Cheating in Elite Dangerous

[jasonbarron]

Blue, orange... All same to me.
Sorry once again, but I'm irked by frequent attacks at community managers who should obiously completely disappear from the forums until they get a blessing from the top floor to say: "We're on it and we can't say more".

Go ahead and embrace your irked-ness my friend, but that's not going to change the fact that it's a community managers literal job description to interact with their community. And when the issue at hand is an epidemic of cheating within the framework of a competitive multiplayer game that basically devalues the entire experience, I'm not buying that it's somehow abusive to call out the dev's for either their lack of action or response.

 

[babelfisch]

Go ahead and embrace your irked-ness my friend, but that's not going to change the fact that it's a community managers literal job description to interact with their community. And when the issue at hand is an epidemic of cheating within the framework of a competitive multiplayer game that basically devalues the entire experience, I'm not buying that it's somehow abusive to call out the dev's for either their lack of action or response.

As I've pointed out several times, they took action in the past. What makes you think it will be different this time?

 

[Goose4291]

are the volunteer moderators trying to derail this thread again?

Back to the naming and shaming cheating please

Of course they are, it's something brought to light by the proactive elements of the PvP community, so certain entrenched individuals are more than happy to discount, dismiss or ignore it.

Of course, if this had been an (throws dart at wall for a name) Obsidian ant expose of the cheat engine, these same people would be taking it seriously.

The tribalism makes me a little sick tbh.

 

[Krash]

False equivalence. A cheat is an unfair advantage that is counter to the rules, not simply any advantage at all.

I've put something like 6500 hours into this game. Playing like someone who has put ~6500 hours into this game is going to be functionally superior to most cheats in the hands of an abject novice, but that doesn't make experience a cheat.

Reading through the forum of the users of this hack, its mostly noobs that don't know how to play the game. eg "what does [Freeze Ammo] do??" wow

 

[Goose4291]

Go ahead and embrace your irked-ness my friend, but that's not going to change the fact that it's a community managers literal job description to interact with their community. And when the issue at hand is an epidemic of cheating within the framework of a competitive multiplayer game that basically devalues the entire experience, I'm not buying that it's somehow abusive to call out the dev's for either their lack of action or response.

Now you've done it.

Sensible people in this thread fix bayonets and form square...

I can hear the 78th Braben's Own White Knight Regiment of Horse charging over that Hill to our front..

 

[Midian Cabal]

Go ahead and embrace your irked-ness my friend, but that's not going to change the fact that it's a community managers literal job description to interact with their community. And when the issue at hand is an epidemic of cheating within the framework of a competitive multiplayer game that basically devalues the entire experience, I'm not buying that it's somehow abusive to call out the dev's for either their lack of action or response.

I suggest you to escalate your problem and demand to talk directly with the manager's manager. Please don't forget to threaten them that you'll stop buying cosmetics until your issue is resolved. That usually helps.

 

[bootsam]

Interesting! Can you post the link?

I found it in 10-20 seconds.

I hope it gets curtailed by FDEV as its pretty much a red line for me.

 

[Vedmo]

Few things I'm not getting from this thread, maybe if I did some searching for the cheat site it would be more apparent, but I'm not going to do that.
The outrage over the HUD color stuff, all I've seen is a screen shot of some sliders on a rather rudimentary looking site. Has anyone actually seen video of this altered HUD in multiple scenarios showing it is in fact as great as we are supposed to believe?

Punishments bring up the same questions. Why in the world are people believing the word of someone promoting their cheats with no actual evidence provided that those are in fact the punishments? I realize it can't be posted here, but are there actual communications from Frontier to cheaters stating the number of warnings and punishment?

So far as Frontier's devotion to tackling this situation, I really don't have the technical understanding to form any strong opinions on that. I have seen games where people thought cheating was being ignored and were irate about it, only to find a wide net had been cast to build solid evidence of all cheats which then got purged en masse.

I really doubt Frontier isn't taking this seriously, but do question their apparent Ostrich strategy so far as letting players know what's going on to combat cheating. They need to roll some heads for all to see.

 

[Vedmo]

Skimmed the forum. No word from FD? The story is starting to make press.

To be fair, the 'press' was a TLDR of this thread.

Edit: assuming I saw the same thing.

 

[cmdr J T Clarke]

Recently, hacking has become more prevalent in Elite Dangerous, with multiple players running into invincible ships each week. This had been a problem in the past but kind of vanished for a bit but has seen a resurgence lately that can't be ignored anymore.

What do the hacks do?
There are multiple ones out there that are public that are easily detectable by FDev and regularly result in bans for the users. These are not the ones we are concerned with.

In late August 2018, one of my guys gained access to a private Discord for an Elite Dangerous trainer that was above and beyond every public one available to date. The level of customization present in this one allowed users to tweak nearly any aspect of their ship beyond what is possible in game. Max power plant output with perfect heat management, significantly more powerful drives, more weapon damage, stronger shields, etc. Any module could be tweaked within this cheat.

As a final insult to injury, this hack is also apparently able to change HUD color better than any other utility, allowing separate color settings for the UI and radar icons. FDev have been asked about adding options for colorblind players and mentioned that it "wasn't possible."

What does this mean for Elite?
Since I am a PvP player, I'll go over the PvP impacts first and cover PvE after.

The majority of encountered hackers use them in dumb ways that are brutally obvious. When you line up a volley of 5 PAs on an FDL, no matter how good the build is, you're going to be doing a ton of damage. When those shots land and the shields sit at 100% for the next 3 minutes after you're dumping volley after volley into them, that's pretty easy to catch, right? Those guys get reported and their names are spread far and wide pretty quickly.

