800+ crys credit w/ 550 wins - have yet to witness “cheating.”

I only mention rank and victories as a qualifier that I’m a decent pvper and that I didn’t win streak to Crystal in a day. That being said I’m not keen on the consistent insistence of a “cheating epidemic.” You’ve seen it; The excuse that finds its way into the seeming endless diatribe threads that, to experienced pvp players (from any game) essentially translates to “I just started pvping and I’m not crystal tier yet, therefor it’s definitely not that I’m not as good as I insist I am, but rather that SE sucks, there’s a cheating conspiracy and where’s my participation trophy naming me the greatest of all time.”

Especially when I consider that in over 1000 matches, (ballpark 30 bronze, 40 silver, 30 gold, 20 plat, 200 diamond and 650 crystal matches) I haven’t witnessed a single instance that had even this whiff of impropriety.
.

I’m not saying cheating is not there; but I know what to look for if it is and Using “cheating” as an uncontrollable epidemic to justify why one can get out of platinum, disincentivizes potential players from getting into what I personally think is the only element of ff14 worth it’s salt (after an initial savage clear, you lose me. Next week it’s gonna be exactly the same as the first fight.)

Personal preference aside, and trying my best in earnest not to gas anyone up, I thought that anyone considering taking a crack pvp ought to hear from someone very active in CC that in my experience on crystal DC, cheating is so negligible, that out of myself and the 63 other people in our pvp cwls, no one has been witness to anything so blatant that they vocalized it; either in game or in discord.

Tier systems work to a degree. It’s the best approach to ranked pvp for an accurate representation of skill level. It’s needs work, for sure. To start, de-ranking needs to be a thing asap. But, there’s fundamental merit, albeit quite limited, to the current tier system

The matchmaking needs work, sure. Jobs need tweaks, and purify / resilience is begging for attention, no doubt. But the unfortunate truth for the salt slingers is that we all face the same odds re: match ups, trollers, bad parties. If ANY of it were a chronic enough issue, no one would make it to crystal within a given season.

99.9% of the time, it’s just someone that thinks they’re a lot better than they are and would rather dear diary their lack of talent before they admit to themselves that they just aren’t very good.

It’s taken a long time to peak this much interest in PvP and I’d hate to see a single potential challenger bail on giving it a shot because some beta @ an led rainbow keyboard doesn’t realize that they just suck.

All of these people trying to down play the cheating issue sure do have a low post count. It's almost like you are all shills and hope we are too dumb to notice lol.

:drakeclap:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KickRox

because some beta @ an led rainbow keyboard doesn’t realize that they just suck.

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Oh man, self burn. Those are rare.

Ive met 3 cheaters in a month, even 2 in the same match on the opposing team.
They walk really fast, pretty much sprinting even in combat, and doesn't stand still when CC'ed, which is pretty obvious from an Ice Mage perspective.

Good for you for not noticing or meeting them for that long, but i just cannot say the same.

1. Telling everyone else to get good in a team sport that relies on the rest of the team being good also is not the own you think it is.

2. Related to the first, in a team based situation with awful communication tools if they added de ranking I'd never play ranked again. There's too much garbage in the mode for that to be a thing I want to see.

Too many matches where I tried to carry as sage while my party sat at the bottom of the chart and ran face first into death. Even ignoring cheaters without team or at the very least duo queuing you're putting everyone at the mercy of a system that's fundamentally broken (server ping, Purify) Unbalanced (job kits, CC spam where some have none), and exploitable (scripts, cheaters, etc).

I'll pass.

1000 matches and only 800 cred...?

There’s two types of players who call out cheating in CC

1. The type of player who knows every ability of every kit and is absolutely sure it must be a cheat due to an obvious indicator like consistently getting CCed the instant you LB

2. The type of player who sees their CC slide off someone due to paean shield and calls it a cheat because they don’t know how any kit works aside from the 5-6 meta jobs.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is cheating, but I also wouldn’t be surprised at all if there’s a lot of people who don’t know how kits aside from the 5-6 meta job kits work, and just call cheats as a form of copium. I’m willing to bet there’s a large overlap between players who think “they must be cheating because they didn’t stop when I CCed them” and players who don’t realize enemy bards can grant a spammable one time CC barrier because why would anyone learn how a trash non-meta(TM) job works

I’ll never understand why some people try to call cheats so often without at least learning how all the abilities for all the jobs work. It’s braindead stupid to so frequently say the game isn’t working the way it should, when you don’t even fully know how it’s supposed to work to begin with.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by iVolke

1000 matches and only 800 cred...?

