online anti cheats are the worst thing
online anti cheats are the worst thing
Recently, i had to move from nixos to windows against my will simpy because of anti cheats. While i dont game that much, the few games i enjoy playing are all online with some kind of anti cheat. I used to dual boot but i was tired of having to wait for my slow hdd to load windows (i only have one ssd). I literally used linux for everything else but because of anti cheats i am forced to move to windows. I managed to make it a little better by using wsl2 and removing bloatware but it will never be the same as linux
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Honestly something I'm surprised no game is doing is embrace the hackers.
For example, create a HvH gamemode where users can use lua scripts to aid them. I bet this would turn a lot of people away from the actual cheating scene.
Cheaters are sociopaths. Most of them pretend to be good and post clips or try to get a following until they inevitably get banned.
Every script kiddie says this same thing. There are already HvH servers. Barely anyone plays them. If a company had official HvH it would encourage cheating. Fuck cheaters..
definitely not all cheaters are sociopaths, been in the cheating community since 2014-ish (starting to slowly back off and leave recently just due to the the obvious toxicity in it) and have made plenty of genuinely great friends there but ofc it is mostly horrible people, especially the people who closet and hide it from friends. do agree that this plan would never work though, but HvH was never really dead, it was at its peak in 2020 where there were probably 200+ people playing although it's really only active in EU now.
Cheating via a lua script integrated into a game is waaaay different to cheating via external software, though mainly from the cheat developers side, less so from the users side, as you need to "fight" the anti-cheat.
Also, I think that considering all cheaters selfish (what is what I think you meant by calling cheaters sociopaths, see below) and bad at the game, really limits ones perspective, as not everyone hacks for the same reason. These reasons include:
- Believing one needs cheats to stay competitive (either because one believes others are cheating or because, as you mentioned, due to lack of abilities)
- For profit (to produce accounts with high value / tradable items/currency or to develop and sell cheats)
- Due to frustration with progress towards a goal (often overlaps with #1, especially for players which are good at the game)
- Enjoyment in breaking the games limits (note that this doesn't decrease much in HvH)
- The feeling of being more powerful than other players (often overlaps with #1, but also overlaps with smurfing)
- For a sense of community (among other hackers, overlap with #2 or among mainstream players, overlap with #1 & #3)
Full disclosure, for me #4 and #5 are the most appealing, with the first two not being that appealing. Note that #1 and #3, are as applicable, if not more sometimes, to high skill players as to low skill players. Two examples I can give of the top of my head are the 2021 trackmania cheating scandal and the Hypixel skyblock dungeon speedruning scene. In both cases there were competitive scenes that (at least from an outsiders point of view) seem legitimate, but a lot of top players all use cheats. Also note that players motivated by #2 are less affected with a pay wall, which could even make them cheat more.
Why one cheats can also impact how one cheats. A player motivated by #1 and #3 is likely to hide their cheats (aka silent cheating I think?) while a player motivated by #2 or #5 may cheat in a way which is obvious to other players and they might not mind getting banned.
Also also, players who are more skilled at the game, can not only take a fuller advantage of cheats but also be more difficult to detect, as they know what they can get away with.
As for your usage of the word sociopath, which I don't think is accurate, though I don't blame you for it, mind you: antisocial personality disorder (the formal diagnosis for someone referred to as a sociopath), is an actual mental condition and using it because someone does not show empathy and/or seeks attention (which is not even a symptom of ASPD, I think you may be confusing it with narcissistic personality disorder?), not only flattens your understanding of the disorder but also raises a bad assumption: while a person with ASPD may find it harder to understand why certain actions are considered bad by others, that's not an excuse for them to be abusive etc. The same applies to the common usage of narcissist/narcissistic.
TL;DR: IMHO what you said is an oversimplification which may make reducing the number of cheaters in competitive spaces more difficult.
using LUA is an interesting idea to say the least but again likely wouldn't prevent or demotivate current cheaters from doing their thing.
It wouldn't get rid of the issue, I agree. But it would divert some of the cheating community away from fighting against the developers to playing by the developers rules.
Treating all cheaters as a monolith is really limiting which is kinda my point haha
this might (barely) work for Source games like CS:GO, TF2, etc but on games like Overwatch, Valorant, Fortnite, etc there are a lot less exploits that would keep HvH actually interestering like fake angles, doubletap, etc like there are in the Source Engine (mind you this is because the engine is literally from 2003 and based on Goldsrc which is based on the damn Quake engine.)
also this did exist for a while in cs:go TECHNICALLY, wingman in CSGO had overwatch disabled (when they were collecting data for vac.net) for almost a year and was literally just used to hvh but it never stopped people from cheating in competitive.
Good point! I honestly only have experience with Minecraft where the vanilla anti cheat is so bad it is often disabled and there are quite a few interesting ways to cheat (Cristal PvP, baritone, etc), so my perspective is limited by that.
However, I feel like if a game has mechanics with enough depth and achieving TAS like gameplay gave a significant advantage, I think, at least for those wanting to develop cheats, it could be fun.
Also, I'm not saying this would prevent cheating in competitive play, but it could give developers more insight into how cheats can be used (like with your example). Cheaters are not a monolith, but I don't want to repeat my other comment :P