Cheating in Elite Dangerous

[Screemonster]

So, a lot of Youtubers are making videos complaining to Frontier about cheaters on PC. They're rallying to ban all cheaters. What bothers me is that they also want to BAN combat loggers. Combat loggers are mostly noobs. They grind like hell to get their fancy ship and then they get interdicted by a ganker, and they combat log, because they took their ship out for a flight and got interdicted.

Here's the thing. The ENTIRE Youtube Elite Dangerous community are HYPOCRITES. Combat Logging is an exploit that can't REALLY be helped. Someones power goes out, they get a three day ban because an ED Youtuber threw a tantrum because they couldn't kill the noob they were ganking? Yeah, some go and brag about it in discords...WHO. CARES.! You know you won, they know you won. They whine about the "Immersion" Yet EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM have EXPLOITED glitches IN GAME. The Skimmer glitch, The Selling Colonia slaves glitch, etc, etc. Some Youtubers are 8 BILLION credits up and not even double elite, and haven't been playing for that long! Yet they complain. It seems it's only okay if THEY do it. Cheating is cheating, exploiting a glitch in the game is still exploiting the game. They're calling for permanent bans, then they should get exactly what they want. Frontier should ban THEM for the EXACT same reason they are calling for the banning of others.

Now, I've never exploited the game, I own every ship, and I'm double elite. I have 4 bill in assets and something like 300 mil to spend. Been playing for over a year. NEVER had to exploit the game, and Frontier can check anyone's account to see when they all of a sudden went from 700mil in credits to 8 billion in the matter of an hour. At BEST I say Frontier should take their credits. At median, reset their account to right before they exploited the game, and at worst ban them the way they want to ban combat loggers. I mean think about it. those glitches they exploited are game breaking. While they can go into a gank confident in their nice expensive ship they bought with an exploit, the kid who DIDN'T exploit the game should lose his ship? And if the noob combat logs they should get banned, while the guy who DID use an exploit gets to stay in Open? Those "Big names" Youtubers don't get the RIGHT to complain about noobs combat logging. And the OP is one of 'em!

Using Hack tools should be a permanent ban to solo mode. Solo mode should have no effect on Open. Power play should not exist on solo mode. That's obvious. Maybe Frontier can't do that yet but it should be done.

But banning people for combat logging? Gimme a break! Then Frontier needs to ban people also for exploiting the game to grab billions in credits in half an hour. Those people are happy with themselves and happy to do it, but when it happens to THEM, they complain. My point is, banning people for combat logging is stupid, ban for REAL cheating. Not cuz some noob didn't want his spankin new vette ganked, or because the kid who's got it so bad the power company shuts his power off for a day cuz his dad lost his job and he can't escape his crappy life....

And I was that boy.

LOL!

sir this is a wendy's

for serious though this thread isn't about combat logging or any of those other in-game glitches

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Okay, and exploiting the game to gain billions in an hour? That's not cheating though...I see no one EVER addresses that little tid bit. Though if I were one who exploited the game like that, I wouldn't want to be called on it or banned for it either, I'd rather push the focus to...combat loggers...An exploit is an exploit. Full stop. Both should be punishable. Would you agree? Or is justification for using the exploit coming, say, pretty much the same justification the cheaters use?

FDev have a history of fixing money exploits faster than anything else I can think of.

 

[Schmack]

Since there is no way to really play competitively in this game, only consensual PvP or a kind of PvE race if you care for BGS or PP, I'd say you can only cheat yourself mostly.

The only harmful thing that could exist are bots automating PvE tasks.

If you cheat in a consesual PvP group I think you'll be thrown out pretty soon.

Only if you're an idiot and do it overtly. No one would ever know if you added a pip to your shields that shouldn't be there (alt account multi-crew anyone?) or if you were just a bit faster than you should be on those turns, or if you show up at the station before the rest of your group and you're rarely seen in supercruise.

Even with video evidence posted here and elsewhere the community response is often "git gud" and complete disbelief that anyone is cheating, as if it's impossible in this game. The odds are greater that the one complaining about it just lost to a better player, with a better ship, who knows how to better manage priorities and modules during battle. Since you only see one side of the story, people grant benefit of doubt to the other side even with a blatant hack like infinite energy or shields, no heat, etc... It could be lag, it could be a bug, it's probably just engineering. So I highly doubt a savvy PvP team player who decided to use a cheat would go all superman in a dogfight against known opponents, with everyone streaming and posting to YT. Instead, they'd be slightly better than their opponent. They'd limp away after a narrow win. They'd lose sometimes just to avoid suspicion, but not important ones.

