183 replies to this topic

[Greenjulius]

JaxRiot, on 28 April 2015 - 08:30 PM, said:

I dont know about aim bots in this game. Ive only seen one instance where I suspected something fishy.

During this event I dropped in a CW match. A pug vs pug.

My team got beat real bad, but everyone on my team kept saying Hax.

After the match we looked at the scoreboard and there was one guy on the opposing team that had an almost 400 rating (390 I think.) 15 kills, and did just shy of 3k damage with one death.

Maybe the guy just had a really good game but it seemed fishy to us because we were dropping like flies to this guy. Hard for me to personally say though. I dont know much about aim bots and such.

Please don't make accusations based on a player doing well. I have had many, many great games where people have accused me of cheating, and I've never cheated in MWO once, and never will.

2500-3000 damage in CW is my usual range as long as we don't get beaten badly and camped. If my team wins, I usually score at least 8 kills, sometimes double that. The key is bringing metamechs and powerful long range harassers.

King Crab with 2xGauss, 2xERLL, 90+ rounds gauss
Shadowhawk 2K with 3xERLL, at least 315XL engine
A couple Firestarters in cheese configs (8xSPL, 5-6xMPL or 6xML)

My first 2 CW drops, ever, were both ~2900 and many kills. I probably still have the screenshots sitting around.

Here is my 1st or 2nd CW match back in December. My usual, "attempt to carry a pug team, even though it's almost always a fruitless endeavor."



That said, there is cheating in MWO. I've seen proof of wallhacks and aimbots existing, and played against people who have admitted that they have used them.

I hope that those who use them and are caught are not granted any kind of leniency, because cheating in a competitive game is not forgivable.

Edited by Greenjulius, 29 April 2015 - 06:49 AM.

[Mystere]

EvilCow, on 29 April 2015 - 03:49 AM, said:

Those who simply dismiss the problem are the best allies of cheaters, the problem is real.

The game has no hard protections so cheaters will cheat, it is their nature.

But allegations without proof are still just allegations.

Stefka Kerensky, on 29 April 2015 - 05:37 AM, said:

Facing a lot of comp.players during this event, I'm quite sure about who were using "esp wallhack".

But... no name and shame, right?

But this happened: I poke out, and he hit me; change position, poke->hit me, change-> hit me again.
So.... how could he know where I was to poke? Quite hilarious, right?

Seismic module?

[EvilCow]

Mystere, on 29 April 2015 - 06:50 AM, said:

But allegations without proof are still just allegations.

Allegations without proof are just allegations, dismissing without proof or knowledge is foolish.

[Greenjulius]

Kyocera, on 29 April 2015 - 02:51 AM, said:

Unfortunately there is an active hack that was released publicly recently as far as I know. We can't talk about it on the forums though. Just report any suspicious players.

As for its functions, from what I know about it it's an aimbot and "wallhack" tool. Smart players will know how to spot users of these and can differentiate between hacks and skill. I've reported 2 players so far this week.

100% true. I've seem plenty of screenshots and a video or two of this particular package at work. It's one of those "subscription hacks" where they want you to pay per month. I'm just astonished that PGI hasn't figured out how to autodetect / autoreport users who are using this crap.

Edited by Greenjulius, 29 April 2015 - 06:57 AM.

[STEF_]

Mystere, on 29 April 2015 - 06:52 AM, said:

Seismic module?

Nope, he was in a Stalker-4N at mid range.

[Appogee]

Is there some kind of "infinite armor" hack around, too?

Three nights ago, I was playing a certain unit who I've since learned are infamous for using hacks.

I was focusing a Hellbringer in my 6LL Stalker. I put about 12 sets of 3LLs (ie about 330 points of damage) into his CT, at a time when we were facing each other relatively straight on, and a range of about 100-150mm. My three lancemates said they were focussing him too.

But I couldn't even remove the armor from his CT, let kill him. Even if we allow for 'bad aim', it's hard to understand how we could not have removed his armor. It's not like he was even able to use the Jump Jet hit box exploit.

