101 replies to this topic

[Ignatius Audene]

I am usually not the biggest Phi defender, but U compare mwo with modern shooters in modern engines (and even then I doubt that it would be an good investment on that low player base).

Mwo engine is hardcore Frankenstein crytek and everytime faction play runs out of conflict someone on Phi needs to sacrifice and virgin to start the que again. There are no cheap standardised implementations in this game.

In general with anti cheat its go big or go home. EAC etc. prevents nothing. U need to invest big money ������ to keep this remotely under control. And sure we can't quantify the numbers, but simply bye playing one hour of tarkov and then mwo, u will realise we are talking at an level where the benefits (some "trust" and a couple of banned accounts (f2p...) Are simply not worth -> investment, false positives, moderation of false positive, invasive software...).

Edited by Ignatius Audene, 09 August 2023 - 11:19 PM.

[Elizander]

Just to add to this topic, a lot of anti-cheat software that is third party can usually be spoofed or bypassed in some way if the hackers are determined enough. It might make you feel better, but I don't think any off-the-shelf solution will entirely get rid of hacks. I'm not saying to let hackers do whatever they want, but don't expect just any old anti-cheat to block things entirely unless it's super intrusive to your system and maybe makes the game launch a few minutes slower as it does a server-side hash verification on every vital MWO game file before allowing you to connect.

[Haipyng]

I would think Anti-Cheat on MWO would be far more effective just because the lower base. Folks selling hacks go for very popular games, that sell lots of copies not games with a low population. Why write code for a low-population game that the publisher can detect and ban requiring a rewrite? That is a lot of work for low return.

I wouldn't much care what AC system is being used, as long as it just cut down on it happening and boosted the integrity of the game.

[Bowelhacker]

My only advice for anyone looking to engage in some haxxx is to make sure you spend up in the PGI store on mech packs and such, then you'll be immune to punishment if caught.

[Ignatius Audene]

Bowelhacker, on 10 August 2023 - 10:45 PM, said:

My only advice for anyone looking to engage in some haxxx is to make sure you spend up in the PGI store on mech packs and such, then you'll be immune to punishment if caught.

Big claims here. Sure u have plenty of info to support this. Not? Then let's continue with the topic.

[foamyesque]

Bowelhacker, on 10 August 2023 - 10:45 PM, said:

My only advice for anyone looking to engage in some haxxx is to make sure you spend up in the PGI store on mech packs and such, then you'll be immune to punishment if caught.

Why would PGI care? They already have your money.

[Rain Dark Sky]

I've literally never seen anything in this game to make me think anyone was cheating.

Frankly I think some people are just angry they got pwned.

[Rain Dark Sky]

LordNothing, on 02 August 2023 - 06:06 PM, said:

i cant imagine that they are a huge source of funding. pgi is going to go where the money is.

Based on management's past choices, I'd say their reflexive response is "$20 is $20".

[LordNothing]

Rain Dark Sky, on 11 August 2023 - 08:53 PM, said:

Based on management's past choices, I'd say their reflexive response is "$20 is $20".

sourcing money from the middle of the bell curve will yield more funds than sourcing from the extremes. obviously you want all the money. but if you are going to release features that screw over one group for the benefit of the other, expect to lose some customers. if you are in a situation where you can go either way and there is no other way forward, go in the way that loses the least customers.

[crazytimes]

Rain Dark Sky, on 11 August 2023 - 08:45 PM, said:

I've literally never seen anything in this game to make me think anyone was cheating.

Frankly I think some people are just angry they got pwned.

There's not a lack of evidence that there are definitely cheats in the wild. A number of streamers have video showcases of it as well.

I feel it's both thrown around a lot against people who aren't cheating- and absolutely not seen by most for a lot of people who are.

I was watching someone recently. Everytime someone was spotted in their front arc, they'd snap to target and start shooting. Even though the target was well outside range. And there terrain in the way. Very likely an aimbot- but useless because the player wasn't any good, so no one accused them.

Either way- I'm not installing invasive anti cheat software for a low population free to play game. The whole point is moot, I see no way PGI would ever bother. If the people who think it's rampant just record their matches and submit it, actual cheaters do eventually get banned.

[crazytimes]

the check engine light, on 12 August 2023 - 02:45 PM, said:

I mean, I take shots out of optimal occasionally, heat and recycle are a non-issue past a certain point, ammo is a limiter and missiles do jack outside of max listed range. A PPC shot that does 0.2 damage still screws stealth and ECM. Snapping to components is a big tell but hard to spot at longer distances.

