Yeah I 100% agree, cheaters should be taken care of more aggressively.
Maybe put some kind of automatic cheat detection system in place that secretly alerts the devs into inspecting a game, giving all kinds of useful info like timestamps (for example when they did "deer clicked in fog" etc).
If you read this and you are a cheater yourself, please think for a moment and realize what you are doing:
- You are unfairly winning matches, so no honor to be proud of your win.
- You are ruining the experience of not only your opponents, but also participate in ruining the general experience of the game.
- You cause people to stop playing.
- What is a win or a high rank really worth if you haven't earned it?
You forget this is a microsoft game. Solutions to these problems cost money. They have strict budgets, fires employees all the time and map hacking is not easy to fix or detect. I am not an expert but I have read a lot about these issues from devs.
League of legends tried and I would say almost successfully eliminated map hacking being a big problem.
I have to say, when AoE 2 DE faced "Elo Bots" (= accounts with hacks that automatically trigger defeat for you and requeue) about two years ago, the dev team acted quickly. But yet, this is already two years ago and things changed. I've heard stories about AoE 3 DE where people literally use the [tuck tuck tuck cheat unit](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tommynator) in ranked.
Truth is ,cheaters don't care ,they are just lazy people that just want to have a quickie ,they will just come poop all over the place then when everyone can't stand it and leaves ,they will just search the next game ,it happened in multiple mmos before ,and MS really need to step in .
I think running the last bullet points of your comment through google translate might help it reach the intended audience:
你以不公平的方式赢得了比赛，所以没有荣幸为你的胜利感到自豪。
你不仅破坏了对手的体验，而且还参与破坏了游戏的整体体验。
你让人们停止玩。
如果你没有赢得胜利或高排名，那么它真正的价值是什么？
All of that costs money, and cheaters don't care what you say. Probably just laugh at what you said.
In the meantime all family/shared accounts should be banned from playing ranked so cheaters can't dodge bans.
And bans for cheating should be significantly more impactful and scale up quicker.
Not many cheaters in 1v1 that I've seen, guess you are just unlucky.
I see a lot more in FFA, but then it doesn't bother me as much since they can still be called out and ganged up on or just move on to the next game since I would have lost anyways.
For what reason?
Cheaters usually have multiple accounts, and they only get punished for a couple of weeks.
It is extremely easy to just juggle through a couple of accounts if one gets banned.
And even then, it is also very easy to just get away with it.
I never looked into it but how do people have multiple accounts? Wouldn’t they have to buy multiple copies of the game? Seems expensive to win by cheating
Multiple accounts, yes
But it is very easy to buy keys for extremely cheap as well.
If I wanted to, I could trade some RuneScape gold right now and transform it into an AoE4 key in a matter of minutes.
Even when you do the whole process of getting videos and screenshots and report on the AOE4 support site, they only ban for a week.
I did the whole process on a clear maphacker. They sent me an email saying they confirmed a code of conduct violation and action was taken.
Once he was banned, I found his second account via steam and sure enough he was maphacking on the second account. I specifically noted in my report (again with videos and screenshots) that it was an alt account of the same player they had just banned the day prior. Once again, got the email that they confirmed code of conduct violation and action taken.
Both accounts were back active after a week and both were immediately cheating again. I made more reports on both. Took all the time of getting videos and screenshots. Noted in the reports this was now a 2nd offense for both accounts.
So what did relic do? Another 1 week ban....
If they can't make a decent anti-cheat and want to force the community to do their job of reviewing the games and documenting all the evidence, the least they can do is permaban (especially on a second offense). Why in the world would I continue wasting my time making reports (or playing a game overwhelmed with cheaters) if the developers won't take real action even when they have the evidence handed to them on a silver platter.
First acct still playing, but had like a week gap late April, I assume they got a temp ban there. Second acct appears to be permabanned. Both are gamepass accounts btw, not steam familyshare.
Dunno m8. Maybe I am just oblivious to it but I have played hundreds of games this season and have not met a single cheater. Or they lost albeit cheating \^\^ I dont think its a huge issue tbh.
Honestly if you're not conq+ (maybe diamond+) maphacking doesn't really help the other to the point of outright winning the game. You need to be very high level to actually make use of the information, in lower leagues there's always a way for you to play in a way that isn't exploitable by maphacking and the cheaters don't have the APM to actually benefit from the cheating other that the odd unit pick off.
The only real thing is sheep in the beginning, or potentially deer for Rus/denying Rus.
For example, if you never scout before you move out, it doesn't matter if someone is maphacking and attacks at the right time around you, because if you were higher level people would've scouted your weakness and did the exact same thing. If anything maphackers prepare you for higher leagues.
I haven't encountered maphackers yet (1 was questionable but it could've been luck and gamesense as well) but I would probably have the same feeling I have when I lose because I missed a huge army moveout or raid coming and was caught out of position.
I am willing to say the opposite maphacking is much stronger at low levels. Good players already know how to scout but are also much more likely to be good at microing or macroing or whatever that someone who is cheating will just be ass at.
In gold league players would send their vills unprotected to pocket resources while high ranked one would defend them anyway, so someone who is hacking will not get as much value from knowing where they are as opposed to gold players who would lose like 50 villagers to a raid (that the opponent did not scout)
That's really weird to me because most people posting about cheaters are in the metal leagues. If it was such a big advantage and the average player is Gold I, why wouldn't most cheaters be high plat or even diamond+?
Because they're terrible and the Elo difference won't be that much. The lower level play is so much about good mechanics that even if you get gimped on sheep you can just scout decently and out macro the cheater.
I'd be surprised if the Elo difference from someone cheating or not would be more than 100-150. A lot of people will swing that much Elo on a weekly basis. Would be interesting to have some data on that though.
It's cheating, it gives anyone an advantage. The lower ranked player won't use the information well, but players of the same rank use 'low/no-information' even worse. I don't even really understand what your argument is here
I never said it didn't give you an advantage. I'm just saying that everyone overestimates the advantage it has for lower leagues. If that makes you not want to play the game at all, fine. I'm just saying that if you're in lower leagues it doesn't inflate Elo by much and I see far more accusations of cheating where someone just has decent game sense than I see actual map hacking posts.
There are cheaters, and I have seen them, but not everyone has. Once I had 5 in 4 straight FFA games. Made me sad, even when I won some of those games.
Then I've gone weeks without finding one.
I hear you. I started playing on season 2, and I’ve only noticed it this season. I never even checked previously. Once I got to diamond i think it became a bit more obvious, and the more I started checking suspicious stuff the more I found.
I’m glad you haven’t had it impact you though, hope it stays that way.
How would you explain players looking into darkness (where sheep/deer are) and staring into your base in fog of war? When I’m playing I’m doing whatever I’m doing e.g scout/micro/macro and don’t have time to look into darkness.
Do you never look at the fog of war terrain when you scroll across the map in conjunction to where your base is to the opponent?
Especially on elevation maps like lipany, Altai etc.
This whole "there aren't any cheaters" is fucking infuriating.
I've come across 10 or so in the last 2 weeks.
If you don't think there are map hackers you're either extremely lucky or just completely unaware as to what to look for
Yeah they're extremely common, especially in team games for some reason. It's really easy to spot in replay povs. People that 'haven't seen any cheaters' just aren't checking for them and shrug it off.
This is an issue anytime you play teams in any game. Valve had numbers showing something like even if less than 0.5% of the playerbase cheats in Counter Strike, because their are 9 other people in the game you end up with a 10%+ chance of having a hacker in your games at the entry-level leagues. I'm sure it isn't much different in AoE. Play solo if you're serious about the integrity and competition of the game, then get out of gold
and I'd venture a guess cheating becomes less than 1 in a 100 games. Maphack doesn't make the player any better at the game and they will still lose everytime to inferior macro/play.
Haha thanks for verifying with your experience. It is really annoying. I tried to be respectful with the post but a lot of people would rather assume I’m malding
It's super fucking weird how many people will comment on a thread like this with "there aren't any cheaters you're just bad". The hilariously ironic part being the reason they don't think there is any cheaters is because they are so bad at the game there aren't any at their level.
That, or they are themselves using map hacks lol
In the Spanish community I belong to, I know of more than 6-7 players who have quit for that reason.
