Does codemaster condone cheating?

[Rune]

Let me preface this with the notion that I have an exceptional hatred for cheating scum,
Running, hosting and administering servers across many games from cs.16 to MW4 I have seen my share of the filth, and as an admin on several different FPS communities over the years I have personally banned probably more than a thousand cheaters in my time.

I quit CS because of cheating, I quit COD because of cheating, I quit CS:GO because of cheating.

Now this being a Rally game, you could argue cheaters have less detrimental effect then a team based online shooter.

I would say you are wrong – Being a competitive person I instantly hone in on the best players of any game I partake in, and try to emulate those players to improve my own game.

Therefore, I quickly identify J1i, Pork hammer, Rallycameraman and others as people participating actively in this community and putting in solid performances (i.e best of this community) often documented on YouTube.

Suddenly there is a new guy appearing on the top of several daily events and as I have no proof I am not going to name him, but I see there is speculation among the best drivers on the forum documented in several threads:
http://forums.codemasters.com/discussion/6781/how-to-report-a-cheater#latest

It’s also a HUGE red flag for me when you have no clear cut way to report the cheating scum, it suggests to me you are totally unprepared for the situation and are most likely not going to act on it.


A quick google search reveals there is indeed a cheat available featuring
• Super Acceleration
• Super Brakes
• Car Vault
• Pause Timer


Now the fact that these scum will always exist I have no real problem with, but I do have severe problems with developers that choose to ignore, sweep under the carpet or otherwise choose not to deal with the filth in any way shape or form.

I simply quit playing their games, and stop advocating their games online or in real life.

I do not really care if these guys are cheating their asses off in the comfort of their own
basement, but If I was one of the drivers I have mentioned above I would be LIVID.


Especially if all my hard work and practice to win daily /monthly events are invalidated on the front page of a developer with indifference or even lethargy.


So my question is; are you going to risk invalidating the competitive element of your game by ignoring, hiding or silencing this issue or are you going to address it?


The way you handle this WILL affect your success and subsequently you bottom line, this much I can guarantee you.

I hope I am not alone in this sentiment and respectfully ask for an official statement from codemasters on this.

PS: to mods; I sincerely hope this post will not be silenced, if we can't have this discussion now in early access you will not only help kill the community but in no small part the success of the game.
The public execution of Lapremier is understandable, (but still poor moderation) his sentiment mirror mine, even if we communicate them in a different manner and have different thresholds for what we suspect as possible cheating.

[Meszes]

Wasabi Wei původně napsal:

I am impressed, kind of amazed that it can be played that way, but it would take the fun out of it for me personally.

Agreed. The 'beauty' of hot lapping.

[ramPage]

Wasabi Wei, the overlay is not displayed to me in game. I record the overlay via OBS while i drive and record the replay seperately, then i mash them up in a video editor. Also, yeah you're right about driving the same stage over and over to get a perfect run. That's what I find fun - nailing a run while going as fast as possible.

[Chocoloco]

Meszes původně napsal:

Wasabi Wei původně napsal:

I am impressed, kind of amazed that it can be played that way, but it would take the fun out of it for me personally.

Agreed. The 'beauty' of hot lapping.

Absolutely my point of view.

Hotlapping in circuit racing is one thing, but it totally defeats the meaning of rally.

[Sierain]

Chocoloco původně napsal:

Absolutely my point of view.

Hotlapping in circuit racing is one thing, but it totally defeats the meaning of rally.

Well, the infinite restarts and lack of risks kind of ruin it. It would be cool if we also had full rally times leaderboard for no restarts-runs. This is why the 128-league is so sweet.

By the way, do players count modifying the game files as cheating? I'm not sure how much you can edit the car behavior, but it could certainly affect the times.

[dgeesio & ronMctube]

any modifying of files means your times are not counted on the official times.obviously some get round this.

replays would be good to be added to the game as you could see then if people use turbo acceleration or instant brakes.

[Sierain]

dgeesio & ronMctube původně napsal:

any modifying of files means your times are not counted on the official times.obviously some get round this.

replays would be good to be added to the game as you could see then if people use turbo acceleration or instant brakes.

I didn't know that the modified runs don't count, that's good news.

