Cheating in AC. My thoughts.

[Kahn62]

The game was deliberately designed to encourage cheating, and it has become so commonplace that times four or five seconds a lap past possible, happen every day, and no-one says boo.

Why? Because KUNOS is in on the cheating. It's the only way it makes sense. If someone has a bad attitude, and a seven second a lap advantage, and they drive like a child, then they're cheating.

When I pointed this out ONCE, in a server that let's small and med cheaters in, but bans the ridiculous ones, I got banned from every site in the world. I join, and get kicked in minutes. This is a great game, and if Kunos cared cheating could not happen.


Most honest people stopped playing years ago, because the better you get, the more obvious it is to you, so they give up. The only reason that there are not tens of thousands of people here, is because of the constant INSTITUTIONALISED cheating.

[Kahn62]

It could easily be policed if that was their intent, but they choose to insult their customers by pretending that these cheater times are real.
I mean someone banned me from every server on the planet, just do that to the cheaters. Problem gone.
If you banned every cheater online now, three quarters of most of the competitive rooms, I would bet that there would be MORE people playing a fortnight later, as the old members would be coming out of the woodwork everywhere. Also sales would skyrocket, as cheaters would have to keep buying the game again and again until they just stop it.
PS. Save the insults for someone who cares.

[Kahn62]

It is, if you want to program a bot to do it for you, but someone with the driving skills, no cheats, and the console, could sort it in a week. I could, if I learned how to operate the console. At first I thought it was simply hardware related, but I spent ten thousand AUDs buying the fastest PC in the world. It made little to no difference at all to my times. What I got for my money was a car that is so stable that rammers often hit me, and ricochet into the wall, without impeding my race at all. My car is hard to slide, and almost never does that childish spin on the spot and drive into the wall thingy. It is a cheat of sorts, and I only use my superpowers for the good of the game, lol. I know it's hard when they are cheating at the .5% mark, but when someone has a four second cheat on it's blind Harry time.

[Kahn62]

Originally posted by парашка все?:

Technically it's almost impossible to combat cheaters on PC in client based games. Just play on consoles to minimize possibility of meeting one of these..

BS it's that attitude that creates the sort of acceptance that allows it to continue. I'm guilty of just ignoring it for decades, but when I get angry I do this.

[Sassanid]

How can you make a thread about cheating and not even mention what the cheats are? How are other players going to know what to look out for?

Saying someone got a 4 second faster laptime is not enough. If you think that's all it takes for someone to convince you of cheating, I would say that's quite worrying.

Are you noticing any visual indicators? Erratic driving behavior that's out of the norm? Is the 4 second faster laptime the server record or all time online record which has never been done before?

Way too vague of a post to claim "constant INSTITUTIONALISED cheating". Be more specific then the rest of us can actually quantify the claim and see if it's something we notice too, or if it's an isolated case. With zero info given other than "I saw cheating", there's zero to go on.

[Kahn62]