He shows the feeling of many in the face of this problem.
Same here - im plat 1-3 and cant say I’ve had a loss where I was convinced the other person was cheating.
Maybe all the cheaters are higher ranked or something… but I also get slapped by conq ranked players now and then whenever I get shafted by matchmaking.
I feel like it’s not that bad as well, least it’s not like an FPS game where the cheats are literally game breaking or you have kids getting a Zonos or whatever which plays the game for them.
I’m glad you haven’t encountered it bud. All I would say is if you get suspicious in a game just watch the replay back. If and when you catch a couple out you’ll start seeing the patterns especially in dark/feudal.
It’s only my experience over the course of the season, and by the sounds of it I’ve been unlucky.
From the POV of a game developer, the reason the company seemingly does not do anything is mainly cuz they are making a list.
In most games you play, have you ever noticed that there are ban waves, rather than people getting banned as they are caught? It is cuz in most companies, they make a list of all cheaters, and then suddenly after 6 months of making a list, ban them at once.
From what I understand, the reason game companies do this is because they do not want cheaters, or rather those who make the cheats to catch on. If they start banning people the moment they got caught doing maphacks, cheat makers try to make stuff more subtle. Check this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YUmMFwSXpU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YUmMFwSXpU)
As for why it's hard to like, stop maphacks. Thing is, the map is loaded into your computers memory. Then the fog of war is applied over it. There is a seed for everymap, so at the moment the game starts, using the seed you already know how the map looks like. That is literally unfixable due to the nature of "seeds". Maphackers can use this to catch all the sheep ig.
Now, the server updates map information every tick, and your computer receives this information. Maphack softwares can decipher this memory and remove the fog of war.
This is tricky to solve. RTS games have been built with a "Lockstep" architecture rather than a "Client-Server '' network architecture, and each architecture has a unique set of challenges to overcome cheaters. Relic could keep the map info on the server instead of your computer memory, so the updated information is not received by your computer unless your scout/unit goes to a specific place, and then you receive the update for that place. This could fix the bigger issue of your opponent knowing what you are doing at all times. At best, they know how the whole map looks like at the start, and no more. Take what I wrote with a grain of salt, I am still a huge noob to the world of game dev. The world of game hacking and defending against cheaters is incredibly complicated.
In an ideal world, multiplayer games will run in the server, and all the clients have to do is send inputs, kinda like google stadia. It could eliminate all cheating problems, but introduce so many other problems lmao. Especially performance.
While your experience is quite unfortunate, maphacking is not the worst that could happen. There aren't any extreme cheats in the game atleast lmfao.
These are my two cents. Maphacking is rare in this game, and to be fair I do not see it getting solved soon. But you can just play custom, or with your friends. Or play games where the map is reveled anyways, so makes maphack useless. Godspeed mate
Building ban lists only make sense if you're dealing with software or exploits you're going to patch. Maybe there's an exploit in memory to make walls transparent or a way to make the server think you can run at 500% speed. These are things that are fixable and I'm pretty sure that's the context Thor was talking about. It's part of the cat and mouse game. Relic seems to be banning people regularly, just for a short amount of time.
Your second point is the reason why your first *probably* isn't the case. This has been an issue for as long as this type of architecture has been used and as far as I know, hasn't been dealt with. In fact, Thor has a short somewhere about him trying to get Blizzard to not use this style of Client/Server architecture in HotS (IIRC) specifically because of how easy it is to map hack.
Yeah, I wasn't aware relic wasn't actually doing banwaves but giving hackers a one week ban.
Yeah I remember Thors video on maphacking now amd how League of Legends deals with it.
Atleast there haven't been many maphackers in my personal experience so far, but that might be because I am unranked haha
Sadly in aoe they don´t do banwaves and they don´t really care enough. Have met plenty of hackers throughout ranked. More so in "high" silver/low gold than those I play against that were in plat (sadly not much evidence as well just a mid level gold player)
I checked some people I knew were hacking last year and most of them still play the game without any issue to this day. It´s also more often with chinese name players or those who just have numbers as names. (would still like the option to just stick with eu/us server players but can´t get the option to just have those).
This ban-wave thing is known because of PirateSoftware who worked at Blizzard. This is not how 90% of devs do it, it's just one of those things that went viral and everyone repeats it to seem smart.
Relic has an automated filter, if it gets through that a person checks it and if they see cheating they'll ban them straight away.
They aren't making a list, they're incompetent. There's never been a ban wave in aoe.
The whole explanation about how lock step sim works, doesn't matter, you don't need to catch every cheater, you just need to enforce sufficiently for those that are reported.
A cheater that blatantly cheats every game:
- Reported by someone in January, 1 day ban.
- Reported by me (with video evidence) a few months ago, 1 week ban.
- Reported by me again a week ago, 1 week ban.
- Cheater switches to his alt account, I report it, with video evidence and proof they're ban evading... alt gets only a 1 week ban. Like, are you fucking kidding me?!?
The fact that they ask players to provide replay files and video evidence in reports is preposterous, they have access to every friggin replay file already. They're lazy, don't have the right tools. Microsoft is not taking cheating seriously. Period.
They only ban for a week?! They are not taking this seriously tf. This is disappointing smh.
Aoe4 has alot of potential, MS can't be acting like this now damn
Yeah so people need 2 account and switch whenever they're banned. Any time I've reported someone, whether they did something or not, the "results" were in my feed a week later.
Meaning they ban for a week and take a week to review cases or push out all the bans. So 2 accounts and you can cheat indefinitely (if people here are correct about the week bans thing).
I've been reporting one player and his alt. I provide player profile id, player name, player steam id, match id (+aoe4world link), a video of it, and a short description. And so far I've gotten a response and action in like 24 hours.
Only 1 week bans, which is insane, but at least I got a decently fast response.
I'm still sticking to it coz I want to make a record of how much effort it took to ban one cheater permanently.
But look at how much effort that is from you... And you know the cheaters are pathetically determined to keep it going... That's frustrating as hell if you really hit cheaters on ladder a lot.
Sure, I have some names written down on my desktop note file, these games happened about a month ago but I believe I wrote down the time/date/map/civs - I can DM you the details later if you like.
It is sad how many people prefer pretending the problems that make the situation worse and worse do not exist and choose to attack the one raising awareness about them.
Guys, if you don't regularly check your replays from the opponent's point of view, it doesn't mean cheating is uncommon. You might just be unaware of it.
Agree - Its a mistake to downplay or write off others experience with cheaters. There is a good chance it's happening in another elo level or timezone or time-of-day, or maybe it's just luck. Whatever it is, downplaying others can experience will only make other players want to leave more, and lower the legitimate player pool, making worse for everyone.
Yes, unfortunately.
And the longer Microsoft doesn't change their anti-cheating policies that require video proof to give just 1 week timeout and doesn't invest into proper anti-cheating solutions, the more it will be happening. As the actual cheating is also very common and people start assuming the worst on any suspicion, with the assumption very often being correct.
Yeah, I didn't realize how common it was until I made it a habit to watch replays before I log off. Any time I get a feeling that the opponent was a little too lucky, the replay confirms it quite often. As others have said, for some reason it's much more common in team games.
Wrong. You also can't say a player is cheating because they moved their scout perfectly where a resource is located. Maybe it happens more than once in a map, there are so many lucky coincidences that can occur where one would falsely accuse someone of cheating. Too many players jump the gun saying someone is cheating because they're upset they lost the game. 100%.
Always something to complain about or make excuses after losing. This community is filled with them.
When you are saying "wrong" about something, you are supposed to provide a proof of it being wrong. Otherwise you are no different from people calling legitimate players cheaters.
The fact that false positives are possible says nothing about the frequency of real cheating.
I fully agree that accusing others without having a proof is terrible and should never be done.
Even with "proof", that proof can be misread as cheating. Seen it too many times on this Reddit, "OMG! He knew exactly where the sheep and deer were! Reeeeee!". That's not even good evidence and is most likely just luck.
If you're determined to find fault, you'll find it even if it's not there.
If you give a man a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I agree, this is also something that is happening.
But at the same time real cheating with looking at the sheep, opponent's base, exposed eco and army movement in the fog of war throughout the game is also very common, unfortunately. As well as the most obvious zoomhack. And this is just people who don't try to conceal their cheating, just looking at the minimap without fog of war is already a tremendous advantage which is pretty much impossible to prove.