Replays would be nice indeed, but I doubt it would still work. DiRT3 had ghost cars, but for the insane times they wouldn't either load or were bugged to oblivion.

[Mr Hydro Blowback]

lich0 původně napsal:

Hydro Blowback původně napsal:

The majority of FPS games alone show me this with all the 1 shot kills after emptying whole clips into peoples faces... Never happened on consoles for me .. If it did it was very rare indeed.. Not every other player ... Also it is not my connection or anything as I have a 100MB fibre optic line .
MMO PVP games .. Anything pvp basically on PC is full of hackers/cheats ..

After reading this I'm quite sure you're just bad with a m+k. I play a lot of online FPS games and cheating isn't as rampant as you describe it to be. Sure every now and then there's an obvious aimboter, but mostly the player that gets accused of hacks is just better. I've been called a hacker many times myself, especially in CoD. Maybe the real problem is that you're not that good with a mouse.

I can use a mouse and keyboard for gaming absolutley fine and have done so for at least 10 - 15 years since the old SoF 2 Double Helix etc..Just never had the money to build a proper " Gaming rig " of my own like I have now until the beginning of this year.

I never had £1500 to spend just on parts for a " games machine " when I was younger and was earning £120 a week ,My rent was £70 of that before my bills and food etc .Consoles were a much better option for me and most people in England .
I paid £250 for the SNES on release in 92 to put it into perspective .

I am not sure how you work out that emptying for eg .. 12 bullets into someones face then they one shot me while im reloading in the leg and get a headshot and walk away with 100% HP and finish the games with a KD of 50-1 while everybody in the game no matter how good are on at least 5-1 KD ( including myself ) makes me bad with a mouse and keyboard ,Games like H1Z1 and most PC and FPS games are full of aimbotters .. It is very well known and they ARE a problem .Obviously not in the competetive arena where it is in a controlled environment where they cannot hack and cheat .. I am not saying there are NOT amazing players out there , Of course there are , But not 2 out of every 3 - 5 people are.. You and I both know it :)

If it was only 1% of people then that still means a minimum of 25,000 this month are hacking CS:GO alone as it has 2.5 Million players atm ... let alone all the other games these people play .. They wont just do it that game .. And its far more than 1% of people who cheat obviously ..
And site statistics say that hack/cheat providers are earning over 1 milion a year in sales .Then add all of those kind of sites up and you have a good % of people cheating .


It is NOT me and my usage of my Mouse and keyboard.. And it is not my fibre optic connection lagging .. Sorry buddy .. :)

I cannot comment on PS4 / Xbox one etc but I imagine that these consoles are much more prone to cheating than the older systems as they are cross platfrom and practically low end pcs in a plastic case nowadays which also connect / hook up to a pc to hack .

[ramPage]

Chocoloco původně napsal:

Hotlapping in circuit racing is one thing, but it totally defeats the meaning of rally.

Yeah, hotlapping does defeat the meaning of rally but those are two different things. You have career mode which is emulating a rally, and you have custom events which is intended for practicing.

Playing custom event gives the ability to push 100% to the limits without consequences and learn from every crash. It's the fastest way to get good at the game compared to sticking to career mode. CM tracks times to make the game more competitive, obviously people will try to best each other.

[Wasabi Wei]

Thanks for the answer regarding the overlay.
That uber-fast gameplay is good info for the devs also. 'Just how fast can this section be run?' You definitely surpassed what I thought could be done. It is fast enough that I was not sure it was legit until seeing that you were using the 2010 Fiesta that is supposed to have high grip tires. I have to go play with the Fiesta after watching your run. (Not that I am going to go THAT fast.)

[Chocoloco]

dgeesio & ronMctube původně napsal:

any modifying of files means your times are not counted on the official times.obviously some get round this.

...

This is only part true. Modifying the car tuning files (for altering grip levels for example, so directly changing car physics behaviour)) will lock you out of the leaderboard (and possibly any Online Events, too. But I'm not sure about that). Modifying the ffb files for example is currently not affected by that. So using the Impact mod or sth. similar will still let you upload your times.

ramPage původně napsal:

Chocoloco původně napsal:

Hotlapping in circuit racing is one thing, but it totally defeats the meaning of rally.

