CQC Are There Known Hacks in CQC That We Know Of?

kossack · Jan 16, 2016

znôrt said:
we've been told the tournament will be monitored.

The tournament - perhaps. But what about qualifying games? The point is that without reasonably hacker-proofing the game the tournament may be fair itself, but totally unfair to the community at large since hackers would win the qualifying rounds (worst case scenario - only hackers) After all - free trip to UK is a big win in itself.
And there is no way to tell for sure if the game is hacked:
At the moment hacks that give you advantage in CQC are widely available (both opensource/free and apparently commercial). And anybody with IQ above 80 can set them up in such way that the effects do not look too suspicious to the other players. Just another "very good player"...

So unless Frontier has some solid plan on how to deal with hacking in CQC ("deeper cheating checks" stated in the announcement mean very little since there are apparently no checks at all at the moment) - the tournament has a good chance to be a total disaster (Nobody will believe that the best players won and will open to all kinds of litigation from players who did not qualify (if Frontier would not openly disclose that hackers may win qualifiers unfairly))

SushiCW · Jan 16, 2016

Quite sure FD has said they'd be monitoring the games that come before flying anyone out to UK. They're not stupid, and I don't doubt that they'll be able to get a full spread of "worthy" competitors that have been fully vetted before being invited to the final round.

As a hopeful (I assume) you probably have more skin in this game than I do though, so I don't blame you for being concerned.

Xevenius · Feb 12, 2016

The most common cheat I have seen is going out of bounds and not blowing up after the timer. One game a pilot was continually trying to get people to follow him/her out of bounds. I followed twice the first time he caught me out the timer came up and I couldn't make it back in time and I blew up, they were still out of bounds unharmed. I then engaged again and they flew out of bounds but I made sure I turned back as soon as the warning came up. I have seen several pilots do this. I do suspect that some have weapon damage buffs and shield buffs too but that's harder to prove. Sometimes a game just doesn't feel right.

suburbanguerilla · Feb 12, 2016

Deffo hackers out there , like the mod says , report anything suspicious . only come across 2 i would call , in 1,500,000 xp points of play . no doubt there were others but hey , i am no expert , if its blatant i report , if there's doubt i keep quiet .

suburbanguerilla · Feb 14, 2016

Just to clarify , if i use the in game report a player for hacking , is it looked in to .

Do we have to report on the forum thread listed above too ?

Brett C · Feb 14, 2016

suburbanguerilla said:
Just to clarify , if i use the in game report a player for hacking , is it looked in to .

Do we have to report on the forum thread listed above too ?

There is no need to report them here on the forums. An ingame report is good enough, additionally you can file a report via our support system: https://support.frontier.co.uk

kossack · Feb 15, 2016

I do not believe Frontier does anything about in-game reports. (I never tried their "support system" - try and see if it works)

One of the players I reported in the past is streaming on twitch now. An he apparently has 4 Billions credits in cash and at least a couple billion worth of ships... Just this number proves he is a hacker. Not to mention that he was reported by at least one other player besides me for hacking PvP.
Frontier neither banned him (for my best knowledge) nor removed his clearly hacked wealth (apparently).

Brimstone · Feb 15, 2016

kossack said:
I do not believe Frontier does anything about in-game reports. (I never tried their "support system" - try and see if it works)

One of the players I reported in the past is streaming on twitch now. An he apparently has 4 Billions credits in cash and at least a couple billion worth of ships... Just this number proves he is a hacker. Not to mention that he was reported by at least one other player besides me for hacking PvP.
Frontier neither banned him (for my best knowledge) nor removed his clearly hacked wealth (apparently).

Have you ever watched any videos by Kornelius Briedis? That guy has like, 12 billion credits.

I'm not trying to argue whether or not your specific player is a hacker, but having a lot of in game wealth isn't evidence of hacking. I myself have over 2 billion credits.

kossack · Feb 22, 2016

Brimstone said:
Have you ever watched any videos by Kornelius Briedis? That guy has like, 12 billion credits.

I'm not trying to argue whether or not your specific player is a hacker, but having a lot of in game wealth isn't evidence of hacking. I myself have over 2 billion credits.

What is your point?
Is it that there is more than one hacker/exploiter or that somebody actually spent 1000 hours (4 hours every day for a year?) playing "space truck simulator"?

As to the original issue - I somewhat retract my statement. FD does a little. To my best knowledge the guy in question was shadow-banned for a week..

suburbanguerilla · Feb 22, 2016

kossack said:
What is your point?
Is it that there is more than one hacker/exploiter or that somebody actually spent 1000 hours (4 hours every day for a year?) playing "space truck simulator"?

As to the original issue - I somewhat retract my statement. FD does a little. To my best knowledge the guy in question was shadow-banned for a week..

Still not punishment enough , he should have hacker added to his gamer tag , till we forgive him .

Enjoy_the_rain · Feb 23, 2016

kossack said:
What is your point?
Is it that there is more than one hacker/exploiter or that somebody actually spent 1000 hours (4 hours every day for a year?) playing "space truck simulator"?