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You tend to see high matches for people that play a lot, especially outside of prime time when the high skill players tend to be playing. I've had Kick Rox in my games numerous times, they're a solid player.

The amount of cheating varies quite a lot by datacenter. At least among the NA datacenters, I've heard that Crystal has the least cheating and Aether has the most. As someone who actually plays on Aether, this doesn't surprise me. We previously had the worst win trader in all of CC as our number 1, another major win trader in third, and even more known wintraders and speedhackers in the top 30. I could easily find 3 clips from 3 different streamers showing one specific player in our top 30 speedhacking. I have personally been invited to join a "premade" that was really just a wintrading group and seen a player outside the top 100 blatantly speedhacking. While I haven't directly seen anyone from Aether starting threads about cheating, it's very much a problem on our datacenter.

I see cheating everyday, it is hard to report, but SE should take measures and do something about it.

I got two right here:
First is a WHM who STILL exists on the Aether Ranked top 100 board: https://www.twitch.tv/nolabell/clip/...=30d&sort=time
And the second is an AST just today: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1485203...ghts&sort=time

Enjoy!

Examples of cheating like this are precisely why the STF is never going to be sufficient due to being horribly understaffed and resorting to roundabout detection methods that can fail to detect problems that are more easily observed first-hand

The GMs would just need to go into observer mode, see them repeatedly moving while stunned/frozen or hacking under the map, then ban them on spot.

I had a game earlier today, there was one person on the crystal and he was almost dead, right as he was about to die 3 of his teammates instant teleported on top the crystal right after reviving. All of us were like wtf!?! Noticed a monk as well going invisible to get his openers and teleporting to different parts of the map to prevent death and then would full heal and teleport back like nothing happened. A whm and ninja under the map, a paladin just skipping across the map at godly speeds unable to be CC, seen a lot today.. Hopefully after reset they are gone or squeenix does something. It seems to be getting worse.

It depends on how someone defines cheating. I hardly saw much of those obvious "over the top cheaters" but a lot of minor (still gamechanging) cheating.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mandudez

All of these people trying to down play the cheating issue sure do have a low post count. It's almost like you are all shills and hope we are too dumb to notice lol.

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I don't have a low post count and I'm in crystal rank and I can tell you I have seen no cheaters minus 1 incident that could have easily just been lag.

OP is right on several things. There's no real matchmaking, things like purify need to be tweaked etc...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Charlotte_Wells

It depends on how someone defines cheating. I hardly saw much of those obvious "over the top cheaters" but a lot of minor (still gamechanging) cheating.

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Minor meaning what? If I feel like putting actual effort in, it's trivial to keybind Target Enemy Player 1, tap that button, and then immediately tap Polymorph to instantly sheep them. I suppose it would be some fractions of a second slower than a script, but considering the awful tickrate the servers run at, I'm not entirely convinced that would even be meaningful.

Understand, I don't think such scripts are defensible in any way, shape, or form. But eliminating them will be virtually impossible without extremely invasive software, which would also completely kill off the thriving plugin and modding scene (including all first-party repos, Penumbra, Textools, GShade, etc), hurt performance, and probably not even truly eliminate them in the first place. If people are using scripts to automate what they could be doing with keybinds already... I'd consider it to be something that shouldn't exist, but you just have to accept as being there.

Whatever effort goes into dealing with cheating, it should focus on legitimate cheating, things that cannot be achieved through normal means - infinite health, clipping through terrain, etc. Stuff like "WHM sheeped me while I was in the LB cast animation" is something that can be done manually by someone with efficient keybinds and by paying attention. Stunning people out of LB cast animations was bog standard play in Feast; the cast times there were loud and slower, but the stun would still typically land within the first second or less of the cast animation, meaning it would still apply to the new LBs since some of them have 1+ sec long "hidden" cast bars.

I don't think interrupting the new LBs with CC is an intended interaction when it results in the LB gauge being consumed without anything happening when that was not the case with the old ones.

I'd gladly take a visible cast time on all of them if it removes that bit of jank.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

I don't think interrupting the new LBs with CC is an intended interaction when it results in the LB gauge being consumed without anything happening when that was not the case with the old ones.

I'd gladly take a visible cast time on all of them if it removes that bit of jank.

