Cheating Accusations

Playing PvP in recent eras (have played a lot in the past), I've been noticing a strange phenomenon lately.

Team, whispers, and map chat are more increasingly used for exposing cheaters. Now obviously on the very overt speed hackers/air-swimmers, this is expected, but it's going further.

This is now common:

• Their Mesmer is scripting! He one shot me from stealth using multiple abilities at once.
• Their Thief is hacking for infinite initiative look closely he uses Shortbow #5 a lot in a row.
• (And the most common) When somebody disconnects on either side, if there is a top10 player in that game, he'll instantly be 'confirmed' as a win-trader. It's happened to me, the worst when harassment will spill out into the mists map chat after game: "Wow, Chaith pays people to throw games, it just happened, very disappointing."

So just a public service announcement, you may not always have the perfect game knowledge to understand how a player can use their profession to do certain things.Everything except overtly air-swimming, speedhacking, it's all possible (and far more likely) the player in question is not using programs to consistently do things within the confines of the game, like strong awareness, dodging your attacks, or hitting you with their classes big bursts.

In about 22k PvP games I've never once felt like anyone could pull off flawless bursts/random dodges with machine like consistency for an entire match. No player can play their class to their full awareness & mechanical potential on a regular basis. As a former pro player I ask you to trust me, you'd get your talent noticed very fast if you consistently dodged every key ability on autopilot.

To reiterate, sorry, but the person who just killed you is 99% likely not cheating, and you wouldn't know even if they were. Save the finger pointing, it's toxic.

As for the alt-throwing to gain wins/shield losses, aka wintrading, you really can't know either unless they're morons laughing in map chat about it. Remember that a huge percent of the playerbase has potato connections, awful skills in PvP, or will throw for a dumb or no reason.

That's it, maybe lower toxicity toward each other by being very conservative about throwing out accusations of cheating

and ppl wonder why reporting doesn't seem to do anything.

Has anyone ever encountered downed enemies not dying at the end of a stomp? I don't know if it's just me or it could be because they're lagging. This one time I downed a Deadeye thief and for some reason he didn't die when I stomped him. I tried multiple times and it didn't kill him. Is this some kind of a cheat?

Acting like there's no cheaters doesn't help anyone. Because cheating isn't just using a third party tool.

I am not a fan of frivolous reports, but if someone gets reported way too much and they are not actually cheating, there can still value in those reports. It's a sign that the build they are using may have something wrong with it. It could be a tad too powerful, or have a bug, or have something working in a way people can't understand or see because it isn't obvious enough, like a hardly visible visual effect, or a visual effect that goes invisible under certain graphic settings. Or it may just have just too high of a skill ceiling and be that deadly only in the hands of that one player.We can't know if no attention is brought to it.Any decent report system would record the builds of the reported players and that info would be usable to see if some particular element appears in reported players particularly often, to catch not just cheaters, but also other problems, and amortize the resources spent in the report system with more than catching cheaters.

There's no mysterious build combinations that a few can figure out that no one else has that allows them to do seemingly impossible things, except for bugged interactions between skills, traits and/or upgrades that result in something unintended.And there's skill and effect behaviors that are just wrong and that are not obvious and not everyone knows about.

Take immobilize, if you are hit by immobilize mid-jump and fall to the ground, chances are your skills will still consider you to be in the air, getting you stuck and unable to use any skill that can't be used in the air.People who know this and exploit this they are not being "smart", they are being cheaters, because the immobilize effect icon is not telling anyone immobilize works like that, and there's no "usable in air" icon in skills like the "not usable underwater" icon.If you are hit by immobilize while running or walking, you may will also be stuck as "moving". But many skills will make the character using it turn around to face the target if they are not moving, but the immobilize effect doesn't say anything about this. Whether immobilize supposed to prevent turning or not, the behavior should always be the same. But it isn't, and there's people who know this, and exploit the unfair advantage, knowing that they can turn around if they stopped moving before immobilize hits, and that the enemy won't turn around and hit with their weapon if they take immobilize while moving.

Another example, Stealth. When some players are supposed to get revealed, they may not be actually visible for all players at the same time, as the client sometimes needs time receive the signal to show the character, and then load the visuals. Cheaters know this, and exploit it by doing things like approaching from a distance under stealth before the client may have loaded the visuals. That is not 'skill', that is 'skulduggery'.This is one of the reasons stealth needs a rework. For example, to make the invisibility portion last only for 2 seconds. Changing to a partially visible translucent shimmer until stealth is obtained again, and any duration past those 2 first seconds would only prevent targeting. Of course, other changes would have to come with that as other problems would arise, but Stealth as it is will have to be addressed eventually, like it or not.

