How do you spot "good" cheats?

General Discussion
1

So a big topic about ow2 is the rampant cheating people seem to be talking about in a few threads i have come across.

it seems that some players are having trouble discerning cheats from good players.

some cheats are easy to spot like instant locking of the crosshairs onto center mass or a head, and by instant i mean like the crosshair has no travel time to hit a target its just there.

those are the easy aimbot cheats to recognize.

the big problem are the cheats that people pay big money for that are ā€œsupposedlyā€ so good that they are ā€œundetectableā€

those are the cheats that people need help spotting, the good cheats and not the ones people use for blatant rage hacking.

so Iā€™m asking people who know the difference between good players and good aimbots.
we need some more insight that will help us decide whether to dismiss something fishy, or to know its a cheat and report it.

if you are the kind of person that can discern good cheats from good mechanics, please post here so we can inform more players, so we can help report actual cheaters and not report good players.

thanks for your time, and thank you for reading and posting.

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2

Sombra Shes the best way to test if someone is hacking

2 Likes
3

I got called a cheater for downing a Sombra, she chose the most obvious path ever then claimed hacksā€¦

4

Ya that will happen but if yiu think someone hacking go sombra and run around invisible and see if they shoot at you if they di they are probably hacking

5

Just report every single play who seems sus in one way or another. It does not matter if its hacking or boosting/smurfing. They will not get punished if they get a report from time to time. But IF they are sus, they will soon see it.

Its so easy to hide cheats, that I mostly look at how they play and if its realistic that they have such a performance at that rank. As someone who was in ranks from silver to Master, I can tell who does not belong there.

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6

I know this forum has a few tech gurus for members, kinda hoping they would post.

7

Just report anything that you find sus.
Even if there is no detection yet, it will put that account on the radar.

8

In some cases you just cannot. But usually the telltale sign is whether the player acts like a good player. Does their game sense/positioning have the same quality as their aim?

While itā€™s not always the case (some players do just have naturally good reflexes), typically those who have very refined aiming skills are people who have played a lot of FPS games and are generally good at other aspects as well. Itā€™s rare to see someone whoā€™s invested 10k hours into FPS games with top 1% aim but still play like a potato.

If you think someone is suspicious, just report them.

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9

The issue here is that people will have their own methods, all of which are based around assumptions and have very little in the way of actual discernible proof of cheats being used.

This is like identifying Smurfs. Everyone has their way of doing it, and not one of them can definitively proof someone is smurfing or not.

All this is doing is setting up a witch hunt over undefinitive proof. Throw the accused in the water: If the accused drowns, it be a skillful player, if they float, it be a cheater.

Itā€™s best just to report suspicious behavior.

Honestly, the best way to get an idea of if you cheats in action is to post a replay or a link to a video. Lots of claims of cheaters running rampant, very little video proof of this proportionally speaking.

10

No cheats are truly ā€˜undetectableā€™. Hard to detect, maybe, but ā€˜undetectableā€™ is just a buzzword people use to sell the cheats.

I am not a tech guru, but here is what I have noticed about players who cheatā€¦

The big question you should ask is: ā€˜Does their brain match their aim?ā€™

If they click heads like they play in t500 for a living but they otherwise seem ā€˜lostā€™, confused, or express generally bad gamesense: somethingā€™s usually wrong.

Look for ā€˜psychicā€™ players. People pre-firing corners, checking for sombra players in magically the right place, taking really odd angles etc.

In replays it is obvious when theyā€™re toggling, theyā€™ll suddenly stand still in a corner for absolutely no reason. Then their gameplay will change immediately afterwards. Theyā€™ll go from not being able to hit the broad side of a roadhog to suddenly being their teams MVP.

There will be an ā€˜uncanny valleyā€™ vibe to their aim. Not ā€˜snappingā€™. But it will be robotically consistent.

Finally: watch their attitude. Trash talking does not mean a player is cheating. And whilst some genuinely good players will trash talk, people who are cheating also seem to want to make a point out of what a god they are to the lobby.

Itā€™s like they have a huge chip on their shoulder about it. Which Iā€™d imagine is why they bought cheats to begin with.

If you see something sus: report it. But at the very least watch the replay first from their pov before doing so. Leave it maybe a few hours to cool off so you can give the person the benefit of the doubt.

If they still look sus to you after that, report them.

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11

I donā€™t know how accurate this games theater mode is, but that would be your best bet if you find something out of place. Even then, their tracking could be good enough that they only turn a few pixels and it canā€™t be noticed without like 0.2X play speed.

12

Iā€™ve seen someone try this before and Iā€™ve gotta say it looks like such a cop out when taken at a broader context.

The cursor did hover over a few players through a wall (the claim was wall hacks) for a quarter of a second each but the arches on Ilios ruins are lined up directly with the middle of the capture point, just coincidentally where these enemy players were standing.

The other examples of ā€œwall hacksā€ were very clearly lines of sight for the player, as well as lines of sight for other players (callouts arenā€™t recorded in Theater mode).

Slow down can make things seem suspicious, but sped up or within (rather outside of) certain context it takes on a whole new light.

13

any character with invisibility will do the trick most of the time, they will look at you or know your general direction, but the biggest thing that will give them away is the amount of info they have. They will somehow know which position to take or hold, when to push when no one is looking, things that you just donā€™t do it without knowing where everyone is. All the f ing time.
The cheats are good , but if the person using them is missing a chromosome then itā€™s for nothing.
That was for wallhacks.