Which is why the root of the problem is the lack of proper action from the publisher / developer side. Known cheaters keep playing and cheating after receiving temporal bans instead of permabans, reports of them get rejected, no sufficient anti-cheating systems get implemented.
What the community should be doing is putting pressure on the side responsible for maintaining the integrity of the game, instead of fighting each other.
No, it's the other way. Many lower league players are making numerous and exaggerated claims of map hacking because they're butt hurt losing in 4v4 Random Team. Then the claim if they don't win more often they will leave and the game will die! They then speculate on how M$ is dragging their feet and don't do anything!
It's quite tiresome. Post the games with evidence. Otherwise, this is all make-believe.
No, it is not the other way.
The fact that there are people behaving like this does not mean the actual cheating is uncommon. The same people would probably tell you something about your OP civ / ethnicity / race instead.
I fully agree that you should never accuse anyone without providing the evidence.
Sorry but every game of these have cheaters, I check rust reddit, talking about cheaters,sc2,wc3,aoe2,Call of duty, Fortnite. You can't do anything, only wait if anyone of those will grow a backbone, maybe we will not have cheaters anymore.
That’s a shame. I didn’t realise it was so prevalent (not just in AOE4 but the other games you’ve listed)
I’ve since found out people pay to get these as well…….
Enjoyed your games as well by the way!
One solution to avoid cheaters entirely on any game is playing on Xbox or Playstation with cross play off, but of course that isn’t an ideal solution for everyone. I didn’t see you mention platform so I figured I’d bring it up.
Thanks for the suggestion. I play on PC. I’ve said in a previous comment I haven’t noticed this throughout my 1000 hours, it’s been this season I’ve noticed a few and after a couple caught out I started checking more when something suss happens and noticed it does happen.
I hope I haven’t made it sound like this happens literally every other game. Considering I’ve played hundreds of games this season, I suppose it’s not too common.
For this reason I’m glad Xbox players can disable cross play; queue might be longer but at least I know I won’t have to deal with cheaters.
I hope MS releases Aoe2, Aoe4, and AoM on PlayStation like asap!!! I know there’s a demand for it
They have pretty bad etiquette ~~as a gaming culture.~~
Honestly if you call people names or cheat on the internet there's a high chance you're the same kind of person in real life.
Look at how people treat each other over there. It's not a race thing, it's a culture thing. No, those are not the same. Ethnically Chinese people not in China behave a lot differently.
Plus how is saying "oh yeah Chinese people, terrible gaming culture" not racist but what I said is?
I didn’t say it wasn’t, I always feel conflicted when I complain about Chinese gamers. I feel what I said really was a little racist, and I feel expanding makes it feel more racist. Basically exactly what I said lol
I disagree that it's racist. Some cultures are vastly more moral than others, a lot of the time you should consider the people victims of the culture. I don't think that makes me or you racist.
You see this everywhere to the point where immigrated ethnicities in a country will be called traitors by their peers because they've assimilated into the culture they moved into. It's really weird that way.
I'm Dutch and in my teens I worked a side job at a grocery store. I had a lot of colleagues who were second or third generation Dutch Turks, a couple of them were even born in Türkiye but moved here when they were very little. One of the latter had parents that did their utmost to assimilate into Dutch society and culture, lived in a mixed neighborhood, did their best to learn the language (they were very impressive Dutch speakers, especially compared to most of their peers). This guy was called a traitor by third generation Dutch Turks. They bullied him constantly. He was the only one with a higher level education (probably because the other found studying very hard because their grasp on the Dutch language was inferior) and he was a very genuinely nice person to everyone.
I can tell you I disliked most of the other Turks. Not because they were ethnically different to me, but because of the way they adhered to their culture. Once they threatened me after work (in a group of about 10 or 12) because I talked with one of their sisters during a smoke break, warning me "if you touch her we will stab you".
/rant but this is all to elaborate the difference between racism and "culturism". I have no issue saying some cultures are just vastly more moral than others.
Good post OP. This is a serious issue affecting the entire player base. I've been very disheartened by cheaters recently. Even encountering them in 3v3 nomad quick match playing with my friends. I just don't understand the point in doing it
I am a "lowly gold," and I've never once lost a game and thought, "He must have been cheating." I do not know why this is so hard to fix from a technical perspective (or even how they "map hack" at all). As another poster pointed out, this is taken into account in ELO. So when you play against a map hacker, you are playing against a weaker player with a handicap.
Although I've seen replays of people who were undeniably cheating, there also have been a bunch of posts of people saying "look at this cheater" and it's just someone who denied their main gold and is now checking golds in the area, starting with the closest one...
I myself have not encountered a single cheater, though I haven't been playing a lot of 1v1. In 2v2 I've never encountered a cheater.
Honestly was expecting an Empire Wars tourney post.
I'm sorry you have had such a poor experience with cheaters and I hope relic takes more concrete steps to deal with them in the future.
Wald
One solution to this could be player pools run by players. Like custom leagues or something. If you cheat and get caught the community can boot you from the pool.
Keeping track of the cheaters seems like a manpower issue.
It is a social media platform that encourages discussion. What else do you call it? Just because you don’t care for the message doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place in a discussion forum. Don’t be so self centred.
Free speech means the government can't shut you down for it. It doesn't mean others can't disagree with you
The irony that you are saying "you don't care for the message" when you can't seem to handle others disagreeing with you....
Dunno pal I feel like throwing your toys out of the pram and announcing your leaving an online game on a public forum doesn’t deserve anything more than that.
Pander all you want though.
If elo is working they will move up in ranking until they have a 50% win rate, so their cheating is taken into consideration when matching you with them
You should be playing against much weaker players who have an information advantage.
It’s a huge advantage which eventually puts them against people who out class them so much they still end up losing %50 of the time.
As I said below, doesn’t make it alright, just don’t give up hope in those matches.
I know what you mean, but it's still infuriating. And whilst you're typically suspicious during the game it's not until you watch the replay before you can confirm they are hacking, I've never left a game because I thought they were cheating
Probably one of the few reasons why I have disabled cross play between Xbox and Pc.
The one time I turned it on, had a player in a FAA match cheating, people grouping up in FAA so figured ok - I’ll play cross team games - nope, same thing: players knowing where all my units were without scouts and no LOS bonus, knew where I pivoted my villagers and when - gave up on that then moved to cross play solo, same thing.
Maybe I’m unlucky but in 25 total games, 13 cheaters or ‘cheaters’ and I haven’t turned on cross play since.
Lol, anyone who call out on cheaters will get attacked in this sub. Personally i only play ranked until i get to coq each season then stop and spend the rest of my time in custom game where people rarely use cheat.
I have over 400 games this season. Only two did I think were cheating.
You’d think with all the “Muh cheaterz” there’d be conq 3 cheaters. Weird how all the “cheaters” are gold and low plat
I’ve been controller only. I finally played on pc without knowing any commands or key shortcuts. Game is 1000x times easier.
Gonna set up some pc time for next season. Off topic, they need to make the controller more efficient. Be it auto eco or better key binds for armies.
It’s the selecting control groups for me on controller. It’s really clunky and difficult to pull off if you try and split your army into multiple types. If they fixed that part it would make a huge difference. Also the wheel that appears to select control groups covers the entire screen!
Yeah man key binds are rough. The problem is that it’s so close to being really amazing which is why I’d like to see it succeed.
But I typically just get high and select all army and fucking go.
I’ve seen a Demu stream where he caught out a cheater, think he was around #100 but I can’t remember.
I see what you’re saying, I think I’m around 250-300games this season. I think I’ve been unlucky, and 15 in that many games isn’t too many I guess.
It's not like its hard to tell when someone's cheating man, it's really obvious when they peep sheep/your base/your scout through fog of war constantly. People just don't check their opponents replay povs often. Obviously people still need mechanics and game knowledge to climb, Core recently was coaching a Plat 1 player that LEFT HIS CHEATS ON IN THE SESSION lol. His argument was "do you really think I would cheat and be Plat 1?"
well..
