voyager, is this you?
If yes (was the only voyager I could find, don’t know whether you play by that name), than I understand why you were beaten, even if Splatterladder only records XP it’s still good for a rough estimation of a players skills. If the linked profile is you, than you need to improve your gameplay a lot and you aren’t beaten by ping or maxpackets but simply by better (not cheating) players.
How are you going to get better if you only play with people who are the same or less skilled as yourself?
voyager, is this you?
If yes (was the only voyager I could find, don’t know whether you play by that name), than I understand why you were beaten, even if Splatterladder only records XP it’s still good for a rough estimation of a players skills. If the linked profile is you, than you need to improve your gameplay a lot and you aren’t beaten by ping or maxpackets but simply by better (not cheating) players.
How does that ladder thing work? I found myself on there but i couldn’t work out what all the percentages mean 
I always liked the old stats on the bio server (even if they did promote stat whoring 
)
It’s basically just XP/minute and a small additional percentage for your overall played time… XP/minute will result in your efficiency rating and your overall played tiime will increase that to the final ‘rating’ value that is used to build the ladder. So, with two guys with the same efficiency the one who has spent more time playing will be ranked higher, also a guy with a lower efficiency but way more ‘played time’ will also have a better rating, thats why I usually only focus on a players efficiency.
Sadly XP is the only information that can be gathered from servers right now, to make better statistics including kills/death / efficiency you need to have access to the server log so only the server admins can create those.
Well my public alias is rated way better than me under my clan name, and some of my clanmates, who are way better players than me, are rated much lower. So, er, kinda worthless IMO. 
I don’t know if it’s possible but a weighting factor based on game type could help. I guess the reason my clan alias scores lower is because I spend all my clan playing time on limited XP stopwatch servers, whereas my public alias occassionally wanders out into the big bad world of Campaign.
well its a bit screwy if you ask me … looking at some of the stats and it says:
28.11.2004 - ET Fuel Dump - 76.65 xp/m (931%) - 22.5 min
If thats 76.65 xp/m during a 22 minute round then it would be 1686 xp in one round :eek2: … thats just strange :disgust:
Well, yeah, as I said, they use XP (as it is the only measurable data) for their ladder and if you’d wanted to abuse it you could easily.
Imagine a medic and a FldOps, doing notthing but: medic shoots FldOps, relaods, Fldops gives ammo and medic heals FldOps. Do this for 30 minutes and you’d easily get 60+ XP/minute and be ranked high in the ladder, while the CovOps who steals a uniform early on FuelDump and than waits 20 minutes patiently until finally an engineer breaks through the axis defence and they bleo up the dump would get a horrible XP/minute rating.
So no, the system isn’t perfect, but unless ETPro introduces a way to gather more information than XP there is no other way for such a project to work.
heh indeed
but the problem was they were my stats I was looking at (for 76 xp / minute on fuel dump) and i know i didn’t get 1600 xp in a round … it was more like 500. so the calculations just don’t add up somewhere. oh well, it filled in some time at work while i was bored so it has served some purpose 
mendicant said :
first things first, without a 76 constant fps ur gonna find it hard to be competative, so if u wanna beat these"super" players then u’ll need to buy some new gear
thats not strickly true, look at my specs at the bottom, i’ve beaten when im the ‘zone’ people at alot higher level then me/on a better pc/better ping rate.
SCDS_reyalP said:
IMO, tweaks don’t make the player. Nor does XP. No amount of tweaking will suddenly turn your average player into a top level player, any more than a fancy car will turn you into a top F1 driver.
thats so true, but yet i see ppl who go ‘oo look at the noob with 3xp’ etc.etc YET i’ve met them later and beaten them easily so i mock… ‘oh dear look at who just beat you with little xp’ L dont get why ppl dont see XP means shit on ET, it HELPS yes but doesnt make you a good player, neither in my opinion a high kill/killed ratio, i mean when im a medic i HEAL b4 i kill… ie do my job… so its obvious my kill/killed ratio isnt gonna be high!
