Everything you need to know about cheaters. [ Edited ]

[DaSud]

I am a suspicious pessimist by nature. As a gamer, I have encountered and called out everything. Aimbots, maphacks, triggerbots, wallhacks, speedhacks, no recoil hacks, hacks that crash servers, hacks that change gameplay mechanics, nothing surprises me.

So before I begin, I want to show you what a real, non subtle, mobile game hacker looks like: [Removed - Admin.]

This is a game called South Park: Phone Destroyer. It was created by a small extension of UbiSoft called Redlynx. Redlynx had either no resources or no competency at programming as the game was made fully peer to peer, with servers only intervening for new content and match results.

This, of course has its own sort of lore spawning from developers figuring out too late that the average twelve year old knows how to work a memory hex, the ensuing cover ups, the devs taking hostile control of the reddit, and yeah, really suck game infested with children with cheats.

To the fellow thinking that legal proceedings would be brought up for this game overrun by hackers, unlikely, we couldn't even get Google Play to cut off their monetization due to misleading/damaged product.

Now here is something that, while it looks dumb and it is a problem of economy mechanic balance, it is not a hack: https://youtu.be/M6RH_mibuC8

I will admit that is a lot of harvesters he's losing and fighting back with a lot of mid cost units, and the sandstorm at the end could make you think he's generating way too much money, but this natural.

This game has standards in place.

I am fortunate to get the opportunity to banter with a few devs that understand me when I throw tech/programming infrastructure, so I got a pretty good lay of the C&C security grid.

Playing South Park is like playing Diablo 1 on open battle.net. Everybody running around with perfectly created hacked gear like a bunch of * screaming children. This is because player data is not controlled by the third party. Both players connect to each other, sync up, and then pass data back and forth. Larry might see Harry at 12 hp, hit him for 30, and the data packet going to Harry informing him of his rightful demise is refused, and instead Harry informs Larry he has 208 hp instead, and he has slapped him for 6969 damage. Ladies and gentleman, we have a hacker.

C&C Rivals is better than this because they made the wise choice of having mediary game servers which set the values and don't let you deviate them. You make a rhino, it does a set amount of damage, it moves as a set pace, it dies when it gets shot. Any attempt to edit these values and send them to the mediary server occurs in mismatch, and likely engagement of anticheat measures. They might be able to get away with it the first time, but usually not for long.

What hackers can do without advanced specialized anticheat detection available is read the game memory and figure out gamestates that might give them extra information. Seeing into the fog of war to perfectly counter your first unit, and having an onscreen timer so they know when your commander power is ready. They can also manipulate human input, creating macros or tap bots to auto block points.

So now that you know what is, and isn't a hacker, please report with evidence so people can help track it down.

[Mister_Crac · Accepted solution]

@TallCarverV4

It is very much related to what the person above posted.

Many people have an insufficient understanding of the game mechanics. They do not understand that in the time in which they build two harvesters, their opponent can build two attacking units to destroy their harvesters (if he does not build harvesters himself). Then they call this cheating, when in fact no cheating is taking place at all.

And no, you cannot cheat on the cooldown timer. There is zero proof that this has ever been done by anybody. If you claim that this is possible, then record a replay of such a battle and show it to us.

Claim of cheating without any proof (e.g. screenshot or recorded video) = Nonsense.

[punishertrd]

everything you said maybe true but if you look up cnc rivals cheats youll see pages of stuff ya some of it is old but some are dated yesterday so that alone kinda makes me think that no matter what you do or the company does its still going to happen, now has it happened a lot recently no not really before yes and a lot more so your long post is kinda right but not all of it 

[74GrimmReaper]

I tell you the one thing that can be done... ban the MAC address of the device that the hackers are using. All of that data can be collected as soon as one connects to the server. When those annoying little 12 year olds have to keep asking their mommy and daddy for a new device, maybe mommy and daddy won't buy any more for the little basta...... slowing weeding out the idiots that cheat to win.

It is frustrating when with troop selection, you have someone dead to rights(by seeing what they are launching)  but yet they launch troop after troop after troop? What happened t9 their cooldown timer? I tell you what, it appears to have been added to mine because my is running slower than a constipated dog.

Instead of banning someone's character, which just causes the hacker to create another account with fake credentials and boost that character and continue to hack away. What is the point?  There is no repercussions from the hacking! 

[Mister_Crac]

@74GrimmReaper 
Can you provide any proof for that? It is easy enough to record a replay and to upload it on Youtube.

Please keep in mind that also your harvesters do count for the cooldown timer. One player might build two harvesters as their first two units, while the other could build no harvester at all. Instead, they might build units to attack your harvs. This is possible because you start with 100 Tiberium, and you also gain a small amount of Tiberium over time even if you have no harvester at all. This has nothing to do with cheating: It is perfectly possible within the rules of the game.

[TallCarverV4]

Cool story about the in game decision to purchase harvesters or not.

This is the most obvious statement anyone could make. Yes, you can choose to get harvesters. You can choose not to get harvesters. You can choose to get two harvesters. You can choose to attack the other player's harvesters. You can choose to defend your harvesters. You can put harvesters on a pad to control it for a missile launch. You can intentionally send a harvester to die to speed up you cooldown time at late game...

Are we on the same page? It feels vastly off topic from the guy's post about possible methods of cheating.

Stephen

[Mister_Crac · Accepted solution]

@TallCarverV4

It is very much related to what the person above posted.

Many people have an insufficient understanding of the game mechanics. They do not understand that in the time in which they build two harvesters, their opponent can build two attacking units to destroy their harvesters (if he does not build harvesters himself). Then they call this cheating, when in fact no cheating is taking place at all.

And no, you cannot cheat on the cooldown timer. There is zero proof that this has ever been done by anybody. If you claim that this is possible, then record a replay of such a battle and show it to us.

Claim of cheating without any proof (e.g. screenshot or recorded video) = Nonsense.

[TegliG]

Well, if you have 2 harvesters and 6 units wandering around. Yes, your cool down will be much much slower than for your enemy, who has maybe 1 harvester and 2 other units out. This is why it is a viable strategy to pop cap your enemy (aka. spare an infantry unit with very few HP so it cannot do any damage but slows cool down).

I agree with the previous comment: understand the game mechanics before you accuse anyone with cheating.

[Alpha11Centuary]

@Mister_Crac

I have found many users with extremely high level units - like the stealth Tank , Basilisk, cannon ect but playing with very low level upgrade with me.


The have units from level 56, 54, 39 and they're getting matched with me at level 15... This can't be possible without unit hacking... Below is the video link you're asking as proof...

https://youtu.be/gA7UDXHNOCE

[Mister_Crac]

@Alpha11Centuary 
While this might feel off to you, it is actually how this game is designed. Two things:

1.) If your opponent has a (field) unit in their deck that you don't have access to yet, this will trigger a Challenge Battle because of an unknown unit. That means you won't lose medals from this fight. A challenge battle is basically the game's way of saying: "Well, we should not really have matched you with that guy cause they have higher units or rank, but they were available just now and instead of making you wait longer for a better match, we will just let you play against this guy and call it a challenge to make up for it".

2.) If you simply keep playing, you will reach playel level 60 rather quite soon. Now, getting your commanders and units levelled up is an entirely different story. That takes way, way, WAY longer to do.

[fr33b00tzn0wy]

*off topic* BTW what does this little screenshot mean?