He was trying to shoot mechs at ~900m with IS medium lasers through the entirety of the terrain on Forest Colony. Repeatedly until he overheated, then continued. It was fun to watch.

[Leadpaintchips]

LordNothing, on 12 August 2023 - 10:55 AM, said:

sourcing money from the middle of the bell curve will yield more funds than sourcing from the extremes. obviously you want all the money. but if you are going to release features that screw over one group for the benefit of the other, expect to lose some customers. if you are in a situation where you can go either way and there is no other way forward, go in the way that loses the least customers.

We've seen from other video game companies that this isn't the case. Hooking the whales is what gives the most money to them. If you lose 10 customers that will pay $20, but have 5 customers who will pay $50, going after the whale is the better choice and the industry chooses to chase the whales.

I mean, they've already shown that they're willing to chase the whales with some mech packs costing as much as a full price, AAA game.

[kalashnikity]

crazytimes, on 12 August 2023 - 02:02 PM, said:

There's not a lack of evidence that there are definitely cheats in the wild. A number of streamers have video showcases of it as well.

I feel it's both thrown around a lot against people who aren't cheating- and absolutely not seen by most for a lot of people who are.

I was watching someone recently. Everytime someone was spotted in their front arc, they'd snap to target and start shooting. Even though the target was well outside range. And there terrain in the way. Very likely an aimbot- but useless because the player wasn't any good, so no one accused them.

Either way- I'm not installing invasive anti cheat software for a low population free to play game. The whole point is moot, I see no way PGI would ever bother. If the people who think it's rampant just record their matches and submit it, actual cheaters do eventually get banned.

I've been playing for many years, I've never seen anything that made me believe someone I was playing against (or with) was cheating, and the "aimtbot" you described (if it was an aimbot, and not a newbie player after "one too many" redbulls) was certainly not going to bring a player to T1.

There are far to many other factors involved in gameplay, but I could see an aimbot bringing a player up one tier, maybe, at the most.

I'm sure there is some "cheating", but like you said...

It's not worth it to install a viral spyware on everyone to stop a handful or pathetic wanabeis.

The real "cheat" is intelligence, wisdom, & dexterity (blessed by God). No "aimbot" is going to beat that, in this type of game, and I pity anyone that feels they need more from an illegal computer program.

I play MW5 and have the aimbot turned off, fwiw.

crazytimes, on 12 August 2023 - 04:05 PM, said:

He was trying to shoot mechs at ~900m with IS medium lasers through the entirety of the terrain on Forest Colony. Repeatedly until he overheated, then continued. It was fun to watch.

So it was a newb with mad skillz?

Maybe you should have got on comms and explained weapons range to him?

crazytimes, on 12 August 2023 - 02:02 PM, said:

A number of streamers have video showcases of it as well.

I've watched a few of those over the years, never saw anything that was PROOF of cheating/aimbot.

[crazytimes]

kalashnikity, on 12 August 2023 - 07:39 PM, said:

I've watched a few of those over the years, never saw anything that was PROOF of cheating/aimbot.

It would be hard to describe just how little your opinion means to me.

Those videos were used as evidence to have people banned. You are irrelevant.

[LordNothing]

Leadpaintchips, on 12 August 2023 - 07:16 PM, said:

We've seen from other video game companies that this isn't the case. Hooking the whales is what gives the most money to them. If you lose 10 customers that will pay $20, but have 5 customers who will pay $50, going after the whale is the better choice and the industry chooses to chase the whales.

I mean, they've already shown that they're willing to chase the whales with some mech packs costing as much as a full price, AAA game.

if the whales provide most of the funds, then the correct questions is "where are all the whales". i dont think they are all t1. even to assume such a generalization is a bad starting point. a normal distribution might be better, but without data on the whaleness of players correlated with their skill its hard to say. my crude guesstimate is that many of the whales are the older accounts, the pokemechs players, not necessarily the best players but the most established.

fp players buy decks, mechpacks, bays, but fp seems to be populated by several different tiers, not just 1s. skill warriors probibly run a lot of the same meta boats and deck them out. maybe run the top 5% of the meta builds and a dupe while they wait. its all about running strong builds consistently, especially ones you have trained well on and know intimately. they probibly dont buy every mech pack unless something looks meta. they aren't gonna buy every light and medium unless they specialize in those classes. stat warriors like to set up alts to scrub their old stats, and probibly buy a bunch of stuff to get started with each account. repeated business potential, but not quite whaleworthy due to low volume.

i hear legendaries have sold quite well in lower tiers. trying to up their edge enough to get to t3. and all the rhinos ive encountered run the full skill gamut. last gold dire i saw didnt hold out too well.