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Maybe not. You lost half the gauge last time, though, so who knows what the intention was? It's very possible to stun people out of LBs now even without scripts. Some of them are *supposed* to be instant, like WHM LB, but it seems like server tickrate causes a lot of grief here. Like the stun gets applied before anything else, even before the animation is visible.

Someone mentioned old school WoW-style spell batching and it sure does feel like it's in this game, too. It's awful. I don't really understand why they pushed for a low TTK design when the servers aren't setup to handle that sort of fast-paced gameplay.

It seems like the server prioritizes buffs/debuffs over healing/damage because I've noticed in situations where several people are eating an AoE that applies vuln stacks the debuff can register well before the damage does.

It's a good thing when it comes to trying to shield incoming damage, but it's detrimental in the case of CC effects as it tends to result in the CC already being gone by the time you're able to act again in the case of stuff like WHM/MNK LB.

Either the PVP CC system is so far out of tune that players can win and look like they're cheating, or people are cheating. There's quite a bit of the first, but a ton of the second.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wilbur

Either the PVP CC system is so far out of tune that players can win and look like they're cheating, or people are cheating. There's quite a bit of the first, but a ton of the second.

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People keep saying there's a ton of the latter but I have literally never seen it and people with thousands of wins are saying they've seen it single digit times. "WHM interrupted my LB!" is something a skilled player could do manually so that happening to you, even multiple times in a match, isn't necessarily evidence of cheating. I guess you could lump win trading in, but that honestly sounds like it's an Aether problem. I haven't heard of it being much of a thing on Crystal or Primal.

I've not played 1000 matches, but I am in the 200 range, and I've seen it once that I can be sure of. It exists, but I agree, it's not every single match like some people wanna claim.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gserpent

People keep saying there's a ton of the latter but I have literally never seen it and people with thousands of wins are saying they've seen it single digit times. "WHM interrupted my LB!" is something a skilled player could do manually so that happening to you, even multiple times in a match, isn't necessarily evidence of cheating. I guess you could lump win trading in, but that honestly sounds like it's an Aether problem. I haven't heard of it being much of a thing on Crystal or Primal.

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Yeah i wouldnt call it cheating but there is a bit of a difference of doing it frame 1 and normal human reaction speed.
Multiple times, i was canceled before my lb animation even started to play while the whm literally just attacked somebody else.
Not like it matters, you cant cancel ast lb, its a little sus tho if you press the button and immediately get morphed vs. you get a tiiny bit in and then get morphed.

But i definitely canceled lbs before when i was whm. Especially other whms, so in itself its not cheating, it depends how often and how quick it happens in a match, but you cant really keep track of it.

It does become sus if you are in a pile and the whm is doing something else and still frame 1your lb with the type of masterful targeting we have.

But who knows…

Recently made account with 3 classes leveled...sounds like a bait.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KickRox

The matchmaking needs work, sure. Jobs need tweaks, and purify / resilience is begging for attention, no doubt. But the unfortunate truth for the salt slingers is that we all face the same odds re: match ups, trollers, bad parties. If ANY of it were a chronic enough issue, no one would make it to crystal within a given season.

99.9% of the time, it’s just someone that thinks they’re a lot better than they are and would rather dear diary their lack of talent before they admit to themselves that they just aren’t very good.

It’s taken a long time to peak this much interest in PvP and I’d hate to see a single potential challenger bail on giving it a shot because some beta @ an led rainbow keyboard doesn’t realize that they just suck.

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I believe you are right when you say cheating is not prevalent. But there are also some fundamental flaws in what you wrote here. Yes, everybody faces "the same odds", but odds are still odds and not certainties. While those odds tend to even things out over the course of a 1,000 + matches, most people don't play that many matches and so they can have vastly different experiences when it comes to ranking up even if they have identical skills. Luck in matchmaking, party composition, and the order of your wins/losses are arguably more important for your rank than your own skill over your first several hundred matches. Until they have a sufficiently high number of matches you simply cannot rule out that someone is where they are just because they got luckier / unluckier than average. You acknowledge that yourself when you feel the need to say that you "did not win streak to crystal in a day".

So, for the sake of fairness, you should not dismiss other people's complaints as "believing they are better than they are".

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gserpent

People keep saying there's a ton of the latter but I have literally never seen it and people with thousands of wins are saying they've seen it single digit times. "WHM interrupted my LB!" is something a skilled player could do manually so that happening to you, even multiple times in a match, isn't necessarily evidence of cheating. I guess you could lump win trading in, but that honestly sounds like it's an Aether problem. I haven't heard of it being much of a thing on Crystal or Primal.

