A new approach to cheating ...

(petameta) #1

Some thoughts about cheating:

We know people cheat. This is a problem, and I don’t think there is a technical solution. Punkbuster tries to solve this problem, however it doesn’t.
Of course it bans some cheats, then new cheats come with are not detected by Punkbuster. Punkbuster updates, new cheats come, Punkbuster updates and so on …

I think this is a very bad solution.

So why don’t we take another approach to cheating: Let the people cheat.

I know this sounds somewhat stupid, but think about it:

Let’s say there’s an aimbot in the game, implemented directly in the game-engine. Everybody is free to use it. So weak players gain an advantage, and may have a chance over the Pro-Players.
The important thing is that people with aimbot enabled are marked as using aimbot. Everybody knows that the aimbot-player gets his hits not by skill, but by aid from the aimbot.
The Pro-Player however has the aimbot disabled and gets all the glory from beating the “aimbot-lamers”.

Of course some measures have to be taken, so this gets not abused:

  • There should be votes to disable the aimbot. So if someone is too good with aimbot, his aimbot can be voted off. Maybe there should a also be a vote to disable aimbots at all.
  • The aimbot shouldn’t be perfect. For example, it should not target players which couldn’t be seen without the aimbot (i.e. a player behind a wall, or a player which is very far away)

This is still not perfect, only a first idea.

–> What do you think about this ?

(Please no discussion if Punkbuster is good or not in this thread, that’s not my point.)

(Wils) #2

That’s a somewhat controversial suggestion :slight_smile:

It has at least four major drawbacks:

  1. People who want to cheat will still try to find ways to cheat. When the server votes to turn aimbots off, they’ll be there trying to use a third party aimbot and wallhacks to retain their advantage.

  2. Providing aimbot functionality with the game would probably only make it easier for cheat authors to write a third party version with none of the constraints. It certainly doesn’t make it any harder to write one, put it that way.

  3. It doesn’t add anything to the game. People who want to cheat will still try to, players will still accuse each other of cheating (see first point). All you’re doing is reducing the potential for individual skill in games where the ‘feature’ is enabled.

  4. By including a cheat with the game you’re potentially further blurring the line drawn between what is and isn’t acceptable. There’s already division in some parts of the community over which graphics tweaks are acceptable or not, for instance.

(Kendle) #3

Yep, the main problem would be cheaters still using 3rd-party hacks because they want to “appear” to be good players. Who in their right mind would choose to use an aimbot and be seen to be doing so?

You say no discussion of whether Punkbuster is good or not, yet in your post you say Punkbuster tries to solve the problem and doesn’t? So you’ve judged Punkbuster (harshly) then try to forbid anyone arguing against your (false) conclusion?

Punkbuster tries to solve the problem and mostly suceeds in doing so. It isn’t perfect, but try playing a game with no anti-cheat software and then see how you feel about ET.

(ExP|Maximus191) #4

Personally i don’t think having an aimbot built into the game is what splash damage had in mind when they wrote E.t tbh :eek3:

I get most of my enjoyment from this game by getting better at the aiming side of it and i really can’t understand people that want to cheat .

(Maple) #5

Although I can see where you’re going with your point, it still would just end up being a waste of time.

(As already pointed out) Players would just vote it (the cheats) off and continue to use 3rd party cheats… People that are cheating would use the excuse that they aren’t using cheats because it has been voted off in the game.

(petameta) #6

I just didn’t want to create yet another thread that discusses if punkbuster is good or not. It’s my assumption that punkbuster is bad, you don’t have to think the same. So please no punkbuster discussion.

I can’t tell if people would still use 3rd party cheats. Maybe, if the aimbot is in the game and is considered to be OK by most players (so, the community), people maybe would not use 3d party cheats. This is an important point in my opinion.
I think many cheaters cheat because they play bad, compared with those who play Wolf and ET (or whatever game) for a very long time.
I do play online for a long time, and i’m quite good at it. However, I can remember my first days online: I got my ass kicked. It was quite frustrating. I didn’t cheat, and practiced a lot. But I can imagine that many people think, hey, why not just use an aimbot.

An ingame-aimbot would give the bad players a chance. Look at the aimbot as a help for newbies. Good players shouldn’t have a big problem with aimbot-enabled-noobs anyway :).

(Loffy) #7

… Maybe, if the aimbot is in the game and is considered to be OK by most players, … people maybe would not use 3d party cheats.

Aimbotmakers will always try to make “yet another version” for various, personal reasons. So the 3rd party versions will pop up.

// Loffy

(Sauron|EFG) #8

That’s called PB off… :smiley:

The only “solution” to the cheating problem would be if we had intelligent bots and stopped playing human opponents. :bored:

Nice thought, but it would turn off a lot of good players, as well as less skilled players (like myself) who still want to compete on equal terms.

