I remember playing Mountain Pass and having my entire defense team wiped out repeatedly by some clown with an aimbot. We tried to kick him, but there was some bug that wouldn’t allow us to enter the votekick command for a user whose name was “||||||||||||||||||||” (I suspect the 20-character length was the key element). I changed sides and sniped him right in the back of the head as he ran for yet another easy slaughter.
The time spent in jail was well worth it.
I used to play a good deal of Quake when it came out, and the cheaters would just want to make you turn the game off. I’m playing GTA SA right now, and cheats here are fine. Sometimes you need an edge against the computer. But when your playing against other people, and the whole fun is playing against other people, cheats really ruin it. It’s not like the cheats are even subtle, it’s like you turn around 180 and you can still kill the guy facing your back with one shot through a wall.
These particular type of games are 100% about competitive balance, and any cheating ruins the very purpose of the game.
I play a lot of SOCOM II online for the ps2 and, luckily, we don’t have too many problems with cheaters out there. From what I know, there aren’t any codes that can get you invincibility or anything like that, so most guys who cheat are just glitchers. They find weird tricks that somehow got over looked (i.e. hiding inside of a solid watertower and being able to shoot out, but not have anyone be able to see or shoot you) and then exploit the hell out of them. On the good hand, though, the gaming company puts out a lot of mandatory downloads that fix these problems. Also, I’m amazed at how “anti-glitch” a lot of people are. Generally, if you are caught glitching on your team, someone will likely kill you and then the team will vote you.
The gameplay online is surprisingly civil as a result.
RPGs are different to FPSs. It’s kinda the equivalent of automatically respawning with a full set of fully loaded weapons and full armour. Nice, but … pointless if you don’t like cheating.
Sure, they’re games. So’s baseball, and cheating is such a big concern there, Congress is getting involved.
The vast majority of online games are not RPGs. Most are shooters or real-time strategy, where cheating is far more destructive because players are in direct competition with each other. CounterStrike is a shooter.
The OP is talking about multiplayer games. No one (except for the extremely anal) cares about people cheating in single-player games. If that’s how you have the most fun in the game, more power to you. (I am curious as to how that makes the game more fun, but that’s purely academic.)
Similarly, I don’t find cheating in games to be fun at all. Principles aside, it’s just not something that I enjoy. So, loading up the same hacks that the cheaters are using just so I can compete with them isn’t a good solution for me, because I’m still not having fun. Plus, most hacks are of such a nature that, if everyone is using them, the came becomes unplayable. How do you play deathmatch if everyone in the game is unkillable?
There’s a bit more to it than that.
A typical video game costs in the neighborhood of $50. That’s not terribly cheap. If I buy a game with the intent of playing it primarily online, as is the main selling point of games like Halo, and find the game laregly unplayable due to the prevalence of cheaters, then I’ve pretty much wasted that fifty. It’s hardly the end of the world, but I’m not going to be terribly pleased.
In fact, this is a big part of why I don’t play online games at all. Too many cheaters, not enough fun. It’s not a huge deal, as I prefer single player games to begin with, but it also means that every company that’s marketing an online game (with a few rare exceptions like WoW) has already lost me as a customer. This is (or should be) a big deal to the game companies, because online cheating is costing them customers. Eventually, they’ve got to start seriously dealing with the issue, or they’re going to go under.
What it ultimatly comes down to, though, is simple politeness. People who cheat in online videogames are like people who talk in movie theaters. Sure, it’s not criminal or anything, but it’s fucking annoying, and it makes it difficult-to-impossible for other people to enjoy what the thing they’ve paid good money for. If that’s not pit-worthy, we might as well close down the forum.
Bryan, you are my hero! 
I’ve done this once or twice. There was a server where friendly fire was turned on. This one group of T’s would kill all the hostages AND kill any T’s that weren’t part of their clan. After a team auto-balance, I ended up on the T team. They killed me straight up. After the round restarted, I headshotted one, ran away and headshotted the other. And then the server admin showed up and booted them!
Max.
Where do the hacks come from? Are they just codes that the designers didn’t take out of the multiplayer versions or are the players actively creating programs that run alongside the game?
