For people who don’t know anything about this, Razer has recently came out with a new keyboard that comes with a feature known as Snap Tap. There’s a really great video breakdown of it here (Ignore the clickbait title, it’s actually very thorough): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feny5bs2JCg
Here’s kind of a TLDR of that breakdown.
Normally, to AD strafe in a shooting game, you need to press one key, release that key, and press the new one. There is inevitably going to be a delay where you’re pressing both keys at once which means that your character just stands still during those frames (since pressing A and D at the same time negates each other).
With this keyboard, (I have to think only on certain keys which you can program which ones), your current input instantly overrides your last one. Meaning that you don’t need to release the D key at all, and you can just rapidly tap A. Since OW2 has no movement acceleration, this results in an almost flawless AD strafe with almost no effort.
I’m entirely certain I’m going to get the army of people who are like “better hardware is always an advantage!” but this is different. This is pre-programed hardware which takes an actual script that games banned and plopped it down on a hardware level. Most good hardware is devoted to making your inputs more accurate. This hardware is devoted to changing your inputs to make a desired effect easier.
OW2 needs to address this. There needs to be some kind of statement on this hardware, since it likely isn’t the last version of this (hardware-level peripherals which provide tangible competitive advantages beyond the scope of merely “Doing what it’s supposed to do better”)
It wouldn’t be hard to ban for this (it’s easy to automatically detect if there’s frame-perfect strafing with no overlap). Alternatively, it wouldn’t be hard to put a setting in the game for Null Binds (this same effect) where it’s accessible to all players so that you don’t have to buy expensive hardware to access it. But letting this rest would be a huge mistake.
Razer’s new keyboard has a feature called Snap Tap that helps with a technique called “AD strafing” in shooting games. Normally, AD strafing requires precise timing to switch directions quickly.
Snap Tap allows you to press the opposite key without releasing the first one, making the strafing much easier. The author argues that this gives an unfair advantage similar to using scripts (banned actions) and urges the game developer (Overwatch 2) to address it. They suggest a ban on such hardware features or adding a similar option accessible to everyone in-game.
-From Google Gemini. (I love it for making summaries of something I don’t understand.)
It doesn’t matter how much it costs. Even if it was only $20, the issue is still the same. A specific competative advantage shouldn’t be locked behind a specific product. (Again, this is different from "this gear is better at playing the game or recording your inputs–having better gear improves what you are doing, not overrides it to make it better without the skill expression it would normally take).
And also, it’s $180.
I’m assuming you’re talking about mice which can be programmed to automatically compensate for recoil? I don’t know much about this, but quick googling reveals that the main situation where this is a thing in OW is in XIM, which is already something that the devs have promised numerous times to do something about and never have.
Programming your mouse to automatically cancel recoil is (to my knowledge?) viewed as scripting which is cheating. I’m not sure what other “pre-programmed” parameters would have use in terms of aim.
This is definitely going to take off. Wooting already is pushing a similar feature on their keyboards, I would be extremely surprised if other keyboard software types didn’t do it as well. And the video I posted is only days old and already at a million views.
Most types of cheating are detected by what the game sees, not by what’s happening on your computer.
If you have consistently frame-perfect AD strafing where you instantly release one key and actuate the second one every single time, it is EXTREMELY easy to scan for that and detect it. Because it’s literally impossible for someone to do without this feature.
If something really needed to be done (which I don’t believe, fwiw, but still), then that.
Banning it is stupid. Playing with that keyboard just feels better, it’s more fun. Why ban something that makes your inputs feel snappier? Sounds like a good thing to me. Besides, its benefits are pretty minor in OW compared to games like CS, fun wins out here.
it’s fairly new, I knew about this for few days, and I’m in a sphere that talks about specifically PC and technology around PC
well then you clearly don’t know how anti-cheats work, some can see more, but hardware is just too deep
that’s not how anti-cheat works,
if that’s how anti-chat worked, you wouldn’t see players inhumanly snapping to enemies, with inhuman reaction time,
or inhuman prediction of Hanzo arrows, where you peek for 0,0001seconds of cover, and the cheat software calculates the trajectory the human wouldn’t see, and fires a perfect headshot,
those things just run around in the game and need to rack up considerable amount of reports for the person to actually get banned.
It shouldnt be banned. I dont think itll be game breaking benefit.
If it needed fixing, it probably should be done in game engine, like incorporate some minimum delays on changing strafing direction if that would be deemed too strong. It would feel bad for some players at times probably though.
There was a time when people would bind Crouch on mousewheel and then they could “crouch spam” very rapidly which looked ridiculous in game.
They later forced on game engine so it cant be spammed.
Some keyboards already have “benefits” over others, like rapid trigger. It’s just how it goes.
There are always going to be items like this - screens with better pixel quality, towers with better processing, mice with special buttons… there’s always going to be something that could possibly give people an edge over other people.
And your average player isn’t going to spend that much on a keyboard.
Those types of things are extremely hard to check for at an engine level because the outcome of what’s happening there is so complex. Added to that, if ALL that it did was instantly snap to the target and fire, it’d get detected almost instantly, most of these use AI algorithms to attempt to mimic human attributes in aiming paradigms and response times because it’s so easy to tell when it’s not.
This, on the other hand, is dead easy. Consistent frame-perfect release at the exact same time as another keystroke. It’s a consistent behavior that is stupidly simple to detect.
Please at least respond to original comment i made.
Tbh, is most likely they will not do anything about it. Because it requires the player to press the button.
If ends up being problematic they could find out through several ways like:
Keyboard model, software, in game logs and atm. Which are often tied to what they check anyways.
Is not that hard, just would require what they consider not fair.
I agree with handling it in engine if necessary, and it’s even easier than you think. Movement could be scripted so that if two opposing directional inputs are held, the character’s velocity is set to 0. This is how OW already functions on a standard kb, except now that behavior would be enforced at the software level.
well, if you actually knew how strong strafing this fast is, you wouldn’t even be asking this question
of course, but you have people who straight up cheat using strong cheats, perhaps against another cheater, and even slowed down, the movement is dead straight, and quite instant and inhumanly reactive,
yet it’s probably not enough for them to just play like this to get banned, they still need to be reported, probably more than by few people