Yeah, hotlapping does defeat the meaning of rally but those are two different things. You have career mode which is emulating a rally, and you have custom events which is intended for practicing.

Playing custom event gives the ability to push 100% to the limits without consequences and learn from every crash. It's the fastest way to get good at the game compared to sticking to career mode. CM tracks times to make the game more competitive, obviously people will try to best each other.

I'm fine with people doing so. It only ultimately destroys the rally experience when you start to memorize the tracks too well. The dependency on the co-driver gets lost, and that's what makes rally unique. I had to pause the game for two months recently, so the tracks felt "fresh" again.

[Meszes]

Chocoloco původně napsal:

It only ultimately destroys the rally experience when you start to memorize the tracks too well.

I wish that Will Smith used his neuralyzer on me to remove my DR memories.

[Oyster]

I think most people (including me) doesn't care that much about cheaters in DiRT Rally because 1. most play Career only and don't notice them and 2. most people don't take games too seriously (which is a good thing). And being a PC player since 1994, I'm really jaded about cheating. I just do my thing and life moves on.

BUT it'll always be a dangerous issue, especially when we talk about the longevity of a game. I've seen through the years many examples of great games that were almost ruined by cheating. So, knowing that CM will implement VAC is a great thing, but not an ultimate solution. As Meszes said, memory injection cheat is fairly easy to do, and overlaps VAC most of the time. Battlefield 4, my most played game, is getting full of injection cheaters because of Origin's Game Time, and servers already have TWO anti-cheat systems (Punkbuster and FairFight), which proves the point that cheaters will ALWAYS be a problem. I don't want to see my favorite racing game being riddled by cheaters, so what I can do is ask CM to please take a close look at this matter so it won't happen what is starting to happen with BF4, taking as just one example.

[Mr Hydro Blowback]

Oyster původně napsal:

I think most people (including me) doesn't care that much about cheaters in DiRT Rally because 1. most play Career only and don't notice them and 2. most people don't take games too seriously (which is a good thing). And being a PC player since 1994, I'm really jaded about cheating. I just do my thing and life moves on.

BUT it'll always be a dangerous issue, especially when we talk about the longevity of a game. I've seen through the years many examples of great games that were almost ruined by cheating. So, knowing that CM will implement VAC is a great thing, but not an ultimate solution. As Meszes said, memory injection cheat is fairly easy to do, and overlaps VAC most of the time. Battlefield 4, my most played game, is getting full of injection cheaters because of Origin's Game Time, and servers already have TWO anti-cheat systems (Punkbuster and FairFight), which proves the point that cheaters will ALWAYS be a problem. I don't want to see my favorite racing game being riddled by cheaters, so what I can do is ask CM to please take a close look at this matter so it won't happen what is starting to happen with BF4, taking as just one example.

BF4 is infested at the moment .. Noticing it myself.. It was actually one of the games I was talking about earlier where i was told it was me and im bad with a mouse and keyboard even though the person has never ever in their life sat next to me and watched me play :D , I just didnt name the game .

You get this from at least 3-5 people in every single match i have played in the last few days doing this .. But of course.. Hes just a good player right who can snap aim and 1 shot every single person within a milisecond of them coming into his firing line .. Through walls too and It MUST be that I cant use a mouse and keyboard ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnguojmc7C4

And all of these people .. https://bf4db.com/players/cheaters

And exactly.. Any hacker / cheat with 1/2 a brain cell can get around VAC bans and HWID bans anyway .. I have NEVER hacked/cheated and I know how to get around it just from researching for literally 3 minutes ..

[Randomheppu]

Sierain původně napsal:

Chocoloco původně napsal:

Absolutely my point of view.

Hotlapping in circuit racing is one thing, but it totally defeats the meaning of rally.

Well, the infinite restarts and lack of risks kind of ruin it. It would be cool if we also had full rally times leaderboard for no restarts-runs. This is why the 128-league is so sweet.

By the way, do players count modifying the game files as cheating? I'm not sure how much you can edit the car behavior, but it could certainly affect the times.

Thanks for info I look forward of the 128-league. I do not practice anymore. I just drive all online events instant. I just miss the rally where you have to drive stages without practice. Somehow Codies fu pvp and did not bring us tools for rally what many of us love.

[Randomheppu]

But can't find any league with name 128...