The Last 2 maybe 3 days I have noticed some odd behaviour which I thought was performance related. Found out it is not. One of the new, possible free, cheats has come around bringing back the Packet Loss Hack. This is a hack/exploit thats been around for at least since the age of torrents, roughly 20 years.
This introduces empty packets of data into the users upstream and some unfortunate players on the other end will receive it as lag or stuttering; worst case as a total lag out causing them to drop from the game.
For me at least, I have found 2 ways to identify it. One being is the several suspected players found using it over the last few days had been using the Pink Finger Gun player icon. Yes I realize its not definitive but generally when there is specific groups of cheaters they tend to use the same icon; like one aimbot group in the past used the Rising Sun player Icon.
The way to tell in-game is if you are getting frame drops, especially when a particular player enters proximity to you. My last match I Was able to identify an enemy level 37 account Doomfist causing this. I could be in a 1v5 against the rest of his team and be fine. But as soon as he was in the fight, or it was him 1v1 with me, the frames would drop and the screen would stutter as if I was lagging. I already had 2 teammates get dropped from the match, 1 at a time. We still won the match.
Just bringing awareness to a regrowing issue. Dont need the flaming, be constructive or dont reply.
Is it really based on proximity for who gets the lag? Believable but odd. I would think it would effect any player in the game with them, or at least anyone with them in los.
Also is it noticeable in replays or just live in game?
From my experience yes, because that one player could be in their spawn and everything is smooth as butter. I would have a full 165-175fps, then as soon as they are within, a rough guess of 3-5 meters, the frames start dropping and if they are within melee range I watched my frames drop to 135fps and the stuttering occured. By a single player. Not the other 5.
I thought it was a joke back when I was playing CS1.6 and Source.
It affects all players, but who actually would notice it? I did, maybe some others, maybe others not so much? I dont think it could affect fiber users, i could be wrong about that, i dont have fiber.
Its noticeable Live, havent checked replays, I dont think it would since it doesnt record Telemetry Data like the HL Demo Recorder does.
If I remember correctly the replay viewer shows how things looked from the servers POV, while what is shown on each playerâs screen can vary slightly due to latency. So I guess it would depend on if the server had the character moving around strangely on its end or just had them standing still until they picked a stable connection back up. I figure it would look similar in replay to someone with an unstable connection.
Just watched the replay of the match and I dont see any lag during the spots that I had encountered it during my POV or their POV. They however did have quite a bit of suspicious moments with their aim, as if A.I. took over or lag compensation did some aim-assist, which couldâve been during peak spikes in latency for them.
But one moment that caught my eye was 11:35 while they were Ashe and then insta-tracked the Tracer.
Here is the Replay 8TGJ48 if you wish to investigate yourself. It looks nothing like how it was encountered in game in terms of stuttering and lag. They were (Hanzo/Doomfist/Ashe/Hanzo/Doomfist/Tracer - roughly in that order)
My only guess is that servers only communicate info to clients that is absolutely necessary. So if an enemy is sitting in spawn far away from the battlefield, thereâs no point in the server sending you info regarding what the player is doing, since you canât see them and they have no chance at interacting with you.
Iâm only guessing based upon my knowledge of developers commonly trying to optimize resources as efficiently as possible so the player only sees whatâs necessary. You might be aware of the phenomenon of objects and details being unloaded once theyâre behind the playerâs view to save on RAM and processing power, so Iâd imagine that the empty packets being sent are only done when the server thinks you as a client need to receive the (empty) data now that the enemy is in proximity.
I mean I believe the same thing but at the same time I think that would be effectEd by los more than proximity. Since it doesnât matter how far the other player is from you if they can see your or you can see them.
I have definitely encountered this âjammingâ. Clutch interaction coming up ahyep nope your cds are basically locked out. umm wut? Get squated on and lose to some day1 hitscan bot.
Something like this just seems to have happened to me. Was just quick play, it started fine, then all of a sudden any time I attacked the enemy Brig (whom I just happened to have outplayed in the first team fight), everything started freezing and players started flying around. So no fps drops, just like if someone pulled the ethernet plug (most people should be aware of what Iâm talking about). I literally NEVER had a single internet problem like that happen to me before (in OW), and Iâm on a very strong stable connection. Two team fights later I just left the game.
Not sure if itâs the same thing but Iâve had a match yesterday that the team fights were evenly matched and intense, quite fun actually. when just as things started to fall in our favor, lag just came out of nowhere. affecting our team as i asked in chat in case it was just me, and the enemy changed tactics in that it suddenly instant focused on myself and the tank as we were performing well and they considered the threats and just kept us suppressed and focused, meanwhile the latency i started losing duels and could not hit accurately or abilities were not responding well. it was so odd.
Then why would it happen ONLY to me? The whole lobby were chatting about it, my girlfriend was in the game sitting next to me on the same internet connection without any problems. As you can see from the OP, this is not a new thing, this kind of âhackâ has been around for 20 years.
That my connection to the server was dodgey is not logical based on everything.
The lag starts IMMEDIATELY when I attack that player. Itâs the exact same as when it happend the first time to me ~a week ago. Until you attack that certain player, nothing happens. And NO, it would not impact everyone, this is a player targeted hack, do your research.
The way it was used in OW1 was maybe affecting the entire lobby, but not the way the hack has been used historically.
Reproducable coincidence? I mean sure, there could be a server specific error messing up the connection between two different players in a lobby, but thatâs extremely unlikely
Yes they do . As I said, do your researchâŚ
I REALLY understand it comes off as paranoia, Iâve never complained about something like this before in my life though. And it has happened twice to me now, once to my gf. And itâs happened to the guy who wrote a few posts above.
It doesnât work exactly as the author of the thread describes, since the server has the authority in this game and you shouldnât be able to send data directly to the other clients but it is probably technically possible by abusing some of the features of the netcode.
I actually did something like that a couple of years ago in an alpha release of another shooter game, with permission of course.
. As I said, do your researchâŚ