only thing i see that SEEMS to help ppl is ping rate i’ve started on the beach, after it loaded and they’ve allready built the ramp and are in the base planting 
but its JUST loaded for me lol.
also being called a cheat is annoying L, once i threw a grenade over the backwall and killed an allie and i said in joke… ‘oo i saw u through the wall buddy’ L now he TRIES to tell ppl im cheatin? :???: i’ve been on spec.(ET makes a good screensaver while eatin :P) and been called a cheat? :S im like prove it? i dont need to cheat i dont see any skill in it.
btw…im trying to get as much kick of of my pc to help frame rate/play etc.etc i have this line in my cfg.
seta rate “12000”
seta snaps “20”
cl_maxpackets “100”
can i add anything to make it go faster? any tips would help thanks 
spec:
pentium2 416mhz
geforce4 440 mx 8x 64mb
512mb ram
YES my specs 
and yet i get about 90% of full speed so it works 
-scratches my head- whats full speed? maybe 100% :S lol
i mean as if i was playin it on a faster pc so i dont get so much slow mo on occasions…
Ok … one more post. Trying to make the simple obvious. Some of the replies above imply that the poster did not read my definition of “super” player. Thus, some responses above do not apply to the conclusions I was making. I’ve tried again to summarize some of my conclusions. My purpose is not to cry foul over the “super” players, but to point out how they can gain artificial advantages over others, so that others can find ways to level the playing field for more enjoyable games. BTW, I have NEVER seen a “super” player on any public ET Pro server. I use the ET Pro Antilag setting. I have never seen someone get 20 or 50 to 1 kill-to-death ratios using SMG on a popular (28+ players) public ET Pro server, but I have seen this several times on shrub servers.
First, I don’t play under the name voyager.
Second, there are, and have been numerous cheats that PunkBuster did not prevent. There were some “cheats” using config tweaks, but all that I know of have been eliminated through “fixes” to the source code for ET. Third, there are some hardware cheats that can not be detected or prevented, using external filtering systems.
Fourth, “super” players in the real world do NOT “wipe the field” of their competitors. Have you ever watched the Olympics? Nearly everyone that competes in running, swimming, etc. finishes with only 1% to 3% of the time of the winner. I will say again, if an ET player can out-perform extremely good players by factors of 500% to 1000%+, then either they are cheating, or they have some sort of “unfair” advantage, or the game itself is flawed in a way that exaggerates the benefits enjoyed by someone who is 1% to 3% better than the other players.
Fifth, I have played with someone (KiLiM) who is regarded by many as one of the best players there is. I’ve also watched him consistently wipe out other players that previously were getting 10 to 1 kill to death ratio. They didn’t even have a chance … even when they were generals, had the jump on him, and fired first, and KiLiM had only level 4 for battle sense and light weapons (only 1 star for medic).
Six, it is well known that someone with very low latency (see posts above regarding the definition of ping / latency / lagometer in this case) can see things sooner and send their reactions sooner than someone else with a higher latency. Pretty big advantage if you ask me. I get shot many times by other players that I didn’t see because they were not displayed on my screen. I suspect my hardware firewall and network connection are below average in terms of minimizing problems depicted by the lagometer. One time I forgot and left verbose logging enabled on my DSL router/firewall. It made a very noticeable difference on the gameplay.
Seventh, even when watching demos, I’ve seen players lose against “super” players
Eighth, if I can hide, pop-up and head shot kill generals on a server, but the same aiming/technique doesn’t work on a super player …
Ninth, I’m not just talking about myself. I see other superb players also get consistently “wiped” by “super” players. Given the dynamics of the firefights, I consider it sheer folly to presume that the “super” players always get jump on everyone. All other factors held equal, on public servers, other superb / top-players ought to be able to kill a “super” player at least sometimes, given the number of factors not under the “super” players control (e.g. other people/things interfering with the “super” player’s tactics in unpredictable ways). Frankly, if the logic of this point isn’t obvious, then you are wasting your time reading this post.