It was a short match as they just rolled over the top of us. At the end of the match, that Hellbringer was still alive, zero deaths.

Edited by Appogee, 29 April 2015 - 07:12 AM.

[PurpleNinja]

LRM aim bots.
LOL

[Amerante]

I had a match where all of my mechs got destroyed by headshot, from full (or almost) armor. My panther when I was running on slope in zigzag, Then my Atlas when I pushed and torso rotating, tho I got minor torso damage, and when I turned to the other side, I got headshot. The other Atlas next to met the same fate. That was a wierd match, many players complained about getting headshot.
But this happaned only once, and never since then.

Edited by Amerante, 29 April 2015 - 07:36 AM.

[Ghogiel]

Appogee, on 29 April 2015 - 07:11 AM, said:

Is there some kind of "infinite armor" hack around, too?

Barring a bug (which migh be exploitable) or somehow messing with net traffic to mess with HSR (which I can't think of being reliable or not an complete hinderance to yourself due to the server simulation being the master) Unlikely. More likely packet loss/network borked and made only some mechs (or just 1 and not all) invincible. I have video ref demonstrating it.

[Knyx]

Ghogiel, on 29 April 2015 - 07:33 AM, said:

Barring a bug (which migh be exploitable) or somehow messing with net traffic to mess with HSR (which I can't think of being reliable or not an complete hinderance to yourself due to the server simulation being the master) Unlikely. More likely packet loss/network borked and made only some mechs (or just 1 and not all) invincible. I have video ref demonstrating it.

Nope, modifying armor is actually a feature of the working cheat engines available for MWO

[Ghogiel]

Knyx, on 29 April 2015 - 07:38 AM, said:

Nope, modifying armor is actually a feature of the working cheat engines available for MWO

Unless they added to the features and isn't listed as a feature for the hack. I have my doubts any serverside data can be manipulated by it.

[EvilCow]

Damage is supposed to be tracked server side so it SHOULD not be possible to hack that unless there is something very stupid in the game implementation.

[Gwendolyn Myra]

Johnny Z, on 28 April 2015 - 08:10 PM, said:

Yep or when the lasers have full burn on side torso even after mech hits the ground behind an obstacle.

This isn't an hack, the game uses server side hit detection so you can't "convince" the server you hit something that isn't possible to be hit. However it is common in games using HSR and such since the server will decide you were still out in the open long enough to be hit by them even if to you, you appear to be under cover.

[Water Bear]

Vassago Rain, on 29 April 2015 - 05:20 AM, said:

Amazing how things change when there's big money involved, isn't it?

Just to say, cheating exists in Starcraft 2 as well. When I still kept up with things, that game had a few competetive players (or community spotlight players) who cheated. Not a whole lot to be honest, but there were some shenanigans. Also pro players using alt accounts and things like this.

As long as there's cash on the table people will cheat in online qualifiers where there's no one watching.

Also, while I have never attributed a death to cheating and find it to be a fairly immature way to deal with the ego de-inflation of loss, I will point out that cheating is not hard to do. You don't have to do some 1990's game-code cracking haxxor whatever. I have the following story.

I know a little machine learning so I became interested in the idea of reading game information and training a learner to play a strategy game, such as Starcraft 2. I won't lie, I was interested in the money that could be made by selling a sufficiently well trained AI. If you could get an agent that used (or faked using) natural computer inputs like keyboard and mouse, and which read publicly available game data, then it would be completely undetectable. Further if you could train it to be on the level of a master's league player, then with sufficient DRM protection to prevent redistribution you could make a coin or two.

It turned out someone (I believe from an Ivy league school) with much more knowledge of computers than me beat me to it. He had a public blog about creating and training an AI (probably a neural net but I don't remember) to play Starcraft at the level that it could beat the hard AI. Of course his agent took in the thousands of actions per minute which would be very easily detectable. A real cheater would limit the APM or have it vary within human-pattern limits.

But I digress.