Edited by LordNothing, 13 August 2023 - 02:12 AM.

[kalashnikity]

crazytimes, on 12 August 2023 - 08:27 PM, said:

It would be hard to describe just how little your opinion means to me.

Those videos were used as evidence to have people banned. You are irrelevant.

So then they will just make an anti anti cheat script, to hide the cheat script from the anti-cheat spyware.

You do know how arms races work, don't you? Or did you fall asleep in history class, again?

Sounds to me like the best anti-cheat system is the current spectator mode... as it is already working, according to you.

Edited by kalashnikity, 13 August 2023 - 07:02 PM.

[LordNothing]

im not even sure installing draconian crap on your system is effective anymore. using a second computer with a cap card and an arduino posing as a mouse. sticking a camera at the screen and use opencv and a cnc mousebot. its possible to do it without the computers even being connected together. completely airgapped. that's overkill for this game though. you can do stat or behavior analysis to counter, look for the telltale markers of a pid controller, even a poorly tuned one. ai based anticheat, etc. that is the current state of the arms race.

the fact of the matter is that the cheats are probibly older than the game. they had cryengine cracked before pgi even spun off their fork. even if that didnt work off the bat, 99% of the work was done. the arms race theory doesn't even factor into mwo at all, they were comatose at the starting line. it was never in pgi's interest to even rent an off the shelf anti-cheat tool for their game, nor have they updated their fork of the engine. so even if they did, it would have probibly stopped working some time ago. we all know pgi's track record for fixing bugs. now the cheaters have a nuke, and pgi has a sharpened stick. and there are plenty of idiots with more money than brains that actually install that nuclear waste on their system.

banwaves that did happen were probibly done with old fashioned police work. it works but its slow and labor intensive. if you need to find a hundred or so cheaters, lots of reports in the support inbox to investigate, some spectating to confirm. you could probibly do a hundred just on videos players submitted. but with a skeleton crew i figure much of that doesn't happen anymore.

[R0gal D0rn]

When is was a novice in this game, i felt too many people was cheating. After some years i was convinced that no one was cheating, and al was skill related.
But at this point i´m pretty sure that some players cheat frequently... The most part of them are not using aimbots or something that easy to detect, They use wallhacks, by example, and this is almost impossible to report because you can´t proof it in a video...

The most severe cases of cheating i´ve find are people who PROBABLY have figured out the way to unblock ALL of their skill nodes at the same time, bypasing the 91 points limits. Again very difficult to report in a video, because all they do is theorically inside of the posibilities of their mech and builds, just not all at the same time...

To deny the existence of cheats in the game is really ingenuous.
But of course half of the supposed cheats are just skill, luck or bugs and exploits in the game....

[R0gal D0rn]

the check engine light, on 14 August 2023 - 10:43 AM, said:

Skill nodes are going to be server side though. There's like, one way I can think of where that could possibly be messed with, in saved skilltrees, and you'd think the server would say "hey you're not allowed to have that many enabled wtf" soooo I am not really sure that's going to be a thing.

Not an expert, but if you can change skill nodes user side, there could be ways to fool the server side...

[LordNothing]

Bronn of the Blackwater, on 14 August 2023 - 10:14 AM, said:

When is was a novice in this game, i felt too many people was cheating. After some years i was convinced that no one was cheating, and al was skill related.
But at this point i´m pretty sure that some players cheat frequently... The most part of them are not using aimbots or something that easy to detect, They use wallhacks, by example, and this is almost impossible to report because you can´t proof it in a video...

The most severe cases of cheating i´ve find are people who PROBABLY have figured out the way to unblock ALL of their skill nodes at the same time, bypasing the 91 points limits. Again very difficult to report in a video, because all they do is theorically inside of the posibilities of their mech and builds, just not all at the same time...

To deny the existence of cheats in the game is really ingenuous.
But of course half of the supposed cheats are just skill, luck or bugs and exploits in the game....

most cheaters are super-casuals, so im not surprised. cheating alone is not enough to raise their tier, because they make bad builds and dont position well, even knowing where the enemy are, they are bad at heat management and they stare a lot. you dont see many of those in upper tiers. why use an aimbot when you are an aimbot? they might use something to improve visibility (other than a wallhack), but that's not even a bannable offense.

Edited by LordNothing, 14 August 2023 - 06:30 PM.