bring up a good point, the uncertainty.

This is another issue with cheating, now even if someone's not cheating you have suspicions running wild. This in another way can ruin the experience for others. Even the possibility can make for a toxic environment.
 
Popular online FPS gaming has been ruined by companies that took away hosted servers claiming it would stop cheating, which allowed it to flourish because there are no admins around to do anything about the cheaters...

This is why games like CS and TF2 still have a good following because you can still run your own servers.

FYI please show me a a$250 gaming rig that can play "anything" above 720p res without all details on low :D
 
butterfliesrpretty said:
Partially agree and I do miss those days somewhat, but I feel like it shouldn't be up to someone's perception as that can be skewed. For instance I've been banned multiple times on 1.6 from server admins and never cheated.
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Been banned to back in the day but you just find another server. It wasn't a big deal. Usually the ban was for your own good anyways because if the average player base on that specific server was shitty enough to think that a good player is hacking you need to be playing a server that typically has higher skilled player hanging out on it.

I recently got a free copy of the latest counterstrike game and the auto-match making crap was hilarious. Because it didn't know my skill I was dominating every match I played for quite a bit. The 13 year olds would be calling me a hacker and i'm just thinking to myself how easy CS is compared to other games with higher skill ceilings. These teens today playing these games really have no idea how much skill the older MP FPS's required. UT'99, HLDM, etc would make these kids cry. I remember bashing my head against my CRT for months playing HLDM and even getting to the point where I could even get shots off on players on some of the pro servers that experience made me fairly above-average in pretty much every other twitch shooter.
 
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I would say that the issue is not only the cheaters, but hordes of casual players that have zero concept of what extremely skilled players can do simply because they don't put in the same amount of time to be decent. I say this because I used to be one of those casuals willing to throw out hackusations all the time.

Then when I was out of work for nearly 2 years from 2009 to 2010... I really started putting in hours playing FPS games. Call of Duty and Battlefield mostly. We're talking 20+ hours a week. I would memorize every inch of the map, every angle I could be fired upon, it really became second nature. Not only that, I would learn about all the game's flaws and I even managed a server for a small startup clan learning what was possible and spectating everything first hand when people accused others. Other things I did was watch youtube and twitch and watch my favorite players and how they did certain things...LevelCap, XFactor, JackFrags, and dozens of others. You quickly start to pick up little things they do and how they approach maps.

Once I started getting decent...then I began watching cheat videos and seeing just exactly the behaviors that cheaters do. The big picture really then became crystal clear.

I will be honest. Hacks are out there, but not as much as people think.
 
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I finally quit playing CSGO as of a couple days ago. maybe permanently. Sad because Ive put in 11 years of counter-strike. Im not sure what happened. Over the Holiday walling hacks have completely taken over casual pubs, without exception I'm like 10/10 theres been a waller in every single pub game Ive played. I've got screenshots demos everything. Its been me at like 10-1 as the carry on every team and the waller at 20-1. Its almost depressing because if I stick it out for another match hoping theyll leave not only do they stay but they follow me so I have to constantly switch teams because I try to help the underdogs struggle against these douchebags. Just going to wait it out hopefully there will be a post holiday ban wave. It hasnt been this bad since I got back into csgo like 6 months ago.
 
I'm wondering what games you're playing experiencing game breaking cheating. I mostly play Planetside 2, so I dont have a lot of experience in other competitive games. Is there cheating in PS2? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes. Does it break the game? No. There is a system in place for players to report other players that they suspect of cheating. If a player gets enough reports they are temporarily auto-banned until a dev can look into the situation. The amount of reports it takes depends on mainly how many hours an account has of live play. This is done to stop people spamming fake reports to popular/legit players. If someone has several hundred hours of play time it is very unlikely they are real cheaters. Seems to be a fairly effective solution to combat cheaters.

They also do other things. Players with crazy stats like super high accuracy or headshots will have their accounts singled out and then watched by a dev while they play. If they see any funny business, instant Ban.
 