Tenth, “super” players are rare in my experience, but extremely frustrating. I only run across one every 10-20 times I play or so. How many times do you see players with pings averaging under 30ms? (That is only one of the necessary, but not sufficient, criteria I listed for defining these “super” players.)
Eleventh, on some public servers I never good many (sometimes none) head shots in, while on others, I consistently get at least 1 headshot per kill. Invariably, pings (latency) are worse for the servers I do worse on. I can see a big difference in my head shot ratios for as little as 30-40ms differences between two servers. Given that I live in California, I don’t think there are a shortage of good players on servers “close” to me.
Lastly, I’ve succeeded in collecting enough observation points to conclude that some (most?) servers “tune” their internal algorithms based on past history of the “network connection” between you and the server. Not uncommonly, I notice it is peculiarly easy to kill other players for the first 1 to 3 maps or so (even though I have no XP at first), and then the exact same type of shots stop being as effective. I used to attribute this to being tired after playing for a while, but then I noticed that if I exited ET just before the end of a campaign, generated a new PB player id (to force the server to think I was a new player), and then rejoined as a new player, I could get kills / head shots more easily again for a while, although I obviously moved a little slower, reloaded slow, had less health, etc. Many months ago, when one of the configuration “tweak cheats” still worked, I was able to annihilate players with incredible ease using a plain MG, again starting with no XP. After about 3 maps, I could empty most of clip into a player’s head with mixed results, and no head shot recorded in the stats. (Yes, I know about head hit boxes.) I only did this one day, purely in the interest of trying to determine how others were sometimes having the same “luck” when shooting me.
Then just play etpro. It is well known that there are more cheats an exploits which work on vanilla et or shrub, and that, in general, those servers attract less skilled players.
Fourth, “super” players in the real world do NOT “wipe the field” of their competitors. Have you ever watched the Olympics? Nearly everyone that competes in running, swimming, etc. finishes with only 1% to 3% of the time of the winner.
That is a bogus analogy. Everyone who gets to the olympics is already in the top 0.01% or better. Imagine a 100meter race that took completely random people off the street… a 90 year old grandma, a 500lb man, a 12 year old child, a falling down drunk bum, an olympic runner. A pub is like that. Something like the TWL alpha finals would a better comparision to the olympics.
Lastly, I’ve succeeded in collecting enough observation points to conclude that some (most?) servers “tune” their internal algorithms based on past history of the “network connection” between you and the server.
This is not true. Whatever your are observing or imagining, that isn’t it.
depends. there are dozens of cheats for any mod not running PB. enable PB on any mod and you will knock off most cheats. etpro adds it’s own AC, but the fact is that the majority of pubs run etpro now because of it’s AC. this means the majority of new cheats are specifically aimed at thwarting the etpro AC.
so you’re right that there are more existing/old cheats for other mods, but that is beginning to change and will be untrue very soon. check any cheat site. the first thing in the README is “shows as clean in etpro”, or “etpro 3.x version”, etc
and that’s just public cheats. since etpro is the mandatory comp mod, it would stand to reason that the majority of private cheats have been geared towards etpro for a very long time.
the day i saw the blowup at planet rtcw over “s!lo”, i swore to never allow anyone to dismiss my fears as “noobish paranoia” again. there quite simply ARE private, complex hacks out there which will likely never be detected by any AC, and are so well coded that you will never know they’re cheating by watching demos of them (amazingly lifelike humanized aim, etc). the only reason s!lo was busted is that he got lazy and turned on his wallhack and a PB screenshot nailed his ass. still, if not for the eyes of a wary admin/official he would have continued - and he’s not alone out there…
i used to think i could spot any aimbot with ease. the fact is that they are getting so good at looking “sloppy” nowadays that i can’t make that claim anymore.
what’s even more frightening is that he released his source code after he got caught, and people are already porting it from rtcw to ET :banghead:
Is there even such a thing as a popular 28+ etpro server?
it’s enough to outperform them consistently by a small margin, since I assume they all play medics; Kill, self-heal, repeat. Outperforming someone by 1000% in damage would mean that virtually nobody ever hits the player, something that would only be possible with complete and utter newbies or an aimbot that I assume would be really obvious.