If you know enough about reading the output from a game -- how it displays graphics or reading net code -- it's not really that difficult to set up an AI to learn to play the game, much like Deep Blue plays chess.

Such cheating could exist since I have read about other people having done at least 80-90% of the leg work.

Edited by Water Bear, 29 April 2015 - 07:54 AM.

[Dracol]

Mercules, on 29 April 2015 - 05:59 AM, said:

Server Side Authentication goes pretty far. The reason many other games require cheat detection running is because of how they are coded and most actions are client side which reports to the server, "Oh I totally hit that guy, ignore what you think happened." opening the doors for easy hacking.

MWO aimbots are going to be really hard to code well since the models are all slightly different.

Wallhacks, on the other hand, are completely possible and likely. In fact my unit might have run into a unit using them in CW this weekend as it was fishy.

The unit in question constantly launched UAVs but did so in areas that made no sense. Those UAVs were so far out of range it was ridiculous. None the less they seemed to always have an idea where people were, even when they shifted along a valley fully in cover. We suspected the UAV launches, despite not being anywhere close to us, where a cover for them so they could say, "No... we had a UAV up so we could see them." When I say out of range I mean we are sniping back and forth at about 500-600 meters and someone in their back line launches a UAV.... ??????

Launch UAVs back behind friendlies, in sight of the enemy. Enemy fires on UAV, friendlies watch where the shots come from and now know were the enemy is.

Edited by Dracol, 29 April 2015 - 07:53 AM.

[WarHippy]

Zergling, on 29 April 2015 - 02:35 AM, said:

Just had a triple gauss Dire snipe my left torso out on a river city night, from beyond the range at which mechs are visible with night or thermal vision. I wasn't firing to light my mech up either.

The Dire was using a macro to fire the gauss in sequence for a constant stream of hits.
Despite how I was moving, torso twisting and turning to avoid taking all the damage in one location, every hit was to the left torso, and it cored my XL engine.

While I'm not a fan of macro's there is nothing against the rules with using them. As for shooting you from beyond the visual range of thermal and night vision do keep in mind you don't have to use those modes even on River City Night where it is possible to see silhouettes at a surprising distance allowing you to accurately hit targets that think they can't be seen because they rely so heavily on thermal/night but can't in return see you.

AUSwarrior24, on 29 April 2015 - 05:52 AM, said:

I think you're jumping the gun by immediately labelling the 'comp' community as illegitimate.

Vassago Rain always jumps the gun on pretty much everything. While he sometimes grazes the truth with his ranting and raving he usually only further obscures any real problem that may exist with his absurdities.

mogs01gt, on 29 April 2015 - 05:59 AM, said:

I've been playing FPS's for 20 years now. The players who dismiss cheats, typically do no have enough FPS knowledge or experience to tell the difference between a human vs a macro/bot.

I have been gaming for years(probably as much if not a lot more than you) with a lot of it in FPS, and what I have personally found is that while there are a lot of cheats out there we also have a lot of people like yourself that so firmly believe they can identify cheats that they falsely get people banned from servers who were not in any way cheating. Their only crime was being significantly better than their accusers and not having the server admins ear. While I'm sure there are some cheats floating around for MWO in all of my games and time spent in this game I can't think of a single instance that had me thinking someone was cheating. As buggy as HSR and the netcode for this game is we do see some strange stuff sometimes, and the serious lack of situational awareness people have in this game doesn't help because those are often the people that immediately jump on the "they were cheating" bandwagon.

[Summon3r]

Dirkdaring, on 28 April 2015 - 07:30 PM, said:

Rain of missiles? Rules out any competition teams.

pretty much this....

i will say though in the past month or so i have come across some pretty amazing amount of headshots, infact in a match the other day my lance all got headed in basically fresh mechs was quite amuzing. is it luck?

[Kenyon Burguess]

Macster16, on 28 April 2015 - 09:19 PM, said:

Is this a response to the OP? Sorry, but has there been a screenshot/vid that has been pulled down because I can't see anything anywhere. As a member of 420, I am very curious to see this accusation in more detail or even if I'm participating in the match that has caused the accusation to arise.