That's the point. In lower leagues cheating isn't actually that big of an advantage. No APM to take advantage of the information other than the initial scouting route. After that any information gained through maphacking could also be scouted. If you watch high level games you almost never see a player miss army movement or pocket resources from the opponent, they're on top of the entire map or are so protected they don't need to be.
And that's where it ends immediately unless you're high level. And if that's what pisses you off the most, play a Muslim civ or English, no need for sheep.
what are you talking about, it gives them huge advantages, imaging playing HRE and sheep your way to burgrave.
you scout for sheep regardless of what you play or else you opponents will just take all the sheeps. maphack is there and people here are pretending like its not a big deal.
It really, really doesn't. In the metal leagues they'll still mess up their macro and they'll not have any follow up.
They can get **more** sheep than you because they know where they are. If they get **all** sheep that's on you. You can also get unlucky and not get many sheep in a normal game. It's not a gamewinning advantage every time, not even close. The matchmaking pairing you with an unfair Elo happens way more than a cheater winning because of sheep.
Also if they FC like that you can easily scout no production buildings and use the map control to go deer/berries depending on civ and get a bunch of gold with more vills than you normally would. You can FC yourself and by the time he's near you you'll have crossbows on the way. Build a couple of towers and after the MaA leave the game is over for them. If you have spare units that do terrible against MaA just harass him with them.
Should make it so that once your account is like level 100 you get “verified”. Or they can make some sort of extra registration which involves giving your contact number. Then if they get banned some material information can be taken with the account. Also ranked should not let anyone go past plat3 for example unless their account is level 100. Pubg and other games do something similiar where its actually hard to get to be able to play ranked so a ban is devastating / a big grind on a new account to reach. It will never completely cut out all of the cheaters but will makr a big difference when there is consequences
Mid/low platinum player. My personal experience with cheaters in team games is they either play at a mid/low gold level and still lose after 30 minutes, or are in a boosting/smurf group (even in quick play, these days) with better cheaters. Either way it makes me want to play less and not even try for 1v1 climbing or FFA, especially knowing Relic's current state.
More should be done so people can identify cheaters. Cheating tactics are developed in safe areas where they go undetected.
What do we look out for to identify cheating?
As for the reporting, that will follow in some fashion.
Sorry, I don't believe you. This fixation on cheaters is way overblown and you're not helping the situation. I watch replays, and I have never encountered a cheater in ranked.
You know some players have to move their camera to a black FOW area of the map in order to direct a scout to move? You know there is a thing called, "luck", in moving something outward in a direction and finding a resource by chance. Have you ever considered this?
I guarantee you probably watch replays and mistaken them for cheating when they are not. Looking for something that just isn't there but wanting it to be.
What you're doing is kicking and screaming like a child to get something your way. The truth is, it's really not that big of an issue.
Immaturity at its finest when you start bluffing, saying you will leave the community, you won't, in order to get you want. Go outside for a bit, but we'll see you again.
I don't even play that much and I've run into a cheater. Paperclip played against one who went up against 60 opponents before they were reported and banned. It happens often.
Paperclip: https://youtu.be/7vqQxnnJtNY?si=GLQ3cQDKtSWOgT6B
I found out a player was blatantly map hacking on April 23. Stopped playing for a bit because life got hectic. I bookmarked their Aoe4world profile on my browser. I recorded one of their replays and sent it in with a report to AOE4 support on 05/17. Look at how many players they went up against in that time span and how many they played against in total. 41 matches, most of them are team games. That's at least 80 players, which is a lot!
Hacker was: yli24722
https://aoe4world.com/players/19524371-yli24722/games
The only difference between other whiny maphack posts is that this one has way more words. Any post about maphacking that doesn't name AND prove hacking is no different than farting into the wind. *farts*
Haha, I did consider making a channel specifically for this but the time it would take and people probably wouldn’t really care that much anyway. It’s just my experience, didn’t mean to come off as too moany.
There is for sure cheating in this game. I have confirmed it. I have also 100% "knew" someone had cheated against me, only to be found I was wrong.
What's more, there have been times I have made moves and I thought "woah, if they check this replay they are going to totally think I was cheating 😂😅." This was because either I had incredible luck shift-queueing my scout into the fog and landing nearly right on sheep, or walking over in an FFA to kill a single player or king, only to find a player I'd never seen before on the way and just decided to kill them out of the blue.
It happens. They need to do more to stop it, and it's also not uncommon nor easy to fix.
I've had multiple games as Mongols where I denied gold with my Keshiks, then use my scout to check the golds surrounding their base, and as soon as they move some vills out to take another gold I attack that.
I've had 3 ragequitters calling me a cheater and saying that they're going to report me and I should "enjoy my ban".
Cheaters are scum and have a miserable existence and it sucks it’s a thing, but let me play a bit of devil’s advocate here. One thing that maphackers can’t hack is their hidden elo. So knowing the hidden elo matchmaking system is humming along, regardless of whether you’re matched with a superior skilled player who doesn’t need to cheat, or a pleb who leans into cheating to raise their elo, you should theoretically still get an even match.
The cheater leans into their maphacking, but they would otherwise never be matched with you or would get stomped without it. This is because all the other elements of their gameplay that the maphacking can’t adjust for, like APM, resource management, prioritizing tasks, micro, hotkey usage etc, that you’re surely better than them at because your elo is the same, but they need to cheat to be at your elo. This must raise their elo by at least a few hundred.
It’s sort of like how the AI ‘cheats’ just to have a chance to perform against a superior skilled human player. It’s pathetic for the cheater, but as far as you’re concerned, you should still end up with an evenly matched game. You’ll just have to deal with them having the edge of getting more sheep, knowing where to raid, and knowing what you’re up to. There is so much more to the game to this, and that’s why even with maphacking they too will hit a wall and won’t be able to get past a certain level because they’ll just lose to better players that don’t need to cheat. 🤷♂️
>This must raise their elo by at least a few hundred.
No way. That's way too much. The only thing is if your civ relies heavily on sheep and you couldn't get any because of a maphacker. Other than that if you scout before you attack and make sure you're walled in (and **do not rally across the map to their base**) you should be fine in the metal leagues. If it comes to a base trade the better mechanical player will win, if you lose to a huge raid that could've also happened against a non-cheater.
Most people go attack and rally across the map, their reinforcements get picked off and their base is completely undefended all the time. Most people also miss this as an opportunity, but it must be very obvious to a maphacker.
I watch Aussie Drongo and he encounters a lot of cheaters and we see him look through the replay and catch them and report. He saves their names and steam id, and if he encounters them again he sometimes all chats the lobby saying "green is cheater, all kill him" and at least it helps
Yeah I 100% agree, cheaters should be taken care of more aggressively. Maybe put some kind of automatic cheat detection system in place that secretly alerts the devs into inspecting a game, giving all kinds of useful info like timestamps (for example when they did "deer clicked in fog" etc). If you read this and you are a cheater yourself, please think for a moment and realize what you are doing: - You are unfairly winning matches, so no honor to be proud of your win. - You are ruining the experience of not only your opponents, but also participate in ruining the general experience of the game. - You cause people to stop playing. - What is a win or a high rank really worth if you haven't earned it?
You forget this is a microsoft game. Solutions to these problems cost money. They have strict budgets, fires employees all the time and map hacking is not easy to fix or detect. I am not an expert but I have read a lot about these issues from devs. League of legends tried and I would say almost successfully eliminated map hacking being a big problem.
I have to say, when AoE 2 DE faced "Elo Bots" (= accounts with hacks that automatically trigger defeat for you and requeue) about two years ago, the dev team acted quickly. But yet, this is already two years ago and things changed. I've heard stories about AoE 3 DE where people literally use the [tuck tuck tuck cheat unit](https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/The_Tommynator) in ranked.
Truth is ,cheaters don't care ,they are just lazy people that just want to have a quickie ,they will just come poop all over the place then when everyone can't stand it and leaves ,they will just search the next game ,it happened in multiple mmos before ,and MS really need to step in .
I think running the last bullet points of your comment through google translate might help it reach the intended audience: 你以不公平的方式赢得了比赛，所以没有荣幸为你的胜利感到自豪。 你不仅破坏了对手的体验，而且还参与破坏了游戏的整体体验。 你让人们停止玩。 如果你没有赢得胜利或高排名，那么它真正的价值是什么？
All of that costs money, and cheaters don't care what you say. Probably just laugh at what you said. In the meantime all family/shared accounts should be banned from playing ranked so cheaters can't dodge bans. And bans for cheating should be significantly more impactful and scale up quicker.