Why is it so difficult to eliminate this behavior?
I’ve done that. 
In fact, one bonehead ppissed me off so badly that I logged in as a throwaway character and TK’ed him until he quit. I kept getting put in jail, and kept coming right on back. It was so satisfying.
Heh. Don’t worry too awful much. Though people may not know it yet, VAC2 is already in effect, collecting server data for suspicious behavior. Within a week or so, be on the lookout for Valve VAC banning a whole bunch more accounts for cheating, as well as VAC going live for HL2-based games.
The official CS-bot is also being released for CS:S next Monday, meaning you’ll be able to play the game offline with/against some pretty decent computer players that don’t cheat.
Pretty much the latter. There are dicks that create these programs basically just to prove that they can, and distribute them just to gain publicity for their skills and to cause chaos.
Because the cheats run client side, usually. For instance, a program intercedes between your mouse input and the game to give you perfect aim. And so on. The best anti-cheat software works by actually checking to see if any of these programs are running and then reporting it back to the server. This is what Cheating Death, Punkbuster, and VAC all do, in various ways.
VAC will be particularly effective, because instead of just getting you banned from one server, cheating can get you banned from ALL the servers that wish to enforce a no-cheat policy. That’s a pretty darn good incentive not to cheat: if you get caught, you’re screwed.
That’s very cool. I have CS: CZ and the bots are good for training purposes, but the graphics suck. And of course, the maps aren’t quite the same. I’m looking forward to that!
Apos, where did you find out about the release date for the bots?
Max.
I was JUST playing on an AA server in which the goddamn ADMIN was a cheating, wallhacking, aimbotting bitch. God, that steams me.
I never understood why anyone wanted to do this. At most, I can’t see anyone doing this for more than 5 minutes before becoming bored.
Last time I was playing CS, I noticed that terrorists killing the hostages had become par for the course. Guys, I know you like fighting CT’s rather than guarding, but those hostages is what makes map like Italy fun! Why do they do this and when did it start being a constant thing?
Another problem is that some players get real pissy if you ever do well. I recall one game of CS where I had a really great run - made five beautiful (out of seven enemies) kills in a a single round and took 19 damage. And of course, they immediately called me a cheater. It was either sour grapes or they just couldn’t believe that someone could use the bloody solenced M16 at more than point blank range.
And finally, I hate jumpers. In many games, characters have such a powerful jump that they do it constantly, becoming much harder to hit. That is so bloody annoying. And it’s just weird.
I think that’s exactly the point. If you are playing a multiplayer game (whether it’s an online RPG, baseball or checkers), and you’re cheating, you’re dicking around with somebody else’s game.
Do what you want when you’re playing single-player, but cheating when you’re playing with other people is the highest form of dumbassery.
I totally agree with this. It wouldn’t be so bad if a dead player respawned straight away, like in a deathmatch situation. But if you get taken out straight away by a cheater, all you can do for the next five minutes (or until the round is won) is to sit there and make witty comments with the other dead players. It’s not a lot of fun getting killed 10 seconds into the game!
Max.
You’re all going to laugh at me because the only online gaming I ever have to do is in Yahoo games. They have a game called Yahoo Grafitti which is basically a “Win, Lose or Draw” game - you draw pictures, the other players guess. I stopped playing for a while for 2 reasons:
Cheaters: There were a few types - the ones who would type some long word as their guess - apparently a word that exceeded the max character limit registers as a correct guess. Then there are the ones that are clearly cheating with the aid of the person drawing. The drawer scribbles a red line, and their cohort guesses (“correctly”) “White House!”, repeat for the entire list. But the ones that drove me the most batty were the ones who would refuse to draw, and would instead just write the word on the screen. I still cannot figure out what the point of this was. Sure you can amass points, but it’s not like the points are good for anything - you can’t trade them for stuff, or anything - and it happened on any table, whether it was rated for points or not.