And thieves have a lot of sources of initiative. But removing that would be bad since the problem is not each one or any particular one of those sources of initiative, but when too many of them stack. That's one of the reasons several of their skills should have charges like Kneel/Sniper's Cover, so they can still use them several times in a row, but not too much when paired with heavy stacking of initiative recovery.

As for disconnects, the game doesn't have AI taking over players that disconnect, and will not pause the match until the player returns. So the moment there's a disconnect, that match is broken. It's possible to win, yes, but the match is no longer in the normal conditions in which it should be. Having players disconnect, on purpose or not, should not be a factor that determines victory, but when it happens, more often than not it is a factor that determines the match, to the point a few players do it on purpose for their own benefit. And after happening to one person 4 out of 5 times you can't seriously expect them to be understanding about it even if all 4 where actual accidental disconnects. It's another issue to be fixed, not something to be brushed aside as a non-issue.

Some may try to rationalize it as much as they want, but lashing out against those who see things that are just wrong without understanding exactly what happens doesn't mean they should shut up. It means the actual source of the problem must be found and addressed, which is not "L2P" as often as people think, no matter how many people have a vested interest on keeping PvP as their particular little noob farm.

And when the problem is indeed L2P, it only shows the game is not teaching them enough, and that it needs a learning progress that allows players to pick up things intuitively and get better over time by knowing what happened to them, what they did wrong, and how the enemy defeated them. Newbies losing in seconds against obscure behaviors exploited by unscrupulous players is far from a learning experience.

@Hoodie.1045 said:Has anyone ever encountered downed enemies not dying at the end of a stomp? I don't know if it's just me or it could be because they're lagging. This one time I downed a Deadeye thief and for some reason he didn't die when I stomped him. I tried multiple times and it didn't kill him. Is this some kind of a cheat?

This is bug . For example he died to condis on some spot but used infiltrator arrow or something like this right before dying ,so on your screen he could be god know where and u can try to stomp .So get ranged weapon,stand still and spam autos, will hit his real body.Also Caith seems to not understand. Fanboys of this 'streamers' etcetc everywhere and throwing/dc'ing for them all around. Example of end of last season. To make sure he is gonna be R1 and not french ,they threw for him and dc w/o him asking .Wasting time creating QQ threads ..meh

It's "Accusations" while yes Accusations can raise some alarms end the end it doesn't mean anything unless proven. Unless you suffer actual damages there not much can be done.

@"MithranArkanere.8957" said:I am not a fan of frivolous reports, but if someone gets reported way too much and they are not actually cheating, there can still value in those reports. It's a sign that the build they are using may have something wrong with it. It could be a tad too powerful, or have a bug, or have something working in a way people can't understand or see because it isn't obvious enough, like a hardly visible visual effect, or a visual effect that goes invisible under certain graphic settings. Or it may just have just too high of a skill ceiling and be that deadly only in the hands of that one player.

Abusing the report feature I didn't even touch on. I'm just talking about toxicity about hacking in chat. Side note, I think using the report feature as you're describing is not happening, more like, they're looked into and found to be false - then disregarded. Bug reports will serve the purpose of fixing visual bugs/functionality bugs, we can't know for sure if there's any point at all to reporting powerful enemies for hacking like you assume.. my intuition says you're wrong - the customer service team's scope of work is not gathering data on what's too overpowered based on hacking reports.

Take immobilize, if you are hit by immobilize mid-jump and fall to the ground, chances are your skills will still consider you to be in the air, getting you stuck and unable to use any skill that can't be used in the air.People who know this and exploit this they are not being "smart", they are being cheaters, because the immobilize effect icon is not telling anyone immobilize works like that, and there's no "usable in air" icon in skills like the "not usable underwater" icon.If you are hit by immobilize while running or walking, you may will also be stuck as "moving". But many skills will make the character using it turn around to face the target if they are not moving, but the immobilize effect doesn't say anything about this. Whether immobilize supposed to prevent turning or not, the behavior should always be the same. But it isn't, and there's people who know this, and exploit the unfair advantage, knowing that they can turn around if they stopped moving before immobilize hits, and that the enemy won't turn around and hit with their weapon if they take immobilize while moving.

This issue has been fixed in 99% of cases, it used to be common for a period in time, now it's rare/non-existent

Another example, Stealth. When some players are supposed to get revealed, they may not be actually visible for all players at the same time, as the client sometimes needs time receive the signal to show the character, and then load the visuals. Cheaters know this, and exploit it by doing things like approaching from a distance under stealth before the client may have loaded the visuals. That is not 'skill', that is 'skulduggery'.

