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I used to play competitive Search and Destroy on PC in Call of Duty. I clocked up a few thousand hours of online multiplayer play during a mis-spent 5 years as

by 1n 4y ago

I used to play competitive Search and Destroy on PC in Call of Duty. I clocked up a few thousand hours of online multiplayer play during a mis-spent 5 years as a student. I’d often get accused of cheating in casual online games - to the point where it became tedious to even acknowledge the accusations. My point is: often people think others are cheating when in reality they are just really good because they have spent thousands of hours playing.

bilalq 4y ago
It's also frustrating when you're not particularly skilled are just having an unusually good performance. My K/D ratio hovered somewhere just under 1, but I had outlier moments in CoD where I would rack up kill streaks and end games 16-0 or 27-1. Being accused of cheating and then follow-through harassed via PMs was just exhausting and ate up some of the joy of performing well.
- cronix 4y ago
  I always turn off text and voice chat as part of setting any game up. I don't care what others in a game have to say about, well, anything. I'm there to play. I rarely if ever look at the social tab of any game. One of the worst things to happen to games in the last 15 or so years imho is in game communications (second to only being able to play with a net connection). We used to use external apps like teamspeak and xfire and the like if we cared enough to talk to people, like if you were in a clan and needed to play cooperatively.
- enneff 4y ago
  I love it when people get salty at me when I do well. I take it as a huge compliment.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Well if you cheat you get to enjoy that feeling even when you wouldn't do well. I honestly expect many of the people who go "nah I'm just that good" even in this thread are actually cheating. That smirk wouldn't feel any less good if you were cheating, in fact it'd be one more thing to smirk about.
    - enneff 4y ago
      On the contrary, I would get no pleasure from the salt if I were cheating. The pleasure entirely comes from feeling good at the game, so good that people feel the need to complain about it.
    - reportgunner 4y ago
      > I honestly expect many of the people who go "nah I'm just that good" even in this thread are actually cheating. This, players that are actually good don't feel the need to brag about it on hacker news.
      - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
        I don't know why you think being good at video games makes you a better grounded person. Lots of people good at games also have big egos.
- Xelbair 4y ago
  take it as a confirmation of your skill - you did so well that others thing you must've been cheating. It is a badge of honor, not a hassle.
cauthon 4y ago
The absolute best I've ever felt in online gaming was when someone accused me of cheating after a particularly good round of TDM. Rode that high for at least a week.
- barbs 4y ago
  I got that once in Unreal Tournament, but only because someone on the server didn't understand what relics were (items that gave you buffs of some kind). Still felt good, though.
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    I totally killed it on a particular server for Counterstrike (the oooold versions). It was the only server that had a map I really liked but my ping sorta sucked. But the netcode made it so that I could circle around people with an MP5 meaning I was very accurate and they had almost no chance to hit me. Guess what happened.
    - smabie 4y ago
      I mean, in some sense you did have an unfair advantage over the other players and maybe they were justified in banning you?
      - doodlesdev 4y ago
        If having a high ping is an issue that should simply be a kick. Most modern games generally have a way to prevent people with a high ping from playing. Lag compensation techniques also reduce the problem to some extent. I imagine OP is talking about CS in goldsrc which absolutely had bad netcode for high ping, still fun as hell though.
        ummonk 4y ago
        High ping / jitter could be used as an intentional cheating mechanism in the days of the lag switch through.
IntelMiner 4y ago
Big agree on this. I play a lot of Team Fortress 2, because it's absolutely timeless Valve in their "infinite wisdom" decided to funnel the bulk of players into a matchmaking style multiplayer system, while relegating decades of player-run (and previously Valve run) dedicated servers to a "Community" tab that opens the old school server browser Consequently the game has been absolutely infested and overrun with bots for the last couple years. They all play Sniper and aimbot instant headshot players on the enemy team, they're also programmed to steal a players username and steam avatar (because there is no throttling on changing that information live, even when connected to a game server) Consequently the paranoia of most players means that even if you're just a "good sniper" (as someone with about 8,000 hours in the game over the last ~14 years) you'll almost immediately be the subject of a votekick. To which you have to get on microphone and plead "I'M HUMAN, I'M HUMAN!" and hope players don't automatically just vote to remove you
- Tool_of_Society 4y ago
  What Valve has done to TF2 has been an absolute tragedy :(
- flangola7 4y ago
  >To which you have to get on microphone and plead "I'M HUMAN, I'M HUMAN!" In a few months even this won't be good enough.
Tool_of_Society 4y ago
Back when I played Counterstrike and Team fortress classic in the late 90s I would occasionally get banned from a server. The only cheats I used were headphones and way WAYYY too many hours of play time. I couldn't even tell you how many tens of thousands of times I've been accused of cheating because "no one could do that legit". One person's skill is another person's cheater. Having said that I've run into plenty of "hackers" and cheaters over my decades of online play. I steer clear of certain types of games as the player base seems more inclined to cheat. Found an old screenshot of Counterstrike after I got auto balanced. https://i.imgur.com/AUFE0zo.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AUFE0zo.jpg
- kjs3 4y ago
  Brings back memories. Used to play waaay too much CS/TF with some work mates in the 90s. The 'problem' we had was we often played from the office after hours. And we had a DS-3 connection. 45Mbps, low latency connect at a time when basically everyone else was dialup. We got accused of cheating constantly; I suppose in one sense we were.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  CS is one of those games where this is actually reasonably possible, because you only need a single headshot with an AK to frag basically anyone. If you get good enough to reliably point your weapon at their head (before they do it to you), you are basically invincible.
  - arein3 4y ago
    CS has a mechanic that makes you miss the shots if you are moving during shooting. Basically you have an acceleration vector, and this value makes your shots deviate if it's higher than zero. But it can be exploited (move the opposite direction before shooting, to cancel the acceleration vector), which makes it frustrating for players who do not train to exploit this mechanic. It basically makes the game unplayable, because you have following 2 options: 1) play normally and get killed constantly which is frustrating 2) train to exploit this mechanic, which makes no sense
runnerup 4y ago
The key difference is that in the story from TFA, valve confirmed 40,000 cheaters with confidence. That’s an insanely huge number. As in, maybe people are often wrong when accusing cheaters, but with numbers like this they’re often correct too!
reportgunner 4y ago
Do you still play ? Cheaters are a whole different league now compared to 10 or even 5 years ago. It used to be script kiddies with aimbots downloaded from somewhere, nowadays it's cheat developers making hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month from renting cheats or selling carry services.

