Edited by agentsm1th at 07:59 CST, 12 December 2016 - 41539 Hits
2a - please don't try to 'sell' your personal opinion as established fact.
2c - this has not worked very well, has it?
3 - and personal opinion 'sold' as fact again.
We simply can not accurately determine how many people are cheating - we can only guess and these guesses might or might not be waaaaaaaaaaay off.
II: Apparently there are many different cheats available, that have been specifically created for this game.
Thus there seems to be enough demand for cheats to support a variety of 'products'.
However, we can't deduce the number of cheaters from this.
III: Given the assumption that QL players are not more honest than any other group of sportsmen, we could reach the conclusion that cheating in QL might be as least as common as in other sports.
Unfortunately cheating (i.e doping) occurs much more frequently than one would like or expect - across almost all sports and skill levels.
Since the risks and costs of cheating in video games are insignificant when compared with the risks and costs of doping in conventional sports, I think that QL could have its fair share of cheaters (among the amateurs and among the pros).
Cheat authors make cheats as a hobby. They enjoy it. It's fun for them to try and circumvent security systems. They would make them even if no one used them. No demand necessary.
In cases where the game is very popular, and the demand is likely high they could consider selling them, and in some cases they do.
The consequences are less great, but so to are the incentives.
2a - Maybe I don't understand you correctly, but to me this argument sounds a lot like circular logic. Apart from that I played everything between T2 and T4 and never got accused - not once.
2c - If it doesn't work we need to find new solutions instead of saying "That's the only way".
I - Can you point out the difference between 'guessing' and 'ball-parking'? English is not my native language.
II - You are wrong about this one. There are several different kinds of cheats, which will work for several games (which share the same engine or API) and there are cheats that work for almost any shooter game.
The fact that these cheats are released to the public in user-friendly, easy to use packages does indeed suggest that these are 'products'. They might not be sold for money, but maybe the producers profit in some other way (e.g. fame, spread of malicious software, or just some elaborate form of trolling).
III - The incentive for some amateur marathon runner to do EPO or ASA are approximately the same as for your average quake player to install an humanized bot or wall hack. Both have no chances of ever winning anything important, yet they like to achieve better results than they could ever do on their own.
Please refrain from "I mean are you serious?" and "Get real" phrases. They do NOT add anything of value to your arguments.
2a - "There is not a lot of cheating going on because almost all accusations are wrong because there is not a lot of cheating going on"?
This is how I understood your argument but maybe I am mistaken.
2c - I think that id has not reacted appropriately to cheating and other related topics. One might get the feeling that there is a lot of arbitrariness going on and that id doesn't really care.
I - well that's exactly what I meant when i said "guess". Unfortunately these processes are either extremely inaccurate or prone to error.
II - wireframe hacks,
aimbots that do NOT use model/hitbox recognition
In some youtube videos you could see that the hacks for quake live had neat looking in-game menus with sliders which could control the various parameters of the cheat. People who develop for the sake of 'defeating a security system' usually don't create these things.
III - Daddy is a bad example, because odds are that his cheats in the game against rapha were extremely obvious. I think its safe to assume that the effectiveness of a cheat and it's risk of detection are generally proportional. Cheats which are easily detected are not the problem - e.g. everyone knows that daddys victory over rapha is ultimately meaningless.
So in conclusion I think the analogy between doping and toggling WH / humanized bots is a very fitting one
2c - A nice start would have been not to unban one of the most prominent cheaters of QL history, just because they think he's a cool dude.
Way to prove my point with your temperature example of 0K and ridiculous high temperature: thats worthless information. You either place the limits ridiculously wide (=inaccurate) or you run a huge risk of placing them too small.
No I don't. Menus and GUI are often the easiest part - but also the most tedious one. That's why somebody who is just looking to break into a system wouldn't be bothered. After all they are named 'USER' interfaces for a reason - not developer interfaces...
III - All a doping athlete has to do is keep cranking up their dose until it's sufficient to guarantee victory. In most cases it isn't necessary to be blatant about it. No difference at all.
1. Clearly. But censoring discussion about cheating serves to make many naive people think cheating doesn't exist.
2b. The onus of stopping hacks is on Id. Trying to control the spread of information will always prove fruitless. In the computer security sphere, when an exploit is discovered it usually gets reported to the developer first to give them a head start, but details of the exploit are always made public shortly thereafter.
2c. There are undetected hacks that have been available on public sites for many months. I'm sure they've received plenty of information on these hacks already... The point is they haven't implemented anything to address it or even acknowledged to anyone that a fix is in the works.
3. Not sure how that's relevant or what would make you think I (or anyone else) implied otherwise.
And then there are the hack developers, some of whom probably do get enjoyment from reading complaints on forums. Rather than trying to hide the truth to prevent hack developers from gleaning any satisfaction, I'm more interested in seeing the issue confronted head on, as it normally would be in the computer security field.
I have never actually heard someone say "cheating doesn't exist" in any game that I've played. Even so, it's a better attitude to have than thinking cheating is everywhere if it isn't true.
Like I said, when it comes to the people whose opinion matters, they know that cheating exists.
This information can be used to the advantage of cheat authors, and really you don't need to know it anyways.
Again it would be raising awareness to say something like "you know that one cheat that's going around, well we're working on fixing it". Ah, now we know there's a working cheat out and should go get it before it's fixed.
You'd be surprised how many players think that cheating is ultra rampant and that hackers are in every single one of their games, or want to believe it because they suck.
It would be nice if Id invested more into QL, hired more developers and had the resources such that you could expect a quick fix on exploits, and it would be nice if the project generated enough money to warrant such an investment. The reality is different though.
There are plenty of QL players who believe that cheating in QL was pretty much squashed a few years ago and, for the most part, no longer exists. Others think that any cheating will be obvious to them (as it was in the Q3 days) and all other accusations must be baseless. I guess recoiling into denial is a pretty standard defense mechanism for a lot of people, but we don't need to turn this into a discussion about psychology.
I tried to skip over this assertion the first time you made it, but since you bring it up again, I have to ask -- why are you the arbiter of whose opinion matters? It's rather subjective, no? If enough users, paying or otherwise, are in denial or apathetic about this issue, then there will be less pressure on Id to do something about it.
If you believe Id is already doing as much as is reasonably possible to address it, then I guess that's one point where we definitely disagree.
Well, that puts your opinion and Id's apparent policy well outside of the norms in computer security.
That point of view relies on the assumption that there are a lot of people who would want to cheat, but just never bothered to google it before. I think the more likely reality is that those who are inclined to cheat already know cheats are publicly available, and those who aren't inclined to cheat aren't going to suddenly look it up.
That's true, but the type of cheating I'm talking about is happening in the higher end of T4, not on noob servers.
I'm not convinced the business model has ever been the right approach with QL, but that's not really my problem. The recent (mis)handling of dropping of platform support reinforces the perception of a poorly run business, though. That they think they can just walk off with peoples' money (mac users) and not offer a refund is reprehensible, and, in my opinion, would not withstand a legal challenge.