Wait, what's the way you claim players are maliciously going about 'skulduggery'? "Approach people from a distance"? You're saying there's a competitive advantage to covering a large gap while in stealth? I've never once seen someone's model being invisible after revealing from stealth for any noticeable or meaningful amount of time. Some people have crappy GPU's or other technical limitations, add the existence of lag and it's very silly to be upset about 'cheating' on this level.

As for disconnects... ... It's another issue to be fixed, not something to be brushed aside as a non-issue.

Again, I'm just saying not to spew in-game toxicity and accuse people of things based on your un-substantiated feelings. I think there was this thread recently about how to better handle disconnects, you might try reading my suggestion there: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/37961/give-4v5-teams-a-fighting-chance#latest

Some may try to rationalize it as much as they want, but lashing out against those who see things that are just wrong without understanding exactly what happens doesn't mean they should shut up. It means the actual source of the problem must be found and addressed, which is not "L2P" as often as people think, no matter how many people have a vested interest on keeping PvP as their particular little noob farm.

The lashing out, the crap behavior, that's happening when you stop playing PvP and start typing a mid-game essay rage whispering enemy insert-name Mesmer is using auto-clickers instead of helping your team win.

And when the problem is indeed L2P, it only shows the game is not teaching them enough, and that it needs a learning progress that allows players to pick up things intuitively and get better over time by knowing what happened to them, what they did wrong, and how the enemy defeated them. Newbies losing in seconds against obscure behaviors exploited by unscrupulous players is far from a learning experience.

Again, where is the obscure behaviors exploited by unscrupulous players in order to farm noobs for their own gain? Are you claiming all the good players are reliably mid-air immobilizing noobs with invisible player models or some combination of that? Because I can tell you, as a top 250 player you will be farming the weakest 1-3 enemies all game very legitimately, that's intended GW2 PvP from ArenaNet.

Why would I trust a random player on the internet about this issue?

@Chaith.8256 said:As a former pro player I ask you to trust me, you'd get your talent noticed very fast if you consistently dodged every key ability on autopilot.

@Malediktus.9250 said:Why would I trust a random player on the internet about this issue?

@Chaith.8256 said:As a former pro player I ask you to trust me, you'd get your talent noticed very fast if you consistently dodged every key ability on autopilot.

Fine, don't.

If anyone can produce a single player who can use game modification to consistently be better than the best mechanical PvP players, let me know. Haven't seen one in 22k games myself better than the best players.

@"Hoodie.1045" said:Has anyone ever encountered downed enemies not dying at the end of a stomp? I don't know if it's just me or it could be because they're lagging. This one time I downed a Deadeye thief and for some reason he didn't die when I stomped him. I tried multiple times and it didn't kill him. Is this some kind of a cheat?

That happened to me before and was accused of hacking lol, but is bacause of lag, my ping was around 1000+, everything my character was doing had a huge delay and to other people around me, would look that I was teleporting around, and we all know guards dont have teleports(Meditations and Sword require target). Was funny how people were fast to jump on the "THE GUARD IS HACKING!! REPORT!!", come on, if a player will hack he will not just stand on your AoE, dont use heal or even fight back...though that was common sense, but I guess I was wrong.

@Odik.4587 said:Also Caith seems to not understand. Fanboys of this 'streamers' etcetc everywhere and throwing/dc'ing for them all around. Example of end of last season. To make sure he is gonna be R1 and not french ,they threw for him and dc w/o him asking .

Well actually I do know that players will throw for dumb or no reasons. If you're gonna throw your own rating or enjoyment so your 'gw2 hero' can gain or not lose rating, I honestly don't know what could be done about that, that to me is just freaking weird and creepy.

Wasting time creating QQ threads ..meh

Hmm that's a pretty inflamatory thing to say seeing as GW2 and its forums are good for one thing, wasting time. Can only laugh to myself at the irony in saying I'm wasting time.

Hmmmm.. :/ ........ Hacks!

@"Chaith.8256" said:

Another example, Stealth. When some players are supposed to get revealed, they may not be actually visible for all players at the same time, as the client sometimes needs time receive the signal to show the character, and then load the visuals. Cheaters know this, and exploit it by doing things like approaching from a distance under stealth before the client may have loaded the visuals. That is not 'skill', that is 'skulduggery'.

A rendering delay when a character leaves stealth is a very real problem, however it's not a hack nor is it a GPU problem.