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PS2 cheating wouldn't really matter and it's not a twitchy enough FPS where cheating really matters.
 
The whole concern about cheating is why I haven't gotten into the Arma III world, it sounds like something I'd like but reviews about being banned for not even cheating bother me and they're all over steam's negative review section.

Played Insurgency recently, It's not my favorite by a long shot but I had no issues. Was somewhat fun but not really my thing.

My idea of online games is UT99 or UT2k3/2k4 online like it was back in the day. or BF1942. I quit playing online more or less after those days.

I'd rather play offline games than deal with this BS. I almost bought GTA5 for the online but after reading all the horror stories i'd rather wait until it drops further in price since I already played it day one on PS3 offline - and enjoyed it.
 
I don't see how this is a new issue.

Back then there was basically no cheat protection or deterrent other than individual server bans. Also hacks were readily available with some basic search engine skills and not even put behind paywalls nor requiring and knowledge other then being able to run a program.
 
Cheating is only a small aspect of human stupidity I don't want to deal with. That's why I prefer not to play any online multiplayer games at all. I want to spend my free time on my terms, and not dealing with other people. That's why it is a concern to me that single player aspect is neglected in many games, or outright omitted.
 
piscian18 said:
I finally quit playing CSGO as of a couple days ago. maybe permanently. Sad because Ive put in 11 years of counter-strike. Im not sure what happened. Over the Holiday walling hacks have completely taken over casual pubs, without exception I'm like 10/10 theres been a waller in every single pub game Ive played. I've got screenshots demos everything. Its been me at like 10-1 as the carry on every team and the waller at 20-1. Its almost depressing because if I stick it out for another match hoping theyll leave not only do they stay but they follow me so I have to constantly switch teams because I try to help the underdogs struggle against these douchebags. Just going to wait it out hopefully there will be a post holiday ban wave. It hasnt been this bad since I got back into csgo like 6 months ago.
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You're way overblowing this.

You'll be eradicated super fast if you're totally blatant. If you're filing reports and they're surviving, the hive-mind disagrees.
 
yeah fuck this "cutting-corners-because-I'm-a-retard-lazy-bitch" mentality. If you don't put in the hours, you're gonna suck. I don't understand why these fuck-turds even play. Is there no satisfaction in being good at something anymore? I left online public matches years a go for this reason only. Now it's all about private servers and friends for me. UT, UT2004, UT3 are fun as hell. A few beers on top of that = win. :)
 
Alright, this is getting borderline flaming. I think the OP has some valid points.

I used to play BF like I wanted to ensure that I never saw another human. Was in the top 10 on Battlefield 2142 for awhile, and got banned from multiple servers for "hacking" just because I was good enough to now be sad about the thousands of hours I logged. That game was, for sure, riddled with hackers though.

Anyways, this habit continued on a lesser scale through battlefield 4, when I finally lost interest in FPS games. I did see a fair amount of glitchers and hackers through and including battlefield 3. I played enough to firmly believe that there were a number of players out there that had manipulated the game in some unintended way, somehow.

I think as long as you have mmo games, you are going to encounter players trying to make themselves on a different level than the rest, for reasons I am unsure.

Anyone else here play Phantasy Star Online? Was that the birthplace of hacking in multiplayer games? God I loved that game, and god did I hate hackers in it.
 
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Simple solution; google for ArtificialAiming, don't buy/play any games that they support. Done and done.

You can blame cheaters all you want, but there's shared responsibility, if publishers wouldn't be less lazy and less greedly, reusing engines that are clearly flawed and easy to hack wide open, then this problem wouldn't persist.

The only thing you can do is vote with your wallet.
 
Toejam said:
Anyone else here play Phantasy Star Online? Was that the birthplace of hacking in multiplayer games? God I loved that game, and god did I hate hackers in it.
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There were people widely cheating in online MP games in the 90s, basically since we started to widely have online MP games.

Which is why I personally don't see how this is suddenly a crippling issue. There is no "good old days" here.