by 1n 4y ago

bilalq 4y ago

It's also frustrating when you're not particularly skilled are just having an unusually good performance. My K/D ratio hovered somewhere just under 1, but I had outlier moments in CoD where I would rack up kill streaks and end games 16-0 or 27-1. Being accused of cheating and then follow-through harassed via PMs was just exhausting and ate up some of the joy of performing well.

cronix 4y ago
I always turn off text and voice chat as part of setting any game up. I don't care what others in a game have to say about, well, anything. I'm there to play. I rarely if ever look at the social tab of any game. One of the worst things to happen to games in the last 15 or so years imho is in game communications (second to only being able to play with a net connection). We used to use external apps like teamspeak and xfire and the like if we cared enough to talk to people, like if you were in a clan and needed to play cooperatively.
enneff 4y ago
I love it when people get salty at me when I do well. I take it as a huge compliment.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Well if you cheat you get to enjoy that feeling even when you wouldn't do well. I honestly expect many of the people who go "nah I'm just that good" even in this thread are actually cheating. That smirk wouldn't feel any less good if you were cheating, in fact it'd be one more thing to smirk about.
  - enneff 4y ago
    On the contrary, I would get no pleasure from the salt if I were cheating. The pleasure entirely comes from feeling good at the game, so good that people feel the need to complain about it.
  - reportgunner 4y ago
    > I honestly expect many of the people who go "nah I'm just that good" even in this thread are actually cheating. This, players that are actually good don't feel the need to brag about it on hacker news.
    - TheHappyOddish 4y ago
      I don't know why you think being good at video games makes you a better grounded person. Lots of people good at games also have big egos.
Xelbair 4y ago
take it as a confirmation of your skill - you did so well that others thing you must've been cheating. It is a badge of honor, not a hassle.

cauthon 4y ago

The absolute best I've ever felt in online gaming was when someone accused me of cheating after a particularly good round of TDM. Rode that high for at least a week.

