If you open up on an unarmed opponent and they take some damage and then melee-knock you... that's one thing. If they take absolutely no damage at all... that's past the point of being suspicious. Some will say I'm a little too quick to bandy about the word "cheater," but c'mon here, people. If you're shooting and they're lighting up but no damage is being done... and it happens in multiple matches... that's not just a connectivity problem. That's a cheating problem. And why is anyone surprised anymore when cheaters find some new way to screw over other people?
Easy fix, Respawn: de-power the melee to 10 points per hit. Which is about where it always should have been anyway.
Another thing I wanted to add that seems very suspicious to me is something that I just noticed happening this season, before this season I never once saw this happening. During hot drops, players will jump up to the top of an arsenal or loot bin for some reason. I have noticed players do this for no reason at all and even get themselves killed, some even open a loot bin, get a gun out and equip it, then jump to the top of the open loot bin and just stand there, getting killed by the first person who notices them. Why in the world would anyone except an idiot do that? Even if you just started the game and just have the explanation Mirage, Pathfinder, and Bloodhound give in the intro, you would know what the object is. Right after hot dropping the last thing you want to do is make yourself more visible to opponents. Ideally, you would want to crouch behind an open loot bin you just looted from, or run to the nearest building and shoot from there. Standing on top of a loot bin during a gunfight is suicide. Yet, this happens a lot, not every game, but I noticed players will jump to the top of arsenals or loot bins and just stand there until they die a lot this season. Why did it just start happening this season and why are people even using this as a strategy? Maybe this is connected somehow to what the people are doing that I mentioned in the OP, but this is just my speculation.
One problem they cleaned up that I haven't noticed anymore (I took off from the game for 6 months before last season started, so this is only my 2nd season back) is that you don't see those bot players anymore that just stand there and punch the air until they die to the ring, leaving you with only two people. You still see players with number strings as their names, but they actually play the game now and don't do that.
The closest thing to the problem in the OP that I saw in prior seasons was back in season 20 when I would play no-fill duos a lot a wraith that seemed to be doing the same landed next to me and I was dropping hot there as well, and she punched me once and I died, which seems fishy too. However, after that season I never noticed any melee punch related problems in the game until now. I hope I can record this happening eventually, because it would make it where I could report it on the tech side of the website.
"During hot drops, players will jump up to the top of an arsenal or loot bin for some reason."
I don't know how much bot royale you've played, or whether your mmr gets you into very low-skill lobbies, but in either place you can see actual Respawn bot players in action. And they often do exactly what you're describing. So these could be legitimate bots, or real players attempting to emulate bot behavior, though what the motivation for doing that might be, I'm sure I couldn't say. But just because I don't know why people are doing something... doesn't mean they don't have a reason. De-ranking used to be a thing in Halo. Not sure if it is here. Are we talking about ranked matches or unranked?
I'm wondering if maybe the 6 months I was away from the game has anything to do with the lobbies I'm getting. I notice most of my games tend to be on the left side of the bell curve in unranked trios since I came back. The situations I described in the previous two posts happened in unranked trios lobbies. I have been playing wildcard and ranked though, and come to think of it I haven't seen that type of behavior in the other two br modes. Although I have noticed cheating in ranked and wildcard (one guy even admitted on his headset he was using triggerbot), none of the cheats involved bot like behaviors or melee punches. So, I think you may be onto something here. Also, maybe the cheaters are trying to emulate bot behavior to fool people during hot drops into a false sense of security.
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