But as you said, we have some very skilled players in our unit and when we play in groups, we use comms extensively.

I was responding to OP. my post was a compliment to [420] teamwork.

[Ghogiel]

Water Bear, on 29 April 2015 - 07:52 AM, said:

Just to say, cheating exists in Starcraft 2 as well. When I still kept up with things, that game had a few competetive players (or community spotlight players) who cheated. Not a whole lot to be honest, but there were some shenanigans. Also pro players using alt accounts and things like this.

As long as there's cash on the table people will cheat in online qualifiers where there's no one watching.

Also, while I have never attributed a death to cheating and find it to be a fairly immature way to deal with the ego de-inflation of loss, I will point out that cheating is not hard to do. You don't have to do some 1990's game-code cracking haxxor whatever. I have the following story.

I know a little machine learning so I became interested in the idea of reading game information and training a learner to play a strategy game, such as Starcraft 2. I won't lie, I was interested in the money that could be made by selling a sufficiently well trained AI. If you could get an agent that used (or faked using) natural computer inputs like keyboard and mouse, and which read publicly available game data, then it would be completely undetectable. Further if you could train it to be on the level of a master's league player, then with sufficient DRM protection to prevent redistribution you could make a coin or two.

It turned out someone (I believe from an Ivy league school) with much more knowledge of computers than me beat me to it. He had a public blog about creating and training an AI (probably a neural net but I don't remember) to play Starcraft at the level that it could beat the hard AI. Of course his agent took in the thousands of actions per minute which would be very easily detectable. A real cheater would limit the APM or have it vary within human-pattern limits.

But I digress.

If you know enough about reading the output from a game -- how it displays graphics or reading net code -- it's not really that difficult to set up an AI to learn to play the game, much like Deep Blue plays chess.

Such cheating could exist since I have read about other people having done at least 80-90% of the leg work.

Someone made a farm bot ages ago that actually moved the mech to cap bases and could relaunch into games allowing people to afk while it potentially wins games. I think at some point it actually was shooting at things it targeted. Most people from 2012-13 will remember at least the afk farm bot epidemic. And that was all just scripted stuff irrc.

[Dracol]

Sjorpha, on 29 April 2015 - 06:28 AM, said:

I'm not saying it's not possible, but I was curious about the "just google it" kinda comments, so I actually went looking. So far I have confirmed 26 scam attempts and 0 legit hacks. These are the first few pages of basic google searches for MWO cheats/hacks/aimbot etc. For example there is a frequent one pretending to allow adding MC/cbills which is just a concealed adware installer.

Be very sceptic, because all games have hundreds of cheatbot offers showing up in google searches and 99% of these are just scams trying to make you install adware or give away some kind of personal information. A secure sign of a scam is when the download link leads to a service asking you to fill in a "survey" or take part in a lottery before downloading.

Other sign of scam is that the offer is posted long ago, or recently with an outdated video, or that the posts on the webpage all have 0 comments or only positive comments.

Another test is whether they show up in torrent communities and the more unscrupulous gaming hangouts, as all real cheats eventually do. If they are only in the "www.getomgleethacks.dodgy" type of places they are scams.

None of the reddit threads or threads in various MWO communities I have looked through have convincing evidence either, all links I have found are to one of the aforementioned scams or to obscure blurry snippets of video and screenshots that look edited. Nothing solid anywhere, and mostly even easily confirmed misinformation.

I hate cheating, I want to purge it from all online gaming, but I also hate conspiracy theories.

Inb4 the obligatory super secret boogieman "you just don't know where to look" type of post. Yeah, sure there is a possibility of that in theory. In practice that just isn't how the net works. The onus of proof is on the accuser, not on the sceptic. Consider for a moment exactly how useless the argument form projected ignorance is before using it.

Don't like conspiracy theories you say? Got one for you anyways. Maybe the people suggesting others google for hacks are the ones putting up the scams?