There has been a lot of low morale surrounding cheating in Diablo 3 over the course of it’s existence, especially with regards to how quickly cheaters are dealt with by the Blizzard Hacks team (or however they are referred).
Is there any official word on how this might be handled in Diablo 4? Will they deal with cheaters on a more regular basis?
Seems like Miss Cheetah said something about this at one time and I just can’t remember.
Way too early. Might want to follow up with this in a year when the game and systems are closer to being final.
Also please remember that Blizzard does not discuss their methods of dealing with cheating.
In fact they just don’t say much at all…which is all about:
Trust us to do our job and concentrate on your game play instead.
I was amazed when the gold AH bots were out just a month or so after D3 initial release.
I mean how in the world do these guys make a bot so fast with a new game?
I’m sure D4 will have advanced tracking systems to eliminate bots quickly.
I can’t really say much because I don’t know much. Blizzard does not discuss the methods and strategies they use, nor the plans for it.
We can assume that there will be some sort of anti cheat system, and that as technology changes, methods will change. We can also assume, they won’t share info on it 
If you want ideas though, you can look at what the Hacks team does with other Blizzard games.
We have a few years to go before this is even an issue for D4 though.
As technology advances, so do the tools of thieves and criminals. I don’t think any software is ever really completely secure by itself. I think it comes down to how often Blizzard deals with cheaters on a regular basis, rather than relying on automated systems to do the work for them.
But regardless, we’ll just have to wait and see I suppose.
what if they made a separate cheater mode? where you can have unlimited xp, gold, shards, meterials, best items etc.
since it is online only, chars can’t be carried to non-cheaters mode.
so cheaters can play there, and non-cheaters will have less cheater on their normal mode…
You want a game company to spend development $$ creating a mode for … cheaters. Really?
Cheaters don’t usually want to play with other cheaters. They usually do it to gain advantage over others. It is no fun for them when everyone is cheating.
I am a much bigger fan of no cheating at all. I love that items and chars can’t be modified in D3 on PC.
meh… but… personally i don’t care about leaderboards /season… i would prefer to play 100% solo if possible… not caring about other players at all… only reason to cheat is, i dont want to spend 10k+ hours to have perfect gear, knowing i could have this within minutes with cheat engine…
I’ve often seen this boasted/promised over the years (not by Blizzard but various devs making mmos or online games) and never once have I ever felt it was accurate.
I suspect the unfortunate but REAL truth is devs will always be playing catchup to hackers and botters (just like other industries struggle with criminal activity like credit cards, car industry etc). Seems like a constant security war.
Its always been that way in the past, and I see no reason why that would ever change. Nobodys came up with the magic solution so far, so I guess there simply isn’t one.
Expect things to be very similar to how they are now.
It’s not too early. I can tell you right now how thigns are going to play out.
It really comes down to money. If the game does not generate consistent recenue, Blizzard are not going to dedicate enough resources for combating cheating.
For example, back in Vanilla D3, a friend of mine installed a bot, botted for a week and got banned. The game wasn’t competitive, but RMAH existed.
Then later RoS released in 2014 and the first big ban waves we saw were in 2016, despite the fact, that the game was supposedly more competitive than Vanilla due to the implementation of Greater Rifts as the main endgame activity and Leader Boards.
Also, from what I’ve seen thoughout the seasons of RoS, my impression is, that Blizzard only act if it’s about the top 10% of the Seasonal leader board or high profile players. Other than that, people are free to cheat for the most part if they don’t do it in a ridiculous fashion…
I’m saying it’s too early from a they know how it’s going to work yet perspective since they don’t have core gameplay systems locked down yet. Cheating and how to deal with the cheaters is not on their radar yet.
And I’m saying, that it’s not too early to know how they are going to deal with cheating, because the core gameplay systems have literally nothing to do with Blizzard’s approach. It’s whether the game generates continuous revenue or not.
If this wasn’t the case, baning cheaters in RoS should have been far greater priority than it was, at least compared to baning cheaters in Vanilla D3, because Vanilla D3 wasn’t really competitive, and RoS’s endgame inherently is due to GRs and the ladder… and yet it wasn’t. In D3 Vanilla you would get banned within the week, in RoS you can cheat for years and never get cought.
Again, literally nothing to do with gameplay and systems, but rather – money.
I understand what you are saying but you don’t seem to understand that worrying about combatting cheating is not on their radar ATM. They are more concerned with making the game playable and figuring out all its systems. Once those are solidified, then they should focus on anti-cheating measures. No offline mode helps with everything but botting. With botting and cheating in general, devs will always be reactive. Can’t stop cheaters until you find out what they are doing.
I understand very well.
You are talking about D4.
What I’m saying is, that we already know the approach of the company.
D3 and RoS should be sufficient example and an indication as to how things are done.
This would be true if we we’re talking about a brand new game with mechanics never seen before… made by a brand new company.
However, we’re talking about Diablo and Blizzard. The major issue will be botting. It always has been.
Unless the itemization structure was completely changed, say that you obtain items by completing certain challenges to get a specific item with a guaranteed roll (mind you, I’m not arguing that should be the case),
the result will be, that there’s going to be botting.
“Oh, but you don’t know, people can maybe come up with a speedhack or something like that!”
Blatant cheating like that will never be the main issue. When people do something like that, it means they are done with the game and wanna get banned, and they’ll be banned rather quickly.
IMO, it really depends on how the game works. If it’s like D2 or even D3 Vanilla, I wont care so much about botting, because it would be making gear more abundant.
If it’s like D3 RoS where botting results into you having massive advantage in terms of character strength, allowing you to double or triple your dmg (which is what Paragon 2.0 does), then it would be a big issue.