Cheating

[Jebus]

First and foremost, please don't actually type out HOW to cheat in games here.

Right, so...have I been living under a rock for a few years or is cheating online more rife than I was aware of?

Recently, myself and few guys from here have been playing Fifa 09 a lot online, and (again) recently we've noticed a huge amount of people "cheating". Gaming the system... They've found a bug whereby you can transfer all the worlds best footballers into whatever team they choose to, keep the "real" stats and therefore alter the game in such a way that unless you yourselves choose to cheat, you have a real hard time winning.

So, having a conversation with a friend about "cheating online" he drops the bomb that apparently, users with modded 360's can alter games like Call of Duty 4 (specific example used) to include cheats and then burn, and play online! This blew me away, surely those people are getting banned quickly? Is it even true?

I recall Gears of War being full of glitchers and I find that people almost excuse it away as being "glitching" when what it actually is, is cheating. It's gaming the system to clip through a wall, snipe from the top of a building you aren't supposed to be able to reach, where you can't take any damage, and kill everyone. That...is...cheating.

I've heard about people who purposefully mess with their internet connection to induce lag when it helps them, again...that is cheating.

What's getting me, the thing that really make me angry is this is that these people are cheating and ruining my experience, an experience I am paying real money for, yet the numbers doing so never appear to drop, these people never seem to get caught. Worst still, youtube is full of video tutorial showing how to achieve these glitches/cheats, people are actively encouraging and even teaching people how to use/apply them!

Subconsiously I must have ignored it, because when I think about it, I've really encountered a awful lot of this kind of thing.

So, two things : Firstly is it as rife as it seems (and I've just not thought about it before) and secondly, I'd like to hear your stories about cheaters you've encountered.

[Steakman]

This is starting to bug me a bit now, gave up on Gow along time ago due to all the matches being unplayable and the ridiculous Epic DLC achievements designed to strip you of your life and your money.

Worse for me is the surfacing of people talking about modded controllers. I've been trying to get the last few achievements in the new Tiger and that involves winning so much cash in online tournaments, the scores getting posted to get near the top are insane because people have tuned all their clubs to around a 2% sweetspot and can nail it perfectly off the tee everytime with maximum power.

Seems a bit pointless me spending my time to build my guy up to get the satisfaction of smashing a ball 350+ yards to still be trailing someone by another 100+!

Worrying still is the prospect of buying games like Modern Warfare 2 when you know that when you try online, you are going to get pwned by some tit using a rapid fire controller!

What happened to playing games competitively just for fun, win or lose!

[nakamura]

Too many sad pathetic people in the world.

Set up games with actual friends not randoms from over the world. For me killing a yank i dont know or care about is no different to killing a bot. Its boring.

Scoring one over on a mate at fifa etc is much more satisfying.

[Goemon]

Unfortunately the mentality "anything to win" is very prominent online, I actually learnt a long time ago to ignore online leaderboards/scores (on some games) because a lot are completely false.

As mentioned, playing friends or playing with forumites is the best way to play.

[EvilBoris]

I think the more popular a game is the more cheating there is. Halo 2 was absokutely shocking , every other game had people network manipulating, 'standbying' or using some weird glitch to get outside a map.

Halo 3 is lots better as they managed to crack down on it, but people still use more subtle network manipulation like you said, to induce lag.

People were hacking Gears of War then going online with their modded 360's and burned discs and cheating their faces off.

People are even designing special rapid fire controllers for specific games.

Halo 3 accuracy/rapid fire



Cod 5 Rapid Fire



Gears of War Automatic Active reload


It really is rife and it really does spoil games, losing isn't a bad thing, but it is when you are losing to people who aren't playing fair.

[importaku]

LOL i had no idea people would go to such lengths to cheat, buying hacked joypads is hillarious.

They really must be a sad little person to do crap like that, theres me thinking they were just using an autofire button like pads of old, didn't realise you could get them to do macros & stuff.

Hmm wonder if thats why 1 vs 100 is played by quiz robots that have almost superhuman reaction speeds, i call shennanigans on the whole thing.

[Darwock]

The worst I have experienced was in Metal Gear Online, I gave up on that for a number of reasons but the huge number of cheaters was at the top of the list.

The problem there was that Konami did absolutely NOTHING to address the issues, so it just got completely out of control. Killzone 2 has been the opposite - Guerrilla have been all over the exploits and glitches, patching most things immediately and making sure the game doesn't degenerate into a competition to see who can cheat the most.

[Flabio]

If you suspect someone is cheating on live, report them. If it's being done by hacking rather than using a bug exploit then it's a bannable offence, and they do check up on people if they get multiple reports about them.

[Jebus]

I think the more popular a game is the more cheating there is. Halo 2 was absokutely shocking , every other game had people network manipulating...

I know I said I didn't want to know, but I am intrigued by this. I've heard people say "Oh here we go, fired the torrents up" and I'm assuming that means by downloading on their connection, it creates lag/latency and ruins the game?

Is that all it is, or is it more complex?

If you suspect someone is cheating on live, report them. If it's being done by hacking rather than using a bug exploit then it's a bannable offence, and they do check up on people if they get multiple reports about them.

But I do that all the time. I must have filed complaints/reported about 20 Fifa 09 players in the last fortnight, I also put them as avoided players, yet I've come across them again! That system does not work and I don't have any faith that MS are doing anything about the complaints. I wonder if they see that people have filed 20 complaints, and just think "Yeah, stop whinging". You can't report specific incidents, so how can they check?

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

The only game I've noticed really bad cheating on is SSFIIHDR where players will pick Vega or Bison and just win because of the lag. I'll combo them and they'll have a full life bar and just go through all my attacks. It really does my head in because virtually no one on my friends list plays it any more so it's always ranked matches.

Came across one lagger the other day with 34 consecutive wins. No one is THAT good! Sure enough, he lagged and beat me.

And the whole 'Gamer Zone' thing and the 'Avoided Players' is a load of bollocks as it's never worked.

[Flabio]

The system does work, but it has to protect against poor losers and people just trying to grief the reporting system. They can only act against someone if multiple *different* players have reported a given player for the same issue.

If the system isn't working well it's because most people don't use it. Which means less people use it cause of the perception it doesn't work.

[EvilBoris]

I know I said I didn't want to know, but I am intrigued by this. I've heard people say "Oh here we go, fired the torrents up" and I'm assuming that means by downloading on their connection, it creates lag/latency and ruins the game?

Is that all it is, or is it more complex?

That's one way of doing it but first they manipulate the game into making the game select them at host

There are even more devious things such as packet flooding, where they use their PC to obtain your IP address as theyplay you, then wreck your connection so you get kicked out or Disconnected.

There is one particuarly nasty website where people actually discuss the various methods of ruining peoples fun.
It actually makes me angry reading through the posts

[Jebus]

I've never seen it work once. I've "avoided players" along with the rest of my party, and we've faced them the very next match. We (my regular playing party) always report and give feedback after facing cheaters, every time.

I've filed complaints about "cheating > using in game exploits" and 2 weeks later, they are still playing the same game, still cheating.

Boris, there's no words to describe how pathetic people are that do that. No words.

[Flabio]

Then you're probably the only person other than myself I know that does. Everyone else I know doesn't bother, writing it off as 'just part of the game'.

It needs most people to report for there to be enough data to act on. You can't ban someone just cause a couple of people said they were cheating, it's not practical. There needs to be overwhelming evidence of it. They *do* ban people for this, but we're talking hundreds of reports over the course of multiple months before they act.

Because the PR fallout from false positives is far far worse than being more ban-happy than they are.

[EvilBoris]

People get really really competitive online, silly competitve.