Do not judge anyone by their credit count. There were/are very profitable methods to gain countless amounts of credits, space-trucking is not one of them.
My personal experience: 99% of the times someone calls another player a cheater, they are simply outplayed. The remaining 1% can be p2p, lag issues and maybe, MAYBE one in a million is actually a cheater.
CQC is probably the purest form of pvp I had in a while. (try one of the mainstream shooters for comparison)

kossack · Feb 24, 2016

Enjoy_the_rain said:
Do not judge anyone by their credit count. There were/are very profitable methods to gain countless amounts of credits, space-trucking is not one of them.
My personal experience: 99% of the times someone calls another player a cheater, they are simply outplayed. The remaining 1% can be p2p, lag issues and maybe, MAYBE one in a million is actually a cheater.
CQC is probably the purest form of pvp I had in a while. (try one of the mainstream shooters for comparison)

Unusually high credit count is a good indicator. Either of hacking or exploiting. Combined with some observations (players supposedly "playing" through the night (9 hours) in solo and showing up next evening 200+M credits richer pretty much puts it into highly likely category...) There is simply too much grind to get billions of "spare" (after you got all possible ships, etc...) credits... FD used to be better about removing "exploited credits" (just read about first ED billionaires..). But since "the billion bounty exploit" I have not heard about confiscations...

BTW IMHO ED:CQC is not the best PvP space sim - SC:AC is much much better (at least in version 2.1.2). It does not have "power-ups" and "auto-targeting", has realistic physics and damage model and requires actual flying skills to get to the top.

Speaking about PvP space sims: SC has the same problem as ED (probably even more so). Player performance depends quite significantly on the hardware. You can get better just by getting faster CPU/GPU (not to diminish value of flying skills entirely, but just noting that it is also a "who spent most money on hardware" competition)

Lenny.V · Feb 24, 2016

kossack said:
Unusually high credit count is a good indicator. Either of hacking or exploiting. Combined with some observations (players supposedly "playing" through the night (9 hours) in solo and showing up next evening 200+M credits richer pretty much puts it into highly likely category...) There is simply too much grind to get billions of "spare" (after you got all possible ships, etc...) credits... FD used to be better about removing "exploited credits" (just read about first ED billionaires..). But since "the billion bounty exploit" I have not heard about confiscations...

BTW IMHO ED:CQC is not the best PvP space sim - SC:AC is much much better (at least in version 2.1.2). It does not have "power-ups" and "auto-targeting", has realistic physics and damage model and requires actual flying skills to get to the top.

Speaking about PvP space sims: SC has the same problem as ED (probably even more so). Player performance depends quite significantly on the hardware. You can get better just by getting faster CPU/GPU (not to diminish value of flying skills entirely, but just noting that it is also a "who spent most money on hardware" competition)

I'm able to earn 120M+ credits in 4 hours. And even before update 1.5/2.0 it was more because now are NPC more agressive, but it's possible. He plays since Alpha stage or so. So you don't judge him, because it's possible. . If you're bored of ED, so you can play own SC:AC and keep by "trailer" game stage -,-... We don't need advertising here. SC:AC has consumed over hundred milions dollars and had more more time to development. You can't to compare these two games ...CQC update should be still this year.

SushiCW · Feb 24, 2016

Star Citizen's arena mode is definitely a different flavor, so which you prefer is going to be a matter of taste. They both have strengths and weaknesses, and hopefully both will just get better (and shamelessly steal the best bits of each other).

Weps · Feb 24, 2016

Xevenius said:
Sometimes a game just doesn't feel right.

My feeling exactly. I don't pretend to play a lot of CQC, but let's say I play 4-5 matches, I get a certain "feeling" of the game, then I jump into a different game and encounter some things which don't make sense. Like ships standing still and being able to turret and keep me in their sights without even using boost (which has a visible effect), although I am using all my boosts to draw circles around them. Or ships which seem to get away from me despite me boosting and having 4 pips in engines. Or alpha strikes which kill me in 1 or 2 shots despite me having 4 pips in shields.

This doesn't happen very often, which is why, when it does, it looks suspicious.

I'm not going to bother to set up recording and watch my games to see if I can notice any foul play.

FDEV should consider implementing some spectator mode so that when we have any suspicions, we can simply take a break from the match and watch those other players to see if anything is out of the ordinary. Besides, I want to be able to answer the phone or change loadouts without the game forcing me back into the action.

kossack · Feb 24, 2016

AlikCZ said:
We don't need advertising here. SC:AC has consumed over hundred milions dollars and had more more time to development. You can't to compare these two games.

You think that is why SC:AC is better?

I beg to differ. It is mostly about the physics. Basically half a dozen numbers that need to be changed in CQC to make it much more realistic. Plus removal of powerups and "gimballed weapons". That is all it takes to make CQC way closer to SC:AC. (I am playing "Battle Royale" exclusively and comparing it to Deathmatch.)
While "visuals and stuff" are important, at least for me the main issue is in the very basic architectural decisions. I guess it can be summed as: ED:CQC is "fake" by design and SC:AC is "realistic" by design.

And for the god's sake how much money does it takes to implement something like this: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/arena-commander/leaderboard?mode=BR
Around $3K?

