Identify suspected cheaters using PVP hacks

reckless442

As some of us have experienced in PVP, there seems to be a hack out there that allows players to target and kill teams extremely quickly. I'm not talking about matches that might go quickly because the user is using a quick-strike team or boosts (or both), but one that would allow a team like level 85 Moonstone, 77 Hulk, and 85 Bagman to beat 141 Lazy Thor, Black Panther, and Human Torch twice in three minutes (as happened to me the other day). This hack seems to permit any team to one-hit-kill opponents.

Some of my alliance members and I thought it might be useful to start a thread to record these strange incidents. By listing the users who appear to be able to attack suspiciously fast, we could: (1) let others know they might want to avoid unshielding if those players appear to be active; (2) encourage players who experience problems with those users to submit reports to encourage the developers to investigate (we don't know if there is some type of critical mass at which point complaints about suspicious activity are examined); and (3) find out if those players have been sandboxed and track how long it takes for the developers to act in response to suspected cheats. (The latter is due to the fact that we learned today that the developers just sandboxed a player who was reported in April for similarly suspicious activity.)

A note of caution. Just because a player manages to attack the same opponent twice, even after a shield goes up, does not necessarily mean the player is cheating. Often, the same opponent reappears in the player's queue despite having just been fought. The real tests of suspicious activity are: (1) the speed at which battles are won; (2) the imbalance between teams or speedy victories using characters that are not known for offensive prowess.

Also, please don't substitute this thread for actually reporting suspicious activity to the developers.

I'll list two that I find suspicious:

1. Watercat. With the aforementioned Moonstone/Hulk/Bagman team beat me twice in the SHIELD Simulator event. I was unshielded for a total of 3 minutes and he hit me after I finished my battle, but before I reshielded and then again within minutes after I reshielded. Report submitted on 5/19.

2. gbr33. Hit me three times within the span of 3 minutes near the end of Krakadoom -- twice when I unshielded for a total span of four minutes, and the third time mere seconds later. I had not been unshielded for seven hours, so it was highly unlikely that he had queued me before and had me in cache and this was purely lucky timing. He was using 153 Ragarok, 128 Hulk, and 117 Steve Rogers, which are not exactly quick offensive teams. He also repeatedly hit several other players who reported the suspicious activity in the Krakadoom thread. Report submitted on 5/21.

Unknown

It seems to me if you have a level 85 Bagman in these fast wins, it's more likely that there's some trick is involved, because if you're hacking it'd seem like you'd want to use characters that at least appear legitmate. I remember back before they fixed the increased crit modifier/increased environmental damage I was killing people with my level 1 Hawkeye often in one minute too, and it must look pretty mystifying to the guys losing to a team with a level 1 Hawkeye that was doing the infinite combos.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

It seems to me if you have a level 85 Bagman in these fast wins, it's more likely that there's some trick is involved, because if you're hacking it'd seem like you'd want to use characters that at least appear legitmate. I remember back before they fixed the increased crit modifier/increased environmental damage I was killing people with my level 1 Hawkeye often in one minute too, and it must look pretty mystifying to the guys losing to a team with a level 1 Hawkeye that was doing the infinite combos.

Pray tell what wonderful trick Bagman is capable of in a PVP scenario

Unknown

Perhaps the first guy seems suspicious and warrants monitoring but the inclusion of the second guy seems like a stretch and raises questions about the legitimacy of the goals listed in the OP.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

Phantron wrote:

It seems to me if you have a level 85 Bagman in these fast wins, it's more likely that there's some trick is involved, because if you're hacking it'd seem like you'd want to use characters that at least appear legitmate. I remember back before they fixed the increased crit modifier/increased environmental damage I was killing people with my level 1 Hawkeye often in one minute too, and it must look pretty mystifying to the guys losing to a team with a level 1 Hawkeye that was doing the infinite combos.

Pray tell what wonderful trick Bagman is capable of in a PVP scenario

I have no idea, but it doesn't sound crazier than a level 1 Hawkeye going infinite on turn 3 on Forest either. It is likely a hack but I'd think if you're cheating you'd go all the way and start with more seemingly legit characters like lazy Thor instead of Bagman, unless that guy just wants everyone to know he's hacking, which is of course totally possible too.

reckless442

mcheath wrote:

Perhaps the first guy seems suspicious and warrants monitoring but the inclusion of the second guy seems like a stretch and raises questions about the legitimacy of the goals listed in the OP.

