Hack or Bug? Shouldn't be Real but I've seen 3x Now.

[Jitters.9401]

First time I thought maybe I made a mistake so I kept a careful watch and it happens.

 

Playing Mesmer.

Running Signet of Humility. I found that turning people into the Moa is a fair amount of fun.

 

Occurrence: 

Fighting an ele. I am watching the enemy portrait and get a successful moa in. The portrait turns into a Moa but almost instantly turns back to the original enemy portrait.  I think maybe I made a mistake and the Moa change never happened.

 

Yesterday... Feb. 27 2023. Early Morning. 

I am Fighting an enemy Green in her Green Camp of Umberglade on EBG.

 

She is on the north east edge of the camp, right above the two Crystal Nodes. I am on the southern corner of that wall. 

 

I used MOA. I saw both the portrait and the actual toon turn into the Moa. So I literally saw the Moa bird in front of me. 

 

I quickly moved to unload my burst but suddenly she was gone. 

 

This person had teleported South past all the obstacles and about the distance of 2 teleports, and was no longer a Moa bird. The teleport should have been stopped due to my enemy's issue with line of sight. 

 

Where I was situated I could see the teleport exit but where she was situated she would not have been able to see through that wall that blocks the two Crystal Nodes from the rest of the camp. 

 

So aside from the suspicious double length teleport, it is now three times I have seen someone I have just turned into a Moa bird revert to their normal self in like 1/2 a second, though it has a 6 second duration.

 

So that is three times in the month of February alone that I have seen someone I've turned into a Moa Bird almost very very quickly dispell it. 

 

Many of us have seen teleport hacks but this Moa dispelling I have only seen occur this month. 

Could it be just a bug? 

Edited February 28, 2023 by Jitters.9401

[MedievalThings.5417]

I see this all the time.  6 second moa, lasts maybe 1.  I have also seen where the portrait shows they were moa'd, but the player never changes or stops using their class skills.  Would be nice to make sure this is working correctly.

[ZTeamG.4603]

Definitely sounds suspicious, but there's a lot of legit things that can look suspicious. Were they a chronomancer, maybe? Has anyone tested if the chronomancer class skill can rewind you out of moa form?

[Dawdler.8521]

Maybe its just my normal hallucinations but I feel like moa duration is considered a "condition" and affected by condition duration reduction.

[Mikhael.2391]

7 hours ago, Jitters.9401 said:

First time I thought maybe I made a mistake so I kept a careful watch and it happens.

 

Playing Mesmer.

Running Signet of Humility. I found that turning people into the Moa is a fair amount of fun.

 

Occurrence: 

Fighting an ele. I am watching the enemy portrait and get a successful moa in. The portrait turns into a Moa but almost instantly turns back to the original enemy portrait.  I think maybe I made a mistake and the Moa change never happened.

 

Yesterday... Feb. 27 2023. Early Morning. 

I am Fighting an enemy Green in her Green Camp of Umberglade on EBG.

 

She is on the north east edge of the camp, right above the two Crystal Nodes. I am on the southern corner of that wall. 

 

I used MOA. I saw both the portrait and the actual toon turn into the Moa. So I literally saw the Moa bird in front of me. 

 

I quickly moved to unload my burst but suddenly she was gone. 

 

This person had teleported South past all the obstacles and about the distance of 2 teleports, and was no longer a Moa bird. The teleport should have been stopped due to my enemy's issue with line of sight. 

 

Where I was situated I could see the teleport exit but where she was situated she would not have been able to see through that wall that blocks the two Crystal Nodes from the rest of the camp. 

 

So aside from the suspicious double length teleport, it is now three times I have seen someone I have just turned into a Moa bird revert to their normal self in like 1/2 a second, though it has a 6 second duration.

 

So that is three times in the month of February alone that I have seen someone I've turned into a Moa Bird almost very very quickly dispell it. 

 

Many of us have seen teleport hacks but this Moa dispelling I have only seen occur this month. 

Could it be just a bug? 

Bug,  i ve been moaed 2 time srecently and couldnt even use moa abilities coz it ended.

[Loke.1429]

its probably similar to the lightning flash that happened then never happened, a client side desync, so client side it looks like was ok but right after server says nope you didnt

[KeyOrion.9506]

I've been Moa'd for the full amount of time, but then again, I usually run ranger, but I rarely see anyone break Moa, since you're not supposed to break moa.  Your normal skills are gone, and you have Moa Skills.  However, I have seen instances where a Mesmer has completed a Portal Entre/exit before being Moa'd and teleporting out of the area using said portal.  That's not a cheat, that's them just completing a skill before they were Moa'd, and then being able to use a traversal portal to escape.  It's possible they were able to successfully use a skill before being Moa'd.  But again, I have never seen anyone break Moa before the full count. 

 

I have seen some guber desync's just like the person that just posted above me.  Where, the opponent is running on a system that is synced more closely to the Anet client than you.  You will drop back in the sync, and what you believed to be 1 second, was actually a client full six seconds.  This is a real thing and is not a bug.  It's just time slippage.  Have you ever run, where all the sudden your Frames Per Second seemed clipped, copy and paste frames that don't align properly, and then you see friendlies or enemy appearing and disappearing quickly bypassing your actual believed location?  Yah.  Not a bug.  Just FPS slippage.  Your system finally catches up, but by then everyone else has disappeared.  That, I've seen occur way too often.