BTW, SC:AC was first released mid-2014 and at the time RSI had received $44M in funding... RSI allegedly wasted a lot of money so I bet only a little went to the AC development.

PS: I am not judging anybody. Just stating my observations. Statistically speaking players with 12B credits in cash are likely to be cheaters/hackers. It is possible that the credits were earned legitimately. Just unlikely..

kossack · Feb 24, 2016

Weps said:
My feeling exactly. I don't pretend to play a lot of CQC, but let's say I play 4-5 matches, I get a certain "feeling" of the game, then I jump into a different game and encounter some things which don't make sense. Like ships standing still and being able to turret and keep me in their sights without even using boost (which has a visible effect), although I am using all my boosts to draw circles around them. Or ships which seem to get away from me despite me boosting and having 4 pips in engines. Or alpha strikes which kill me in 1 or 2 shots despite me having 4 pips in shields.

This doesn't happen very often, which is why, when it does, it looks suspicious.

I'm not going to bother to set up recording and watch my games to see if I can notice any foul play.

FDEV should consider implementing some spectator mode so that when we have any suspicions, we can simply take a break from the match and watch those other players to see if anything is out of the ordinary. Besides, I want to be able to answer the phone or change loadouts without the game forcing me back into the action.

The most common hacking software for the game lets you adjust your weapons power. There are posts on the hacking forums suggesting 2.5X damage multiplier as "not obviously detected". Another "advice" from there is to modify power distribution so your capacitor is always full. So you can fly with 4 pips in shields while able to boost and fire your weapons continuously. Keep your eyes open and report suspicious players (at least sometimes FD takes action, I presume after multiple reports for the same offender?)

All FD had to do is to make both parties of the fight "count" the damage (in/out) and energy use. So if numbers do not match - a notification (suspected hacking) is sent to the server. (This is still P2P and does not put much computational burden on anything and FD server already gets a message about kill-shot). This would address practically all PvP hacking I've seen in ED.

Lenny.V · Feb 25, 2016

kossack said:
You think that is why SC:AC is better?

I beg to differ. It is mostly about the physics. Basically half a dozen numbers that need to be changed in CQC to make it much more realistic. Plus removal of powerups and "gimballed weapons". That is all it takes to make CQC way closer to SC:AC. (I am playing "Battle Royale" exclusively and comparing it to Deathmatch.)
While "visuals and stuff" are important, at least for me the main issue is in the very basic architectural decisions. I guess it can be summed as: ED:CQC is "fake" by design and SC:AC is "realistic" by design.

And for the god's sake how much money does it takes to implement something like this: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/community/arena-commander/leaderboard?mode=BR
Around $3K?

BTW, SC:AC was first released mid-2014 and at the time RSI had received $44M in funding... RSI allegedly wasted a lot of money so I bet only a little went to the AC development.

PS: I am not judging anybody. Just stating my observations. Statistically speaking players with 12B credits in cash are likely to be cheaters/hackers. It is possible that the credits were earned legitimately. Just unlikely..

Of course. But you should give to FD little or more time, they give us patches step by step and not all-in-one like SC:AC. Just they asked us what we want in the CQC right now, even we have a special thread for it. I expect the CQC update at autumn this year +/-.

The most common hacking software for the game lets you adjust your weapons power. There are posts on the hacking forums suggesting 2.5X damage multiplier as "not obviously detected". Another "advice" from there is to modify power distribution so your capacitor is always full. So you can fly with 4 pips in shields while able to boost and fire your weapons continuously. Keep your eyes open and report suspicious players (at least sometimes FD takes action, I presume after multiple reports for the same offender?)

All FD had to do is to make both parties of the fight "count" the damage (in/out) and energy use. So if numbers do not match - a notification (suspected hacking) is sent to the server. (This is still P2P and does not put much computational burden on anything and FD server already gets a message about kill-shot). This would address practically all PvP hacking I've seen in ED.

You speak about the cheaters. I have almost 14.000 kills and many hours i spent to this CQC and just i haven't a lucky to find them. Why? Maybe because i'm one of them, because many players marked my name as a cheater too? Or just only still they don't know what to do in PvP? I don't deny that there can be few "strange" things but i don't have a lucky to find them :-(.

SushiCW · Feb 25, 2016

I'm in the same boat. I've never seen anyone who I suspected of cheating. Lag and desync, yes. Intentional cheating, no. Could be I'm just dumb, though. Or maybe just lucky.

Ian Doncaster · Feb 25, 2016

It probably helps that if you want to cheat in ED, CQC is about the least useful place to do it
- I've so far earned about as many credits in CQC as blowing up two big ships in a RES would get me. Why anyone would risk an account ban for perhaps 100k credits, I don't know.
- You're in a fight being watched by multiple people so you're more likely to be noticed if you go for anything properly game-changing (invincibility, performance well outside operational parameters, etc.)
- Anything less good will still mean you're not killing quickly enough to beat the people who are actually good (or even just above average) at the game. Continuous damaging fire is nice but only if you can point your ship at the target, and four pips to shields won't help for long if you can't get out of the way of incoming fire either.