Guild Wars 2

Before I begin this I would like to ask anyone that replies to do the following:

1) Do not post names of people
2) Do not post names of Guilds or Servers
3) Do not post examples that you are aware of

This is just to open a discussion on what cheating does in a game and what type of enforcement and feedback that is or should be required.

We do know that cheating goes against the Code of Conduct and probably all agree that cheaters should be banned for life. Most of us know how to report a blatant cheat or abuse/exploit of a game mechanic and most of us do. However that is where things fall apart.

The community has no affirmation of whether or not a cheater has been investigated and punished. Many discussions on this forum, other forums or in-game revolve around the fact that people have reported someone a number of times but the behavior continues. If there is no feedback to the person reporting and if the behavior still occurs then the reporting person gets frustrated, comes to these forums and ends up being censured.

We cannot and should not bury our heads in the sand pretending that such illicit behavior does not happen in the game. It does happen, in this game and in every other game I have played going back to the days of public dial ports and BBS’s. The less feedback the community receives on the issue of cheating, either on these forums or visually in-game the more empowered cheaters feel to continue what they are doing.

A form letter that your “complaint has been received and is being reviewed” is useless without any followup on whether or not what you have seen and reported was a case of actual cheating or abuse or a misconception on your part. That lack of feedback is hurtful to the people that actually care about the game and face it, we would not be complaining or posting about exploits and cheating if we did not care about the game. Those that use cheats, abuse exploits or outright hack do not care about the game, they care about themselves. However there is a growing feeling in the game from many people I have spoken with that a blind eye is being turned to these people. Whether that is true or not is something we will never know due to the lack of any feedback.

If I report a behavior that I believe is a cheat/hack/exploit I want more then just a “thank you” for reporting. I want to know if what I reported was in fact a cheat/hack/exploit and not just an erroneous observation on my part and I want to know if the person has been punished. After all I do care about the game and I do not care about cheaters. The majority of players play the game without cheating but that majority is becoming more and more disillusioned and the minority that do cheat are becoming bolder and more blatant in their actions.

Of course the effect is that you become the victim of the cheat. I think that because nothing is being done (at least visibly) and no feedback from the aformention game company we will see a lot more of this until the non-cheaters get frustrated and quit. One can only hope that there would be some sort of announcement acknowledging that this is happening and they are working on it, but sadly there is not. I imagine that this thread will be gone by this time tomorrow. Such discussions as this aren’t allowed on the forums.

That is why I carefully worded this thread and did not point out anything specific, pointed no fingers and laid no blame. I made sure to read and re-read the forum CoC and there is nothing so far that can be construed as a violation of it. It is a overview of the problems and issues that caring people face and a suggestion as to what might possibly help.

Only solution is to have GM in game, or helpers with is players that can go check when a report come and then record so Arenanet can ban.

Cheaters and bug abuser makes you quite the game (not for always but when your in playing and you lose T3 keep or 1700 supply is 0 and you have 100 rams in the keep)

I think cheaters and the lack of banning them completely changes the game.

1) Others see cheaters getting away with cheating and decide to cheat themselves.

2) Non-cheaters quit roaming and stick with zergs.

3) People quit the game rather than compete against cheaters or cheat themselves.

4) Cheaters force people (non-cheaters) into fewer build options.

Theftwind.8976:

The community has no affirmation of whether or not a cheater has been investigated and punished.

Cheaters are in every game and GW2 is nothing special here. Seeing that Arenanet is doing absolutely nothing against these people, at least in EU is very frustrating on one hand and from their point of view also not understandable. They don´t loose any subscription fees if they ban those people. And i don´t even talk about things that are only suspicious i talk about obvious fly / speed hacking, damaging people from beyond the surface etc. Seeing people doing that for weeks after reporting them is, i don´t know, very discouraging.

But i guess we have to understand that their whole team was busy the last months with designing the new colours for the commanders and they did not have time for such trivial things.

the last weekend one or more players from an enemy server used map glitch to kill lords in upgraded towers . they succeeded to give a good score to their server and a big advantage like 12k points .

the result of their actions was to kitten off both servers that was the victims of their actions and turned both servers against them !

after 2 days of the hacker / glitch-ers actions they are behind in the score ….

GJ hackers you doomed your server

Reborn.2934:

the last weekend one or more players from an enemy server used map glitch to kill lords in upgraded towers . they succeeded to give a good score to their server and a big advantage like 12k points .

the result of their actions was to kitten off both servers that was the victims of their actions and turned both servers against them !

after 2 days of the hacker / glitch-ers actions they are behind in the score ….

GJ hackers you doomed your server

So basically you are saying their whole server will suffer for a few rotten apples. And I am sure they don’t even care – they get their loot from the keeps and the fun of trolling others… and I don’t mean only you – I am sure their own server don’t like what they are doing.
But anyways – here is my experience with such a case: Our whole server reported him with ingame reports for months, then I tried a mail and got a “we are investigating” reply. After a week I asked how is the investigation going and got a “use the ingame report system” reply. ………what? Lucky for us he quit the game after like 4 months. Yey…..

There are better ways of handlung cheater them ANets way.

E.g. Look at http://bans.wcfan.de
This is a privat group running some Counter Strike Servers and they do a Lot effort to keep Servers clean. This of course also means involving the community (submit demos) and giving feedback to actions chosen back to the community.

And kudos to Valve for making Source TV an inevitable tool to validate that someone was indeed hacking in this case.

