20 replies to this topic

[Paladin00]

Well i had enjoyed the game until i played sat morning... i had my suspicions that something wasn't right in game, how did the other side constantly know where I was or where other players were and in some instances couldn't have known... And Sat I found out why... I was in game on clan faction game and someone was being quite suspicious in a few comments they had put in chat and over voice... "better move him or will be found" out and one player knew where to strike perfectly.. then he let it slip that he had second account that he was using to spy on the other team.

If people are resorting to playing like this and spoiling it for everyone else then I may aswell take my money elsewhere.

Edited by Darktier, 25 October 2015 - 05:56 AM.

[Aiden Skye]

Sucks that this could happen, but it's pretty easy to do especially with F2P games. But if it could happen in MWO it could happen in any game and I'm sure it does!

You might have to expand your MWO retirement to gaming as a whole, cuz there is always going to be some try hard out there seeking to undermine the system. Lose faith in humanity instead, there are just too many ***holes in gaming in general!

No reason to stop playing because of that though, most people aren't that bad of a try-hard and still have some sort of respect for the game.

[Dracol]

Darktier, on 25 October 2015 - 05:55 AM, said:

Well i had enjoyed the game until i played sat morning... i had my suspicions that something wasn't right in game, how did the other side constantly know where I was or where other players were and in some instances couldn't have known... And Sat I found out why... I was in game on clan faction game and someone was being quite suspicious in a few comments they had put in chat and over voice... "better move him or will be found" out and one player knew where to strike perfectly.. then he let it slip that he had second account that he was using to spy on the other team.

If people are resorting to playing like this and spoiling it for everyone else then I may aswell take my money elsewhere.

Was this in CW? I would find it hard to believe this was possible in pug or team queue.

And as Warkhan said, it can be found in any multiplayer game. Best to report the person then hit relaunch.

Edited by Dracol, 25 October 2015 - 06:45 AM.

[Kjudoon]

This is the latest scandal for MWO that is starting to pop up. Not on PGI mind you, but on teams doing this. This is why I pray that the push to get real money involved in matches and tournaments dies until such time as these kinds of shenanigans and the activities that brought about the last banwave (which is still 10 times too small I suspect) are ended or dealt with in a way that makes this kind of ilk leave the game.

Well, one could hope, but I'm a realist and know better.

[Kjudoon]

W A R K H A N, on 25 October 2015 - 06:05 AM, said:

Sucks that this could happen, but it's pretty easy to do especially with F2P games. But if it could happen in MWO it could happen in any game and I'm sure it does!

You might have to expand your MWO retirement to gaming as a whole, cuz there is always going to be some try hard out there seeking to undermine the system. Lose faith in humanity instead, there are just too many ***holes in gaming in general!

No reason to stop playing because of that though, most people aren't that bad of a try-hard and still have some sort of respect for the game.

Warkhan, yes, you are right. This is what you get when you have an entire generation that think ethics are for suckers and are taught two "immoral truths":

The ends justify the means, and
Whatever makes me feel good/benefits me, is good.

I could go on a lecture circuit about this, but why bother? The immoral and unethical do not care till their system of beliefs brings them to ruin. Then, and only then do they consider change. And in this whipped, participant trophy, special snowflake, first world problem, western civ, narcissistic relativist mess of internet culture.... even then, we see utter ruin only brings out the fingers, pointing at everyone but themselves.

[Kushko]

Its very unlikely for this to consistently work as well as there being a chance for it to backfire and put the useless afk spy account on your team leaving you with a handicap. Not to mention that the benefits from successfully doing this are not that huge or gamebreaking.

So as far as im concerned if someone wants to go trough that much trouble for a slight chance of having a slight advantage they can have it. At the end of the day they would probably be more of a threat if they spent all that time and effort improving their pilot skills instead.

Also i assume that more often than not the feeling you get that the other side knows where you are is because they have a UAV in the sky that your team missed/didnt shoot down (or an ECM light sneaking behind your lines).

Edited by Kushko, 25 October 2015 - 07:04 AM.

[DarkMetalBlade]

Another thing is, if he is using an alt to spy on the other side, I'm guessing that it can be tacked on for a team treason report.

My best guess as to what to do is find a way to record the VOIP audio, & with that combined with video evidence, it very well might be solid proof for them to bring out the banhammer on that account & tack the main for multi-account abuse.

This of course, might just be little more than speculation on my end...

[Mudhutwarrior]

PGI screwed the pooch when they said they had a larger list of cheaters then did nothing. In pug there are tons of alts doing exactly what you saw to farm c-bills for their buddies. A lot of them are open about it being a synch drop and they don't care.

Nothing does more to kill the game for new players and casuals then that.

Now the population is so low PGI is trapped. They cannot afford mass bannings.

[Kjudoon]

Mudhutwarrior, on 25 October 2015 - 07:08 AM, said:

PGI screwed the pooch when they said they had a larger list of cheaters then did nothing. In pug there are tons of alts doing exactly what you saw to farm c-bills for their buddies. A lot of them are open about it being a synch drop and they don't care.

Nothing does more to kill the game for new players and casuals then that.