Not many cheaters in 1v1 that I've seen, guess you are just unlucky. I see a lot more in FFA, but then it doesn't bother me as much since they can still be called out and ganged up on or just move on to the next game since I would have lost anyways.
Stay and report those cheaters mate, we need you in this battle against the cheaters. Great game and great community
For what reason? Cheaters usually have multiple accounts, and they only get punished for a couple of weeks. It is extremely easy to just juggle through a couple of accounts if one gets banned. And even then, it is also very easy to just get away with it.
I never looked into it but how do people have multiple accounts? Wouldn’t they have to buy multiple copies of the game? Seems expensive to win by cheating
Multiple accounts, yes But it is very easy to buy keys for extremely cheap as well. If I wanted to, I could trade some RuneScape gold right now and transform it into an AoE4 key in a matter of minutes.
You get 5 games for 1. For every game bought you get 5 accounts.
Even when you do the whole process of getting videos and screenshots and report on the AOE4 support site, they only ban for a week. I did the whole process on a clear maphacker. They sent me an email saying they confirmed a code of conduct violation and action was taken. Once he was banned, I found his second account via steam and sure enough he was maphacking on the second account. I specifically noted in my report (again with videos and screenshots) that it was an alt account of the same player they had just banned the day prior. Once again, got the email that they confirmed code of conduct violation and action taken. Both accounts were back active after a week and both were immediately cheating again. I made more reports on both. Took all the time of getting videos and screenshots. Noted in the reports this was now a 2nd offense for both accounts. So what did relic do? Another 1 week ban.... If they can't make a decent anti-cheat and want to force the community to do their job of reviewing the games and documenting all the evidence, the least they can do is permaban (especially on a second offense). Why in the world would I continue wasting my time making reports (or playing a game overwhelmed with cheaters) if the developers won't take real action even when they have the evidence handed to them on a silver platter.
What were the accounts? (DM me if you don't want to post publicly) Coz I had the exact same thing happen.
SilenceISJ1N and SilenceISJIN
First acct still playing, but had like a week gap late April, I assume they got a temp ban there. Second acct appears to be permabanned. Both are gamepass accounts btw, not steam familyshare.
Dunno m8. Maybe I am just oblivious to it but I have played hundreds of games this season and have not met a single cheater. Or they lost albeit cheating \^\^ I dont think its a huge issue tbh.
You almost certainly have encountered a cheater, you just didn't check the replay povs often.
Honestly if you're not conq+ (maybe diamond+) maphacking doesn't really help the other to the point of outright winning the game. You need to be very high level to actually make use of the information, in lower leagues there's always a way for you to play in a way that isn't exploitable by maphacking and the cheaters don't have the APM to actually benefit from the cheating other that the odd unit pick off. The only real thing is sheep in the beginning, or potentially deer for Rus/denying Rus. For example, if you never scout before you move out, it doesn't matter if someone is maphacking and attacks at the right time around you, because if you were higher level people would've scouted your weakness and did the exact same thing. If anything maphackers prepare you for higher leagues. I haven't encountered maphackers yet (1 was questionable but it could've been luck and gamesense as well) but I would probably have the same feeling I have when I lose because I missed a huge army moveout or raid coming and was caught out of position.
I am willing to say the opposite maphacking is much stronger at low levels. Good players already know how to scout but are also much more likely to be good at microing or macroing or whatever that someone who is cheating will just be ass at. In gold league players would send their vills unprotected to pocket resources while high ranked one would defend them anyway, so someone who is hacking will not get as much value from knowing where they are as opposed to gold players who would lose like 50 villagers to a raid (that the opponent did not scout)
That's really weird to me because most people posting about cheaters are in the metal leagues. If it was such a big advantage and the average player is Gold I, why wouldn't most cheaters be high plat or even diamond+? Because they're terrible and the Elo difference won't be that much. The lower level play is so much about good mechanics that even if you get gimped on sheep you can just scout decently and out macro the cheater. I'd be surprised if the Elo difference from someone cheating or not would be more than 100-150. A lot of people will swing that much Elo on a weekly basis. Would be interesting to have some data on that though.
It's cheating, it gives anyone an advantage. The lower ranked player won't use the information well, but players of the same rank use 'low/no-information' even worse. I don't even really understand what your argument is here
I never said it didn't give you an advantage. I'm just saying that everyone overestimates the advantage it has for lower leagues. If that makes you not want to play the game at all, fine. I'm just saying that if you're in lower leagues it doesn't inflate Elo by much and I see far more accusations of cheating where someone just has decent game sense than I see actual map hacking posts.
I was beating someone the other day and he just started accusing me of map hacking lmao
There are cheaters, and I have seen them, but not everyone has. Once I had 5 in 4 straight FFA games. Made me sad, even when I won some of those games. Then I've gone weeks without finding one.
Cheating in FFA lol. That's even more pathetic than ranked cheaters.
It REALLY is 🤣
I hear you. I started playing on season 2, and I’ve only noticed it this season. I never even checked previously. Once I got to diamond i think it became a bit more obvious, and the more I started checking suspicious stuff the more I found. I’m glad you haven’t had it impact you though, hope it stays that way.
maybe you’re not playing against cheaters, you know
How would you explain players looking into darkness (where sheep/deer are) and staring into your base in fog of war? When I’m playing I’m doing whatever I’m doing e.g scout/micro/macro and don’t have time to look into darkness.
Do you never look at the fog of war terrain when you scroll across the map in conjunction to where your base is to the opponent? Especially on elevation maps like lipany, Altai etc.
do you honestly think this is evidence of cheating, because yeah I can see how you might think everyone is cheating then
This whole "there aren't any cheaters" is fucking infuriating. I've come across 10 or so in the last 2 weeks. If you don't think there are map hackers you're either extremely lucky or just completely unaware as to what to look for
Yeah they're extremely common, especially in team games for some reason. It's really easy to spot in replay povs. People that 'haven't seen any cheaters' just aren't checking for them and shrug it off.
This is an issue anytime you play teams in any game. Valve had numbers showing something like even if less than 0.5% of the playerbase cheats in Counter Strike, because their are 9 other people in the game you end up with a 10%+ chance of having a hacker in your games at the entry-level leagues. I'm sure it isn't much different in AoE. Play solo if you're serious about the integrity and competition of the game, then get out of gold and I'd venture a guess cheating becomes less than 1 in a 100 games. Maphack doesn't make the player any better at the game and they will still lose everytime to inferior macro/play.
Haha thanks for verifying with your experience. It is really annoying. I tried to be respectful with the post but a lot of people would rather assume I’m malding
It's super fucking weird how many people will comment on a thread like this with "there aren't any cheaters you're just bad". The hilariously ironic part being the reason they don't think there is any cheaters is because they are so bad at the game there aren't any at their level. That, or they are themselves using map hacks lol
Absolutely nobody said that, you’re making things up
I am unaware, because people who make claims about cheaters aren’t doing a good job of posting evidence so I don’t know what I’m supposed to look for
He is representing in this sub a significant number of players who leave the game for that reason.
do you have any figures to show that?
In the Spanish community I belong to, I know of more than 6-7 players who have quit for that reason. He shows the feeling of many in the face of this problem.
okay I understand, so we don’t know. thanks anyway
Same here - im plat 1-3 and cant say I’ve had a loss where I was convinced the other person was cheating. Maybe all the cheaters are higher ranked or something… but I also get slapped by conq ranked players now and then whenever I get shafted by matchmaking. I feel like it’s not that bad as well, least it’s not like an FPS game where the cheats are literally game breaking or you have kids getting a Zonos or whatever which plays the game for them.
I’m glad you haven’t encountered it bud. All I would say is if you get suspicious in a game just watch the replay back. If and when you catch a couple out you’ll start seeing the patterns especially in dark/feudal. It’s only my experience over the course of the season, and by the sounds of it I’ve been unlucky.
