TF2 General Chat and Speculation Station V13 - Heavy times - Games

ThAt Tf22 IS dEaD xDDdd

Like this? ARBITRAGE AND EQUILIBRIUM IN THE TEAM FORTRESS 2 ECONOMY | Val.. I linked to a wayback machine copy because the incompetent people that manage valvesoftware.com website managed to make all the embedded images in the article 404. I really hope the VACnet or something is coming, valve doesn't want false positives, but it still seems stuff that should be easily detectable isn't. Recently I ran into the classic sniper spinning looking at the sky hitting instant headshots. Maybe for a tick the cheat had him actually facing me, but it wasn't a unit of time long enough to show that happening to other clients on the server, so a stupid heuristic could just note weird unhumanlike behavior like this and after you have enough datapoints over an interval send out a ban. Yes, cheats would then work to not set this off, but in doing so they would be retarding the cheat because it couldn't just be changing a huge view angle and firing, it would have to wait a few more ticks bringing it into the range of combined luck + skill shots giving the victims a slightly higher chance of beating it.

now with spectator gone i have to learn the more hidden cheats by actualy realising that someone is cheating instead of being a incredibly good sniper or using some other subtle cheat.Right now i guess i will be watching spot the hacker for a long time until i get acustomed to what kinds of cheats are being used and how to spot them.

Have anybody ever encountered any obvious cheaters in MvM? I know how bloody stupid that question sounds but at the same time I could reasonably see some poor smuck desperate for australiums cheating as a sniper in order to carry quicker and get more tours done.

I've experienced about three cheating snipers in my lifetime on MvM, two of which however were on mann up and one on boot camp for wave 666. Surprise surprise, my team refuses to kick the guy in Mann Up cuz "Oh but it's a free win" Attempting to kick them however gets me vote kicked instead, cuz high tours don't care about fun. Just quick completed tours at any means necessary.

I can't recall any cheaters in MvM since Two Cities first started off hand.

yes but what's so special about it? why wouldn't it be a thing

Its seems like an obvious thing that people hacking mvm would only party with other hackers to farm loot privately.

err no. You only need one cheater to reach top efficiency in mvm. 6x cheaters is severely overkill and a waste of time. They still want to feel good about themselves and witness destruction. Be it to ruin the fun of others by monopolizing the game or just test out / configure their newly acquired cheats without repercussion. Plus I'm pretty sure cheaters are usually all hostile toward eachother regardless. But it's certainly true that the majority of them will be in mannup for the items and not custom mvm. man i feel we already talked about this all already. mus is really going in loops nowadays.

I've encountered a couple. Some were blatant cheaters, while others tried to hide it. Kinda sucks in MVM since people will actually want to keep blatant cheaters because they want easy loot (even though two cities is pretty easy anyway)