Now the population is so low PGI is trapped. They cannot afford mass bannings.

In this you and I agree on Mudhut. I'm not sure if that's a sign of the coming apocalypse or what.

I will also go so far as to say sync drops... if done honestly where you are trying to 'wrestle your brother' and win is not a problem. Doing it deliberately to sandbag your other team or help them get a Deathstar award >cough cough< should be a bannable offense and I mean fast, if caught.

And if the last estimates of active population being around 15-16000 total are true... that's a hair-raising state of the game.

This is a combination of self inflicted wounds that we the gaming community at large and PGI both are to blame for our parts.

Edited by Kjudoon, 25 October 2015 - 07:13 AM.

[Cementi]

W A R K H A N, on 25 October 2015 - 06:05 AM, said:

Sucks that this could happen, but it's pretty easy to do especially with F2P games. But if it could happen in MWO it could happen in any game and I'm sure it does!

You might have to expand your MWO retirement to gaming as a whole, cuz there is always going to be some try hard out there seeking to undermine the system. Lose faith in humanity instead, there are just too many ***holes in gaming in general!

No reason to stop playing because of that though, most people aren't that bad of a try-hard and still have some sort of respect for the game.

Lots of games manage it better than MWO though. I think the only way to stop or at least limit this kind of thing would be to take planet choice away from the players so people could not reliably get alt accounts to pop on the faction they are attacking.

For now I would suggest report every single afk you see in a CW drop. Eventually they should be able to figure out which ones are coming from the same source and do something about it.

[Mister Blastman]

There is no way to stop this. The lengths people will go when reputation or money is on the line knows no bounds. I've been happy in Elite where shenanigans like that don't matter and when I play MWO, I PUG. I don't have time to deal with tomfoolery like that.

[oldradagast]

Kjudoon, on 25 October 2015 - 06:54 AM, said:

Warkhan, yes, you are right. This is what you get when you have an entire generation that think ethics are for suckers and are taught two "immoral truths":

The ends justify the means, and
Whatever makes me feel good/benefits me, is good.

I could go on a lecture circuit about this, but why bother? The immoral and unethical do not care till their system of beliefs brings them to ruin. Then, and only then do they consider change. And in this whipped, participant trophy, special snowflake, first world problem, western civ, narcissistic relativist mess of internet culture.... even then, we see utter ruin only brings out the fingers, pointing at everyone but themselves.

With all due respect, if anyone thinks this type of behavior is limited to "kids these days," they have conveniently white-washed nearly all of recorded human history. Every time period was full of this nonsense, from the idiot Roman emperors, who'd gladly squander the wealth of the Empire just to claim a bit more territory for themselves, to the robber barons and trust crooks that ran the show around 100 or so years ago.

Before the internet, people like the try-hards the OP describes still existed, but they instead cheated at cards or tabletop games, but they were limited to making the people around them miserable. The internet just lets them spread that misery, but the people remain unchanged.

I'm just tired of listening to people blame "kids these days." It's no different than the angry old farts at a previous job I worked at complaining about how "kids these days are lazy, have no ethics, and spend all their time on the internet instead of working." Meanwhile, one of these old farts was cheating on his wife, while the other was an ex-con, and both spent their time wandering around the building and goofing off; but they weren't on Facebook, so I guess it's ok...

Edited by oldradagast, 25 October 2015 - 07:29 AM.

[Darian DelFord]

I do not see how this can be consistently done in the PUG queue, maybe once in a blue moon when the stars light up you can have your main and your alt in the same match. But not regularly. CW and group queue I can see it more due to the limited numbers that drop in those two.

But yeah report the hell out of them. It's gotten to the point with me I record every match and when I see shenanigans going on. mainly team treason and team killing, it gets sent up the chain to support.

[Kjudoon]

oldradagast, on 25 October 2015 - 07:27 AM, said:

With all due respect, if anyone thinks this type of behavior is limited to "kids these days," they have conveniently white-washed nearly all of recorded human history. Every time period was full of this nonsense, from the idiot Roman emperors, who'd gladly squander the wealth of the Empire just to claim a bit more territory for themselves, to the robber barons and trust crooks that ran the show around 100 or so years ago.

Before the internet, people like the try-hards the OP describes still existed, but they instead cheated at cards or tabletop games, but they were limited to making the people around them miserable. The internet just lets them spread that misery, but the people remain unchanged.

I'm just tired of listening to people blame "kids these days." It's no different than the angry old farts at a previous job I worked at complaining about how "kids these days are lazy, have no ethics, and spend all their time on the internet instead of working." Meanwhile, one of these old farts was cheating on his wife, while the other was an ex-con, and both spent their time wandering around the building and goofing off; but they weren't on Facebook, so I guess it's ok...

I'm saying the rate is accelerated. I'm very familiar with the sociological complaint that goes back to the cave. "Kids these days." It's much deeper than that. I would say that the internet has added a new element to it for the era, anonymity and accelerated it on a global scale. Much like the true sociological 'gift' to the world from modern American culture is convenience.

As for a lack of ethics, some of the least ethical people I see nowadays are pretty darn old. At least the young can learn and grow if given the right opportunity.