It's the single solo player guys who go to open after they've toyed with the hacks and decide "I don't care if I get banned, I want to ruffle some feathers, tired of the game anyhow" that show up on videos. The BGS manipulators who do so intentionally are likely doing it in Solo, and could be more botting than outright cheating using a trainer.

 

[ryan_m]

Okay, and exploiting the game to gain billions in an hour? That's not cheating though...I see no one EVER addresses that little tid bit. Though if I were one who exploited the game like that, I wouldn't want to be called on it or banned for it either, I'd rather push the focus to...combat loggers...An exploit is an exploit. Full stop. Both should be punishable. Would you agree? Or is justification for using the exploit coming, say, pretty much the same justification the cheaters use?

It's addressed almost constantly on these very forums. The "exploits" you're talking about almost always consist of just taking missions that the game presents to you. There are very few credit fountains that would be considered ACTUAL exploits. FDev does not consider it to be exploiting, which is why there is never a punishment for it. They're fixed usually within 24 hours of being publicized, so I'm not really sure what your point here is other than to seemingly minimize the issue of ACTUAL HACKS being used in the game.

Taking passenger missions that pay 30 million credits per run is not the same as hacking your shield values to be invincible and if you can't see that, I don't know what to tell you dude.

 

[Firebat01]

Let me put it this way. If ANY of those "Big names" were serious, and have used exploits to gain those credits? They'd delete their accounts and start over.

sir this is a wendy's

for serious though this thread isn't about combat logging or any of those other in-game glitches

It was made into it when they posted the livestream and they were all calling for the banning of people who exploit the game. Combat logging is an in game exploit to escape having to spend credits on a rebuy, Skimmer mission glitch was an exploit to gain billions in a few. What's the difference. Cheating is cheating. Whether they fixed it or not. those recorded doing it by Frontier should have their accounts reset. Because they don't have to combat log, they got billions cheating, they can afford the rebuy.

 

[ryan_m]

Let me put it this way. If ANY of those "Big names" were serious, and have used exploits to gain those credits? They'd delete their accounts and start over.

It was made into it when they posted the livestream and they were all calling for the banning of people who exploit the game. Combat logging is an in game exploit to escape having to spend credits on a rebuy, Skimmer mission glitch was an exploit to gain billions in a few. What's the difference. Cheating is cheating. Whether they fixed it or not. those recorded doing it by Frontier should have their accounts reset. Because they don't have to combat log, they got billions cheating, they can afford the rebuy.

The difference is that FDev considers one to be cheating and the other to not be cheating.

 

[Marcus Tullius]

Habitual loggers not getting punished.

Neither cheaters. I haven't seen a single report from FD for someone banned for cheating. No single one. They simply don’t want to ban. We will investigate is all we have gotten all these years. Why they should ban someone, who potentially could buy a paintjob from frontier store? Squeezing out every single penny from ED with minimal effort is the motto written with capital letters in the lobby of FD building

 

[Firebat01]

sir this is a wendy's

for serious though this thread isn't about combat logging or any of those other in-game glitches

Though, I should say they should have their accounts reset to right before they exploited the in game glitch. They don't lose anything, but neither do they gain from the exploit. And if Fdev had to fix it, it clearly was not meant to be that way, and no one should be able to profit from it. Look I don't cheat, and Im not minimizing cheating, I've posted cheaters using hack tools should get a permanent ban to solo. But then what to do about every OTHER way of exploiting the game? No one would agree that at the very least a person who exploited a glitch to gain billions should have their account reset to right before they did it? Then that's hypocritical, end of story.

 

[Firebat01]

Otherwise, no one should have a problem with just credit cheats. Modify your ship? Ban! Get some extra money...meh...

 

[Maro-Val]

Since i can predict exactly what will frontier do with cheating, i would like to say this.

Can someone that has the coding skills pls isolate the part that lets you use different hud colors, so we can use it and call this matter a day?
We know that frontier allows changing the game files on this.
If anyone knows how to do it, or has info about it pls pm.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Credits mean very little in this game.

 

[Screemonster]

The difference is that FDev considers one to be cheating and the other to not be cheating.

