How do you actually tell if someone is cheating?

General Discussion
21

There are many many ways to do so, one can even tell someone will cheat before the match starts based on their profile name/picture/rank/stats.

However for someone new like you I’ll try to keep it short and talk basics.

In short - inhuman consistency or consistency that is too good for their current rank often gives cheaters away. Smurfs can also be too consistent for their rank, but cheaters usually don’t have the gamesense and positioning of smurfs. Cheaters often make very risky plays the type of plays smurfs wouldn’t risk constantly going 1v2 1v3+ etc and they go for risky plays because they often know or feel they can get away with them because of wallhacks and ~100% aim. If you are in bronze/silver/gold and your enemies straight up land all possible shots especially more difficult and long range ones on non sniper heroes and go on quick killstreaks they are most likely cheating.

Usage of wallhacks can somewhat compensate for their poor positioning though. You can often tell someone is walling, if they always have a drop on you and see you comming before you see them, if whenever you peak a corner that is not main and instantly receive massive damage or whenever you try to flank them they are already expecting you they are most likely walling. Constant superflanks can also give them away when they manage to slip behind an entire team and ult multiple times per match.

There are many more ways to tell someone is cheating such as perfect ability usage with inhuman reaction time or without line of sight, but for now I think the tips above will do.

2 Likes
22

nah i dont think most people can.
Every single replay code people post on here …never seen a single one of the peple accused of cheating actually banned and the “evidence” is shaky at best.

23

Lots of cool down cheating tbh. I noticed cheaters move from one to another and find loop holes.

24

To be fair I do this because I’m a former TF2 player and know how to spycheck so if there is an enemy Sombra I am constantly shooting in areas I think she might be lurking/coming from and I am firing at head-height. Also when she translocates in stealth you can still hear her, so when I hear that I immediately spin in the direction I heard it go and start firing and I can usually find her. I popped a Sombra about ten times in my last Ramattra game, I’m sure she thought I was cheating but really I was just paying attention and knew she was going to keep going for my Ana.

SOMETIMES that is just game sense. If the Sombra is literally standing still hiding somewhere not moving and someone beelines to her though that’s different.

1 Like
25

No, I’ve seen plenty of cheating.

No silver Widowmaker on the planet has 80 percent crit accuracy.

Hell, not even top 500 Widowmakers have 80 percent crit accuracy.

Most cheaters are using wallhacks/soft aimbot and they pick specific heroes. They play Hanzo because they can get away with wallhacking because people will assume it’s sonic arrow. They play 76 because he’s already easy to aim with and his ult. They play Widowmaker because again, they can wallhack and pretend it was just their ult.

I saw a cheating Reinhardt the other day. Know how I know he was cheating? Because he was magically pulling up his shield and doing full snap turns to block every single sleep dart, every single anti-nade, every single ult, every single CC ability. I mean, instantly. It was inhuman reaction time. Nobody has that kind of awareness in gold.

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26

I mean your example for widow is really bad, the widow might be smurfing but isnt actually using any 3rd party cheats/hacks. Yes top 500 widows dont have 80% crit accuracy because they are playing against other top 500s but the same top 500 will most likely have near to 100% crit accuracy on a silver if they were smurfing.

27

As someone whom Widowmaker is one of the three damage characters I play that is comforting to know.

Yeah I know how that feels.

28

How do you actually tell if someone is cheating ?

When your other half starts getting distant and claiming that they have to work late at the office. A classic.

2 Likes
29

A big problem is the new hitboxes that came with the S9 patch. Before it was much easier to spot, as flawless aim was unlikely. Today it is much more likely because hitting with especially hitscan is so much easier.

I believe that is also why we have so many more hacking accusations. They may not all be hacking, but a good number a product of the increased hitboxes instead.

30

Bad hacks are obvious but they’re not the most common type. They’ll have tell tale signs of aiming and snapping that just don’t happen with people, ie, some one doing a 180 insta lock to a torb turret and they can’t stop aiming at it, no matter how much you see the reticule drag away to only snap back to the target.

So, depending on the hack, you can’t tell based on aim alone. There are enough cheats out there for every game that have aim that are indistinguishable from a very high skilled player. For those really well made cheats, you’re only going to spot them if they’re making plays that don’t make any sense until you factor in that they’re also almost certainly using wallhacks.

Feel free to take a gander at the first few minutes to see what i’m talking about.

youtube com/watch?v=RwzIq04vd0M

31

In the end, it doesn’t really matter if one can or can no identify cheating because you can’t do anything about it anyway.

