Cheating in Battlefield BC2/BF3

[M0RPH]

I'm still playing BC2 but I guess this applies to BF3 just as well. I've always believed that Punkbuster was an effective anti-cheating system and that people who complained about cheaters were mostly whining. Then the other day, I was in a game and a guy came in and was obviously cheating. He quickly racked up a score of like 60-1, and then was spamming the url of a cheat site where they sell cheats. This is the first time I remember seeing such glaringly obvious cheating.

It makes me wonder, first of all, why Punkbuster didn't detect this cheating and remove the guy from game. Second, if it's this easy to get away with such obvious cheating, how many people are using more subtle cheats that would not be so obvious? I've always loved the BF games but I'm a more casual type and not a great twitch FPS player, so I've always struggled to compete with the more hardcore players. But it really sucks to think that some people might be cheating, and that's why they are doing so well against me.

So I guess the question is, how prevalent is cheating in these games? Are there that many undetectable hacks/cheats that Punkbuster is nearly useless at this point?

 

[Childs]

Punkbuster caught one on Tugboat last night, although an ATer said he knew him and he wasnt a cheater. He name was something like Fauxtool.

 

[Arkaign]

I don't think it's that common really, I've been playing a good number of hours and haven't run into any obvious cheaters yet. I know they're out there, but the good thing about a ban system + key system is that the cheaters are quickly removed and new PB data added so that the same cheater couldn't do the same thing even with a new key, and the cheater is out $XX for each license.

Contrary to common conception, PB isn't really to find new cheats on its own, it is more like an AV database that has to be fed info. BF3 is still very young, as time goes on the protections will improve considerably.

 

[hdeck]

hackers will always be one step ahead of the anti-cheat systems. that's just the way it is. there is no way for them to completely prevent all cheats all the time.

 

[zerocool84]

hackers will always be one step ahead of the anti-cheat systems. that's just the way it is. there is no way for them to completely prevent all cheats all the time.

This

 

[NoSoup4You]

Punkbuster seems more effective in my experience than VAC at least. VAC, I swear on my life, appears to do absolutely nothing. Or hackers know how to bypass it...etc. Whatevers going on it's useless. Hackers were (and I assume still are) all over MW2, it was open season in that game. Same with TF2 right now. Fortunately TF2 is more casual and hackers don't ruin the fun as easily, plus dedicated servers...etc.

I've rarely, if ever, come across clearly obvious hackers in BF games, which all have used PB if I recall correctly. Definitely plenty of glitchers, people glitching into the geometry...etc. But no obvious hackers - guys running around at lightning speed and one-shotting everyone...etc. That kind of stuff happens in MW2 and TF2.

I'm trying to recall what system Crysis 1 used in MP. If it was punkbuster then it didn't work at all, there were hackers galore in that game. Maybe it's not Punk Buster at all preventing the cheaters, more likely it's the lack of hit-scan weapons. The balllistics (bullet drop/velocity) probably make hacks more difficult.

 

[StepUp]

Punkbuster caught one on Tugboat last night, although an ATer said he knew him and he wasnt a cheater. He name was something like Fauxtool.

That was me that said he wasn't cheating; he was, and I don't know him. Sorry to confuse!

 

[Maximilian]

Ive seen tons of people instabanned for cheating... tons! Ive only seen 1 successful cheater though, he came to a 24/7 operation metro server i was on and dominated, i killed him twice through getting lucky :biggrin: He still creamed my team though :\

 

[Arkaign]

hackers will always be one step ahead of the anti-cheat systems. that's just the way it is. there is no way for them to completely prevent all cheats all the time.

I think that's true, but it will probably end up being irrelevant in most cases. Cheaters will be that weird rare thing you spot once a week/month or whatever, testing a new cheat that quickly gets added to the PB banlist.

ie;

First person using cheat has to get caught, server logs are looked at, he gets scrutinized by the PB guys and the cheat is busted. First guy gets his game key banned for life. Second person tries to use same cheat, PB recognizes immediately, guy gets permabanned, game key lost. Third person tries entirely new cheat, gets away with it for a few hours, gets caught, gets banned. Etc. Eventually as more holes are plugged and the banlists add up, hackers and those trying to use cheats get tired of shelling out $40+/key to try them.

There will always be somebody, but I don't expect it to last all that long in any meaningful way.

 

[Stuka87]

I have played BC2 since it started. And I really very rarely find a cheater. PB does a pretty decent job at getting rid of real cheaters. Now it can get rid of people that are not cheating as well if they don't keep their PB client updated. I have had it happen to me before.

For BF3, I have not seen a single cheater. The game is extremely new still, and it takes a while to actually create a cheat. Unless there is just some massive hole that they find.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

VAC works on a delayed ban system that's why it seems like it doesn't work. A cheat circulates, and a bunch of cheaters start using it. VAC learns the new cheat and lets people keep using it. Then it eventually bans the lot of them when they think they are safe.

Like everyone else has said. Cheaters are always a step ahead of the anti cheat.

Another thing I've come to realize after getting much better at FPS games is that 95% of the time the person you think is cheating is just really good.

The only proven cheaters I have seen are ones that 1 shot killing jet pilots with a pistol as soon as they take off from their spawn, and have like 200-1 ratio's. lol.

 

[pcslookout]

We had 10 people banned last night on a server I was playing on. It was a normal 64 slot server too.

 

[coldmeat]

I've noticed there seems to be more of them lately. I've seen more in the past week than I've ever seen before.

 

[pcslookout]

I've noticed there seems to be more of them lately. I've seen more in the past week than I've ever seen before.