Bingo. If I take a stack of passenger missions to Hutton Orbital and after my first jump a big ol' "ALTERNATIVE DESTINATION" message pops up offering me a bonus on top of the Hutton Orbital payment to not go to Hutton Orbital and instead go to Barnard's Star or something, then I will absolutely take that offer and not go to Hutton Orbital.
That's not an exploit, the game practically dumped it in my lap.

If I say "wow that's neat, I wonder if I can get it to happen again" and take a ship loaded with passengers for Hutton, jump in circles until a side-mission pops up, and accept if it's an alternative destination or else abandon if it isn't, then that's... slightly cheeky, obviously not intended behaviour to get consistently paid trip-to-Hutton money for taking a trip to not-Hutton, but the thing is, I didn't go out of my way to find this glitch, it just happened and I took advantage.

If, on the other hand, I wanted to do hutton missions super-fast and downloaded this tool to instantly drop on the outpost without doing the cruise out there, that does require me to go out of my way. There's a really big difference between stumbling upon some quirk of the game's mission generator and taking advantage of it, and going out to subvert or bypass the game's mechanics entirely.

It's the difference between min-maxing your character in a D&D game, and bringing a bunch of loaded dice.

 

[Firebat01]

The difference is that FDev considers one to be cheating and the other to not be cheating.

Bingo. If I take a stack of passenger missions to Hutton Orbital and after my first jump a big ol' "ALTERNATIVE DESTINATION" message pops up offering me a bonus on top of the Hutton Orbital payment to not go to Hutton Orbital and instead go to Barnard's Star or something, then I will absolutely take that offer and not go to Hutton Orbital.
That's not an exploit, the game practically dumped it in my lap.

If I say "wow that's neat, I wonder if I can get it to happen again" and take a ship loaded with passengers for Hutton, jump in circles until a side-mission pops up, and accept if it's an alternative destination or else abandon if it isn't, then that's... slightly cheeky, obviously not intended behaviour to get consistently paid trip-to-Hutton money for taking a trip to not-Hutton, but the thing is, I didn't go out of my way to find this glitch, it just happened and I took advantage.

If, on the other hand, I wanted to do hutton missions super-fast and downloaded this tool to instantly drop on the outpost without doing the cruise out there, that does require me to go out of my way. There's a really big difference between stumbling upon some quirk of the game's mission generator and taking advantage of it, and going out to subvert or bypass the game's mechanics entirely.

It's the difference between min-maxing your character in a D&D game, and bringing a bunch of loaded dice.

Hmmm, that's a better answer.

 

[Firebat01]

Bingo. If I take a stack of passenger missions to Hutton Orbital and after my first jump a big ol' "ALTERNATIVE DESTINATION" message pops up offering me a bonus on top of the Hutton Orbital payment to not go to Hutton Orbital and instead go to Barnard's Star or something, then I will absolutely take that offer and not go to Hutton Orbital.
That's not an exploit, the game practically dumped it in my lap.

If I say "wow that's neat, I wonder if I can get it to happen again" and take a ship loaded with passengers for Hutton, jump in circles until a side-mission pops up, and accept if it's an alternative destination or else abandon if it isn't, then that's... slightly cheeky, obviously not intended behaviour to get consistently paid trip-to-Hutton money for taking a trip to not-Hutton, but the thing is, I didn't go out of my way to find this glitch, it just happened and I took advantage.

If, on the other hand, I wanted to do hutton missions super-fast and downloaded this tool to instantly drop on the outpost without doing the cruise out there, that does require me to go out of my way. There's a really big difference between stumbling upon some quirk of the game's mission generator and taking advantage of it, and going out to subvert or bypass the game's mechanics entirely.

It's the difference between min-maxing your character in a D&D game, and bringing a bunch of loaded dice.

I suppose some wouldn't even know if it WERE a glitch if they just happened across it, and publicized it. You'd only know when or if Fdev fixed it. That's better reasoning. I accept your logic. And My apologies to Exegeous for being a on his YT channel. LOL! I'll go subscribe, If he sees this. Sorry buds! Feel free to kick me around in the comment section. LMAO!

 

[Mindenite]

You're constructing a strawman here.

Combat logging is cheating, full stop. Cheating should be punished. FDev have been incredibly clear on this.

FDev can’t redefine cheating. Using built in functionality of my operating system (alt-F4 or ending a task) is never cheating. I should always be able to control what runs on my computer. It’s FDev’s fault that they don’t do what practically every other online game in existence does. If you ungracefully exit an MMORPG, your character stays online and suffers whatever consequences a defenseless character might suffer. If I “combat log” (abandon/ragequit) Rocket League, the match counts as a loss and I get temp banned for 15 minutes. Every other competitive online game I’ve played has consequences for exiting using non-approved methods.