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My favorite is:

“I used my entire burst on a MCH/DRG/any no/low barrier job and did 0 damage! This cheating is out of control!!!”

Cheating huh..? Sure it was cheating..? You sure they didn’t have an LB PLD using guardian because they took the time to, ya know.. learn what each skill doe— oh look, they deleted their reply.

Again, I’m not saying it’s not there. But it’s absolutely nowhere near the levels people insist. Not at crystal at least. We play with/against each other every day, all day. If someone were overtly cheating (outside of win trading) you’d have actual crystal players calling them out, by name, both in game and on the boards. There’d be legit threads with screenshots, links to footage videos etc. just like the one exposing real offensivename the crystal dc 1st place.

But whatever helps them sleep at night ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KickRox

My favorite is:

“I used my entire burst on a MCH/DRG/any no/low barrier job and did 0 damage! This cheating is out of control!!!”

Cheating huh..? Sure it was cheating..? You sure they didn’t have an LB PLD using guardian because they took the time to, ya know.. learn what each skill doe— oh look, they deleted their reply.

Again, I’m not saying it’s not there. But it’s absolutely nowhere near the levels people insist. Not at crystal at least. We play with/against each other every day, all day. If someone were overtly cheating (outside of win trading) you’d have actual crystal players calling them out, by name, both in game and on the boards. There’d be legit threads with screenshots, links to footage videos etc. just like the one exposing real offensivename the crystal dc 1st place.

But whatever helps them sleep at night ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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That's all well and good

Yet here's the thing

Outside of Streamers catching cheaters on VOD having definative proof of Scripting/Hacking, a YouTube Channel that was exposing all the cheats (which got hit with a takedown) and so on

Know why nobody posts it on the official forums?

Because Witch Hunting and Call out posts are not allowed.

But you keep pretending that those players that suddenly snap auto target and Poly at an inhuman reaction time, those that run around at sprint speed forever and can't ever be CCed are legit players and not at all cheating to get ahead.

Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JanVanding

That's all well and good

Yet here's the thing

Outside of Streamers catching cheaters on VOD having definative proof of Scripting/Hacking, a YouTube Channel that was exposing all the cheats (which got hit with a takedown) and so on

Know why nobody posts it on the official forums?

Because Witch Hunting and Call out posts are not allowed.

But you keep pretending that those players that suddenly snap auto target and Poly at an inhuman reaction time, those that run around at sprint speed forever and can't ever be CCed are legit players and not at all cheating to get ahead.

Whatever helps you sleep at night I guess?

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They don't post it here, but this is far from the only location where XIV things are discussed. Honestly, it's probably not even in the top 5. Other places tend to be fine with "call out" type stuff as long as the person provides evidence of their claims to the moderators before posting it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JanVanding

But you keep pretending that those that run around at sprint speed forever and can't ever be CCed are legit players and not at all cheating to get ahead.

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When I actually see either of these two things, for the first time, I’ll let you know there, sport.

Still recording every match, still running playback on anything that seems off at the time, still a legitimate explanation for the 3 or 4 times out of 1200+ matches something didn’t add up.. until I realized despite my extensive pvp experience, I still have things to learn about how the game works.

But isn’t it just easier to blame ‘cheaters’?

I'd like to think that the blatant cheating was just a fad that died down after people realized the hard way SE wasn't going to let them get away with the insanely obvious stuff...though it's also possible they just hit crystal rank and stopped PvPing by now.

It's unlikely they'll ever action the people using scripts to automate skill usage, though, as that falls into the vague space of "plausible deniability" that gives them the benefit of the doubt.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by KickRox

When I actually see either of these two things, for the first time, I’ll let you know there, sport.

Still recording every match, still running playback on anything that seems off at the time, still a legitimate explanation for the 3 or 4 times out of 1200+ matches something didn’t add up.. until I realized despite my extensive pvp experience, I still have things to learn about how the game works.

But isn’t it just easier to blame ‘cheaters’?

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Check Violent Destructions Twitter, that's exactly what the cheater he caught on VOD and posted to Twitter was doing, perma sprint immune to CC.

Also I love that humble brag attempt, this might shock you, but some of us have been around PvP in MMOs since the days of DaoC so we might know a thing or two about what cheating actually looks like?

Well cheating now there is a discord selling hack/mods/cheats and ppl are paying for that, you can even look it up on youtube to see how these cheats are being shown off and advertising
like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw3nSD_MwT8