I'm reminded of an old joke. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can beat it repeatedly with a newspaper.

Edited by Kjudoon, 25 October 2015 - 08:06 AM.

[kilgor]

Sadly, poor sportsmanship in multiplayer games has always been around and I've been playing online multiplayer games since the late 1990s, so I've seen a lot of examples of poor sportsmanship.

[Mudhutwarrior]

PGI could stop this to a magangeable level if they wanted to. And you would think top teams and factions would police their own but so far they seem to be the biggest users of cheats/exploits.

I would love to here their explanation for not getting behind cleaning house. Till then I have no respect for any of them.

The game deserves no support. Let the cheaters/exploiters do it themselves.

[Karamarka]

CW I can see it happening. PUG queue is really hard for sync drop but not impossible.

[Speedy Plysitkos]

honestly , shitheads like double-account you mentioned, should be banned for IP. FOREVER. such idiots.

[Paladin00]

Yeah it was in CW, I was playing wolf clan.. I should have tried to record of screen shot but I didnt think at the time. They were in a group of 4-5 and group name was 2 numbers and merc after it... For example 66mercs or something similar and was between 0600-0800 sat morning. I work nights so was trying to get a few games in before bed.

[Mad Porthos]

I seem to recall that sync dropping functioned basically off the idea that when you as a group are entering the matchmaking at precisely the same time as other groups (also associated with you) you flood the matchmaker with easy choices and a LIMITED TIME to make a match before things get "unreasonable". That is why the syncing can work. If you and the other groups you are sync dropping with are of roughly the same ELO, or now... Tier, you are the puzzle pieces to putting together two 12 man teams and you already have some good control if all 3 or 6 groups you are dropping in are 4 men. Whatever metric may be used, it's probably going to try to make up those teams of the ideal sizes of groups, so it would try to grab those 6 four mans and make a match there, perhaps making sure that the two best rated groups are on opposing sides and then balancing out the other 2 four mans to make the match fairly even, based on what it knows now about the tiers of the players.

While this is guesswork, it's pretty certain you could test this quickly and get a sense how to craft matches with any iteration of a matchmaker. It would get to be the definition of meta... gaming the matchmaking to be sure you get for example, MS vs MS matches, without bothering with private lobbies, or to be certain that at least one lance on the other side is actually in your unit. If overall, your unit is trying things like to push players higher in a tournament or accomplish certain goals like kill totals, liquid metal etc., it makes it simply easier to do so and certain people would justify it by saying things like, requiring premium time is pay to win, I shouldn't have to pay to win to fight all members of my own unit in a private lobby.

But also, yeah... alot of the time I have seen this, there are whole lances in my team that go walk off the side of the map, rather than participate in a fight with their own unit... or who do the rambo charge, leaving you torn between trying to support the move of them as TEAM MATES, when you also realize they are making a bee line to their buddies in the enemy team so the match will end and they get a chance at another drop in the group queue on the same team. Sure, they take a few shots but they are not fighting the good fight or even being strategic - they are hauling arze in plain view into where they know their buddy's firing line is. And the makeup of these annoying situations? Two groups of four on the other side (mostly same unit), one group of four of same clan or mixed, ending up on our side. This suicide lance if nothing else, pre-wins the battle of attrition where one loss tends to snowball into two or three or the complete collapse of your team. Four guys you can't count on, in addition you might your own three guys and 4 from some random assortment of 2 groups of 2. Getting these non sync dropped groups to all fight the careful game or focus on the few who make mistakes or stray out of position on the enemy team is hard if not impossible - since trying to win 8 vs. 12 often is about manuver, getting the enemy to push where you aren't actually at as you draw them out, retreat and then refocus many on a few - for a few quick kills evening the numbers. It can happen, but syncs do happen and usually are going to guarantee better odds for those practicing them, because either they are in fact a 12 man in a group queue, or they are an 8 man, with 4 saboteurs on the other side.

Often the motivation though, is not even I think about cheating, winning by gaming the system. It's just trying to set up drops where they are playing vs. their own teamates on voice comms. I've been on Marik Monday Madness and Sync Drop Saturdays type things where dozens of groups where in the queue in a central lobby, all in voice chat and when it shook out which groups were in what games, they would self segregate into the appropriate Team Speak rooms, so that all the guys thown together in teams on one side or another by CHANCE, really were in full communication as a 12man. That's how it works in a positive light, because the guys involved in the event ON THE OTHER SIDE, should self segregate into thier own teams voice chat channel. But they don't always. I have heard individuals say things like, oh man, our group is on the other side now from you guys in Channel X... but then never leave the channel and start saying stuff like, ok guys... my raven is with thier lights, we are heading towards epsilon I think to cap it, I'm with two locusts and providing them ecm cover. Right there, we can ignore that and pretend the guy just forgot to join the right team - but when it happens time after time, we know better. Some people just wanna keep helping thier buddies, even when matchmaker puts them on the other side - and I can't pretend people in these events on my side did not just charge out there with thier streak crows to wipe out the locusts, likely letting our buddy in the raven get away.

Edited by Mad Porthos, 25 October 2015 - 11:34 AM.