Never heard of him, which clan is he in? (Can’t find anyone with that name on Splatterladder.)
So you’re a “superb player”?
I would love to see a demo of one of these “super players” if you can provide one. I don’t want one with an obvious aimbot though, since that’s not what we’re talking about.
(Please don’t turn into Ironman. )
Well I have come to the conclusion that you are just a prat voyager; that you almost certainly have no concept of the very relative concept of ‘super’ in comparison to many other ‘levels’ and that u are still trying to put down great players. I mean…all your talk of ‘killing generals’ does alot to prove my point.
voyager, it seems to me that you are used to playing on servers where the average skill is quite low. Don’t be offended, but the truth is that large servers (18 man +) or servers with 6-10 map campaigns usually contain low skilled players. Even an average skilled clan player could probably dominate one of these servers.
So it sounds like every now and then a high skilled clan player will join the server and dominate completely. The difference in skill between a top level clan player and your average pub player is huge. Some clan players have been playing Q3 / RTCW / ET etc day in day out for years, so obviously their skill level will be much higher than someone who has been playing ET for a few months. Also the level of skill in clan games is massively higher than publics, so if a player plays clan games for 6 months they will improve much faster than a player who spent 6 months playing on public servers.
It would be good if you could post some demos of these ‘super players’ as it would be useful for us to get an idea of their skill. Also, if they ARE using somesort of wallhack/aimbot it is likely we can indentify this from watching the demos.
voyager, I would recommend you try downloading some demos of top level clans in action to see just how skilled some of these guys really are
Nuts. I was afraid that the hackers might proliferate secret WMD for use against the innocent on ET Pro servers.
I wasn’t aware of the situation regarding private hax. I suspected it, but haven’t hunted down the evidence. Thanks for the info.
Regarding “sloppy” aimbots, I’ve suspected that for a long time. Ever since I first started getting blasted by “super” players with perfect aim. When you look at their stats these days, it doesn’t show 50+% accuracy anymore. Their aimbots are purposely sloppy, and they shoot to miss occasionally to lower their accuracy.
I think open-source game servers are increasingly a stupid idea. The only way to stop the cheaters anymore is to play private LAN parties, where everyone uses another’s computer.
Again, people are not reading my prior definition’s of “super” player carefully.
If you just think of a super player as someone who is really really good, then I would agree with most of the posts here, even the ones that contradict my conclusions.
However, I’m NOT talking about the best 1% of the best 1% of clans’ players. That is not the definition I gave, describing what I meant by “super” players. I specifically defined characteristics that make it essentially impossible to be classified as a “super” player without using advantages that have nothing to do with player skill.
No.
Obviously that happens. However, I’m also speaking of clans that occasionally open their servers for non-clan members to play. Also, I’ve specifically pointed out that I’m talking about situations where one member completely dominates (i.e. 10 to 1 using SMG) other highly skilled clan members. Obviously, this has happened thousands of times on hundreds of servers (e.g. whenever a skilled player uses a software cheat). To deny this, would deny the existence of the cheaters that have already been caught.
Again, I haven’t really said anything new. A skilled player can:
Also, if they ARE using somesort of wallhack/aimbot it is likely we can indentify this from watching the demos.
Not true. Not all aimbots are detectable from demos. Hardware cheats can be undetectable. Also, as previously pointed out by someone else above, timing advantages are not directly discernable from demos. Demos are not really WYSIWYG (see their post).
voyager, I would recommend you try downloading some demos of top level clans in action to see just how skilled some of these guys really are
I’ve seen them.