This is exactly what I’m seeing in competitive, anywhere from about 1800 up to at least 2600. Your team will look like it’s going to stomp by holding the first objective until overtime, then suddenly one or two people on the other team literally can’t miss. There is usually a “toggle on” moment when that potato Hanzo with the Halloween skin starts hitting every third shot (miss, miss, headshot), and if that doesn’t turn the tide then there is a “rage mode” moment where it’s all headshots, even on targets not in his FOV a millisecond before the shot.
The trolls like to say they rarely see a cheater. I say I rarely see a smurf anymore. I mean I know they’re still there, maybe there are more of them than ever, but you can’t identify them anymore because they don’t “carry” like they used to. They’re just regular Gold or Plat players with better gameplans and a larger hero pool who are getting stomped just the same as non-smurf players.
All that is in competitive. Now let’s talk about Quick Play and Arcade… there’s no “toggle” moment in these modes. The hacks are on rage mode from the beginning. The hero pool is expanding, too – you used to see mostly Widowmaker and McCree, but now people are cheating on Mercy and Lucio. I’ve seen several aimbotting D.vas, and the funny part is that I didn’t realize it until they got de-meched and baby D.Va is spazzing out with bunny hops and faster-than-fingers ADAD spam while keeping the pistol crosshair locked on your head. I’ve seen several aimbotting Mercys, too. Why? No idea. Maybe they forgot to toggle it off, maybe they still need that advantage with sidearm fire, maybe they just can’t play games without cheating anymore. Cheating does seem to be a kind of addiction for some people – they can’t stop.
If you want to see some aimbot bloopers, play a few rounds of Mystery Heroes and watch people struggle to use Hammond with an aimbot tuned for Widowmaker, then go AFK or quickly disconnect/reconnect while they toggle off.
This all has been going on concurrent with the rise of the boosting epidemic, dating back to mid/late September. What’s that, 5 months – almost 6? Boosters are actually advertising in match chat now, not just DMs / friend requests, and they brag that none of their clients have ever been banned. They have a large pool of cheap throwaway accounts that they use aimbots on to help boost in 2- and 3-stacks. They already know the $11 throwaways are going to get banned, but it takes long enough to get caught that the cost is just minor overhead. They can boost a lot of accounts for a lot of money before the aimbot throwaway gets banned. Then they re-image their hard drive to get rid of the secret Warden file, and start over with a new $11 account.
It’s gone on so long and is so pervasive and brazen that I’ve just about given up hope that it’s going to ever be solved.
Meanwhile over in Hearthstone, the gold farming bots in unranked have taken over the queue.
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