@Pavel.8531 this is what i am saying and this is my ( and many other players ) clear message to cheaters .

if a server has hackers then this server have a chance to have both enemy servers against hacker’s server ….. you can call it team-play , but with a serious reason this time.

now of the dilemma of to suffer or not suffer a server because of their rotten apples ?

my opinion is that they must suffer all with these rotten aplles because their actions have as purpose to benefit all from the server … to win all the matchup ,to have all better score/performance/rewards from seasons and ofc the most important the whole server have better morale in matchups !!!

yep that would be of course great but the reality is, people are not that noble. I´ve seen mesmers flying into keeps to port the whole zerg into it afterwards. Nobody said anything in map chat, because this time a cheater worked in their favor.

It is a two fold problem. The first is that the bugs persist that allow it and the second is the game has zero in-game admins. Nothing can be done on our end to stop it all we can do is tolerate it. Course for many there are limits and other games to play.

Glad for once a thread like this isn’t being locked/deleted instantly, though the reason could very well be ANet not logging into the WvW forums to check what we’re saying…

Anyway, I haven’t been on this game for about a month, after I became disillusioned when threads regarding this subject kept getting locked/deleted. I’ll tell you what I thought would work.

Step 1: Implement a new section of the forums where people to to report cheaters.

Step 2: Before entering the forums each time, make the sure player is aware that they can only report a cheater with viable evidence that they have, either video or screengrabs

Step 3: Actually follow up on the investigation, and upon its conclusion release the findings to the public. This not only lets them know that a decision was reached, but also that hackers are now being punished.

Step 4: Once this has been in effect for a bit, add a new feature. Players who have made a certain number of successful reports and have shown that they care for the community should be given an in-game symbol next to their name that shows they have been getting people banned. Basically, a symbol that would show that they have a line of communication to ANet. It is important the symbol be viewable in game, because from what I have seen, when an ANet employee is in WvW, hackers tend not to hack in front of their faces. Now imagine if there were double, or triple, the number of people hackers were afraid of. That would be something.

and if you (ANet) choose not to do anything in that list, at least let us discuss hackers on the forums and find a way for ourselves to deal with them. Because at the moment, it’s ridiculous how almost every thread is locked/deleted and ignored.

A good example. Last night I was fighting/chasing an enemy engie from one end of the map to the other with my guardian. He was doing things I had not seen engies do and which I have not experienced or done on my engie and I was certain is was some sort of hack/cheat. Before submitting it as such I talked it over with a few people on the server and found out that by equipping certain traits the behavior I witnessed was indeed possible for an engineer.

If I had not talked it over and submitted it as I saw it then I would not have found it that it was a legitimate behavior and with the lack of any feedback from the devs on my submission I would only A) become more and more frustrated on witnessing the same thing again and Think that the game we are playing is “dirtier” then what it is.

Even if they would compile a list of all the cheat/exploit reports they have with a basic description of the behavior and then a simple “yes, this behavior is an exploit” or a “no, this is possible under certain paradigms” then people would not feel so frustrated upon seeing the behavior again and the number pf complaints the receive would drop considerably.

Theftwind.8976:

A good example. Last night I was fighting/chasing an enemy engie from one end of the map to the other with my guardian. He was doing things I had not seen engies do and which I have not experienced or done on my engie and I was certain is was some sort of hack/cheat. Before submitting it as such I talked it over with a few people on the server and found out that by equipping certain traits the behavior I witnessed was indeed possible for an engineer.

If I had not talked it over and submitted it as I saw it then I would not have found it that it was a legitimate behavior and with the lack of any feedback from the devs on my submission I would only A) become more and more frustrated on witnessing the same thing again and Think that the game we are playing is “dirtier” then what it is.

Even if they would compile a list of all the cheat/exploit reports they have with a basic description of the behavior and then a simple “yes, this behavior is an exploit” or a “no, this is possible under certain paradigms” then people would not feel so frustrated upon seeing the behavior again and the number pf complaints the receive would drop considerably.

in the past i did the same mistake and i reported an engineer because of the same behavior and after that i played more my eng and i found that this char is just fantastic …..

engineers are difficult chars but when someone learn him can do the impossible …. possible

Straegen.2938:

It is a two fold problem. The first is that the bugs persist that allow it and the second is the game has zero in-game admins. Nothing can be done on our end to stop it all we can do is tolerate it. Course for many there are limits and other games to play.

Honestly as bad and annoying as cheating is:

It has never decided a matchup.

Maybe the cheaters will read this, and realize whatever they do is futile when it comes to cheating.

So what could they do to show us they are actually investigating and acting on cheats/exploits/hacks?

1) Create a Dev only postable sub forum for Cheats/Hacks/Exploits. No replies or discussions are allowed.

2) If they receive a report that person C in Guild BC on Server ABC was cheating and if they found out after investigation that no cheat was involved they can post exactly like that. "Person C, Guild BC, Server ABC was reported to be cheating. Here is a description (sanitized) of the behavior observed and after investigation the specific behavior is possible under certain conditions and is not a cheat/hack/exploit.

3) Person Z, Guild YZ. Server XYZ was reported flying into a Keep and porting Guildmates in. After review they could post that yes it was a hack, Person Z has been perma-banned and Guild YZ have all been suspended for 7 days.

Now reading reports 1 and 2, I as a player will know that the first behavior is not a cheat/hack/exploit and will not report that specific behavior in the future thus lowering their workload. I will also know that the second behavior by Player Z was a hack and that there were serious consequences for his actions which included everyone involved. Anyone thinking of doing the same in the future will have second thoughts.

My frustration level is lowered, the amount of actual cheating is reduced, and players have a better understanding of what is possible within the game design. To me a Win, Win, Win or WWW situation.