The current state of TF2 isn't all that pleasing, but what blows my mind is how as a community we've let this happen in the way of openly accepting these major updates. Valve doesn't really communicate but I'd like to think if enough people lash out they'll change their approach (i.e Skyrim Paid Mods on Workshop) We've had several discussions about the F2P Update, the Quick Play system and the most recent Meet Your Match MM update. But throughout all the discussions I never really felt like enough people understood or really cared about the consequences of automation. Simply put the best stopgap measure to cheaters is the Community itself. Whether its experienced admins who have been playing since GoldSrc or the custom made Cheat Detection mods for dedicated servers... VAC cannot beat the efficiency of a self driven system managed by humans. That is not to say the human way of doing this is without error. There are a LOT of inexperienced admins out there that can easily make the wrong decisions when banning players. Unlike the absolute dead space RNG Social Experiment that is the Match Maker for any game out there. You have no power and each time we get a "quality of life" update that makes it easier for new players to hop right in, we lose a lot of what makes a community capable of keeping itself together. Losing the ability to spectate alone wasn't worth the entirety of the match maker IMO. It is easier than you might think to let a cheater go unnoticed. I keep referring to it, but my video on the bots is a prime example of just how little people care about whats going on in the game. I'm not against people doing what it is they want to, but I have to criticize the lack of care the general person has for a community they are actively effecting. Or perhaps that is precisely why Match Makers are abhorrent. They are anti-community in nature in that they match random users together for all of about 15 minutes and then separate everyone, effectively removing the player's feeling of connection to a community. I strongly disagree with the notion that if a cheater decides to make their appearance less visible that in turn means they are less of a threat to the experience. Here are a list of things I've come across myself along the road to Tier 8 casual. Cheaters that claim they only use it to counter other cheaters. Some will faithfully keep their cheats toggled off until they run into another cheater. Whether they have the experience to distinguish a skilled player from a cheater though is... Well yeah Cheaters that will focus only one player at a time. This is really obnoxious and makes the target getting focused completely powerless in chat. (i.e: "he's cheating", Response from anyone else in the server: "Just because he's killing you doesn't mean he's cheating") Toggling. This is the most common method and relatively undetectable by a vast majority of the players in Casual. Partial use of cheats. Some cheaters will keep their aimbot off entirely and stick to things like ESP or wallhacks. Try getting a 200 hour player to understand any of that... Very talkative in chat or sometimes even voice chat. This alone can keep them from getting kicked despite an entire enemy team calling them out in chat. ("But he's using a mic, he's talking in chat, he's friendly") A stack of cheaters! Doesn't matter how large the group is, 2 cheaters can ruin a server just as easily without being the least bit obvious. Cheaters can rejoin servers they've been kicked from by using a direct IP connect exploit. Not sure exactly what it is they're doing but if you don't kick all of the associated people to that cheater, they'll be able to rejoin non-stop. (More precisely they've taken advantage of the party system itself and modded the shit out of it) Crit hacks on melee still exist. Vaccinator resistance switch cheats. Hard to believe but I've only seen it once or twice. "Silent Aim" is relatively well known, but can fool teammates pretty well. The playermodel is left untouched by the aimbot to prevent twitching of the sorts. The longer it takes for teammates to notice, the worse of an experience it will be for the enemy team. Cheaters don't have to top score. They don't even have to top frag. Its hard to believe but some people will only justify kicking an accused cheater if they are top scoring.Don't be this kind of stupid. If the cheater selects their targets with a combination of any of the above to remain under the radar he can effectively control who will win the round just as well as a blatantly obvious spinbot sniper. Already experienced players using cheats. Sort of speaks for itself. I've seen it happen in Sniper v Sniper tournaments. As an admin for Snipezilla there is nothing that annoys me more than the nerve of people that use cheats despite being capable without them. If you don't want to practice, don't enter a fucking tournament. Chat clearing! A lot of casual players never notice the odd silence in chat and if no one picks up on that, the odds of the other team getting the cheaters noticed or kicked for that matter are good as none. Keep in mind that everything listed is just one of the many different things cheaters will do simultaneously. Combine any of the listings which ever way and you've got yourself something far more destructive than the obvious cheaters who are far more likely to get kicked or mass reported. There is more, but the point gets across that cheats are not always a on or off type scenario and can be just as effective while being obvious or completely under the radar. Just because the experience for one or two players is getting trash canned, this is by no means less harmful than the most obvious of spinbots clearing a server. The sniper that makes it obvious as hell is more likely to get noticed by everyone. Either they get kicked or people leave. Its an annoyance. The sniper that remains under the radar will induce psychological torment to a few players at a time. The severity and effectiveness is far more than just an "annoyance" and this cheater will last a lot longer due to lack of reports.

Okay, I suppose I might not be playing nearly as much TF2 as you (I'm only at Tier 2 Casual), but I think this confirms I just must be really lucky. Because I'm pretty sure I have yet to experience half of this stuff in my last two years of playing casual. Like, seriously, I had no idea vaccinator resistance switch cheats were even a thing, cause I've never run into a player who was taking longer to kill than normal. Nor have I ever seen a cheater that was smart enough to only target specific players so he wouldn't get top score (every single one of them always is at the top with multiple dominations). Haven't seen a friendly voice chatter cheater in ages either (Last one was at least 4 years ago - was a Heavy with a blatantly obvious anti-spread cheat that claimed to be an Iraq war veteran who got paid to play video games.), nor a chat hacker. Seriously, my experience has been really rage-free compared to a lot of you. Worst thing I tend to face at this point is blatantly unbalanced teams. But again, I only play two to three hours a day at most, and some days I don't play at all.

I've reiterated this countless times before in every TF2 community I'm a part of, but no absolutely no one seems receptive to it. Either they're so disillusioned by Valve that they believe no amount of community outcry will help, or they simply don't care enough.

ehm, tf2 isnt in its best years but its fine nonetheless. i'm still enjoying it.

