Wii online players/gurus: any way to block cheats?

The Game Room
1

Okay, so help the forty-something year old dude help his kids deal with the seemingly endless cheaters on the online Wii game sites. Cuz they ruin the fun.

The story - I’m no slacker to old school games going back to… well, the beginning, I guess. I actually had an Atari, if that means anything (it doesn’t, I know). But as I’ve gotten older, I just don’t play as much anymore, and have turned the keys over to my kids (11&12 Y/O) to enjoy.

Having burned through and maxed out all the games they have, I set up their Wii to play online, knowing full well (and warning them) that online a-holes may likely ruin the experience somewhat.

Sadly, I wasn’t disappointed.
Mostly (at the moment), they like to play Mario Kart and such, and the online games often offer a really nice challenge (they’re pretty good, both of them) since they’re not playing the AI. Problem is, there is an endless supply of (sl)hacker wannabees that infest a lot of these games.

I know the drill - find a cheat code (or button combo, or whatever) of some kind, join a game, then LOOKIE AT ME! I iz the Awesome! No damage! Invulnerable! I always win, cuz I is the best! (No, you actually suck, that’s why you cheat.)

Hell, in one game I watched, a “player” just sat at the start/finish line in his kart and sort of glitched back and forth in place, the whole race, then “won” at the last second when he crossed over the line. Damn, you’re good, kid!

But I digress.

So - a simple question for players in the know, if there are any here (the SDMB kinda trends a little, um, old.) Shhhh…

Can these twits be blocked any way, or are there any tips for avoiding them? Because from what I’ve seen watching my kids play, there isn’t.

And assuming there isn’t a solution to this infestation, where are the best places to find access to, let’s just say, solutions to level the playing field?

Cuz if you can’t beat 'em…

Thanks for any advice.

2

This was posted kinda late last night, so if anyone of the 400 or so views would be so kind as to pop in and just say “Sorry, Jack, yer outta luck - this is how online gaming works”, I’d really appreciate it and won’t bump the thread again. It’s pretty much what I’ve told the kids anyway.

Thanks for any help.

3

I would actually be somewhat surprised if it was actually cheat codes vs a combination of “The other player is much better than your kids” and “the game has glitches anyone could exploit”.

Console games are much less prone to ‘hacks’ because it runs on specialized hardware, and the game is read off the disc instead of being installed. So my first instinct is to say "No, they aren’t really invincible, your kid just isn’t that good of a shot at those First Person Shooters and the other guy is. A 360 no-scope is possible without an aimbot, and if you can play 12 hours a day you can get good enough to do that. (Whether you will be good at anything that pays money is another question).

Your Mario Kart example is probably more a glitch in the game than a cheat.
Now, I’m not saying a cheat is impossible - very little is impossible with computing. But I do think it’s unlikely. If your kids are really not having a good time, I’d recommend they play either with people they know in real life (and are therefore known to not be cheaters) or just mentally track if someone is at a much higher skill level or seems fishy, and just not play with them anymore.

Nintendo (and most online game companies) take cheating very seriously, because it will KILL the online market for a game. You could try reporting the issue up, but don’t expect a response, especially if you don’t have exact info (“ie. yea, my kid was playing that racing game and there was a cheater. Username? Of course I don’t know the username” vs. “While playing MarioKart Wii at 3:57PM EST to 4:16PM EST under the username “sangfroid”, I noticed player “maddogkilla” never moved from the starting position but nonetheless came in first every race”.

4

Thanks for the response yellowjacketcoder.

The boy is actually quite good. They just play the Mario Kart game lately, and I can say from watching very closely that this is not just a case of other player envy, unless you can help me explain how another gamer can just sit at the finish/start line, move back and forth a few times while the other racers do three laps, then get the checkered flag at the last second. I watched this myself.

Other “glitchers”, as the kids call them, will do things demonstrating quite clear permanent invincibility traits like never losing a single coin in coin battle games. If you’re familiar with M/K, you likely know that certain attack methods- like spiny shells, I think- target ONLY the lead player) and after watching these players get hit again and again (you can tell they got hit, cuz their icon spins around on the race monitor screen) and not take any damage from any players, not just my kids, I gotta believe something else is going on.

I’ve watched a racer stop mid-race, hover-scoot across a chasm in the game and pop up on the other side to win. Not a legit shortcut mind you - the kids know almost all of those, as do most of the other players. Something’s up, I just don’t know what.

Maybe these players have just found “enhanced” shortcuts or something. I’m going to try and get some of this on video tonight so I can clarify things a bit. These moves look seriously funky to me, no pun intended.

Thanks for your input.

5

Yeah, yellowjacketcoder is wrong that consoles are unhackable. I believe that in this instance it’s done mostly through the installation on the Wii of a channel called Homebrew. In the past, you could use a glitch in Twilight Princess to modify game codes but I believe you can now just do it through homebrew. As far as I know, not being an online player myself, the only course of action is to report them to Nintendo.

6

Bolding mine. I never said it was unhackable.

7

You’re welcome!

If you manage to get that video, I would submit it to Nintendo. Like I said, they want to get rid of cheaters just as much, if not more than, you.

8

I’m not going to argue with you. Hacking in Wii is more prevalent and easier than you make it sound.

