How to become a NS2 Cheater/Hacker

[Ghoul]

This post is from the offical forum[forums.unknownworlds.com]

Either you die as "noob" or live long enough to become a 'hacker"

As lately more players started to accuse other of cheating again and after reading some of those accuses i realized there are still some misunderstandings about the NS2 gameplay leading to the believe that certain people cheat.

Warning: Wall of text incoming.

POSITIONING
The golden key to win a fight in NS2 is how you enter it. Simple called your positioning. As long as aliens are not in melee-range marines always are in favor of winning the fight. Therefor it’s important for aliens to close the distance to the marine as much as possible while marines want to keep aliens as far away as possible.

Basically you can only win a direct combat as alien if you are able to land the first bite before the marine even notice that he got hit.

That’s the very reason skulks have parasite. So they are able to follow the enemies movement and are able to create the needed opening.

SOUND

Many players don’t realize how sound driven NS2 is. A veteran is able to basically locate every enemy with sound alone. Competitive players even know every location on a map from which they are able to hear into the next room to locate every single enemy. This means if one of your teammates forgets to move silently you give away your position which means the enemies can adjust their position to their favor.

MINIMAP DETECTION

Many player do not realize that the minimap detection is not only working with the player’s line of view but 3D. This means if a marine walks directly below a skulk he will still see that skulk at his minimap. This means you have to directly attack or retreat as alien in that situation. Because otherwise the marine (who always has a look at his minimap) will turn around and shoot you. For new players this might look a lot like the player is using a aimbot but it’s only the minimap.

Also the map is overall always useful to track the enemies movement and to adjust your positioning to your favor.

CLOSE COMBAT

Once the alien has managed to catch up to the marine it should the goal to try to keep the distance as close as possible while the marine tries to use strafe jumps to get away. However i see a lot skulk players jumping away from the marine after landing the first bite instead of cycling around him. This just allows the marine to directly kill you while getting the next med-pack making it possible for one marine to kill 4-5 skulks alone.

AMMO MANAGEMENT

Every bullet can decide the end of a fight as marine. Therefore don’t “spray and pray”. Also avoid reloading in a direct combat situation instead if there is only one low enemy left switch to the pistol. As alien try to make the marine wasting as much of his ammo as possible before engaging.

HEALTH MANAGEMENT

Basically always have an eye on your health points (hp). Avoid to enter a fight with less than 50 % of your hp unless you are moving as team. As alien better retreat, recover and retry when you are alone. Otherwise you won’t be even able to close up to a marine.

As marine it is recommended to carry a welder with you for exactly this reason of maintaining the effective hit points of yourself and your teammates.

HUMAN REACTION TIME AND NETWORK LATENCY

Always have in mind that it will take you opponent about half a second to react to your engagement. So use that time wisely. Good positioning and map awareness allow you to maximize the gain of this half second.

AIM (Marine)

The better your aim is the higher is your damage output and as more aliens are you able to kill in a fight. With a bit training you should be able to get at least an accuracy of 15 %. After that you can boost your accuracy up to 20 % by good positioning and teamwork.

Accuracies beyond 20% are possible but require intensive training. Therefore most player with those kind of values are playing or have played either ns2 or a familiar shooter competitively.

CONCLUSION

Having all these factors in mind you might now understand why it’s often hard to decide if a person is cheating or not. Often players just master all the above factors to gain an advantage which looks like they would cheat. However sometimes people use cheats to make up for their lack of understanding these factors.

Basically to differ between cheaters and good players have a look how they exactly enter combat and also at their minimap.

[Chris]

I think the sound and minimap parts are particularly important.

I think the minimap mechanics are all around very poorly understood (or explained). Almost every single game, I clean up a hidden skulk that a marine ahead of me "detected" but didn't notice and most of the time you can know with 100% certainty which little knook the alien is hiding in from the map. Pretty sure the map also helps against cloaking.

