I feel this requires a special skill to be able to determine, to avoid false reports which I read can lead to punishment by blizz, how are we supposed to know? do we go on the hunch if there’s a single doubt to report for cheating and give details or how do we go about this?
there’s a difference between suspicious and “false reporting”
If you “suspect” anyone to be cheating, send a report to blizzard,
If I’m unsure I just type ‘‘possibly aimbotting’’ or something in the report. Better send it anyway so that they can doublecheck instead of possibly letting a cheater run free. They have the tools to determine is it hacking or not, after all. If the person is innocent nothing happens
I’m sure they are a bit more lenient on ‘‘false reporting’’ when it’s about hacks.
Its just experience. After some time you just know what is and isn’t hacking.
Anyway this might be useful to you.
Cheating can be really hard to correctly detect but there’s a few things to consider:
It’s my understanding that a piece of AntiCheat software called warden is scanning memory, looking for modifications. I suppose most “hacks” available for the game revolve around reading sensitive memory locations and reporting that to the player. Hacks that modify memory, [xtra damage, infinite life, infinite ULT charge] would not work very long before warden detects them and blocks it
This considered, one could infer that it’s likely that reliable hacks will be centered around hitbox detection and aim snapping, and these only read data and report it but do not modify it.
Certain heroes would be much more attractive to play than others
Most of the suspect footage i’ve seen is usually a Widow, McCree or '76
If you suspect a hacker, you can bait them
Go stand in a room and hover around a health pack for a bit. Make sure there’s no way anybody knows you’re in there, then make yourself available to be shot.
The more patient hackers will use a little more sleight of hand, they can be xtra insidious because they often reach very high ranks before they draw enough attention to themselves and really skilled players are able to pick up on whats happening
A really strong indicator is an account that has shot up in ranks with a very very high win rate, with obvious suspect heroes played such as McCree, Tracer, Widow, etc with no other heroes played, not even in Quickplay, because the massive difference in stats would be obvious
Another thing to watch for is “Aim Snapping”
How these programs work is usually the operator my push a button, and the hack will “snap” the cursor [reticule] to the hit box closest to it
If you watch someone for awhile, what you’ll notice if they are aimbotting is that sometimes they will snap to an unintentional target, or it will snap to a hero who’s behind them that they didn’t even know about
I watched a clip where a McCree was 1v1 a Winston, and a Genji joined the fight, McCree didn’t know he was there and when he “snapped” he panned like a full 180 onto Genji’s face and then the Winston killed him and E V E R Y B O DY knew exactly what that was when they saw so it can be really annoying but these players never make it to pro scene and they are useless without their crutch so just take solace in that fact
I can give a couple of tips to identify cheaters:
- First and foremost the most important aspect: consistency. Humans are very inconsistent by nature, so if you see someone with remarkably consistent aiming behavior, follow that person more closely. Make sure you can see multiple kill cams of that person and look if he always behaves in a very similar way. This can be very wide, from constanly making the same movements and oddly constant camera move speed to suspicious tracking. If this is the case, it’s possibly an aimbot or aim-assist.
- If you’re lucky there are some dead giveaways like instantly snapping to the target and never over- or pre-shooting. Unfortunately, cheats are getting more sophisticated and becoming better at mimicking human behavior.
- If possible, switch to hard to hit heroes like Tracer or Genji to bait out potential aimbots or triggerbots and switch to Sombra to bait out wall-hacks.
- Make sure to compare the suspicious person’s behavior with that of all other players, or in broader terms with your skill level. As a result cheats are easier to spot the lower the skill level is at which you play, because the difference between the legit players and the cheater is larger.
- In combination with the former: if the person’s profile isn’t private it’s also a goldmine: Low level and silly name are usually an indication for a throwaway account. Almost no play time on aim-based heroes, conflicting damage numbers between mechanically similar heroes, etc… can indicate a cheater.
You should take as much of these things into consideration to decide whether someone could be cheating or not. However, in the end some gut feeling is also required.
From personal experience I can say that these tips work quite well though. Of around half of all people I’ve reported for cheating, I’ve gotten a message that actions were taken.