 

Not a bug.  Just major traffic jam in your FPS upload/download.

[Jitters.9401]

On 2/28/2023 at 8:29 AM, ZTeamG.4603 said:

Definitely sounds suspicious, but there's a lot of legit things that can look suspicious. Were they a chronomancer, maybe? Has anyone tested if the chronomancer class skill can rewind you out of moa form?

No it wasn't a chrono. Interesting thought though.

[Jitters.9401]

1 hour ago, KeyOrion.9506 said:

You will drop back in the sync, and what you believed to be 1 second, was actually a client full six seconds. 

This sounds like those alien abduction stories. 

But sorry, no. I can tell the difference between 1 second and 6 seconds of real life as it was me casting the skill and witnessing the de-morph in real time. 

 

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Jitters.9401 said:

This sounds like those alien abduction stories. 

But sorry, no. I can tell the difference between 1 second and 6 seconds of real life as it was me casting the skill and witnessing the de-morph in real time. 

 

Well this is a game and not real life so you cant. Lag, desync and client side prediction is a thing in GW2, of course. For example you can visually pull a player toward you with a grapple skill but not actually pull them from others of view, because its your client being desynced with the server. Usually you can sense the janky behaviour going on but sometimes it can be hard to tell. Especially if you have no one to "validate" your action from another perspective.

In theory it could be possible that your client predicted a moa hit and transformed the player, but the player actually dodged it. A second later the client got the update and corrected itself.

It even become more complicated because skills and movement is two separate things that can lag/desync individually. Anet has improved it ALOT over the years, it used to be far worse.

just saying. Weirdness can always happen. Also I still believe my theory on CC condi duration reduction affecting moa.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Jitters.9401]

17 hours ago, Dawdler.8521 said:

Well this is a game and not real life so you cant.

Sure I can.

I push my moa button, when the cast time completes and the enemy turns onto a moa then right after the moa is dispelled, then lol. Yes I can. 

Signet of Humility has a 1 second cast time. Unless I am on the peripheral of a black hole it will always be a 1 second cast time (any dsync or lag is incredibly noticeable as we see when it comes to skill lag in the midst of massively grouped people like in the legendary naked man... so we have all seen it and recognize it). 

Any legit WvW person monitors cast times. You have to so you can make on the fly determinations of what is best, amd at some point it becomes a subconscious thing.

 

Or.... I can count the :1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi 3 Mississippi ...... etc..... from beginning of the cast, but if in real time only 1.5 or 2 seconds have passed  (including cast time) then, yeah.  Haha. You cannot just decide it was 6 seconds on a whim when not even being there. That is funny. 

 

I know what you are trying to say but no. 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Jitters.9401

[KeyOrion.9506]

Actually, what Dawdler described can't happen.  The final outcome of an attack has to be completed by the system, for a "to hit" to occur.  Even if you had like say a Quad Core.  Each of the processors will come to a solution and then match that solution with the other processors.  The processors that come to the same conclusion will be processed as the Actual Solution.  For this case in attack the Actual Firing Solution.  The system can't give a roll of the dice for a hit, then have another processor go, "No, that didn't hit, that was a miss, so I'm going to be taking that hit back".  No.  The system does not work that way.  It'll crunch the numbers it was programmed to crunch.  If the number at the finale says "Hit", then it's a hit.  It can't Hit then change its mind.  It's not programmed to do that.

 

The only way for that to occur is poor programming, where a second set if variables mess up the "timer" for an effect to take place over the space of a clock, in seconds, minutes, or hours.

 

Now if something is truly affecting the time, then we need to know any number of variables that would screw up the timer or cause a discrepancy in that timer gauge.  We are talking quite a few variables.  Could be a single variable, or a combination of variables working together to cause your six seconds to become 1 second effect.  Base stats of the player.  Class Profession. Runes.  Sigils. Traits. Weapons (main/offhand). Armor type/skin.  Infusion.  Foods.  Oils.  Ohmygod.  The permutations are endless to possibly find out your 6 seconds being compressed into 1 second of Moa time, and how it's possibly happening.

 