For aimbots, you canā€™t really see in game if they have something like aimware(cs2 cheat because i donā€™t know ow2 cheats :P) ; a cheat where you can select which hitbox to snap on and follow or you can set a certain amount of bullets to hit the head (every 5 bullets 3 will hit head for example).

best way to verify is after a game looking in replay with slowmo. And report everyone that ticks you off.

14

Some hacks are hard to identify, others are just the player knowing how to hide them. All that is still assuming theater is accurate. Like if you try to watch a Halo match from someone elseā€™s POV, their movements and aiming will be jittery to say the least, but your perspective is almost if not perfectly accurate. However, if you watch someone elseā€™s recording of that same match, youā€™ll see yourself as the potential hacker.

I remember a match in H3 on MCC where I landed over a dozen direct hits and just as many shots had other targets in range of my scorpion shots to die from the explosion and they all basically laughed at surviving a guaranteed OHK so many times that even the top players would say itā€™s unplayable. H3 never had the best hit registration, but even that would be grounds to call the entire team out for hacking in any other game. Their perspective though probably showed the equivalent of a Bronze player shooting while cross eyed and so drunk they couldnā€™t even find their controller.

The best part about that time was this was after 343 Industries claimed to improve H3 hit registration since the MCC version was somehow worse than the original, which probably 1/3 of your shots at minimum were blanks anyway. Apparently, a faster built in frame rate translates to slower projectiles or something, and that was part of the problem.

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15

there have been times ive had a report all written up ready to submitā€¦only to delete it, becauseā€¦you just dont know. the cheats are so smooth now, are they cheating, or are they really goodā€¦and i dont want to report somebody if they are simply just playing well.

the sad part about what i just said is thatā€¦it means that the cheat makers are winning. people who have some semblance of compassion and dont want to see someone unfairly punished means that there may be cheats that go unreported.

Ive heard it said that people here get banned, not for really doing anything wrong, but, the system automatically bans people if they receive too many reports. if thatā€™s true, i dont want to cause that to someoneā€¦so i end up not reporting a lot of things that maybe i shouldā€¦

there was one the other day that wasnt a hard lock, but, it certainly looked like a soft lock aimbot, meaning, while the target wasnt fixed to the persons head, the target would move around on their body, but always seemed to be right within their body outline, and when that person changed direction, even minute left-right quick movements, their targeting would mimic that.

i had all the timestamps, the intended target and explanations written down for all of itā€¦and ended up just deleting the whole thing causeā€¦what if it was a player on console and thatā€™s how console aim assist works?

then you come to forums like this and ask, and people say ā€œthereā€™s no cheating! you just need to git guud!ā€ and they all act like cheating is a rarityā€¦soā€¦what do you do? some will say cheating is present in every game, some say it almost never happens.

shrug

see, thatā€™s not always a tell tale sign. there are people out there who dont have a bit of game senseā€¦but have really good reflexes and really good aim. i think the two could possibly exist at the same time.

ive heard itā€™s not accurate really. things you see in the replay dont match up, timestamp wise, to how they happened in the game. so, certain kills, peek shots, things that you might say ā€œwowā€¦what theā€¦ā€ in the replay, may have been legit in game.

its unfortunate, but, itā€™s the only tool we have to try and catch this stuff. i wish we had better.

butā€¦they can also make things seem more realistic than they really are. case in point are the new aimbots where they mimic human inputā€¦at .25x speed, it would look like a completely natural reflex and aim, but at normal speed, youd see that the aim was far too quick to have been human, especially when its a target thatā€™s completely off their screen, or even behind themā€¦which ive seen in the past day, where a target was completely behind them, and they turned and aimed on them with such speed and precision it was hard to believeā€¦butā€¦some people play at high sensitivityā€¦soā€¦was is legit??? no idea.

had one the other day also where a sombra threw her locator and the person i was watching turned and snapped to where her locator ended upā€¦the same person was shooting at a tracer and the tracer recalled to a point behind themā€¦and they turned and started firing at the point where tracer appeared. soā€¦is this a hack or is this person exhibiting really good game sense?

16

If they are good then you arenā€™t supposed to spot them. So there is no way.

17

The obvious ones are the one that snaps onto the target when they fire their shots. If you look at the replay and slow it down to x0.25 speed, there should be some movements before the initial position and the landing positions when they shoot.

Most smarter cheater who doesnā€™t make their aim hack obviously, are usually caught due to wall hackings. You have to watch the replay to catch signs of it. Donā€™t confuse this with sound play though since audio cue can easily pinpoint your enemy locations.

18

the best cheats that are harder to prove if you hide them well are wallhacks and triggerbot. instead of aimlocking and snapping onto the head, triggerbot simply shoots for you the instant your crosshair crosses a head/body (there are body shot trigger bots and headshot trigger bots, good cheaters usually use both) theyre also toggle-able to make it more discreetā€¦ but if theyre used wrong theyre just as obvious as ā€œrage hackingā€ (when the crosshair is snapping onto heads without a care of being obviously a cheater)

19

If you watch the replay of the match and see them tracking or flicking between targets behind walls at range 24/7 thatā€™s a red flag. If theyā€™re tracking or flicking to head accuracy is 100% thatā€™s another red flag. Itā€™s possible to turn them off mid-game or lower the efficiency but that requires more brain power on the cheaterā€™s end. Cheaters use throwaway accounts most of the time like Smurfs. It is incredibly hard to spot cheaters who donā€™t just up the cheats to instantly snap at everything.

20

There are people with good aim who are in bronze. The problem is when they end up in diamond lobbies with that kind of gamesense. When something doesnā€™t add up, it usually doesnā€™t.