Same here. They start typing some crazy things too.

 

[TheAdvocate]

Had a guy go 84-1 defending in rush mode last night, with a pistol. He didnt even bother denying it. No idea what he was using though. He said he was going to "make rank" like that was justification.

At first I thought he was just good/well situated. Til I saw him in action. He was playing like it was God mode.

 

[greenhawk]

and the cheater is out $XX for each license.

while I find that a good system to stop cheats, it falls into a useless steaming pile when the game goes F2P.

The only TF2 cheaters (before going F2P) were speed hackers.

But both were on known servers with a good admin / reporting system, so while it was not instant, it is nice to get a email saying "xxxx" has been banned for a month. Espically if they were being a hats as well as cheating.

Though as with most things, it did not take too long before it was more of everyone on that one person so we were having fun bagging them out / killing the "god" player (as one of them wanted people to call them). Had to laugh, none of them or their speed cheats worked when they were shot into the air.

 

[greenhawk]

I've seen more in the past week than I've ever seen before.

must be a hoilday currently or possibly a cheap sale recently were they stocked up on accounts/games.

 

[Worthington]

If you see something like "Admin banned player xyz for cheating" that's just an admin throwing a hissy fit about getting schooled. Once you see something like PB_BAN PLAYER XYZ for MD5tool hack.. you gotch yourself a cheater.

When we can start taking PB screens again that will go a long way. We filtered out a ton of ass-clowns on our 1942 server by going through the screens and noticing the people that had the opposing team on their mini-map, etc.

 

[Grooveriding]

PB has some merits but is ineffective against everything. The sites that are selling people cheats for a fee market on their cheats being undetectable.

You need a combination of Punkbuster, PBBans/GCC-Stream/Metabans streaming, an rcon plugin that allows players to page an admin over hackers and admins who will take the time to look at a suspect player and if it is glaringly obvious that they are hacking - mete out the righteous banhammer.

 

[Arkaign]

while I find that a good system to stop cheats, it falls into a useless steaming pile when the game goes F2P.

The only TF2 cheaters (before going F2P) were speed hackers.

But both were on known servers with a good admin / reporting system, so while it was not instant, it is nice to get a email saying "xxxx" has been banned for a month. Espically if they were being a hats as well as cheating.

Though as with most things, it did not take too long before it was more of everyone on that one person so we were having fun bagging them out / killing the "god" player (as one of them wanted people to call them). Had to laugh, none of them or their speed cheats worked when they were shot into the air.

Fwiw, I think that BF3 won't go free to play for years, if ever. I like TF2 a lot, but it was based on a very old engine, and was mostly outdated pretty quickly as a game. If BF3 sales get so low that they think they can get more $ by going to a F2P model, perhaps its possible, but AFAIK they never did that with BF2, BF2142, BC2, etc. There is that Battlefieldforfree or whatever, but it's kind of a pale effort compared to the big releases.

I think permabanning relatively expensive keys will work fairly well at tiring out a majority of the casual hackers. Obviously folks with tons of cash could keep coming back with new hacks, but as the PB detection routines keep adding them to the bannable detectable cheatlists, it will get harder to do so.

There's no such thing as an undetectable cheat, but there can definitely be too lax of an anti-cheat mandate by management. As long as EA/Dice don't drop the ball on that, I think they'll be fine.

 

[M0RPH]

Well, a simple web search shows tons of sites advertising undetectable cheats. Just one example here: http://www.fpscheats.com/
Maybe they are all scams, I don't know. Maybe they get detected quickly, I don't know.

Clearly the super obvious cheats get exposed rather quickly, otherwise we would see more people running around in "god" mode. But what about the ones that just help improve your game but are not completely obvious? What about, say, a cheat that just lets you see the location of enemies around you. Something like that might just turn a poorly skilled player into a top player. It may not be an obvious thing, they just appear to be a really good player. This is the kind of cheating I'm talking about. Who knows how much of this is going on.

That site I listed above claims to have been online for 4 years and have over 300k people registered.

 

[DarkForceRising]

Well, they're not about to advertise and sell "easily detectable cheats."

 

[bunnyfubbles]

if you haven't noticed cheaters in BC2 you are either:

1. the luckiest guy alive to not see them (possible you just favorited some well-administrated servers)

and/or

2. not very good so as to be able to recognize cheating when its actually happening (most people confuse legit players for hackers though)


Several people in the top 100 score, or even the top 10 have stats that are dead giveaway for some blatant cheating, and whats worse one of the guys at one point looked like he was legit with platinum medals on all his weapons with reasonable accuracies and headshot to kill ratios, all except for one weapon, the SPECACT M16 of which he had a 90+ % headshot to kill ratio with tens of thousands of kills. Whats more is the dude was in (may still be, haven't checked in a long time) the top 10 for months and months with no repercussions despite the blatantly obvious hacks, continuing to play and boost his score, and he wasn't the only one.

DICE/EA really just don't care enough to do anything about it. Punk Buster is little more than a placebo to make gamers much like yourself more comfortable and confident that their experience is going to be relatively free of cheaters. And I suppose its ok, because I hate to imagine how much worse the hacker accusations on legit players if there wasn't any sort of service such as Punk Buster.

 

[CPA]

I don't get the psychology of cheating.

 

[Grooveriding]

I don't get the psychology of cheating.

I think the blatant 100 Kills - 2 Deaths, insta-headshot cheater is sort of akin to a rampant and purposeful delighting troll.

The ESP wallhacking type with a decent score is just lazy and not interested in trying to improve and wants to be seen as a good player.