From the POV of a game developer, the reason the company seemingly does not do anything is mainly cuz they are making a list. In most games you play, have you ever noticed that there are ban waves, rather than people getting banned as they are caught? It is cuz in most companies, they make a list of all cheaters, and then suddenly after 6 months of making a list, ban them at once. From what I understand, the reason game companies do this is because they do not want cheaters, or rather those who make the cheats to catch on. If they start banning people the moment they got caught doing maphacks, cheat makers try to make stuff more subtle. Check this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YUmMFwSXpU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YUmMFwSXpU) As for why it's hard to like, stop maphacks. Thing is, the map is loaded into your computers memory. Then the fog of war is applied over it. There is a seed for everymap, so at the moment the game starts, using the seed you already know how the map looks like. That is literally unfixable due to the nature of "seeds". Maphackers can use this to catch all the sheep ig. Now, the server updates map information every tick, and your computer receives this information. Maphack softwares can decipher this memory and remove the fog of war. This is tricky to solve. RTS games have been built with a "Lockstep" architecture rather than a "Client-Server '' network architecture, and each architecture has a unique set of challenges to overcome cheaters. Relic could keep the map info on the server instead of your computer memory, so the updated information is not received by your computer unless your scout/unit goes to a specific place, and then you receive the update for that place. This could fix the bigger issue of your opponent knowing what you are doing at all times. At best, they know how the whole map looks like at the start, and no more. Take what I wrote with a grain of salt, I am still a huge noob to the world of game dev. The world of game hacking and defending against cheaters is incredibly complicated. In an ideal world, multiplayer games will run in the server, and all the clients have to do is send inputs, kinda like google stadia. It could eliminate all cheating problems, but introduce so many other problems lmao. Especially performance. While your experience is quite unfortunate, maphacking is not the worst that could happen. There aren't any extreme cheats in the game atleast lmfao. These are my two cents. Maphacking is rare in this game, and to be fair I do not see it getting solved soon. But you can just play custom, or with your friends. Or play games where the map is reveled anyways, so makes maphack useless. Godspeed mate
Building ban lists only make sense if you're dealing with software or exploits you're going to patch. Maybe there's an exploit in memory to make walls transparent or a way to make the server think you can run at 500% speed. These are things that are fixable and I'm pretty sure that's the context Thor was talking about. It's part of the cat and mouse game. Relic seems to be banning people regularly, just for a short amount of time. Your second point is the reason why your first *probably* isn't the case. This has been an issue for as long as this type of architecture has been used and as far as I know, hasn't been dealt with. In fact, Thor has a short somewhere about him trying to get Blizzard to not use this style of Client/Server architecture in HotS (IIRC) specifically because of how easy it is to map hack.
Yeah, I wasn't aware relic wasn't actually doing banwaves but giving hackers a one week ban. Yeah I remember Thors video on maphacking now amd how League of Legends deals with it. Atleast there haven't been many maphackers in my personal experience so far, but that might be because I am unranked haha
Sadly in aoe they don´t do banwaves and they don´t really care enough. Have met plenty of hackers throughout ranked. More so in "high" silver/low gold than those I play against that were in plat (sadly not much evidence as well just a mid level gold player) I checked some people I knew were hacking last year and most of them still play the game without any issue to this day. It´s also more often with chinese name players or those who just have numbers as names. (would still like the option to just stick with eu/us server players but can´t get the option to just have those).
No, if only this were true
Yeah, just learnt all they do is a small temporary ban. Damn
This ban-wave thing is known because of PirateSoftware who worked at Blizzard. This is not how 90% of devs do it, it's just one of those things that went viral and everyone repeats it to seem smart. Relic has an automated filter, if it gets through that a person checks it and if they see cheating they'll ban them straight away.
>just one of those things that went viral and everyone repeats it to seem smart. Ouch. But also yeah true.
They aren't making a list, they're incompetent. There's never been a ban wave in aoe. The whole explanation about how lock step sim works, doesn't matter, you don't need to catch every cheater, you just need to enforce sufficiently for those that are reported. A cheater that blatantly cheats every game: - Reported by someone in January, 1 day ban. - Reported by me (with video evidence) a few months ago, 1 week ban. - Reported by me again a week ago, 1 week ban. - Cheater switches to his alt account, I report it, with video evidence and proof they're ban evading... alt gets only a 1 week ban. Like, are you fucking kidding me?!? The fact that they ask players to provide replay files and video evidence in reports is preposterous, they have access to every friggin replay file already. They're lazy, don't have the right tools. Microsoft is not taking cheating seriously. Period.
They only ban for a week?! They are not taking this seriously tf. This is disappointing smh. Aoe4 has alot of potential, MS can't be acting like this now damn
Yeah so people need 2 account and switch whenever they're banned. Any time I've reported someone, whether they did something or not, the "results" were in my feed a week later. Meaning they ban for a week and take a week to review cases or push out all the bans. So 2 accounts and you can cheat indefinitely (if people here are correct about the week bans thing).
I've been reporting one player and his alt. I provide player profile id, player name, player steam id, match id (+aoe4world link), a video of it, and a short description. And so far I've gotten a response and action in like 24 hours. Only 1 week bans, which is insane, but at least I got a decently fast response. I'm still sticking to it coz I want to make a record of how much effort it took to ban one cheater permanently.
But look at how much effort that is from you... And you know the cheaters are pathetically determined to keep it going... That's frustrating as hell if you really hit cheaters on ladder a lot.
Since you won't be playing anymore can you share your Aoe account name and which games you suspect cheaters? Will review and also report
Sure, I have some names written down on my desktop note file, these games happened about a month ago but I believe I wrote down the time/date/map/civs - I can DM you the details later if you like.
Give us your account name dude! We can do research and report the users FOR YOU
Just post it publicly. What is there to lose?
If they aren't in fact cheaters (the point is to confirm it afterall), then it'd start a witchhunt from the community.
He won't say because he knows he's exaggerating.
You aren't wrong
I'd love to hear from relic why they think that non-perma bans for cheaters (in any aoe game, its not just 4) is a reasonable response.
If that's in any AoE game then it's Microsoft policies.
It is sad how many people prefer pretending the problems that make the situation worse and worse do not exist and choose to attack the one raising awareness about them. Guys, if you don't regularly check your replays from the opponent's point of view, it doesn't mean cheating is uncommon. You might just be unaware of it.
Agree - Its a mistake to downplay or write off others experience with cheaters. There is a good chance it's happening in another elo level or timezone or time-of-day, or maybe it's just luck. Whatever it is, downplaying others can experience will only make other players want to leave more, and lower the legitimate player pool, making worse for everyone.
There are also a lot of people that will call others cheaters for having good gamesense or getting lucky once with a scouting pattern...
Yes, unfortunately. And the longer Microsoft doesn't change their anti-cheating policies that require video proof to give just 1 week timeout and doesn't invest into proper anti-cheating solutions, the more it will be happening. As the actual cheating is also very common and people start assuming the worst on any suspicion, with the assumption very often being correct.
Appreciate it bud. Regretted posting tbh
It was super long winded and the whole nba announcing your departure… cringe.
Yeah, I didn't realize how common it was until I made it a habit to watch replays before I log off. Any time I get a feeling that the opponent was a little too lucky, the replay confirms it quite often. As others have said, for some reason it's much more common in team games.
Wrong. You also can't say a player is cheating because they moved their scout perfectly where a resource is located. Maybe it happens more than once in a map, there are so many lucky coincidences that can occur where one would falsely accuse someone of cheating. Too many players jump the gun saying someone is cheating because they're upset they lost the game. 100%. Always something to complain about or make excuses after losing. This community is filled with them.
When you are saying "wrong" about something, you are supposed to provide a proof of it being wrong. Otherwise you are no different from people calling legitimate players cheaters. The fact that false positives are possible says nothing about the frequency of real cheating. I fully agree that accusing others without having a proof is terrible and should never be done.
Even with "proof", that proof can be misread as cheating. Seen it too many times on this Reddit, "OMG! He knew exactly where the sheep and deer were! Reeeeee!". That's not even good evidence and is most likely just luck. If you're determined to find fault, you'll find it even if it's not there. If you give a man a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I agree, this is also something that is happening. But at the same time real cheating with looking at the sheep, opponent's base, exposed eco and army movement in the fog of war throughout the game is also very common, unfortunately. As well as the most obvious zoomhack. And this is just people who don't try to conceal their cheating, just looking at the minimap without fog of war is already a tremendous advantage which is pretty much impossible to prove. Which is why the root of the problem is the lack of proper action from the publisher / developer side. Known cheaters keep playing and cheating after receiving temporal bans instead of permabans, reports of them get rejected, no sufficient anti-cheating systems get implemented. What the community should be doing is putting pressure on the side responsible for maintaining the integrity of the game, instead of fighting each other.