The more insidious kind of hacker is one that knows about the game and can use this to their advantage. With a bit of knowledge about PvP builds, you could set up the hack so that it was basically undetectable by the opponents you were fighting. 5% more agility. 10% more damage. 20% more power output to let you run more power-hungry builds. Better heat management. Higher weapon breach chance/damage to snipe modules. Modify them just enough to give you a significant edge, while your opponent will just think you have a good build and can pip manage really well.

Situations like the ones above cast a shadow of doubt over every interaction with another unknown player.

In PvE, the effect is arguably more extreme because of the BGS implications. Infinite shields/ammo to farm CZs or tank wings of cops/ATR while grinding. Dropping off a T9 full of passengers at a station 100k ls from the star by literally just jumping into the system and dropping to normal space. Don't even have to make the journey. This would also allow AFK credit/mat farming.

What have you tried to do about it?
In early December, we took an export of the Discord along with screenshots and submitted it to FDev through their ticketing process. We got the standard canned reply, which is honestly what we expected. We understand that they cannot explain what they're going to do about it, so we just kinda moved on for a bit. It has been over 6 months since we submitted it to them and there has been no interruption in service or any additional facets of the hack becoming detectable. We have reached out directly to both Will and Paige, providing the same information. The same canned response was sent ("we'll pass it on").

The Discord is still active with scores of people posting every single day about how to use it and requesting new features be added.

What do you want done?
We want FDev to start being more heavy-handed and proactive with punishing hacks. The mere existence undermines the entire game. If you were to be caught hacking in Elite, here's what punishment currently awaits you:

• First offense: 3-day ban to solo
• Second offense: 1-month ban to solo
• Third offense: Permaban to solo

What other online game allows you to cheat and get caught 3 ****ing times before you eat a perma, especially an online MMO? If Elite were a single player game, this is a very different conversation, but it isn't and this has implications for every single play style.

EDIT: Exigeous did a great video on this as well.

Hello Ryan_M you seem to be pretty clued up on these hacks and the nature of PvP combat. I was attacked today however i'm unsure if the said party is a hacker or not. Do you have any advice for this situation?

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

Cheaters aren't working around unfairness, they are perpetrating it.

There are a handful of minor biases worked into the game, but by and large, everyone is provided with the same opportunities to learn and master various game related skills as anyone else.

Yes, it takes a copy of Horizons and yes, it takes time. There are no skill based activities that do not take time and no activities that require tools that don't have some form of initial expense.

I'm not a fan of Engineering either, but to consider an deliberate and well established part of a game equivalent to a cheat if utilized, is laughable.

Not really if you look at it from fairness perspective. If you can crush unwitting players unmitigated the powerjuice is just like cheats. Only is officially sactioned. But that doesn't make it good gameplay mechanics.

 

[Goose4291]

Not really if you look at it from fairness perspective. If you can crush unwitting players unmitigated the powerjuice is just like cheats. Only is officially sactioned. But that doesn't make it good gameplay mechanics.

I suspect even if engineers wasn't a thing, you'd still argue that cheating was okay back when FDLs and FAS' were dunking on poorly built Annie's

 

[Midian Cabal]

Not really if you look at it from fairness perspective. If you can crush unwitting players unmitigated the powerjuice is just like cheats. Only is officially sactioned. But that doesn't make it good gameplay mechanics.

I have yet to meet a person in CS:GO or R6S that will say: "Oh this guy is clearly a newbie, I won't kill him".

 

[cmdr J T Clarke]

I don't mind the balance of power if you're going to put the effort into engineering your ship then it's fair combat. what I don't think is fair is sitting down for 10mins writing some code and then being able to overpower everyone you come across. It's not just cheating yourself but cheating everyone else.

 

[Chaparral]

I suspect even if engineers wasn't a thing, you'd still argue that cheating was okay back when FDLs and FAS' were dunking on poorly built Annie's

How would you know? Apparently cheats have been a thing since the beginning. Should I git gud or git cheatz?

 

[Ziljan]

I'm hoping the delayed response means that they are actively trying to fix the problem (break/detect the hacks) before issuing a reply. Because honestly, would anyone trust that they would actually enforce punishments based on reports of other players? That's unreliable on multiple levels.

 

[Navigare Necesse Est]

I suspect even if engineers wasn't a thing, you'd still argue that cheating was okay back when FDLs and FAS' were dunking on poorly built Annie's

Nah. I can take some good humoured asymmetric gameplay. Nothing wrong with jumbling up the odds a bit.
Is just you lot got so addicted to the powerjuice - you simply lost the perspective.

 

[znôrt]

I'm not buying that it's somehow abusive to call out the dev's for either their lack of action or response.

ahem ...
i'm not buying that this is a competitive multiplayer game either ...

and ... cheat epidemic! seems we just got wind that there's been nobody at the controls for five years, but i don't see the forum littered with scores of cheat accusations either.

this all is about people shifting perspectives about what they thought they knew, that's always either thrilling or stressing or both, but the world keeps spinning.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Not really if you look at it from fairness perspective. If you can crush unwitting players unmitigated the powerjuice is just like cheats. Only is officially sactioned. But that doesn't make it good gameplay mechanics.

So, not like cheats at all.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

How would you know? Apparently cheats have been a thing since the beginning. Should I git gud or git cheatz?

What platform are you on?
Aren't you on console?