"Shield Hacking" - culture of suspicion?

[Mr Sophistication]

I don't post here often but I feel compelled to by what I just experienced.

I'm aligned with Aisling and was engaged with a fight on my own with 2-3 Mahon CMDRs who were undermining one of our expansion targets. I fly an A Class Python with Prismatic Shields under the handle Bishounen.

I had about 4 to 5 engagements over the course of about an hour. In two of those engagements I was in combat with a Vulture and a Clipper for a sustained period of time. In both these cases the arrival of a third ship (FDL) and/or system security prompted me to leave, but before I was quite successful in degrading my opponents to the point where I felt a kill was a possibility before that occured (or I forced one of them to high wake in one engagment).

Anyway, this isn't a bragging thread, it's about what happened next. Upon restocking my SCBs etc in a nearby system and jumping back I was informed by the Clipper pilot he was now recording his game. Upon asking why it was apparently because the strength / SCB recharge rate of my shields didn't stack up to him, and he believed my shields should have been down at one point. We had a bit of a chat about it and I assured him I was not cheating and explained what equipment I was using. After that I felt he was relatively accepting of this and believed me, and I felt the encounter had run its course (quite hard to fight solo against 3 ships if they all nav lock in immediately, but I'd had some fun nevertheless).

This does raise the wider issue of hacks creating a 'climate of suspicion' in the game. The Python is a powerful ship and maybe people underestimate how good it is after the nerf. All that said there seems to be so much talk about hacks right now, although I haven't witnessed any personally.

If there are these hacks going on they need to be dealt with as a priority. It's slightly dispiriting to have an expensively equipped ship that I've invested a lot of time into and put a lot of thought into loadout etc, then take it into a fairly risky 2v1 combat situation and to acquit yourself reasonably well only for suspicion to immediately fall onto you.

Please note I am not flaming the individual - as I said we chatted it out afterwards; I'm more generally concerned about the fact that if cheating is happening the default response for performing well is going to be for suspicion to fall on honest players, which is a shame.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Air of suspicion 100% yes. Should you be worried if you arn't cheating, not at all. Well done for educating people, I'd maybe have just said "Go ahead and report, im not cheating "

With the current setup it is remarkably easy to cheat (sadly) and it does happen. Whilst its not as widespread as people seem to think it is just common enough for people to be overly suspicious. Devs are working on it from what I read but at the moment as far as I understand it Frontier are currently looking at it on a case by case basis. It is a little sad that non-cheating players get looked at with suspicion but then again I'd rather have good players being reported by accident than cheaters get away with it.

 

[Tarman]

It's more a subset of players than it is the widespread prevalence of hacks, despite their existence. Some players refuse to accept that they can be defeated; like, end of the story villain-grade D: NOONE CAN DEFEAT ME HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE, so any time they're thwarted they cry HAXXORS. This has been going on since there have been games, really. Glad you could educate someone in this case; that's not always possible.

 

[tetra]

Hackusations happen in every single multiplayer game ever released. What doesn't help is the current P2P network that Elite uses which is A: Very open to 3rd party tampering and B: Incredibly unreliable in many cases, which leads, in the case of B, to things not looking "right" when in fact they are perfectly normal. It makes it very difficult to spot actual hacks vs network issues, unless the hack is blatantly obvious (pounding the last shield ring of an enemy for a couple of minutes flat for example, videos of this are widespread). Just ignore it and move on, for every actual hack spotted or recorded at least 10 cases will be either butthurt players or network architecture issues. In all cases FD have said each one is reviewed separately and no doubt compared against back-end data for verification, so there is absolutely nothing to worry about for legitimate players whatsoever, even when recorded.

 

[Distance]

The problem is is that FD take a softly softly approach to hacking giving out 1 day or 1 week shadow bans to known hackers. Lots of us have seen the same hacker multiple times even after been reported and since Fd do sod all about combat logging players have lost faith in their ability to police their own game.

The paranoia will only get worse until FD start sending a clear message that hacking won't be tolerated by wiping saves and permanent shadow bans. They think they can "rehabilitate" hackers who laugh at fd's weak response and carry on as if nothing has happened.

The problem is that people read so much about hacks and know that there are repeat offenders in the game that they're more likely to call "hack" if they're losing and the whole game suffers. Fd should have been hard since day one but instead 7 months down the line hacking and combat logging are still ruining the game for everyone even if you don't personally witness the acts.

Shield hacks are easy to spot though, I have a video of one on my youtube if anyone wants a link so you can see what it looks like.

You have my sympathies OP.

 

[Klab]

Even if I found an easily downloadable hack, I wouldn't use it. I mean what's the point? Where is the challenge if you win by cheating? I guess I'm old school, but the satisfaction of winning on merit far outweighs any short-term buzz from cheating. I feel sorry for people that have to resort to underhand tactics to win, they are just so sad. Kudos for your post btw & repped

 

[Roybe]

The default response to someone you suspect of cheating is to create a ticket and let FDev handle it.

The problem I've seen in some cases that I would suspect cheating, the player isn't. The lag and the way the game handles different things causes the appearance. That being said..if I felt strongly enough, I would still create the ticket so that it could be investigated!