barbs 4y ago
I got that once in Unreal Tournament, but only because someone on the server didn't understand what relics were (items that gave you buffs of some kind). Still felt good, though.
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  I totally killed it on a particular server for Counterstrike (the oooold versions). It was the only server that had a map I really liked but my ping sorta sucked. But the netcode made it so that I could circle around people with an MP5 meaning I was very accurate and they had almost no chance to hit me. Guess what happened.
  - smabie 4y ago
    I mean, in some sense you did have an unfair advantage over the other players and maybe they were justified in banning you?
    - doodlesdev 4y ago
      If having a high ping is an issue that should simply be a kick. Most modern games generally have a way to prevent people with a high ping from playing. Lag compensation techniques also reduce the problem to some extent. I imagine OP is talking about CS in goldsrc which absolutely had bad netcode for high ping, still fun as hell though.
      - ummonk 4y ago
        High ping / jitter could be used as an intentional cheating mechanism in the days of the lag switch through.

IntelMiner 4y ago

Big agree on this. I play a lot of Team Fortress 2, because it's absolutely timeless Valve in their "infinite wisdom" decided to funnel the bulk of players into a matchmaking style multiplayer system, while relegating decades of player-run (and previously Valve run) dedicated servers to a "Community" tab that opens the old school server browser Consequently the game has been absolutely infested and overrun with bots for the last couple years. They all play Sniper and aimbot instant headshot players on the enemy team, they're also programmed to steal a players username and steam avatar (because there is no throttling on changing that information live, even when connected to a game server) Consequently the paranoia of most players means that even if you're just a "good sniper" (as someone with about 8,000 hours in the game over the last ~14 years) you'll almost immediately be the subject of a votekick. To which you have to get on microphone and plead "I'M HUMAN, I'M HUMAN!" and hope players don't automatically just vote to remove you

Tool_of_Society 4y ago
What Valve has done to TF2 has been an absolute tragedy :(
flangola7 4y ago
>To which you have to get on microphone and plead "I'M HUMAN, I'M HUMAN!" In a few months even this won't be good enough.

Tool_of_Society 4y ago

Back when I played Counterstrike and Team fortress classic in the late 90s I would occasionally get banned from a server. The only cheats I used were headphones and way WAYYY too many hours of play time. I couldn't even tell you how many tens of thousands of times I've been accused of cheating because "no one could do that legit". One person's skill is another person's cheater. Having said that I've run into plenty of "hackers" and cheaters over my decades of online play. I steer clear of certain types of games as the player base seems more inclined to cheat. Found an old screenshot of Counterstrike after I got auto balanced. https://i.imgur.com/AUFE0zo.jpg https://i.imgur.com/AUFE0zo.jpg

kjs3 4y ago
Brings back memories. Used to play waaay too much CS/TF with some work mates in the 90s. The 'problem' we had was we often played from the office after hours. And we had a DS-3 connection. 45Mbps, low latency connect at a time when basically everyone else was dialup. We got accused of cheating constantly; I suppose in one sense we were.
Aeolun 4y ago
CS is one of those games where this is actually reasonably possible, because you only need a single headshot with an AK to frag basically anyone. If you get good enough to reliably point your weapon at their head (before they do it to you), you are basically invincible.
- arein3 4y ago
  CS has a mechanic that makes you miss the shots if you are moving during shooting. Basically you have an acceleration vector, and this value makes your shots deviate if it's higher than zero. But it can be exploited (move the opposite direction before shooting, to cancel the acceleration vector), which makes it frustrating for players who do not train to exploit this mechanic. It basically makes the game unplayable, because you have following 2 options: 1) play normally and get killed constantly which is frustrating 2) train to exploit this mechanic, which makes no sense

runnerup 4y ago

The key difference is that in the story from TFA, valve confirmed 40,000 cheaters with confidence. That’s an insanely huge number. As in, maybe people are often wrong when accusing cheaters, but with numbers like this they’re often correct too!

reportgunner 4y ago

Do you still play ? Cheaters are a whole different league now compared to 10 or even 5 years ago. It used to be script kiddies with aimbots downloaded from somewhere, nowadays it's cheat developers making hundreds if not thousands of dollars per month from renting cheats or selling carry services.