Let me elaborate on gbr33. The key issue was the speed of the attack. I was attacked when I needed to break for my final battle in Krakadoom simulator just so I could set a final 3-hr shield. I deliberately chose to attack a fairly squishy team in my nodes, not a Hulk/LT behemoth worth more points, because I wanted to minimize the amount of time I was exposed to possible attack. I had been unshielded for several hours, so it was unlikely that he had me queued from the night before. I was unshielded for a maximum of four minutes -- I know because that was the amount of time that elapsed between the time I made my last post in alliance chat before breaking shield and when I made my next one after reshielding. During that time, I set my boosts, unshielded, fought one fairly quick battle, and reshielded. I came out and received a notification that gbr33 had hit me twice. I went to chat, typed "got hit," came out of chat to see what team gbr33 had possibly used to defeat mine so quickly, and saw another notification that he had hit me a third time. I was running 150 Ragnarok, 141 Modern Thor, and 141 Classic Magneto, the first two had over 8000 health and the latter 5800. The most damage in a single strike that gbr33 could have done was with 117 Steve Rogers' or 128 Hulk's red (though that would deplete his green). In fact, all of his characters do max damage on red. Hulk does some damage on green, but only about 1,000 points. So, as I said before, that is not a quick-strike offense. Even assuming he got lucky cascades and generated green from Rags' red (which means not using Steve Rogers'' or Hulk's greater damage) and Hulk's anger, did it really happen three times in such quick succession?

Now let me add something else. I was not the only one who found gbr33's activity suspicious. EvilSonGoku mentioned being hit by him between shields in our alliance chat almost immediately after I was hit. So that was a fourth extremely fast battle. kidicarus reported in the Krakadoom thread that he was hit three times in rapid succession too. And Twysta posted that he had the same problem with gbr33 in the past.

I don't have any goals in this thread other than to try to ferret out the people using this cheat and to get the devs to do something about it. With the expanded MMR being used, players who score high early are now losing 40+ points at a pop. I lost 90 points to gbr33 and though I hardly needed the points to win the event or the season, I would hate to have it happen to me or anyone else when it actually would make a difference in the outcome of an event.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

jozier wrote:

Phantron wrote:

It seems to me if you have a level 85 Bagman in these fast wins, it's more likely that there's some trick is involved, because if you're hacking it'd seem like you'd want to use characters that at least appear legitmate. I remember back before they fixed the increased crit modifier/increased environmental damage I was killing people with my level 1 Hawkeye often in one minute too, and it must look pretty mystifying to the guys losing to a team with a level 1 Hawkeye that was doing the infinite combos.

Pray tell what wonderful trick Bagman is capable of in a PVP scenario

I have no idea, but it doesn't sound crazier than a level 1 Hawkeye going infinite on turn 3 on Forest either. It is likely a hack but I'd think if you're cheating you'd go all the way and start with more seemingly legit characters like lazy Thor instead of Bagman, unless that guy just wants everyone to know he's hacking, which is of course totally possible too.

No Phantron, don't be an ****, Tell me what a level 85 Bagman can do. A level 1 modern hawkeye had an ability because environmental and crits were broken. But everyone knew that was possible.

I play this game a lot. I wager I know more about it than most. Again, pray tell, what could a Bagman possibly do in a PVP scenario to assist in speeding up a batlte? Put up or shut up.

Unknown

I'm sorry for the experience but really what is the new here? The game has broken server communication architecture from the beginning and nothing was done about that. The server treats client as trusted thing and just carries out whatever request it happens to send. If it is a "game won" packet, it's applied without a second thought. If it's sent as repeat it's applied again.

It would not be hard to make server resilient against all those attacks, we even provided the description how, but D3 does not care about hacks going. Only offers user-reporting and possible after-the-fact restoration, if at all.

And as long as people are happy to pay up for any **** it will hardly change. They will keep improving algorithms that detect "tanking" or "easy game" to trigger more scaling on you. But to reject completely forged games? That only leads to "suck to be you", why bother.

Note that the reported case was pretty blatant and obvious, such wins can be injected into the system in better ways with barely more work and made not evident/reportable as you can always lose to some ungodly cascade. All it takes to send the instawins on different games. And eventually use some better-looking team.

MarvelMan

Define irony:

jozier wrote:

No Phantron, don't be an ****......Put up or shut up.

Unknown

Post deleted. Let's try to keep things a little less targeted.

Unknown

This thread is devolving a bit, and is also very close to a "name and shame" thread, which is typically frowned upon. If the people are innocent, it's hard to recover their image. If they're guilty, the report you filed should suffice to bring it to the attention of the developers.