For example if you think that it's a prevalent issue in CSGO but not way back in CS then you were simply blissfully ignorant back then.

Something to think about is that Punkbuster was launched back in 2000. This should give you an idea of how long there has been wide spread cheating in games at the very least.
 
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Thuleman said:
Simple solution; google for ArtificialAiming, don't buy/play any games that they support. Done and done.

You can blame cheaters all you want, but there's shared responsibility, if publishers wouldn't be less lazy and less greedly, reusing engines that are clearly flawed and easy to hack wide open, then this problem wouldn't persist.

The only thing you can do is vote with your wallet.
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Oh man thanks for the info about Artificial Aim. Ive been using it in TF2 on a new steam account and its awesome fun. Getting back at the clans that used to never give me a fair chance lol so awesome.
 
I guess I'll never understand what the point of playing is if you are using an aimbot. But that idea has been argued a multitude of times, and isn't the goal of this thread, so I'll sigh and move on.

I remember in Phantasy Star Online there was a NOL hack, where everyone in a room would be turned into a generic character named NOL and it would alter your save file... lost a character with a few hundred hours played due to it, and never seriously played it again after that. yay human race.
 
About the only game I play these days is csgo. Are there hackers, sure. I have over watch and review cases all the time. Not all the people reported for hacking are really hacking. Some are just smurfs playing against players of lower skill.

What really annoys the shit out of me is de-rankers. You are really sad if you are playing to lose just so you can be a lower rank to beat up of players of lower skill.
 
You killed me! I died! You must have cheated! Yeah, that is a pretty common view these days among many players whatever the game. :D
 
limitedaccess said:
There were people widely cheating in online MP games in the 90s, basically since we started to widely have online MP games.

Which is why I personally don't see how this is suddenly a crippling issue. There is no "good old days" here.

For example if you think that it's a prevalent issue in CSGO but not way back in CS then you were simply blissfully ignorant back then.

Something to think about is that Punkbuster was launched back in 2000. This should give you an idea of how long there has been wide spread cheating in games at the very least.
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I wouldn't say it was widely though. Yes more cheat protection nowadays, but games are way cheaper with hackers buying multiple accounts. Talked to one guy who wasn't hacking, but just bought new accounts then ranked them up so people could play mm (usually cheaters) and then sold the account. This shit is a full on industry now, that's the problem.
 
Mchart said:
Cheating in online competitive games would not be an issue if AAA titles released today still allowed player hosted dedicated servers. Player hosted dedicated servers and their attached communities have enough of a constant admin presence that they can quickly detect and kick/ban cheaters.

The issue is that games today aren't player hosted and we have no real admins on servers to ban cheaters.
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I don't see how that is any different, then getting to know which rented servers have active admins. Just because a player can host a server on his PC, doesn't mean they are keeping a close eye on it.
I guess one advantage of private servers, is you're guaranteed there is an admin on it.
The last 3 Call of Duty games have supported private servers with bot support.
Unfortunately there is no server browser so you have to join on Steam friends.
Hopefully the dedicated server option will actually come out in April.
 
Toejam said:
Anyone else here play Phantasy Star Online? Was that the birthplace of hacking in multiplayer games? God I loved that game, and god did I hate hackers in it.
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That game DEVOURED pretty much all my game time at age 17. Only DC game I can recall that truly demanded you own a keyboard.

Damn Phantasy Star Universe for getting me excited and turning out so shitty!!

EDIT: My god, http://nerdreactor.com/2015/07/19/phantasy-star-online-2-us/ , I am MOST DEFINITELY going to look into this more tomorrow :eek:
 
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I put an unreal amount of time into PSO millions of years ago

the hunt for red boxtober
 
butterfliesrpretty said:
I wouldn't say it was widely though. Yes more cheat protection nowadays, but games are way cheaper with hackers buying multiple accounts. Talked to one guy who wasn't hacking, but just bought new accounts then ranked them up so people could play mm (usually cheaters) and then sold the account. This shit is a full on industry now, that's the problem.
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Why would games being cheaper matter?

