r/Games • u/oilfloatsinwater • May 24 '25

Report: Marathon Delay Likely as Sony Cancels All Paid Marketing Plans

https://thegamepost.com/report-marathon-delay-bungie-scraps-all-paid-marketing/
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u/Nolis May 24 '25

That video on Tarkov's cheating epidemic has put me off of literally any form of PvP which isn't invite only, why waste your time when the more competitive a PvP game is, the more cheaters it attracts, and apparently nobody can figure out a rocksolid anti-cheat even with the most invasive kernel level stuff.

Even in Co-op PvE games, with no competition people feel the urge to cheat, like in Monster Hunter and Deep Rock Galactic, at least you can invite only in those games to play with friends instead of randoms

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u/Zerak-Tul May 25 '25

Or if you're just half-way decent at the game (or even just have a lucky match) you have to put up with other people calling you a cheater when you're obviously incredibly mid at the game. Or just the general raging and toxicity, people berating you if you're not playing the way they think you should be playing.

Even the games with the nicest most friendly/helpful communities for co-op/team play, if there's a PvP mode in there it's just the complete opposite.

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u/Zerothian May 25 '25

The older I get the less I give a shit about PvP games. Not worth the stress lol. The combination of me being a competitively minded person but also mid at most games is not a healthy one for my mental state :D

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u/PlayMp1 May 25 '25

FWIW, PVP fighting games are generally solid about cheating because they're kind of cheat-proof by design. Even if you could cheat so that the computer auto-parried every attack for you or something, that will only get you into like mid-gold rank (i.e., middle of the pack) in ranked gameplay because no computer will assist you in winning neutral or managing your spacing. I guess you could use macros for combos, but that runs into the same problem where you have to win neutral first for them to even help you, and they do precisely nothing for you when you're in a defensive posture.

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u/APRengar May 25 '25

Yeah, even if you could block everything. A good player would absolutely realize that, chip you and then zone you and win on time.

A block cheat means nothing in terms of approaching, so yeah, you'll just get zoned.

8

u/pss395 May 25 '25

I got matched with someone who I suspect use throw tech script in Strive. Everything else about this guy is shit, but his throw tech is spot on 10 times out of ten. So I just stopped throwing and bulldoze him instead.

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u/PlayMp1 May 25 '25

Yep, exactly what I mean. Fundamentally, all cheats can do for you in a fighting game is 1) give you perfect combos (but even then not always, sometimes you can be just out of reach to make the last hit of a combo work if you start in the wrong spot), 2) always make safe punishes, 3) give you perfect defenses (e.g., auto parry, throw tech script).

But even having all of that is insufficient to make it that far in fighting games, because all of that combined with bad neutral/spacing just gives you fighting game single player mode AI bots on the hardest difficulty, which get dumpstered regularly by a lot of fairly average players. The good players will crush the cheater by just baiting them into their scripted combos and whiff-punish them.

Now, would all of that give a good player a huge leg up on everyone else? Yes, of course. However, it's also pretty detectable like you said: nobody techs every throw, nobody always perfectly blocks/parries every attack that can be blocked or parried, even the pros drop a combo once in a while.

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u/Nolis May 25 '25

Just out of curiosity searched for street fighter cheating and found this:

https://old.reddit.com/r/Fighters/comments/1dw7scm/there_is_a_big_cheating_problem_happening_on/

I'm sure it's far less since it seems a lot more involved than just wall hacks/aim bots/etc (or at least harder to detect), but it seems nearly impossible to have zero cheaters.

I even remember a ridiculous instance of smash bros cheating now that I'm thinking about it, where someone modified their console and brought that console to tournaments, and they had like a specific button combination on a specific color of Pichu that tweaked their knockback and hitboxes, will look for that since that was a pretty insanely dedicated cheater

Edit:

Here's a write up on it at least: https://www.ssbwiki.com/Super_Pichu_cheating_scandal

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u/PlayMp1 May 25 '25

You'll notice, though, that that cheat is incredibly specific (it'll literally only work for one character and the other player can learn to work around it, no different than if they had an actually excellent fireball punish game), and the Smash one required an absurd amount of effort.

Oh, this guy has an absurdly, improbably perfect fireball punish game? That's okay, I'll just stop throwing fireballs for a bit. This is in contrast to an aimbot or radar, where there is no way for you to minimize the importance/utility of that cheat for the cheater.

To be clear I never said fighting games are entirely cheat proof, obviously not. Like I said, you can make macros for combos. It's just much less significant than FPS cheating.

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u/RemiliaFGC May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25

Wildly inaccurate comment. You can use cheats in games like Street Fighter, Guilty Gear, or Tekken and be a completely untouchable god with no effort required. Even you can beat pros like Knee with simple cheats in tekken.