Do I enjoy TF2? Of course I do. Can it be far better? Absolutely. Why would you ever, EVER, rest on your laurels? There's no such thing as "good enough."

Because if there's a mass outcry it's probably more likely Valve just dumps TF2 for good.

that's an acceptable outcome. because it's far better than just saying nothing and leaving your players to guess whenever something is gonna happen (and when something does happen odds are it's probably mediocre/harmful changes which makes the whole deal even more intolerable) if everything was suddenly set in stone forever and ever then many people would just stop hoping for more and accept it, you know?

Its a purely a time and location based phenomenon. I enjoy playing TF2 to the point where I've managed to sink as much time into it as I have. God knows how many games total I've played prior to the stat that tracks it. But regardless of how long or how many games I've played the fact of the matter is this shit is rampant. Script kiddies tend to be on in the evenings and weekends. They come out in force during extended holidays, summer and winter. They have off periods when they feel like something might be in danger of getting detected. You can WATCH the publicly accessible update pages for these cheats to see when the next wave of dorks will come flooding in. There are patterns. There are steam groups you can track them with. It should go to show that TF2 is complex with both the bad and the good. The skill ceiling is high and the learning is infinite. Its what keeps me playing the game, but you could also say there is a high skill ceiling for cheating as well. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/315994/4929fc4b-d7bc-48df-aa9a-2e2ea8ed2e1a/tf2_thisisfine.jpg No but seriously...

And you're basing this assumption on...?

Nothing except how little TF2 is actually worked on anymore and how little Valve as a whole cares about the game.

if there is a mass outcry they're just gonna do the same thing they always do nothing

While it's true I play 666 boot camp a lot. I do play mann up Two Cities as well... Most hackers I saw in MvM were doing it for loot. If that's the case running a six person team consistent of one man's bot is probably the safest and most efficient way to farm loot. Since actually players do have a tendency to kick and report hackers for hacking. Not to mention the drops are all pretty much the same regardless of who you're partying with regardless. I couldn't see an cheater jumping into a mann up match for any purpose other then to farm loot though. I mean... To make the mode easier for everyone on the team? Seems kind of mute since you won't get nearly as many pissed off players hacking in MvM as you would a standard casual match.

I'm fine with tf2 as it is. i'm sorry for those who feel dragged on and on about how the game <could be better>(because it could be THE BEST GAME EVER MADE), but i'm happy with what we have so far. when the game feels boring or unrewarding, i'd probably ditch it and move on, like most people do. I'm sorry you people feel so... attached? devoid? (blue balled?) and wish for the game to perform better than it could be. thats all. at times it feels like some of you are in some weird stockholm syndrome about tf2, trapped in an endless thrist for "what should/could be"

We don't know that though; in fact, the last time the community was united in outrage, Valve did respond. I've gone over this before--I have very specific tastes and there aren't any games like TF2 on the market. Not to mention, you're a Pyro main right? You're telling me you're satisfied with the game balance shafting your class? Pyro is terrible.

I won't accept your apology and I won't apologize for telling you your opinion sucks. But what I won't do is demean you for having the opinion you do. Are you sure you know what that means? It honestly feels like you saw Exor use it once and thought "This looks smart, time to throw it."

tf2 is pretty fun

The problem with that is to get Valve's response they have to mess up so hard that the community outrage goes beyond the boiling point in the firstplace And thats not limited just to TF2

You're right and i agree Fuck you

I don't like it when people say "tf2 is a fun game" as an argument that we don't really need many content updates or major fixes. It has been confirmed time and time again that with any major update, hell, even with this Scream Fortress one, that it helps the game to get more players and to be more relevant. Stop saying "tf2 fun game" and thus implying that we don't really need many updates or many major fixes or improvements, because the game will do juuust fine without them anyway. It's seriously counterproductive.

I just wanted to say tf2 is fun improvement is always an option, there aren't any really perfect things, anyone saying tf2 doesnt "need" more updates is pretty wrong, however you can totally say tf2 is """fine""" while still agreeing that a lot of things are fucked atm atleast thats my defintion of the word "fine" - something that has issues, but the issues are not big enough to be ruining the entire experience - I can totally see people associating fine with "not in need of anything" but that would be the word "perfect" for me