Cheating Online Gamers

An anonymous submitter writes: "The NYT has an article - Do Cheaters Ever Prosper? - Just Ask Them. Hmmm.. Wireframe walls in Quake?"

Wireframes?

[Student_Tech]

Wasn't there a driver several years ago for a video card that allowed somehting like this? (Ok found /. story here [slashdot.org].)

Why modify the game where they might be able to detect it when you can just play with drivers to do the same thing (assuming the game is sending all that to the video card already)

I agree with the author..

[tempestdata]

cheating itself is not such a problem. I remember using tainers in Diablo so that I could just go in and kill some monsters. I never PKed, or went into games where they said 'cheaters not welcome'. I went off with a few friends into the caves in nightmare mode. It was a gore fest and it really was fun!
I think the issue is decency more than cheating. There will always be a few who wish to gain a 'competitive advantage' somehow, making life difficult for the average joe. This isn't the case just in games... look at our law books and you'll see what I mean.

Cheat me once

[ackthpt]

Cheat me once, shame on you. Cheat me twice, shame on me. If I continue to play against cheaters, or people who continuously kick my butt, where probability should demand a more balanced percentage of win/loss, it's my own fault. Better to play honest people like me, who play for the fun of playing, not for some thrill of cheating fellow players.

Re:MOD PARENT UP!!

[zebs]

Do Cheaters Ever Prosper?

No-reg access to NYT... the answer must be a resounding yes then!

Re:What college is this?

[anon*127.0.0.1]

But thats always the justification that cheaters use. They're not doing it to gain an advantage. They're just doing it to "level the playing field", because everyone else cheats already, or has lots more time to play, or has a better computer.

The worst thing about cheating is the climate of distrust it creates. Any time a player gets lucky, or does something unusually skilled, they're quickly accused of cheating and usually booted. Even worse are the "So-and-so is cheating! / No I'm not!" arguments. Once one of those gets started, the games ruined. I spend more time worrying about whether that person is cheating or not then I do playing my own game.

Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance

[Anonymous Coward]

For some people, the fun is in the acomplishment of cheating itself (you know, essentially hacking the game).

For some people the fun is in "being evil" by cheating and causing others to have less fun.

For some people the fun is in the glory winning, even if it was not fair win (just as long as the others don't find out).

Re:read it here

[benjiboo]

Karma whore! The annoying thing is that these posts always go to 5 - informative. The NY Times is unlikely to get slashdotted, and you're just depriving them of ad revenues etc.

Re:Never Trust the Client

[Sloppy]

Games like Quake are susceptible to aimbots.

Then it needs to just be part of the game. Quake is a virtual reality of a very high-tech world; it's only natural that the soldiers of that world have cybernetic enhancements and smart weapons.

Alas, this rationalization wouldn't work in a FPS game that models a low-tech world, like one where savages run around shooting each other with arrows, throwing daggers, etc.

Re:read it here

[RobotRunAmok]

I resent having demographic information pryed from me, personal information demanded of me, my email address handed out to lord knows who, having to remember yet another password and cope with yet another web designers maddening form verification script, all in exchange for the rare priviledge of reading the news.

Then why don't you drop some change at the news stand and buy yourself a dead-tree copy, Privacy-Boy?

Do you not think that the NYT deserves some form of compensation for publishing a story that drives so much discussion (and pageviews) on this site and elsewhere?

What do you do for a living, by the way? Or is it just that you're sixteen years old, and your perception of the world is that it revolves around you? (If so, my apologies; real life will straighten you out better than I ever could soon enough...)

Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance

[alexandre]

I'm not a gamer myself but when i do try out a game (in single player mode that is) i dont feel i have tried the game if i havent seen the cheats...