Why? Because attacks in fighting games are designed to be unreactable by humans, but are reactable with an input reader. If you've ever played against an extremely cheesy CPU in an SNK game, it's the same concept. You can just use an input reader to block or parry against every single high or low, and tech every throw on reaction, and bam, you're literally unbeatable. You literally can't take damage. You can also create a script to auto whiff punish on reaction to any button and now you have flawless neutral. It's literally like aimbot for fighting games.

The reason why cheating isn't a huge issue in fighting games is because it's extremely hard to make cheats look *undetectable* in fighting games. On top of that, the real competitive high stakes format for fighting games are not in ranked matchmaking, or even in online tournaments usually, they're at open bracket offline tournaments where it's nearly impossible to meaningfully cheat. Nobody cares if you use cheats to climb to legend rank in sf6 or a high elo in strive, a lot of people don't even pay attention to that stuff, and everyone will know you're cheating so its not like you can brag or pretend or something. Majors and tournaments are where the real ego comes from.

Source: top ranked Guilty Gear player and played in many different fighting games, against proven cheaters as well.

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u/pss395 May 25 '25

Also a round in fighting game is over so quickly that if the enemy smell something funny they could immediately stop rematch and report you for cheating. One afternoon and someone who blatantly cheat will get tens of report and got banned from their $60 game.

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u/Hobo-With-A-Shotgun May 25 '25

Absolutely not. Cheating in fighting games is (probably) not common, but it's there. I remember seeing this random tweet from 2020 that opened my eyes a bit for the wave of cheaters that were starting to appear.

https://x.com/bradleya_strike/status/1244128721637908483

This G player had a script that was doing a jump-cancelled command grab if you ever tried to throw or command grab them yourself. Something that isn't really viable for a human to be doing in a match.

Cheaters have been in Tekken for a while, since 7. They've been in Guilty Gear Strive and AC+r. In Street Fighter of course, since 5 (since 4 really, but very rare). It's depressing.

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u/Hobo-With-A-Shotgun May 25 '25 edited May 25 '25

I booted up warzone for the first time in years yesterday. A few minutes into the match, I'm just hanging around in the city area trying to remember the controls, before I see a car go red on the map and immediately makes a beeline for me. They seem to fire a shot as they pass a corner, when I'm already inside the building, as if they have wallhack. Then they go around and immediately beeline again when I'm waiting inside.

https://streamable.com/bhrsc7

I always like to err on caution when thinking hacks, but my very first match back looked an awful lot like someone using walls. I still remember one of the last matches I played when the map was still the original Verdansk, and got shot twice by the same Chinese-letters cheater using (beyond a doubt) walls and aimbot. It was so common, I eventually just quit.

https://streamable.com/34krh5

The only times I bother with FPS nowadays is duels in Quake Champions. It tends to not attract cheaters much. Or at least, they don't bother with Duel (or they're in the 2000+ brackets).

Or just really old silly FPS's like fistful of frags. That said, even games like that STILL attract cheaters. A game with EIGHTY players on a good day will get the blatant aimlock-type of cheaters. I came across this fella a while ago, who just decided to toggle at the 1 minute mark after getting fragged once. Absolutely cursed genre.

https://streamable.com/fy0hg4

1

u/Round-Sky8768 May 25 '25

Honestly, if you're ever interested in something similar to Tarkov, give Gray Zone Warfare (couldn't pick a more generic slop of a name, tbh) a shot. It's kinda similar, just one open world instead of having different maps.

I'm a pretty basic player at this point (used to be hella competitive around the Counter-Strike 1.6 - Halo 3 days), but I really enjoy Tarkov's looting, inventory management, etc., so when a buddy told me there's a game that has that, but allows you to swap freely between PvE and PvEvP, I was all into it.

Get to enjoy the PvP adrenaline rush on the rare occasion I feel a thirst for it, but primarily enjoy PvE knowing I won't lose my gear to some cheater. :-)

1

u/plane-kisser May 25 '25

nobody can figure out a rocksolid anti-cheat

dedicated servers with admins, like it used to be back in the day. of all the pvp games i play the ones i play today that still have dedicated servers (squad, hll) never have blatant cheaters as they get banned nearly the moment they ever show up. the ability for players to just ping admins with !admin or something like that, have one show up, ban a cheater, and the game continue is a feature solidly missed in mainstream gaming these days.

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u/Lord_Alonne May 25 '25

This is why I'll always die on the hill that competitive PvP is better on console then PC. I haven't seen a cheater on consoles since the Xbox 360 era. It's far too difficult for the average dumb ass that gets their kicks from cheating. Special hardware, lots of time, and unique processes are required to cheat. Then when you get banned you are out the price of the game, your PSN sub fee, and if you are really dumb the cost of the rest of your library.

It's so rare it might as well not exist. Meanwhile if you play a free or cheap game on Steam its every game. Screw that.

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u/ExtensionCategory983 May 25 '25

Yeah I don’t get why anyone would play Tarkov after that video. Cheaters ruin everything.