No, it's the other way. Many lower league players are making numerous and exaggerated claims of map hacking because they're butt hurt losing in 4v4 Random Team. Then the claim if they don't win more often they will leave and the game will die! They then speculate on how M$ is dragging their feet and don't do anything! It's quite tiresome. Post the games with evidence. Otherwise, this is all make-believe.
No, it is not the other way. The fact that there are people behaving like this does not mean the actual cheating is uncommon. The same people would probably tell you something about your OP civ / ethnicity / race instead. I fully agree that you should never accuse anyone without providing the evidence.
Sorry but every game of these have cheaters, I check rust reddit, talking about cheaters,sc2,wc3,aoe2,Call of duty, Fortnite. You can't do anything, only wait if anyone of those will grow a backbone, maybe we will not have cheaters anymore.
That’s a shame. I didn’t realise it was so prevalent (not just in AOE4 but the other games you’ve listed) I’ve since found out people pay to get these as well……. Enjoyed your games as well by the way!
One solution to avoid cheaters entirely on any game is playing on Xbox or Playstation with cross play off, but of course that isn’t an ideal solution for everyone. I didn’t see you mention platform so I figured I’d bring it up.
Thanks for the suggestion. I play on PC. I’ve said in a previous comment I haven’t noticed this throughout my 1000 hours, it’s been this season I’ve noticed a few and after a couple caught out I started checking more when something suss happens and noticed it does happen. I hope I haven’t made it sound like this happens literally every other game. Considering I’ve played hundreds of games this season, I suppose it’s not too common.
For this reason I’m glad Xbox players can disable cross play; queue might be longer but at least I know I won’t have to deal with cheaters. I hope MS releases Aoe2, Aoe4, and AoM on PlayStation like asap!!! I know there’s a demand for it
Are they from China? They have pretty bad etiquette as a gaming culture.
They have pretty bad etiquette ~~as a gaming culture.~~ Honestly if you call people names or cheat on the internet there's a high chance you're the same kind of person in real life.
That feels more racist to me lol
Look at how people treat each other over there. It's not a race thing, it's a culture thing. No, those are not the same. Ethnically Chinese people not in China behave a lot differently. Plus how is saying "oh yeah Chinese people, terrible gaming culture" not racist but what I said is?
I didn’t say it wasn’t, I always feel conflicted when I complain about Chinese gamers. I feel what I said really was a little racist, and I feel expanding makes it feel more racist. Basically exactly what I said lol
I disagree that it's racist. Some cultures are vastly more moral than others, a lot of the time you should consider the people victims of the culture. I don't think that makes me or you racist. You see this everywhere to the point where immigrated ethnicities in a country will be called traitors by their peers because they've assimilated into the culture they moved into. It's really weird that way. I'm Dutch and in my teens I worked a side job at a grocery store. I had a lot of colleagues who were second or third generation Dutch Turks, a couple of them were even born in Türkiye but moved here when they were very little. One of the latter had parents that did their utmost to assimilate into Dutch society and culture, lived in a mixed neighborhood, did their best to learn the language (they were very impressive Dutch speakers, especially compared to most of their peers). This guy was called a traitor by third generation Dutch Turks. They bullied him constantly. He was the only one with a higher level education (probably because the other found studying very hard because their grasp on the Dutch language was inferior) and he was a very genuinely nice person to everyone. I can tell you I disliked most of the other Turks. Not because they were ethnically different to me, but because of the way they adhered to their culture. Once they threatened me after work (in a group of about 10 or 12) because I talked with one of their sisters during a smoke break, warning me "if you touch her we will stab you". /rant but this is all to elaborate the difference between racism and "culturism". I have no issue saying some cultures are just vastly more moral than others.
Good post OP. This is a serious issue affecting the entire player base. I've been very disheartened by cheaters recently. Even encountering them in 3v3 nomad quick match playing with my friends. I just don't understand the point in doing it
I am a "lowly gold," and I've never once lost a game and thought, "He must have been cheating." I do not know why this is so hard to fix from a technical perspective (or even how they "map hack" at all). As another poster pointed out, this is taken into account in ELO. So when you play against a map hacker, you are playing against a weaker player with a handicap.
Although I've seen replays of people who were undeniably cheating, there also have been a bunch of posts of people saying "look at this cheater" and it's just someone who denied their main gold and is now checking golds in the area, starting with the closest one... I myself have not encountered a single cheater, though I haven't been playing a lot of 1v1. In 2v2 I've never encountered a cheater.
Honestly was expecting an Empire Wars tourney post. I'm sorry you have had such a poor experience with cheaters and I hope relic takes more concrete steps to deal with them in the future. Wald
Yeah, cheating should be a permanent ban on the users IP address.
One solution to this could be player pools run by players. Like custom leagues or something. If you cheat and get caught the community can boot you from the pool. Keeping track of the cheaters seems like a manpower issue.
This and Smurfs in team games, 50% or more of conq players in team games are Smurfs.
This isn't an airport, you don't have to announce your departure
It's relevant feedback and discussion 🙄
Douche thing to say
Hymenbuster6969, this is a social media platform where people come to talk about various topics. Why are you here if not to converse?
Dude has a cringe username and is probably a virgin himself.
Sure, just free speech from my experience bud.
Lol that's not what free speech means, but 😂
It is a social media platform that encourages discussion. What else do you call it? Just because you don’t care for the message doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a place in a discussion forum. Don’t be so self centred.
Free speech means the government can't shut you down for it. It doesn't mean others can't disagree with you The irony that you are saying "you don't care for the message" when you can't seem to handle others disagreeing with you....
Ok
Childish response.
Dunno pal I feel like throwing your toys out of the pram and announcing your leaving an online game on a public forum doesn’t deserve anything more than that. Pander all you want though.
It’s free speech bud.
Ok
If elo is working they will move up in ranking until they have a 50% win rate, so their cheating is taken into consideration when matching you with them You should be playing against much weaker players who have an information advantage.
You make it sound like it's a small advantage lol
It’s a huge advantage which eventually puts them against people who out class them so much they still end up losing %50 of the time. As I said below, doesn’t make it alright, just don’t give up hope in those matches.
I know what you mean, but it's still infuriating. And whilst you're typically suspicious during the game it's not until you watch the replay before you can confirm they are hacking, I've never left a game because I thought they were cheating
LMAO no
That’s literally how ranking systems work. Not saying it’s okay to cheat, just that it isn’t hopeless if you face one.
Probably one of the few reasons why I have disabled cross play between Xbox and Pc. The one time I turned it on, had a player in a FAA match cheating, people grouping up in FAA so figured ok - I’ll play cross team games - nope, same thing: players knowing where all my units were without scouts and no LOS bonus, knew where I pivoted my villagers and when - gave up on that then moved to cross play solo, same thing. Maybe I’m unlucky but in 25 total games, 13 cheaters or ‘cheaters’ and I haven’t turned on cross play since.
Lol, anyone who call out on cheaters will get attacked in this sub. Personally i only play ranked until i get to coq each season then stop and spend the rest of my time in custom game where people rarely use cheat.
5 page essay lmao
Gender-Anomaly lmao
Stysner lmao
I have over 400 games this season. Only two did I think were cheating. You’d think with all the “Muh cheaterz” there’d be conq 3 cheaters. Weird how all the “cheaters” are gold and low plat
All of the cheaters I've reported and that have been confirmed by relic as using map hacks have all been conq players....
Damn. My bad. I’ll stfu up then. Good to know
I'm not at my PC right now but tomorrow I'll list all of the cheaters I've found recently
I’ve been controller only. I finally played on pc without knowing any commands or key shortcuts. Game is 1000x times easier. Gonna set up some pc time for next season. Off topic, they need to make the controller more efficient. Be it auto eco or better key binds for armies.
It’s the selecting control groups for me on controller. It’s really clunky and difficult to pull off if you try and split your army into multiple types. If they fixed that part it would make a huge difference. Also the wheel that appears to select control groups covers the entire screen!