Back in the "good old days" there was only server to server individual bans which had to be manually done by admins and there were not global persistent aliases. So what if you got "caught" and banned from an individual server? You just switched servers. You could just switch your name up every match and never develop a reputation.

Account wide bans requiring game repurchases did not really become widespread until Valve implemented VAC in 2002. Punkbuster before then was never global and only optionally enabled server to server. The reason these services came was to address widespread cheating issues. They weren't developed in anticipation of some future problem.

And like I said you didn't even need to get the newest hacks behind a paywall or know anything to use them. Anyone could search for CS hacks back then and find readily available ones like OGLhook (? can't remember the exact names).

Speaking as someone with experience from every angle (player, admin, user, etc.) I can easily say if you thought it wasn't widespread issue before way back you were simply blissfully ignorant. Which isn't a bad thing since it meant it wasn't affecting your enjoyment.

Do you know how mainstream cheating was in terms of players trying to get an advantage? Asus (yes that major company) released graphics drivers that cheated back in 2001 - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2001/05/10/asus_releases_games_cheat_drivers/
Yes this is the same company that also has that "Sonic Radar" currently out that parses and maps sound directions for you.

Also I want to address the admin thing. Consider that people have cheated undetected in competitive matches how effective do you think casual admin of pub servers is in filtering cheats? The earliest and simplest cheats back in the day were just to employ high contrast elements (such as via changing the texture), this would enable a significant advantage yet be impossible to tell just via spectating.
 
horrorshow said:
That game DEVOURED pretty much all my game time at age 17. Only DC game I can recall that truly demanded you own a keyboard.

Damn Phantasy Star Universe for getting me excited and turning out so shitty!!

EDIT: My god, http://nerdreactor.com/2015/07/19/phantasy-star-online-2-us/ , I am MOST DEFINITELY going to look into this more tomorrow :eek:
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Whaaat? I watched that website for a solid year and a half waiting for a North America release. I'll have to explore this when I get home next week. Madness.
 
Zuul said:
yeah fuck this "cutting-corners-because-I'm-a-retard-lazy-bitch" mentality. If you don't put in the hours, you're gonna suck. I don't understand why these fuck-turds even play. Is there no satisfaction in being good at something anymore? I left online public matches years a go for this reason only. Now it's all about private servers and friends for me. UT, UT2004, UT3 are fun as hell. A few beers on top of that = win. :)
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It's not just this, there is a real problem with cheating as well, as has been pointed out, in popular games primarily. Wondering why world of warcraft hasn't been mentioned yet. You know the real reason why wow is so successful for a decade and still going? Server performance is great, and cheaters are super rare (do they really exist at all?) why? because it's a serverside centralized governed structure and once somebody is found to try to hack they are banned and from then on will not be able to play where the fun is at, without buying the game again. This shit works.

I expect somebody to chime in and say hackers do exist in wow, but we all know they can do nowhere near the same damage to the experience as a hacker can do in counter-strike for example.

If I were to to develop a game I would follow wow's concept, even if it wasn't an MMO per se.
 
limitedaccess said:
Why would games being cheaper matter?

Back in the "good old days" there was only server to server individual bans which had to be manually done by admins and there were not global persistent aliases. So what if you got "caught" and banned from an individual server? You just switched servers. You could just switch your name up every match and never develop a reputation.

.
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I've been playing games since those days, yes hacks existed but it was nothing like it is today. I think the main reason especially in cs go is the ranking system and the idea of being pro. It is now seen as a real sport somewhat and that gets the competitive juices flowing.
 
Yup,if a fps doesnt support dedicated servers with a browser and admins then I don't buy on pc. My Xbox one and ps4 have been getting a lot of love latley lol. My pc still has it place but its now mmo's/roleplaying like fallout 4 and certain games like starcitizen
 
Even AAA RPGs haven't been that great recently IMO. Xenoblade X is the only AAA rpg recently that's really held my attention due to the depth it offers.
 
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