I will admit some of the strangest, ABSOLUTELY STRANGEST, player occurrences for visuals I have ever seen usually was the particle movement effects.  The skins/movement effectors.  Like a player who has the item that when they are traveling it actually looks like they are floating a foot off the ground.  Seen one guy use it exclusively and we would be firing at him....and he would slip skim away from us, to the point where it looked like he was teleporting every three seconds further away from us, until he was clear out of sight.  We would all notice this, so we knew it was on the client side.  There would be three or five us chasing him, and then he'd be gone, and we would go "How in the heck did he do that?"  "Did you see that?"  "Yah I saw that."  And it only happened visually when he was using this device to travel.  We assumed it was some kind of hack being caused by the device he was using for moving.  We identified it as the Electromagnetic Ascender which changes how it looks like when you travel.  The only idea we could come up with, is for some reason the item at that time, made it appear that you were traveling near the ground, levitating, however the item actually showed you traveling near the ground visually, but your actual body was way up in the sky.  We couldn't hit the target, because it was nowhere near ground level.  For us attacking him, our attacks were attacking his visuals near the ground.  It was like firing at a desync, where a body wasn't anywhere near.  Sadly, I see this happen like 1 in 10 times, so it has to be in coordination with some other variable.  A variable that we still haven't figured out what causes it.  However, apparently some players know what that variable is, otherwise they wouldn't be getting away, taking no damage all the time, getting from point A to point B.  It's been reported numerous times, but people see it occur still to this very day.  Last time I saw it was two weeks ago.  Maybe two dozen times last year alone.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, KeyOrion.9506 said:

Actually, what Dawdler described can't happen.  The final outcome of an attack has to be completed by the system, for a "to hit" to occur. 

Except I know it can happen. I often run with just a few people on discord and have had a situation where we all saw someone standing still, I pull him toward me, see him get pulled and swing at him...  and hit nothing. No evade, no miss, no dodge. A second he's warped way in front and running away.

Of course I went "did you see I pulled him and he just teleported!". Their response was "what? No you didnt, he stood there and then ran off".

More commonly, we have desynched downstate where people can see them in different locations. Or gliding, thats a hoot seeing people run normally on the ground when they are flying.

Your quadcore argument make zero sense because we're talking about client<->server coms and clientside prediction. Not just number crunching on the server.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Aeolus.3615]

On 3/9/2023 at 9:49 AM, Dawdler.8521 said:

Except I know it can happen. I often run with just a few people on discord and have had a situation where we all saw someone standing still, I pull him toward me, see him get pulled and swing at him...  and hit nothing. No evade, no miss, no dodge. A second he's warped way in front and running away.

Of course I went "did you see I pulled him and he just teleported!". Their response was "what? No you didnt, he stood there and then ran off".

More commonly, we have desynched downstate where people can see them in different locations. Or gliding, thats a hoot seeing people run normally on the ground when they are flying.

Your quadcore argument make zero sense because we're talking about client<->server coms and clientside prediction. Not just number crunching on the server.

That's desync, it's heavy on wvw, and one of the reasons Anet had to drop from ESL spvp , the data on server side get queued in the wrong order or something, and even sometimes data gets lost when smc flipping  from server  to server walls vanish and smc becomes a tower with no walls for that players, happened as well quite some times in the past and all of us were passing tough walls in the eyes os other player.

I once had the experience of  being damaged by the lord in smc  meelee players outside smc, its just pure desync and netcote getting f***up all over the data needed to queue and process,  players are actually bein gdamaged by "floating damage" sometimes players that are outside their range or not even being targeted.

The server and client tend's to bottleneck itself and some data delays or get lost if one doesnt have a high freq cpu, guess game needs more AOE and more boons.

Note: most desync issue vanishes if not all when i had the cpu @5.2 ghz altough due heat could not play much  t ime with it, wich makes me believe theres a delivery bottleneck in the relation of server <-> client due the amount of data that can be executed, and i  now put the thin hat foil and say that skill lag happens when this delivery starts affecting alot of players wich force the delay on skill activation on some players in 1 server or both servers, i also been in situation that the entire zerg had to move out since they were the only affected by skillag while my side was ok,.

Edited March 11, 2023 by Aeolus.3615

[Dawdler.8521]

3 hours ago, Aeolus.3615 said:

Note: most desync issue vanishes if not all when i had the cpu @5.2 ghz altough due heat could not play much  t ime with it, wich makes me believe theres a delivery bottleneck in the relation of server <-> client due the amount of data that can be executed, and i  now put the thin hat foil and say that skill lag happens when this delivery starts affecting alot of players wich force the delay on skill activation on some players in 1 server or both servers, i also been in situation that the entire zerg had to move out since they were the only affected by skillag while my side was ok,.

Desync has absolutely nothing to with your hardware spec. But yes desync is client prediction failure ie you're not getting any data and the client try to fill in the gaps.

Skill lag is a very different beast - skills are queued on the server end with certain priorities, when the skill queue cant keep up with requests it starts to lag. Autoattacks as an example is prioritized hence has a tendancy to work better. Anet has already explained this before, in more or less loose terms. Movement is a  separate process hence as I said earlier they can lag individually (ie skills can lag but not movement, or movement can lag but not skills, or both).

Edited March 11, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Loke.1429]

I most commonly see it with abilities like lightning flash away from enemy out of their pulling-range + getting pulled anyway. I teleport, but then i didnt teleport / was pulled from extremely far (from my point of view). This is because instant abilities like that are shown client side instantaneously, but then server needs to correct it because pull and stun happened before the teleport. It's very visible at times like that because your character and viewpoint jumps forth and back again. Other times it is there but harder to notice. Most games I played has some kind of quirk like this, and it is just a  normal part of playing online games really. You get more of it with higher ping for sure, because then more client-side is "predicted"/not yet confirmed by the server.

Edited March 11, 2023 by Loke.1429