9

On PC, since the platform is open, games are more likely to suffer from hackers/cheaters. Devs and the community respond by using a combination of hack-detection software systems, robust server/client architecture, and community tools.

The end result being that you typically find a handful of servers you like because the community is good about booting anyone being a jerk/exploiting and banning cheaters, and the number of those isn’t absurdly high thanks to better ways of handling server/client communications and improved anti-hacking software and more drastic consequences for people getting caught (on some services).

On the consoles, most developers take the stance that it’s not going to happen, since it’s a closed platform… the problem is that it DOES happen, just not as often, however, since the consoles lack many of the features that PC games have to counter jerks online - you’re pretty much helpless in most cases until/unless they get caught.

10

Holy crap, does it ever happen! I’m sure everyone who has ever played Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has a tale to tell about some cheating mofo running an aimbot or some other sketchy mod that makes them either omniscient, invulnerable or something else.

It’s gotten somewhat better in the past few years; I haven’t run across nearly as many obvious cheaters playing Battlefield 3, for example.

I also think a lot of what’s called “cheating” is either the effects of shitty network lag compensation code or players that really are that good. A lot of college kids seem to do nothing but smoke pot and play video games for 18 hours a day. You can spot the lag problems by watching the kill-cams; lag problems are the ones where it seems from your POV that you unloaded an entire magazine into the other guy’s chest, and then he fires one shot and kills you. The kill-cam will show you blundering around the corner in slo-mo, and the other guy fires one shot, with you firing nothing.

11

Yeah, some of the more popular games on console are finally, now actively helping curb cheaters.

I wonder if things will get better/worse with next gen. Apparently Microsoft is allowing you to sideload games to your console in order to run/debug games. I don’t know if that might create an attack point for hackers to crack the system or if it can be done totally securely.

12

Thanks, everybody! I knew the SD wouldn’t let me down. Great info so far.

The boy told me he’s pretty confidant that we can get some of these glitchers on video (they seem to show up around the same times) so I’ll try tonight to video a few examples and put them on photobucket (it’s the only online account I have - I don’t share a lot of pics/videos) so I can link them. Keep in mind this is just the Mario Kart online game they’re playing for the time being.
The kiddos haven’t moved to the teen/adult game segment yet, but I know they will eventually. I’d like to think they can play online without a whole lot of BS to deal with, but let’s be honest - even simple message boards have to deal with a crapload of misbehavior on a regular basis, and I have tried to instill this fact in the young’uns so they aren’t too disappointed when things don’t go as planned online.

It’s a strange world out there…

:stuck_out_tongue:

13

With Mario Kart, there are known hacks that allow a player to obtain any item they want at any time. I’ve seen this manifest as a driver getting a mushroom fast at convenient times, to people running the whole race with unlimited golden mushrooms, to assholes who dial up blue shells ad nausaeum and don’t even drive, they just sit there and fill the track with explosions.

Unfortunately, there no way to stop this behavior, and I hardly even play online anymore. It seems there’s a “if you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” effect, where races are not about driving skill, but who can exploit glitches and hacks best.

The cumbersome friend codes is the only way to play reliably against honest players.

Maybe in the Wii U vesion, DLC patches can prevent exploits like that from ruining things.

14

I stopped playing COD Black Ops 2 because of the prevalence of cheating. That and because I can’t stomach the COD gaming community. What a group… <shakes head sadly>

Honestly, I don’t understand any cheating, at all. A “win” isn’t really a win…and the cheater knows it. So I can’t see what sense of accomplishment comes from it. <shrug> I just don’t get it…

15

Move to a different game. Seriously. I realize there aren’t that many “Mario Karts” out there, but some games are much more prone to cheating than others.

Alternatively, play with friends.

16

This was exactly our experience, and why we stopped playing MK online…once it was happening more often than not, that was the end of it for us.

17

I sort of explained this to the kids already.

It’s really rather sad. There is a great opportunity for genuine fun competition by playing other people with widely different skill sets (rather than just the AI), but as is apparently increasingly common these days, a few jerks can ruin it for everyone.

I just saw this exact example tonight while the kids were playing - didn’t have time to get the video before the game ended though. As other posters have mentioned, this behavior is not limited to any one game, but crosses through many.

I’m starting to have a bit more appreciation for online places where people work hard to keep the jerks at bay.

Thanks for all the input, everyone.

18

In my experience, there are 2 categories of jerks.

There are the knuckleheads who cheat to win, because they suck or otherwise delight in winning so much they’ll cheat to do it. These are the ones running aimbots and wallhacks mostly.

Then the other group are the griefers, whose whole goal is to basically fuck with other people in the interest of pissing them off and getting a rise out of them, because they think it’s funny. These are the guys running predator missile hacks and blowing the same guy up over and over until he quits the server.

19

I’m against the death penalty on moral grounds… but I’d be tempted to allow it in either of those cases.

20

Isn’t there a way to play Mario Kart with only friends? That would seem to me to be the best way of handling this for the time being. Heck, we could probably set up a thread for Dopers who like this game to share their friend codes. Since there’s no chat on Wii (right?), you wouldn’t even have to worry about censoring yourselves for kids.

And if any “friend” pulls this stuff, don’t play with them.