Accusers: Given a good group of non-cheating, semi-intelligent people, the game could be a lot of fun. I was pretty decent at it, despite a complete and total lack of artistic ability. But I was sick of the idiot who couldn’t figure out that a picture of an apple was for the clue “Apple” and then would accuse me of cheating when I got it right. I type quickly, and have the half an IQ point needed to figure out quickly that if they drew a house, and are now drawing blue squiggles, it’s probably going to be ‘house boat’. But out would come the cry of “Cheater!” from the idiot who was throwing out guesses like “Sand box! Sugar cube! House in the sky!” or “Apple!” (five words after it was the clue). It got to the point that I was actually sandbagging - yes, sandbagging in Yahoo Grafitti. It was then that I figured out I needed to find a new game.
Personally, I’m far less annoyed by the cheaters than by the asshats. I’m playing a deathmatch game, somebody shoots me, I die.
i4mg0dd9243: lol n00b ur teh suxxor
RolandOrzabal: Yeah, you killed me once. Clearly I am unworthy to behold your majesty.
i4mg0dd9243: wtf ru talkin lik that 4? ru gay?
RolandOrzabal: No, but thanks for the compliment; I find that on average far fewer homosexuals are asshats.
i4mg0dd9243: ur a fag n00b
RolandOrzabal: Well, actually, no I’m not. Didn’t we just go through this? And by the way, while you were composing that brilliant rebuttal, I exploded your head with a rocket.
<i4mg0dd9243 has left the game>
Asshats are 97.2% of the reason I quit playing Starcraft online. And Diablo II online. And Halo online. And Quake III online. And UT online. Hell, I’ll even throw in Ultima for good measure. I deal with enough asshats at work every day…why would I want to spend time around them during recreation?
My beef with online cheaters? They’re ruining it for the rest of us. I’ve heard it on authority that the one reason no one’s released a cheat device for the X-Box is that people are going to use it to cheat online. There are at least three games for the X-Box that I’ve been dying to play for months, and because of a bunch of self-serving jerks whom no one seems to have any idea what to do about, I’m probably never going to buy one*. (I suppose it’s conceivably possible for someone to design a cheat device that doesn’t work online, or for Microsoft to release a non-online compatible X-Box with built-in cheats, but the demand’s much too small to make either viable.)
If it’s your game, do whatever you want with it. Once you start competing with other people, you’d damn well better be on the same playing field. It’s really very simple; my codes don’t hurt anyone, online codes do. It’s a pretty blatant injustice and completely unforgivable.
But y’know…that’s online gaming for ya. Seriously, is there ANY one of these things that doesn’t eventually degenerate into rampant cheating and jerkiness? Does anyone even ATTEMPT to maintain a semblance of order?
So anyway, Maxxxie, I sympathize…but really, you should’ve expected this. The one ironcald standard for online gaming seems to be “caveat emptor”.
*I’m not kidding. The only reason I bought a PS2 was because I had this kind of safety net. Some of us don’t want to spend two years getting used to a single game, you know.
DKW, yeh, I did expect it. I just didn’t expect it to be so damn demoralising. 
Meanwhile, the other day I had the pleasure of being pwned by an 8-year-old for whom the use of the terms, “faggot”, “cunt” and “shithead” are standard fare. I know he was 8 (or thereabouts) because he used voice comms and we were treated to his pre-pubescent high-pitched voice. I don’t have a problem with cursing per se, but I just don’t think that type of cursing is appropriate for kid his age. He thinks it’s ok to talk like this! I suspect his mother would bitch-slap him if she heard him talking like that in real life.
And don’t get me started on the homophobia! I had one tossbag hear me using voice comms the other day, who said, “**Maxxxie ** you sound gay”. I asked him if that was supposed to be some sort of insult. He said no, I just “sound that way”. For fuck’s sake. So I one-upped him. “As a matter of fact, I’m a dyke. That answer your question?”. He couldn’t come back with an answer, apart from apologising profusely for his stupidity. At least he had the nuts to take back his attempt at insulting me. Then I hunted him down and headshotted him numerous times. “GAY THIS, dickhead!!!” kablooie
Max
The logical extension is presumably for everyone to use hacks that makes them invincible. Yeah, that’d be fun.
So basically the behaviour you are proposing of necessity involves you ruining other peoples’ game.
Charming.