I think the best idea would be to sell the cheats openly. Then have cheat on, and cheat off servers. Then if you cheat in the wrong place, you get banned from all of the no cheat servers. We could then rename them to mods, because if everyone in the race has it, it's no longer a cheat. Don't get me wrong here, this is the best driving game I have found, but they made three really big mistakes. Firstly, making complicated graphics. If I could turn the details DOWN a bit more I would, and I'm getting 480-900 FPS as we speak. I would go to wire frame with minimal fill, if I got more frames. Seriously. I can max it, and I get 85-150 FPS, but then the slimy road feel comes back. Why would anyone EVER put the detail levels up on a lesser PC? Second, catering to the cheaters, and third making Competizione. Imagine the original mods that could be available now, at a fee, if they continued developing this instead of wasting time and money on a dead in the water game. Why would anyone give them more money, when this game was never finished to an acceptable standard. They could have developed a FWD engine, that drives like a FWD car for instance. That would be nice for the first non rally game ever to have a FWD engine that works. Imagine a Godzilla, that handled like Godzilla, and not like a RWD Fiat on steroids?
Cheats, high graphic settings and setups make most people slower than they should be, after driving AC, than they were beforehand. They UN-TEACH you how to drive properly. The whole road, and the ripple strips, become the hot line for instance. How can you learn a track, when there is no wrong way to do a corner. Most people make it as pretty as their eyes can take, and put up with 50 FPS average, lol, and wonder why they slip and slide everywhere. The other thing that they do to limit their chance of getting better, is to ignore chat requests. I ALWAYS see people I can help to get faster, but they never want to find out why. Most good drivers WANT more better drivers around, but if you don't chat, they can't help you. It often takes less than a fortnight for me to teach someone with no cheats on, to go from mediocre to fast. Well, as fast as me, anyway. Cheaters are simply unable to learn how to do it well, it's easier to lie to themselves. I haven't been this angry for years. One comment, and banned everywhere? It is a solvable problem, and all it takes is for people to know there are cheats, and refuse to play with people who have suspicious driving traits.
What really got my goat, was when some seven second cheater, was up a newb for not ceding to a blue flag, and calling THEM unsporting. That's what made me lash out in the chat. You don't deserve blue privilege, when you're obviously cheating. Kunos have quite a Russian mentality, even though they're Italian, which has made them a million dollars from their idea. The only problem is that it was literally a billion dollar idea, and they wasted ninety percent of it's potential selling cheats to losers so the losers could pretend to be special. It's still a better game than iRacing by a fair bit.
The problem with iRacing is their licencing system. I bought some DLC two years ago, and still am not qualified to use any of it. Everything else is as OK, and the cheating is taken seriously, and I could drive many cars, but I won't drive any FWD car that handles like a Datsun 120Y for instance, in ANY game, and as long as I can only drive one car, it seems pointless. It's just a way to bore their patrons into giving them less money.)
Anyway. this is still the best driving game in the world, and I want it back one day, but it could have been the ONLY serious online racing sim around now. They've turned it into a "hangin' with the guys" sim. Most people just sit there and watch others driving... Well why would they even try, after all, they're so slow an' all. Anyway now that I can't play my favourite distraction, I don't know what to do with myself. I need something other than ranting at Kunos to do.

[Kahn62]

Originally posted by Fret 𐎣𐎡𐎠𐎵𐎡:
How can you make a thread about cheating and not even mention what the cheats are? How are other players going to know what to look out for?
Saying someone got a 4 second faster lap-time is not enough. If you think that's all it takes for someone to convince you of cheating, I would say that's quite worrying.
Are you noticing any visual indicators? Erratic driving behaviour that's out of the norm? Is the 4 second faster lap-time the server record or all time online record which has never been done before?
Way too vague of a post to claim "constant INSTITUTIONALISED cheating". Be more specific then the rest of us can actually quantify the claim and see if it's something we notice too, or if it's an isolated case. With zero info given other than "I saw cheating", there's zero to go on.

