Can / Do people cheat in AOE 2 online?

[Samtar]

I've seen a lot of posts about the cheating aspect of this game. I guess I'm more so wondering about how common it is. I really dont want to suggest my dad buy this game if he's just goin to run into the same problem he did ten years ago.
Is it possible and people do it? Because it's the reason my dad stopped playing the game about 10 years back. He wants to get back into it but is hesitant because of the cheaters.
I heard there's a mode where you can disable cheating online, but precise hackers can still hack through that... and there's the concept of being able to basically do no fog of war with recording. Back to my first question though. How often is it that people are cheating?

Thanks everyone,

Ess.

[Laptop]

I hardly ever hear about cheaters on here.

[Samtar]

Originally posted by Laptop65:

I hardly ever hear about cheaters on here.

thank you sir. looking for as many comments as I can get :P.

[Ashur_Arbaces]

Not often, only encountered it twice Ingame: one guy turned cheating on and I didn't noptice and the other one changed his ELO from 1800 to 1400 (and he failed to trick me cause when the game start was counting down his ELO automatically changed back).

For normal RM and DM maps I very, very rarely see cheating and mostly the "cheating" people are talking about is preteaming (just avoid lobbies where the first 2 or 3 players are in the same team). Also constantly keep checking the lobbies map settings there you can see if cheating is turned off or not.

Much more problematic are rigged scenario maps, wich are a bit too common for my taste.

[okay]

Originally posted by AJ Ashur_Jellal:

Not often, only encountered it twice Ingame: one guy turned cheating on and I didn't noptice and the other one changed his ELO from 1800 to 1400 (and he failed to trick me cause when the game start was counting down his ELO automatically changed back).

For normal RM and DM maps I very, very rarely see cheating and mostly the "cheating" people are talking about is preteaming (just avoid lobbies where the first 2 or 3 players are in the same team). Also constantly keep checking the lobbies map settings there you can see if cheating is turned off or not.

Much more problematic are rigged scenario maps, wich are a bit too common for my taste.

None of those cheats involved hacking the multiplayer game, except for arguably the ELO rating one, although that might have been a bug, given that there is a known bug where the player's elo doesn't show at all until the game starts counting down. Everything else you mentioned is legitimate but unfair.

[Ashur_Arbaces]

Originally posted by KING NOOB:

Originally posted by AJ Ashur_Jellal:

Not often, only encountered it twice Ingame: one guy turned cheating on and I didn't noptice and the other one changed his ELO from 1800 to 1400 (and he failed to trick me cause when the game start was counting down his ELO automatically changed back).

For normal RM and DM maps I very, very rarely see cheating and mostly the "cheating" people are talking about is preteaming (just avoid lobbies where the first 2 or 3 players are in the same team). Also constantly keep checking the lobbies map settings there you can see if cheating is turned off or not.

Much more problematic are rigged scenario maps, wich are a bit too common for my taste.

None of those cheats involved hacking the multiplayer game, except for arguably the ELO rating one, although that might have been a bug, given that there is a known bug where the player's elo doesn't show at all until the game starts counting down. Everything else you mentioned is legitimate but unfair.

Yeh you're right, on real hacking I have almost nothing except from the ELO thing where the guy in question was doing something he shouldn't be doing since the lobbies name was "under 1600" and he tryed to distract me through quickly typing some sh*t in caps in the chat to draw my attention away from his ELO right before the game started and his ELO changed.

Although the rest I mentioned isn't any real "hacking or cheating" It still was worth mentioning.

[Samtar]

This has given me a lot to think about everyone. I really appreciate all of the comments. And, after reading this, I think I can go ahead and recommend the purchase to my father! Thanks so much!!!!!!

[The Chair From Moneyball]

I've played close to 200 hours on here, hosting most of my lobbies, and not once have a i run into anbody hacking. There is a option to turn on and off the cheats that are already built into the game, but everyone keeps it off unless it's a lobby designed to use these cheats. The game is really great in comparison to many steam games that in 200 i have not once run into anyone hacking. Hope it helps :)

[Samtar]

Originally posted by The Chair From MoneyBall:

I've played close to 200 hours on here, hosting most of my lobbies, and not once have a i run into anbody hacking. There is a option to turn on and off the cheats that are already built into the game, but everyone keeps it off unless it's a lobby designed to use these cheats. The game is really great in comparison to many steam games that in 200 i have not once run into anyone hacking. Hope it helps :)

I really appreciate this, sir. I can't wait to show my dad these posts. This was a game him and I both used to really enjoy.

[Dalv]

those AOE2 maphacks back in the day were in the MS Zone, where they had no anticheats whatsoever. Almost no one cheats in steam nor voobly today.

[Rumblebelly]

yeah!

[shx]

For my 102 hour total playing time in this game, i have not spotted one cheater in all my multiplayer games.

[gagman]

Best is he host the game, than he untick Cheats ingame, than he also no need afraid that the host use a custom map, if your father is the host he can use the map and can be sure to play a official map. i personally never saw cheaters that use maybe other ways to win.
There are sometiems people that disconnect the connection that they no loose the elo points, but if your father find a good group or trusted gamers he will have fun.

[Hawkstein]

When you're the host of the room, before you start the match, there is the option to allow cheats during the match (I think that option is located near the bottom right corner). Normally that option is not activated, but if the player who's hosting the match has activated that option before the match starts then enjoy the cheatfest lol.´

By the way, just to remind that if you or anyone in the match uses cheats, no one will get any achievement unlocked in the end of the match. It seems to be some sort of punishment for cheaters.

[okay]

Kalavedet, one more thing your dad needs to know of is about drop-cheaters. They're not really hacking the game, instead they're exploiting bugs in the game's multiplayer network setup. By messing with their own connection in certain ways, they can force the game to desync. But since desyncing uploads the game files to the developers for analysis, this kind of drop-cheating is very uncommon. The more common one is forcing the game to freeze and end it with a disconnection, which leaves their Elo points unaffected. They use this to avoid losing Elo points when they are bound to lose a match. Overall, this is not very common anymore because the devs have released patches to deal with these issues. But it seems a few people always find a new loophole.

[The O.G. Manbeast]

I've played over 600+ hours of this game and I've yet to encounter actual kackers :)