And i'd say that for me, if i wanted to cheat online, it would be for the fact that cheating is actually pushing the possible capabilities of the game to it's limit... Like being Neo eh? ;-)

It's not a question of showing off, or being evil or even winning... it's the question of getting all the necessary powers to your character. It's the only way to really get into the games, having everything. The problem lies in the fact that it is there, always a possibility in your mind. And i've never liked to put barriers there ;)

Oh well, i don't see how we'll be preventing that beside playing on remote X terminals ehehe (which requires huge bandwith:-)

(P.S. Just a point of view, i never actually tried an online cheat and usually play with friends on local LANs anyway so i'd get my head ripped off hehe :-)

Why cheating ticks me off

[Quill_28]

I _used_ to play Counter-Strike.
But it took to much time too many cheaters.

Two reasons I haters cheaters.

When I made a great move or kill or too many kills in a short amount of time, people would call me a cheater. I would get tired of defending myself.

In other games(real basketball) when someone makes a nice move or shot/pass, I tell them so(Complimenting other players seems to keep egos in check, and thus more fun)
The problem is in Counter-Strike I never know if they are cheating or not.

Thus is the end, is simply ruins the game.

Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance

[operagost]

So are you saying that when you're angry with someone, it's okay to take it out on innocent strangers? And that this should be considered a political protest?

Re:Wallhackers and the honesty of surveillance

[cjpez]

it's the question of getting all the necessary powers to your character. It's the only way to really get into the games, having everything.

Well, I'd certainly disagree with that. If you're cheating, you're not getting into the game, you're changing how the game works. You're changing the nature of how the game flows, what you can do in it, and all that. You're no longer playing the original game. Yes, I'm still playing a game if I decide that every piece of mine is a Queen, but it's not chess anymore. And if I'm playing Quake and my client automatically locks onto the other players and frags them without my ever having to hit the fire button, then I'm just playing something that happens to talk to Quake servers. When you're playing against a bunch of other people who are expecting you to be playing Quake Proper, they've got every right to be upset if they discover that you're playing something else.

I'm not saying that doing so can't be fun, or that nobody should see what they can do with their software. I've cheated on the single-player modes of just about every game I've played, generally shortly after I've become bored with the basic game itself, and shortly before I decide to just uninstall the thing and go read a book instead. And I agree that it is fun to push the limits of the software, just to see what you can do, but again, you're not really playing that game anymore.

Also, I think that cheating can in fact get in the WAY of getting into the game. Ever play Half-Life? The whole fun of the game is being dropped into this strange, hostile world with nothing but a crowbar and having these terrifying alien creatures leaping out at you. Sure, I can cheat and get all the weapons or make myself invincible, but if I do so all of the suspense goes away. I could noclip and wander around finding things but I'm not getting claustrophobic in air ducts and the like. Do you remember Aliens TC, for Doom (I think)? That was a fantastic mod. And with cheats it became Just Another Shooter.

Anyway, that's a hell of a lot more words than I should have spent on that. :)

And online life mirrors real life yet again...

[irritating environme]

Gee, what a surprise.

If a sufficient percentage of people cheat, the entire system falls apart.

That never happens in real life. Unfortunately, I can't switch servers with my wet body. Or can I? Maybe if I moved to Australia...

Once again, (glass half empty) the online world shows humanity to be tragically and irreparably flawed. No good deed goes unpunished in this world.

Proposed solution - Handle more on the server side

[zapp]

I'm not all too familiar with the multiplayer gaming infrastructure, but I am a 4th year computer science student... so I think this makes sense.

How about The server keeps track of positions of all the clients, and does some vector math on calculating visibily before even transmitting coordinates to the clients? With the fast-as-hell CPU's we have out there now, I'm sure this could be pulled off with VERY little slowdown. This reduces network traffic by not sending everyone everyone else's position, but also... so what if player X does have a see through walls hack? If the server doesn't tell Player X where Player Y is, he still can't see him.

Any Thoughts?

Oh, and by the way... I knew a guy doing transparent wall hacks back before 3d accel cards were even invented, it's not news :)