If you don't know what they are, then you're not paying attention to your gaming. People who can, for instance, go up the inside of me, while my tyres are howling like a potato, and drive off into the future faster than I can, despite having a tighter radius to do at a higher speed. You sound like a developer pretending to be a customer to me. My only evidence, is from watching, driving and racing games for twenty five years now, and I can tell when someone manoeuvres into a passing position, and executes a pass properly, compared to someone else, who follows on your bumper the whole way, and then just pulls out and does a drive away on you for no apparent reason, like they're in another class of racing. Like watching a V8 go past a Mini. I can follow a good driver around for two or three laps sometimes, but not a cheater, because they just drive off with no tow for me. You don't get proper "feel" behind a cheat, so it's easier to drive near them, because they screw up the slipstream. Is that specific enough for you?
This is not the first game I was right about in the end. Remember this, the catch-cry of the cheat is always "There's no-one cheating in this game, it can't be done". Anyone who says that is instantly suspect. It's the fast car, that comes up behind you with little squirming, from you or them, and just drives away from you instead of towing you along with them, for a bit at least. When a car comes up behind you, and "makes" your car get squirrelly, then you know it's a fair dinkum racer behind you, and the only way to learn how to deal with the squirrelling, is to anticipate it, and react appropriately, usually by BRAKING early. Imagine that, more braking, because you have no down-force to help you slow down, so you have to brake more, and earlier. YOU CAN'T LEARN THIS TECHNIQUE BEHIND A CHEATER, no matter how long you work at it. I have two driving styles, one for in slip, and another for following cheats and driving solo. I just pretend the cheats are not there for most corners, because you can't beat them out anyway, and they're just so much faster, lol. If you have been doing AC for a long time, then you too, subconsciously do this, otherwise you couldn't cope with the two extremes. By institutionalised, I mean that you can get your cheats in any strength you require, a little for the faster cheaters, and a lot for the newbies. Tailor made, so to speak.
The hardest part is separating the deliberate from the incidental. Some cheats don't even know they're cheating, their "mate" gave them a better "setup", or a mod came with the cheat on it. I just want new players to realise that their times are OK for a non cheat, instead of them leaving, believing they have no talent for the game.
I am reluctant to expose the name of the company, but they sound like they came a long way, we're sure. A cryptic clue, not a good one, but that was the point, enough for those that know, not enough for a smart person to figure it out, lol. I feel like just blurting it out here, so everyone can have them, but it really ruins the game for people who like the feel of their cars over their phony lap times. People like me. I know how it's done, and I would rather lose than lose the feel of the drive.

[Kahn62]

OK, first, I look at every name in the room before I join. Second I look at the times. Anyone a second faster than me gets a mental note for future enquiry. Then I watch the launch off the line, that tells a lot, I'm traditionally awesome off the line, so anyone gaining on me or leaving me behind is suss, but getting four seconds a lap on me, on Vallelunga med, is unforgivable. We really are that good. I drive in a group of great non cheat drivers a lot, that's how I know tje feel of it all. I find that you can feel the cheats get stronger as you get better, over time, and they need more speed to stay ahead. Cheetahs love it when the good drivers give up, and leave the newbies behind to be trashed by them. They absolutely despise being in a room with JUST cheetahs though. Nothing gets them to leave like a lack of victims. When I blurted, the honest left in seconds, then five minutes later the Cheetahs all left, leaving the three admin and me. Then they buggered me, and I couldn't say any more. Half an hour after first blurt the room was down. The room had eighteen to twenty four people on it for three days straight, and it's still down now. Does that sound like the actions of innocent people.

[Kahn62]

OK, first, I look at every name in the room before I join. Second I look at the times. Anyone a second faster than me gets a mental note for future enquiry. Then I watch the launch off the line, that tells a lot, I'm traditionally awesome off the line, so anyone gaining on me or leaving me behind is suss, but getting four seconds a lap on me, on Vallelunga med, is unforgivable. We really are that good. I drive in a group of great non cheat drivers a lot, that's how I know the feel of it all. I find that you can feel the cheats getting stronger as you get better, over time, and they need more speed to stay ahead. Cheetahs love it when the good drivers give up, and leave the newbies behind to be trashed by them. They absolutely despise being in a room with JUST cheetahs though. Nothing gets them to leave like a lack of victims. When I blurted, the honest left in seconds, then five minutes later the Cheetahs all left, leaving the three admin and me. Then they buggered me, and I couldn't say any more. Half an hour after first blurt the room was down. The room had eighteen to twenty four people on it for three days straight, and it's still down now. Does that sound like the actions of innocent people. And no, I've seen a 1;20 on the Vallelunga, Five less than MY MX5 can do. Even the stupid cheating sites have to kick you when you're that far off the planet. If YOU can do a 1:22, I call cheat, every time. There is no point arguing whether there are cheats, only how many, how strong are they, and what to do about it. Hiding it under the carpet hasn't worked, maybe open discussion can. Lets make a poll, and see who thinks something needs to be done about this. I bet everyone would SAY that they want a cheat free game, but the Hyenas, a Cheetah with its spots mostly worn off, would stop playing if they had to do a fair race. Heck, I'm a bit suss on a 1:24,5 even.
Oh yeah, every proven cheater I know of, once said to me I've got a better setup. What poppycock. Most of the settings on the MX5 have NO actual effect on your speed or cornering abilities. I've swung the dials from one side to the other, and shuffled them in myriad ways, and that's my conclusion. Performance only ever goes down if you play with your knobs. If your MX5 setup is better than mine, I again call BS. The MX5 is a setup free car, and THAT is the only reason it's by far the most popular car in the game, even though most people never realize this, because they don't have the tech background for it, so they just accept the idea, that if a knob is there it probably does something. The best setup is stock, with tyre pressures, fuel needed and ride height that seem to do anything. The only reason that this game HAS setups, is to hide the cheaters from plain sight. People can rationalise a setup being the difference, and look no further. They then called the game setups, to confuse the issue and make it seem like a setup was important in the game. A setup can only give a good driver a modest increase in performance, like half a second. I never heard of a race setup that could gain you five seconds on a stock setup. Someone please stop me AAAAAHH, I have nothing to do now in my life, but sit here and vent my rage at the devs, until they turn my game back on. Oh, and my new favourite hobby, going into rooms and posting my concerns there now and then in random rooms until I get booted, again. Stuff like, "If you are following a cheat, you are teaching yourself hot to NOT take the corner behind an honest driver." and other snippets of interest to most people.