I talked with a couple vets about sound recently and even they didn't know how well headphones can simulate surround sound. I've got a decent sound card and a very nice pair of Sennheisers so if you make a sound, I know were you are. (aliens can try to turn that to thier advantage)

I had an incident a few weeks ago were I was in terminal and I heard a sound coming from east wing. Those 2 sections that break off from the main path are the 2 most likely spots. Heading to east wing, I checked the first one on the right ( yes a skulk can remain out of sight up in the ceiling there, but I was looking for the ambush and thats a bad ambush spot) but when I didn't see him there, I knew he was waiting at the entrance to the entrance to the east wing room (up and to the right obviously). I hopped around the corner, pre firing my shotgun, and now I'm a wall hacker that he tries to get kicked from the server.

This story is just a funny example meant to show how these mechanics that Ghoul is talking about work into the thought process of the guy you think is hacking.

[Stark]

I've got some pretty decent headphones too, and the amount of information you can collect from simply listening (like alien poistion, number, lifeform, etc.) is huge. I've avoided countless ambushes due to being able to detect small noises before entering a room, and then being able to tell where they came from with great accuracy. On top of that, like Chris said, your minimap will often tell you where a skulk is hiding before you see it.

You can gain a big advantage with sound and minimap awareness alone, much less if you improve any of the other techniques Ghoul mentioned, like positioning.

EDIT: Can confirm that Chris wall hacks

[Ghoul]

The following tactical draft form snails (NS2 WC Winners) should demostrate how using sound and positioning helps you to win the game:

http://oi62.tinypic.com/ouu00g.jpg

In case you have never seen this draft before and want to get deeper into competitive ns2 tactics i recommend to read this post[forums.unknownworlds.com]

Originally posted by Stark:

You can gain a big advantage with sound and minimap awareness alone, much less if you improve any of the other techniques Ghoul mentioned, like positioning.

Sound and minimap awareness are just game elements that allow you position yourself as good as possible. Positioning is just a key word used for getting yourself into the right spot to fight.

To know where that right spot is you have to be able to know the enemies locations / have to assume where they will be. That's where sound, the minimap and generell map awarenes help alot and make certain players ultilizing all of those factors look like "cheaters".

[Chocapix]

I would like to add a comment for the rookies.

I just wanted to let you know that aliens have an upgrade (called aura) that allow them to see marine's health status through walls. That means you can see every marine in a certain perimeter around you without getting a parasite on them !

I'm just saying that cause I have been called a cheater once cause I killed a sneaky marine thanks to aura ...

[Joe Cool]

Sorry but the few people I suspect of cheating in NS2 (and thankfully it is only a few) aren't using aura, or sound, or any of the other excuses outlined in this thread.

I've had these suspected cheaters use the "I heard you" excuse when I'm crawling (not running) as a level 3 phantom skulk, and I'm the only alien on that side of the entire map! Yet they round a corner knowing EXACTLY where I am because "they heard me" Bull****!!... A level 3 phantom skulk makes no noise whatsoever, especially one that is crawling.

It's like back in the early days of CoD when that one perk would hide you 100% from UAV, yet cheaters would always claim "dude I saw you on UAV" when you know for a fact they didn't.

I bet the # of people cheating is probably a lot higher than anyone thinks to be honest. Simply because whenever you have a cheater that is caught, you suddenly seem to have a bunch of "skilled" players coming out of the woodwork to defend them. Even when it's beyond obvious that they're guilty.



I've been called a cheater many many many times in all the years I've been playing online games. Funny thing is I've never felt the need to get defensive about it or start harrassing the person who accused me. (which many suspected cheaters will do if you say anything) Nor have I ever felt the need to come to a suspected cheater's defense (let alone an obviously guilty one) If someone calls me a cheater I just laugh, take it as a compliment, and move on. Why get so defensive and butthurt about it if you're a legit player?

[Stark]

Originally posted by MoFo™:

I've been called a cheater many many many times in all the years I've been playing online games. Funny thing is I've never felt the need to get defensive about it or start harrassing the person who accused me... If someone calls me a cheater I just laugh, take it as a compliment, and move on. Why get so defensive and butthurt about it if you're a legit player?

Most likely because the person(s) crying cheat (with no proof) start a vote kick, which is usually successful. Or they are super butthurt and and complain to an admin. So the result is that you get tempoarily or permanently banned from one of the few servers that you can play on (due to the others being full or empty). When this happens enough it kinda gets on your nerves.