Said cheater is just going to continue cheating and if the account gets banned they simply create a new one.

The only thing we can do is deal with it and move on. Yeah it’s stupid but why waste time over something you will not be able to influence anyway?

32

easy. If I lose they clearly cheated :clown_face:

1 Like
33

This is sometimes true and sometimes not. I don’t just go by crit accuracy, I look for other things as well. Also smurfing is reportable, it’s under cheating as boosting/deranking. Just fyi.

What I look for:

a) absurd accuracy/crit accuracy compared to rank
b) tracking through walls on killcam without sonic arrow/widow ult/symm turret/sombra hack up at the current time
c) instant snapping to specific targets—a lot of hacks now can be set to prioritize support or dps, for example, and this is most noticable if you are playing support and there is a specific enemy who is always hitting you the instant you appear on their screen, no matter what angle you are at or where you are or how far away you are.
d) tanks with consistently ‘miraculous’ shielding/blocking of ults/cc. I don’t mean like once or twice. I mean the entire game.

There’s more but it’s too much to list really, these are the main things. If more than one is present, I become even more suspicious. I report for only two things—cheating, and gameplay sabotage. I am always getting ‘thanks for your report’ messages when I report cheaters. I’ve gotten fairly good at recognizing them, and if I have any doubt in my mind I won’t report. If I’m certain, I do.

I’m the same with gameplay sabotage reports. I look for very specific things, like for example a tank that consistently steps off the objective at the last minute or lowers their shield at a crucial moment when there’s an enemy ult incoming. While a lot of throwers are blatant, soft-throwers who are looking to derank without getting banned try to just make it look like they are bad, but they have tells where you know they know what they’re doing, but they’re actually throwing.

I’ve seen some super blatant cheating too. Once I saw a Cree who was literally shooting at the floor but would instantly kill someone while doing so. Shooting the floor, shooting the spawn door, shooting the sky, someone would die. It was ridiculous, his entire team stopped playing and we just waited out the timer.

It’s a lot lower than you’d think—it’s just that they get them at the right times/on the right targets, and their enemies are harder to hit than in metal ranks. I always say you know you’re doing okay for your rank if your stats are comparable to a top 500 players, because they produce the most consistent statistics against players of their own level.

So if you have the same stats as a top 500 player, that means you are where you should be, because your stats are comparable to theirs in your current rank. If they are better then you should be climbing because you’re outperforming your current rank. Doesn’t mean you’re top 500 but it does mean you are probably a rank or two higher than what you are currently and/or can get there with enough time invested.

34

Most of the time I’m like this on the first few games of the day.

It’s like mental and physical lag before it gets going.

Like i would be doing stupid things I know shouldn’t do.

35

I, too, fall into the ‘hella lucky’ camp. I don’t see cheaters that often (a little more than usual recently because of the current issue with them, but they’re not in every game.)

ngl that seems hella sus. You may have encountered a cheater there.

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36

You can’t. Because the point of those cheats is not to make it look like your cheating but that you are legit. No cheater is going to turn on 100% aimlock that will just get them caught, those that do are just trolling usually on hacked accounts.

37

Depends on the degree and quality of hacking they are doing.
Rage hacking is quite easy to tell but subtle Wall hacks … really hard.

Start with checking unhuman reactions/movements to things that did no sound and keep asking yourself , how did this guy know this? Maybe a team mate’s call? If nothing fits … thats sus and you should investigate.

38

That’s because you are not in the GM / Top 500 range. No cheater is going to stay in Gold/Diamond. Cheaters climb quickly usually to those upper rank. It’s the same what the devs of rainbow six said about XIM users. They’re mostly in high ranks.

39

Finding the cheater is basically the new witch hunt and ea and every nobody out there wants to find one because its ‘cool’ and a good way to justify your loss or an excuse when meeting someone thats better then you

Over 95% of the players yall ever accused of cheating are actually just better then you😫

40

you could always send the replay code to blizz and tell them you thought it was sus. I think they have or had a designated mail just for this.
haven’t encountered it myself if anything its a smurf using to much gamesense for the elo. which imho isn’t cheating just a player i should not face but thats not the players mistake (at least in the match they own me in. as a smurf imho is only doing bad things when he tries to stay low, playing like a gm in silver is fine, playing like a silver as a gm isn’t. not that I could smell the real skill behind their Monitors)