Rampant Cheating in Starfighter Assault

[falcorfive]

Product: Star Wars Battlefront II
Platform:PC
What is your issue related to? General
Summarize your bug Rampant Cheating in Starfighter Assault
What is your gamertag/PSN ID/EA Account name? falcorfive
How often does the bug occur? Every time (100%)
Can you tell us the date (MM/DD/YYYY) that you saw the bug? 01/05/2018
What time did you see the bug? (HH:MM AM/PM) 06:30 PM
In what game mode did the bug occur? Starfighter Assault
What is your time zone? PST - GMT - 8:00
Steps: How can we find the bug ourselves? Please just have someone review the leaderboards as often as possible and look into the players who are racking-up the top 5 slots consistently, just as a quality control measure to catch cheaters.
What happens when the bug occurs? The cheaters continue to farm an outrageous amount of battle points, basically rewarding them with the ability to upgrade to their hearts delight with credits awarded post game. It's a vicious cycle that has ruined Starfighter Assault full stop.
What do you expect to see? Fair play.
Please select your region North America
AMD or Nvidia Model Number

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Like I said above, please just have someone review the leaderboards as often as possible and look into the players who are racking-up the top 5 slots consistently, just as a quality control measure to catch cheaters. You can even login and play yourself, and you will notice aim-bots, OP starfighters without the appropriate star-cards in play, and Fighter class vehicles that somehow manage to fly and glide around like Bombers, but with the bonus of being able to go full speed when it suits them.

There is cheating going on all over the multiplayer side of this game, and with star cards in play, if you don't stop the abuse soon, the game is going to be hopelessly ruined for good. You guys did such an amazing job with this game, please do not let all of your hard work go to waste. I truly appreciate any and all assistance you can provide with this inquiry.

[DYSPROssium]

I myself wasn't able to identify hackers in SA, but since hacks are available for ground then I can image it also works in the air.

If you feel like helping the community by reporting the players please check the following:

You can report any cheaters via Xbox Live, PlayStation Network or Origin, as outlined here: https://help.ea.com/en/article/how-to-report-cheating/

You can also report ingame on PC, by pressing esc->players/leaderboard/->click on name->report->in game client hack etc...

I always try to provide video evidence of the hackers, but enough players reporting the same hacker will probably work as well.

[falcorfive]

Thanks for your reply. The first link you provided is actually to the Battlefield 2 cheat report page, but I'm sure there's one for Battlefront 2 and I'll search for it shortly. I tried using the in game Origin option, but when I tried to use it a little while ago, it kept giving me an error code saying I wasn't "on-line" through the Origin launcher, but I checked and I was, so I'm at a loss. But I will use the web page option until I can sort out what's wrong... inconvenient, but worthwhile. The cheating just ruins the game. 

Will they ever change matchmaking so that the top level winners, who are the same round after round for most sessions, are paired together so they can all just cheat each other, or at least stand a better chance against each other, and leave us little guys to grind our path to purple cards in peace?

[DYSPROssium]

@falcorfive Hello there!

(if you want to reply to a specific person, you can type an '@' with the name (it will pop up on screen) so that that person gets a notification! )

I indeed mistakenly copied a link from battlefield 4 (what even?) so here is the correct one: https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/faq/report-players-for-cheating-abuse-and-harassment

The error you got while playing the game is probably some small bug, but it should work!

The top players on the leaderboard are indeed many times the same players, but that doesn't necessarily make them hackers. If you get one shot from the other side of the map with the TL-50 while playing as a hero then yes that may be a hacker. 

I hope that the matches will be made more balanced, but keep in mind that balancing is pretty hard since there are many variables and a certain player can play really good on one map and very bad on another. But yes I do agree there could be some improvements made in the overall balance, especially since they have the number on how many times a certain GA  stage has won by rebels, etc. The smaller the game mode, the more the balancing of matches is important. I find HvV the most unbalanced one with 70% of the battles being 10-0 or 8-0.

Lets hope that they will find some good solutions and if you have any ideas or feedback you are free to post here or on the official SWBF2 forum: https://battlefront-forums.ea.com/

[Laura-Orli]

I have seen some go from no health and about to die to having full health but maybe only once a week do I see this. I am top of the list 50% of the time and would never cheat. I do play it every day though, I think practice makes perfect on SA sadly.

[Alliecat7803]

I haven't seen anything I think is cheating in SA, on PS4, and I've played a lot (doesn't mean it's not there...I just haven't seen evidence of it in my games).  I found I got considerably better at shooting, escaping, and orienting myself when I turned off the auto-leveling (I think it was called advanced flight or something in the game settings).  As for health almost completely restoring, if you are near Tallie Lintra when Blue Leader goes off, and you have an astromech, you will heal entirely, even if you are down to almost zero.  As for the fighters that can fly as slowly as bombers, you can pull back on your engines using the left stick on the PS4 (not sure about other platforms), I've easily tailed bombers in a fighter by using that.  There was a big learning curve for flying starfighters from BF1 to BF2, but once you get used to it, the controls are more versatile, and shooting is more skill-based than the auto-locks anyone could use in BF1.  

[narion_k]

I've also played a lot of starfighter assault on PC and haven't yet noticed any cheating. I frequently rank in the top 5 simply by playing the objective well. Alliecat7803 is right about the speed: you can always increase or decrease the speed of your starfighter. (I think the default configuration on PC uses W and S to control the speed, unless I changed that.)

@falcorfiveIf you have any specific tips on how to recognize the cheats you mentioned, please let us know so we can look out for them. I agree with you that some team balancing between rounds would be much appreciated, and this applies to all game modes.

@Laura-OrliGoing from nearly zero health back to full health is a normal part of starfighter assault. All starfighters are able to fully regenerate their health and shields over a period of a few seconds, after they have already gone a few seconds without taking damage. Some ship classes and hero ships have star cards that can reduce the time you have to wait before your health and shields start regenerating. As Alliecat7803 said, some ships also have repair abilities such as droid repair or Tallie Lintra's Blue Leader ability. The amount of health restored by these abilities can be increased with star cards, as well. Some hero ships have other ways of recovering health through their abilities and star cards; for example, Kylo Ren's Regenerative Subsystem star card heals his ship when he kills enemies while his Focused Rage ability is active. Basically, there are a lot of different ways ships can heal.

@Alliecat7803I agree: they really did a great job with the starfighter controls in this game. And once you enable the advanced flight controls, it opens up more possibilities for advanced maneuvers, especially defensive ones!

[Polaris85]

I just started playing a couple of weeks ago and I despise this game mode. On reddit someone was saying "people that have been playing since launch know all the spawn points so its easy to get kills." Doesn't make it any less cheating when you spawn and die in 2 seconds or less. EA fix this problem on this game for the love of all things gaming. This mode is the worst game mode I've ever played (can't actually get in the damn game).

[chuntery]

@narion_k  spot on with your comments!

I have spent over 3000 hrs on Battlefront 2, mostly playing starfighters but I have yet to find a confirmed cheater. They may be there but they must be good at disguising it!

There are plenty of newbies when beaten who claim cheating and plenty of folks making vile and obnoxious comments.....but no real cheaters. This is unlike Battlefront1 which had numerous cheaters and they were really obvious....usually shunned and soon reported.

[EA_Atic]

I'm closing this thread to stop it from being necroed.

If you have any issues with SWBF2 please make a new topic about the issues you are having and what kind of steps you have tried to solve them.

/Atic