(Kendle) #9

When I first started playing RTCW it was my first on-line game, and I found it very hard going. I was terrible and spent most of my time in Limbo!

Being a programmer by trade, when I discovered scripting I took to it like a duck to water, and soon had every script going, weapon toggles, jump scripts, etc. you name it, in an attempt to improve my game. Now I don’t use any scripts (apart from Class selection as it’s quicker than the Limbo menu) because nothing beats practise and trying to improve your skills the “proper” way.

Having access to some sort of “artifical help” would, IMO, remove the incentive for bad players to get better.

Besides, I honestly don’t think cheaters cheat to become better players, they cheat in order to appear to be better than they really are.

(The_Jesus_Zeppelin) #10

Cheaters… :disgust:

i dont them them…Cheaters :disgust:

(SJ_Frankenstein) #11

What you talking about Willis? Or should I say petameta?

v52

(deception5) #12

First off, I’d have to disagree - I think punkbuster does an excellent job limiting the number of cheaters out there. I have never witnessed anyone actually cheating in Enemy Territory (been fortunate) and this is a tribute to the great job Evenbalance is doing.

Secondly, even if cheating were running rampant, this solution would do nothing but make the game more unplayable. It would be a matter of days before people would have a hack to make it look like they weren’t using aimbot so now you’d end up with 3 categories of people:

1.) People who are using aimbot but are not “flagged” as doing so (much like the aimbots of today).
2.) People who are using aimbot “legitimately”.
3.) People who are not using aimbot.

Today we just have categories 1+3. I don’t think that adding category 2 will make the game better…

(The_Jesus_Zeppelin) #13

punkbuster was awesome on cs!

(ETplayer) #14

okay… uhm… im… feeling… kinda… angry… right… now… :angry:

an… aimbot… build… in… ?? :???: :angry:

GO… PLAY :angry: :angry: PONG … PLZ… LEAVE… FORUMS… :angry:

(schmeisser) #15

Cheaters are limp-dick pathetic assholes. Period. Fuck em’ all. I have spoken.

(Machine for to kill) #16

Aimbot wouldn’t help the noobs. They would stay noobs forever because there would be no need for them to improve their skills. Actually no…then you’d have a whole new expert system where people try to become better at using the aimbot. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

I think the best way to keep cheaters off is to have a much more accurate data gathering system. ET tries to do this but it doesn’t work. Basically just like in ET, at the end of the match you’d be able to see all the player stats. Kills, deaths, accuracy, headshots, bodyshots, shots fired, shots missed etc… I think if you look at these and you notice that a player has 100 kills all headshots 100% accuracy and no misses then you’d know that something was wrong. ET does implement this but it doesn’t work for some reason (140% accuracy?). This wouldn’t really stop people from cheating however it would force them to use cheats less so that it’s not too obvious that they’re cheating. Less is always better.

But as the rule says…if there’s demand for something, there will always be a supply. So we must get rid of cheaters. I say we get them all and then send them to some big camp…somewhere where they’re concentrated…a concentration camp if you will. When there we find a way to change their will to cheat…maybe through some hard labor…or a nerve agent of some kind…some kind of gas maybe…

(petameta) #17

I think the same: People do cheat, no matter what. An ingame-aimbot would put the cheats from “illegal” to “legal”. If you can’t prevent something, why not just allow it ?
Didn’t the Prohibition raise many many problems, to give a historic example ?

Can you tell for sure ? I can’t. I’d like to see this, then we would if it works or not. Without a test, nobody knows. Unfortunately I don’t have the time nor the knowledge for writing something like this.

(Sauron|EFG) #18

You keep forgetting that the aimbot is one of several different cheats. I’m sure there would still be wallhacks, and then we’d have the same situation as today anyway. And don’t tell me we should let noobs see through walls. :disgust:

(The_Jesus_Zeppelin) #19

coulnt you theoretically make a patch that would remove wallhacks and aimbot? then when people update id be removed, and couldnt you also sneak them into pk3 files for all the new maps that are being created.

(Machine for to kill) #20

I don’t think wallhack is as big a deal as aimbots. Even if you know where the enemy is you still need some skill to be able to kill him. Aimbot on the other hand…

You know who cheaters are? They’re people who primarily play console games. Most console people are used to the autoaim features of console shooters and they have a hard time making the transition to PC fighting. Plus many people that play mostly console games do use a ton of single player cheats because…well I think we’ve all had our share of the no save, no sense, no getting anywhere after weeks of trying. So when they get to PC multiplayer they can’t imagine a world without cheats.