That’s on FDev. It wouldn’t be impossible to setup a fine system or even to clone your ship and have an incompetent NPC control it for a set time period and whatever happens to it happens to you when you log back in.

Just to be clear, I don’t combat log. I think it’s a terrible practice. Accept the consequences for your weak ship setup or bad in game decisions. I don’t do it and don’t agree with it but it’s not cheating.

 

[Moriarte]

Just to be clear, I don’t combat log. I think it’s a terrible practice. Accept the consequences for your weak ship setup or bad in game decisions. I don’t do it and don’t agree with it but it’s not cheating.

Agreed, just cheesy. I laugh at it every time I see it. The strings of human nature - fella has 5 billions, but shaking at a thought of losing 20 mil.. That’s why we have a lot of nasty stuff going on in the world. Knowing human nature, Fdev should have made character stay in instance after logging. But they neglected to code in this mechanic for Years now. Which means that while they admit that this behaviour is not exemplary, they don’t really consider it’s use a Cheat, or else they would eradicate it long ago, much like they eradicated most other exploits.

Trying to create a culture of disdain for logging is laughable. Much like fighting windmills is. Are you fellas trying to save FD’s money by talking people to death about what they should or shouldn’t do in their game? Classic misdirection. Players are not at fault. FD is. 95% of people won’t even be able to read what these forums have to say so they’ll (some of them) will keep c,logging to their heart’s content.

Change the rules, not the players.

 

[War Eagle]

35 pages of winching about cheating, there are so many aspects to the game that whatever way they are cheating you can still play the game without even running into them. I have not seen a single real player in open from the start, at least not that I am aware of. Who cares- are you competing with them or are you playing a game of exploration/missions/ranks/upgrades from Thargoids or am I missing something?
Perhaps you're all concerned due to CQC- haven't been in there yet and seeings I don't own one of the top "upgraded" ships you won't see me in there for quite a while.
Seriously there is no winner of the game is there it just keeps going, more and more discoveries made every day. I know I haven't been playing very long and have no idea why it matters to you all if someone is cheating or not- that is on them and how they can feel good about themselves is beyond me. Just play the game and do your best.
There, now don't you feel better?

 

[Robbie]

I doubt Fdev will reply to this thread, they've already addressed this cheating/hacking subject circa 2015 - and so perhaps feel they dont need to reiterate themselves over this matter considering how short the community memory is from past experience.

Michael Brookes had spoken about cheating/hacking at this link here (it's copy/pasted from Steam's Elite forum. I couldn't find the source link from Frontier's site, since the recent major overhaul of the forums. No doubt that old post is buried somewhere in this new forum layout). Frontier's developer BrettC has also touched upon what gets monitored in these kinds of threads, so no doubt FDev are following this thread very closely.

I was curious to know just how many players of Elite were using these various hacking tools, and I was surprised by the number of viewers there had been for some of the older hacker/trainer sites, having seen 330K+ players at one site, I would infer that most of those folks reading those threads were most likely downloading those trainers.

 

[Jukelo]

FDev can’t redefine cheating.

Of course Frontier can redefine cheating: they have a monopoly on who gets access to their game, they make the rules. You cheat (and they decide on what is cheating) you break the TOS, they can revoke your access to the game.

Using built in functionality of my operating system (alt-F4 or ending a task) is never cheating. I should always be able to control what runs on my computer. It’s FDev’s fault that they don’t do what practically every other online game in existence does. If you ungracefully exit an MMORPG, your character stays online and suffers whatever consequences a defenseless character might suffer. If I “combat log” (abandon/ragequit) Rocket League, the match counts as a loss and I get temp banned for 15 minutes. Every other competitive online game I’ve played has consequences for exiting using non-approved methods.

Nobody is stopping you from using your computer in any way that is legal in your country as nobody is going to send you to jail for task-killing the game. But we're not talking about sending you to jail here of course, only about Frontier using their power over your game account, to punish you for interacting with their software and their service in a way that breaks their rules.

 

[Duc_Mallard]

It's not so much the existence of hacks being surprising but fdevs very weak punishment for it. Anyone caught using hacks to increase numbers (like shield percentage , heat generation etc) on ship modules should be either instabanned or one warning then instabanned. As in they have to purchase the game again to play.