[Kahn62]

Originally posted by :::

Technically it's almost impossible to combat cheaters on PC in client based games. Just play on consoles to minimize possibility of meeting one of these..

Just because you can't hack a console like you can a PC, does not mean you can't put hacked files into it. It would be nice to dream of a place where it CAN'T happen, but that can;t happen under capitalism.

[Finney]

Originally posted by Kahn62:

The game was deliberately designed to encourage cheating...........................................

OMG

shoo...shoo

[ling.speed]

Typing that much and have audience stay silent (because how would even start responding) is how one gets further cemented in his beliefs, so i feel obligated to:



no

[John Briggs]

This person has issues.

[Artan]

Originally posted by John Briggs:

This person has issues.

Yeah - best leave the alone in their own echo chamber replying to them-self!

[Sassanid]

I think judging by the replies here alone anyone can see that cheating in AC is an extremely isolated and rare occurrence and definitely not prolific or systemic like OP might make it seem. Sorry to hear you got a cheater on your favorite server or tracks, but I can say that in 1-2 years of playing AC, I've never encountered a cheater. The only time I thought to myself, "no way, are they using a cheat?" was around a month ago when I was hotlapping around a Nordschleife lobby in an RSR and someone in a 650 GT3 was not only keeping up with me but overtaking me, and we were going absolutely full send. Everything I knew about these 2 cars from the past 2 years in AC has told me the 650 cannot keep up with the RSR which has more power and is just a more nimble vehicle, but in this situation it was the opposite.

It could have been some crazy setup he was using, or just amazing driving, or possibly some speed cheat, who knows. The point is it's definitely not rampant institutionalized cheating that happens all the time.

I repeat, that was the one suspicious time in close to 2 years of playing AC. Make of that what you will.

[J.J.McClure]

Very harsh words you say there.
First of all, you assume that everyone who is better is cheating.
You also accuse Kunos of fraud.
I think that's a crime in almost every country. With no evidence, you don't even have a reasonable suspicion, accusing someone of a crime is strong stuff.
There may indeed be "players" out there who cheat. But just because someone is faster doesn't mean they have to cheat.
Maybe he just has more experience.
Do you really think that if someone has been racing on the computer for 35 years,
They don't just have more experience?
Do the opposing drivers all have to be younger than you?
Also, if you're just thinking that everyone else is cheating, Why not just open a server?
You can then determine who has access there.
But then there are also people who are faster.
Do they cheat too?
You could also join a league.
There are clear rules and anyone who violates them must expect the consequences.
Racing, real or virtual, is like real life.
There's always someone better.
But if you don't like the league or your own server, you still have the single player mode.
You can then set the opponent's strength to 0% as you wish and lead the race.