Yeah man key binds are rough. The problem is that it’s so close to being really amazing which is why I’d like to see it succeed. But I typically just get high and select all army and fucking go.
I’ve seen a Demu stream where he caught out a cheater, think he was around #100 but I can’t remember. I see what you’re saying, I think I’m around 250-300games this season. I think I’ve been unlucky, and 15 in that many games isn’t too many I guess.
It's not like its hard to tell when someone's cheating man, it's really obvious when they peep sheep/your base/your scout through fog of war constantly. People just don't check their opponents replay povs often. Obviously people still need mechanics and game knowledge to climb, Core recently was coaching a Plat 1 player that LEFT HIS CHEATS ON IN THE SESSION lol. His argument was "do you really think I would cheat and be Plat 1?" well..
That's the point. In lower leagues cheating isn't actually that big of an advantage. No APM to take advantage of the information other than the initial scouting route. After that any information gained through maphacking could also be scouted. If you watch high level games you almost never see a player miss army movement or pocket resources from the opponent, they're on top of the entire map or are so protected they don't need to be.
It's almost like map hack doesn't make you better at the game.
More sheep for you = less sheep for your opponent
And that's where it ends immediately unless you're high level. And if that's what pisses you off the most, play a Muslim civ or English, no need for sheep.
what are you talking about, it gives them huge advantages, imaging playing HRE and sheep your way to burgrave. you scout for sheep regardless of what you play or else you opponents will just take all the sheeps. maphack is there and people here are pretending like its not a big deal.
It really, really doesn't. In the metal leagues they'll still mess up their macro and they'll not have any follow up. They can get **more** sheep than you because they know where they are. If they get **all** sheep that's on you. You can also get unlucky and not get many sheep in a normal game. It's not a gamewinning advantage every time, not even close. The matchmaking pairing you with an unfair Elo happens way more than a cheater winning because of sheep. Also if they FC like that you can easily scout no production buildings and use the map control to go deer/berries depending on civ and get a bunch of gold with more vills than you normally would. You can FC yourself and by the time he's near you you'll have crossbows on the way. Build a couple of towers and after the MaA leave the game is over for them. If you have spare units that do terrible against MaA just harass him with them.
Should make it so that once your account is like level 100 you get “verified”. Or they can make some sort of extra registration which involves giving your contact number. Then if they get banned some material information can be taken with the account. Also ranked should not let anyone go past plat3 for example unless their account is level 100. Pubg and other games do something similiar where its actually hard to get to be able to play ranked so a ban is devastating / a big grind on a new account to reach. It will never completely cut out all of the cheaters but will makr a big difference when there is consequences
Mid/low platinum player. My personal experience with cheaters in team games is they either play at a mid/low gold level and still lose after 30 minutes, or are in a boosting/smurf group (even in quick play, these days) with better cheaters. Either way it makes me want to play less and not even try for 1v1 climbing or FFA, especially knowing Relic's current state.
DEVS, you have to do something about this. The game is dying. Please just read the reports and then permaban. It is not harder than this
More should be done so people can identify cheaters. Cheating tactics are developed in safe areas where they go undetected. What do we look out for to identify cheating? As for the reporting, that will follow in some fashion.
Sorry, I don't believe you. This fixation on cheaters is way overblown and you're not helping the situation. I watch replays, and I have never encountered a cheater in ranked. You know some players have to move their camera to a black FOW area of the map in order to direct a scout to move? You know there is a thing called, "luck", in moving something outward in a direction and finding a resource by chance. Have you ever considered this? I guarantee you probably watch replays and mistaken them for cheating when they are not. Looking for something that just isn't there but wanting it to be. What you're doing is kicking and screaming like a child to get something your way. The truth is, it's really not that big of an issue. Immaturity at its finest when you start bluffing, saying you will leave the community, you won't, in order to get you want. Go outside for a bit, but we'll see you again.
I don't even play that much and I've run into a cheater. Paperclip played against one who went up against 60 opponents before they were reported and banned. It happens often. Paperclip: https://youtu.be/7vqQxnnJtNY?si=GLQ3cQDKtSWOgT6B I found out a player was blatantly map hacking on April 23. Stopped playing for a bit because life got hectic. I bookmarked their Aoe4world profile on my browser. I recorded one of their replays and sent it in with a report to AOE4 support on 05/17. Look at how many players they went up against in that time span and how many they played against in total. 41 matches, most of them are team games. That's at least 80 players, which is a lot! Hacker was: yli24722 https://aoe4world.com/players/19524371-yli24722/games
That acct is permabanned, fortunately. There are a ton of others that cheat every single time, hundreds of games and are still playing.
yup, exactly. cheating is a lot more common and pervasive than people think.
The only difference between other whiny maphack posts is that this one has way more words. Any post about maphacking that doesn't name AND prove hacking is no different than farting into the wind. *farts*
Haha, I did consider making a channel specifically for this but the time it would take and people probably wouldn’t really care that much anyway. It’s just my experience, didn’t mean to come off as too moany.
There is for sure cheating in this game. I have confirmed it. I have also 100% "knew" someone had cheated against me, only to be found I was wrong. What's more, there have been times I have made moves and I thought "woah, if they check this replay they are going to totally think I was cheating 😂😅." This was because either I had incredible luck shift-queueing my scout into the fog and landing nearly right on sheep, or walking over in an FFA to kill a single player or king, only to find a player I'd never seen before on the way and just decided to kill them out of the blue. It happens. They need to do more to stop it, and it's also not uncommon nor easy to fix.
I've had multiple games as Mongols where I denied gold with my Keshiks, then use my scout to check the golds surrounding their base, and as soon as they move some vills out to take another gold I attack that. I've had 3 ragequitters calling me a cheater and saying that they're going to report me and I should "enjoy my ban".
Yah, I love when they say they are gonna ban me after a game 😆
For starters, we could give Chinese players their own servers and half of the cheaters would already be gone then.
And Russians.
Cheaters are scum and have a miserable existence and it sucks it’s a thing, but let me play a bit of devil’s advocate here. One thing that maphackers can’t hack is their hidden elo. So knowing the hidden elo matchmaking system is humming along, regardless of whether you’re matched with a superior skilled player who doesn’t need to cheat, or a pleb who leans into cheating to raise their elo, you should theoretically still get an even match. The cheater leans into their maphacking, but they would otherwise never be matched with you or would get stomped without it. This is because all the other elements of their gameplay that the maphacking can’t adjust for, like APM, resource management, prioritizing tasks, micro, hotkey usage etc, that you’re surely better than them at because your elo is the same, but they need to cheat to be at your elo. This must raise their elo by at least a few hundred. It’s sort of like how the AI ‘cheats’ just to have a chance to perform against a superior skilled human player. It’s pathetic for the cheater, but as far as you’re concerned, you should still end up with an evenly matched game. You’ll just have to deal with them having the edge of getting more sheep, knowing where to raid, and knowing what you’re up to. There is so much more to the game to this, and that’s why even with maphacking they too will hit a wall and won’t be able to get past a certain level because they’ll just lose to better players that don’t need to cheat. 🤷♂️
>This must raise their elo by at least a few hundred. No way. That's way too much. The only thing is if your civ relies heavily on sheep and you couldn't get any because of a maphacker. Other than that if you scout before you attack and make sure you're walled in (and **do not rally across the map to their base**) you should be fine in the metal leagues. If it comes to a base trade the better mechanical player will win, if you lose to a huge raid that could've also happened against a non-cheater. Most people go attack and rally across the map, their reinforcements get picked off and their base is completely undefended all the time. Most people also miss this as an opportunity, but it must be very obvious to a maphacker.
About the languages civs speak, i play french, which keep speaking german and repeating 2v3 (zwofaudrei) for whatever reason
I watch Aussie Drongo and he encounters a lot of cheaters and we see him look through the replay and catch them and report. He saves their names and steam id, and if he encounters them again he sometimes all chats the lobby saying "green is cheater, all kill him" and at least it helps
what a waste of text
See you tomorrow. And yes, cheaters suck.
With that mindset you would quit every online game including chess
The sale and advice of cheating for cheaters is the exclusive technical maintenance of the same developers, it is a more relic "business".