Forum Discussion

5 years ago

Purpose of showing spectator count?

Can someone explain purpose of showing spectator count? It makes so much harder to get proof that player was cheating. He alone destroys whole squad (shoots with amazing accuracy) and then you watch ...

discussion

DoYaSeeMe

5 years ago

Had a high count of cheaters yesterday in casual, almost none of them stopped when I spectated them. At least 3- 4 teams would've survived each match if they would've disabled the cheats while being spectated.

What's disappointing is that the spectator count was almost always 1, so I hardly doubt they were even reported by anyone else. The cheating was very obvious, like railing people at 100m+ distance with L-star and Hemlok in burst mode without scope, pinging enemies behind walls and rocks, aim snapping to walls and rocks while running, railing people through smoke with an unscoped Alternator and without scanning, although it was a BH and had both their tactical and ultimate ready, double headshots with wingman from a high distance as I was jumping behind a fence, a lot of consecutive hits ending with double Longbow headshots while I was running and healing behind covers in train yard, which were shot from the distance and through train car windows, etc..

I still think that showing spectator count can work in discouraging cheating a little bit. It can work in reducing the damage done by the cheaters, until they get reviewed banned (which we know it can take forever).

SlivPTS

5 years ago

@DoYaSeeMe
There are two types of cheaters:
1. They play on new accounts and they don't care if you will report them on EAC page, because they don't mind to lose account and HW ban will not stop them.
2. They are average/high skill players and they play on their main accounts. They usually use only walllhack and some of them also aimlock, but they will always turn off cheats, because they don't want to lose their main account where they invested a lot of time and money.

You see difference? It's almost impossible to catch 2nd type of cheaters. Such players can ruin game for years and nobody can catch them. Actually simply removing icon will not help. Respawn is still sending all information and cheaters still CAN SEE number of spectators in ranked. And why they can see? Because this feature is still enabled in non-ranked mode.
Only solution here is to get rid from this feature completely = remove methods and not send any info about spectator count.

DoYaSeeMe
5 years ago
@SlivPTS I know where the hacks take the information from, seen it in detail in videos. Also, wallhacks and softer aimbot cheats are hard to spot specifically so that they can be kept on even when there are spectators.

One very big problem with cheaters is that they inflict a lot of damage done even by the time they get reported. This is why it's important to take measures to prevent them from cheating, even if for very short periods of time. When cheat detection fails, anything that forces them to turn off the cheats is good, as this makes cheaters pretty vulnerable, since most of them lack skills. This is why I see the spectator count and icon useful.

As an analogy, it's like when some bankrobbers want to rob a bank, but they see some policemen around and abort. Yes, this means that those bankrobbers are still free, but at the same time nobody inside the bank at that time gets shot, traumatized or loses belongings.
SlivPTS
5 years ago
@DoYaSeeMe
But if there will be no indicator, then anyone can spectate anytime. It's even worse for cheaters... they don't know when to turn off/on = it will be easier to catch them.

I just spent like 30 min to read cheat forum and situation is worse than i thought. I thought they HW ban everyone, but turns out it's not the case. So i can spend 30 min of my time to spectate, record, render, upload video, report cheater... then it will take few days to ban cheater, but only account will be banned. Cheater can create new account and play again. It's pure stupidity...

One player is already 10 times banned, but all these times only account banned. Why do we even have to waste our time to report cheaters?
DoYaSeeMe
5 years ago
@SlivPTS Well, I don't know why someone with the intention to cheat would just turn a cheat off out of the blue. Most cheats are usually spotted only when the cheaters fight, so it doesn't even matter if they're left on during looting. Fighting without aimbots often gets them killed, their muscles are lazy, they lack the continuous,fine tuning practice that we get every day.

As for hardware bans, they're a bit irrelevant if they don't get applied fast enough and can sometimes produce collateral victims. It's a good punishment for players that buy cheats. Hackers use hw spoofing, vpns, etc, they know how to mask their stuff and also do refreshes on regular basis. The worst happens when they simulate/copy ids that actually exist, steal accounts or constantly change their hardware, selling the old one. That's probably when you get very upset innocent players, as they got banned "out of the blue".

Banning accounts is pretty useful. Hackers don't make cheats just for fun, they also sell them or use them to boost and then sell accounts. If those accounts get nullified, cheaters lose money, hackers gain less.

Stopping cheaters is nearly impossible, the most effective way to weed them out is to continuously make their effort unworthy. So keep reporting, because they will surely keep destroying games.