For obvious reasons the game engine does not keep every character model continuously loaded in the memory. So when a character model enters visibility the engine has to go scrounging around on your storage drive for the appropriate data and then send that data off to be rendered. For players that a have the game installed on slower speed HDDs (such as a 5400 rpm drive on a old SATA I connector) there will be a very real delay that could easily last a second or more between the point when the character leaves stealth and the when they are rendered.

As you say Chaith it is a purely technical problem and not a cheat, but I can't really blame players for thinking it is, since it's a very arcane problem that almost nobody that doesn't work on graphics engines for a living would know about.

When in doubt, report. It's no skin of Anet's back to check it, and if a player receives multiple reports against them then it's indicative of a build that likely needs a heavy handed nerf.

There is never any reason to send a salty or cheating accusation whisper, just hit the botting report button and let Anet sort it out. If the player is or has used some sort of cheat tool in the past, they'll get it, simple as that.

@Chaith.8256 said:

@Odik.4587 said:Also Caith seems to not understand. Fanboys of this 'streamers' etcetc everywhere and throwing/dc'ing for them all around. Example of end of last season. To make sure he is gonna be R1 and not french ,they threw for him and dc w/o him asking .

Wasting time creating QQ threads ..meh

Yes , ruin good games that not lopsided and could be won by enemies regardless of being behind just to let their 'gw2hero' win...DisgustingAbout 'wasting time' ,indeed everyone does that xD . But I dont see why thats a problem ,there always ppl who dont understand game and think thats hacks but not create threads about it ,that wont stop them

As for the alt-throwing to gain wins/shield losses, aka wintrading, you really can't know either unless they're morons laughing in map chat about it.Many wintraders werent banned cuz Anet lazy af to investigate properly , our famous wintraders are known and their alts pretty much too . EtcetcIn competitive games there is always would be toxicity

@"DeadlySynz.3471" said:When in doubt, report. It's no skin of Anet's back to check it, and if a player receives multiple reports against them then it's indicative of a build that likely needs a heavy handed nerf.

There is never any reason to send a salty or cheating accusation whisper, just hit the botting report button and let Anet sort it out. If the player is or has used some sort of cheat tool in the past, they'll get it, simple as that.

And people wonder why reports are inefective....

Please, don't spam reports for no apparent reason like a complete dumbass. Reports are for TOS violations, there's a reason why there's no "usage of overpowered build" option when you report someone.

Cheating is absolutely rampant, partularly when playing off peak hours. It is easy to tell when someone is wintrading. They stand off points when out of combat, refuse to +1, refuse to rez, run in and die fast to take enemies out of downstate, use only autoattack, etc. These things are obvious. I've even had players on my team run over and stealth me when I was trying to capture on point with zero enemies around.

At your level players can’t recognize this? I wonder how players like that got to your level or how the match maker let players from the below zone get in your game.

Who cares if someone thinks your cheating, that should boost your confidence - meaning your good!

@Chum Chum.7234 said:Cheating is absolutely rampant, partularly when playing off peak hours. It is easy to tell when someone is wintrading. They stand off points when out of combat, refuse to +1, refuse to rez, run in and die fast to take enemies out of downstate, use only autoattack, etc. These things are obvious. I've even had players on my team run over and stealth me when I was trying to capture on point with zero enemies around.

Sounds like average platinum players tbh....

I think part of the problem originates from the reality that the devs have let wintrading and other "cheaty" behaviors persist for so long before taking such mild actions (6 mos., really? Ought to be permanent dishonor). When >50% of the players in the top 20 have benefited from some sort of dubious meta-game behavior and do it season after season... it's going to breed a toxic sentiment among the entire userbase.

@"Vagrant.7206" said:I think part of the problem originates from the reality that the devs have let wintrading and other "cheaty" behaviors persist for so long before taking such mild actions (6 mos., really? Ought to be permanent dishonor). When >50% of the players in the top 20 have benefited from some sort of dubious meta-game behavior and do it season after season... it's going to breed a toxic sentiment among the entire userbase.

this so much. eventually people get fed up by the inaction and or mild actions.

MOM HE KILLED ME 1 SHOT HE HACKING

We're at a point where good players are so unheard of that the plebs just call it hacking when they see one.

@witcher.3197 said:We're at a point where good players are so unheard of that the plebs just call it hacking when they see one.

Everytime I see what I think is a pro player that makes a class look unbeatable, I read through the class skills/cool down periods or worse yet waste the time to create the class and learn it. I usually find the same thing, the 'pro player' was nothing more than a hacker playing without cool downs.