So about cheats at top level?

Let's be real a minute, I see everybody calling the top 100 full of cheaters, hackers and match riggers and whatnot. And while I have seen very sus things here and there, let's address the elephant in the room for once.

What are your evidence, suspicions, things you think are rampant, secret linkshells full of top rankers and whatnot?

I haven't run into in CC as much, probably because of the wider appeal of the mode, but I have goddamn recordings of win trade matches I've stumbled into on Primal Feast season 20, complete with allies emote spamming me and marking me while doing nothing to play the game.

This tied to the PvPrimal discord which had a good number of players outwardly mocking me, others trying to tell me to just suck it up and play around their schedule instead of mine, and those silently abetting them because either its just a game or they're already in and don't want to rock the boat any.

I've seen those same names in CC, but either they've grown a bit, not incentivized the same way to cheat or I'm just not as likely to run into em. Haven't done competitive CC as much overall cuz I wasn't even around for the first 4 seasons.

I doubt reporting them had anything to do with it despite evidence.

As far as outright hacking, I haven't seen it. Maybe I've had some people deliberately sandbagging but there's enough I can do and improve on on my own in this mode that it's not as noticable, not least of all because there's 5 per team and the roles aren't as rigid

I've seen some wildly questionable timing on ability use, but I never equate it to cheating. I'm sure there are script users out there, but I don't think its that prevalent. I have however seen my fair share of speed hackers and teleporters and I even managed to catch one back in season 2 while streaming, but again, I don't think cheating is super prevalent as a whole, though I imagine in the top 100 there are some shenanigans.

Edit:
Link for anyone curious what it looked like - https://imgur.com/jh850iY

I cannot say for most of the DCs, but I think Light is in pretty good place aside from having small-ish playerpool. I haven't seen blatant cheating aside from some questionable cast times from some WHMs in past Seasons, but I think they can still fall under the player just having excellent reflexes.

I'm not part of the discords and such so I can't confirm existence of any secret cabal. There were handful of the top players previously in some of the largest PvP ones, but I think its more about playing together other games when the queue is dead.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

I've seen some wildly questionable timing on ability use, but I never equate it to cheating. I'm sure there are script users out there, but I don't think its that prevalent. I have however seen my fair share of speed hackers and teleporters and I even managed to catch one back in season 2 while streaming, but again, I don't think cheating is super prevalent as a whole, though I imagine in the top 100 there are some shenanigans.

Edit:
Link for anyone curious what it looked like - https://imgur.com/jh850iY

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Do you have a video with better resolution?
To me it looks like you used a gap closer on a BLM as soon as they used Aetherial Manipulation on you twice, further hinted at by them using two ice casts on you without a cast bar ever showing up for them on the enemy party menu.
If I remember correctly 2 players using gap closers on each other leads to some wonky stuff happening and the other looking like they are teleporting.
Here is an example.
https://i.imgur.com/bp4eW8P.mp4

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Originally Posted by Valence

Let's be real a minute, I see everybody calling the top 100 full of cheaters, hackers and match riggers and whatnot. And while I have seen very sus things here and there, let's address the elephant in the room for once.

What are your evidence, suspicions, things you think are rampant, secret linkshells full of top rankers and whatnot?

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win trading hands down, super hard to prove unless you know what to look for and even if you report them mods have no idea what they are looking at when they see it so nothing ever comes of it.

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Originally Posted by kayll

Do you have a video with better resolution?
To me it looks like you used a gap closer on a BLM as soon as they used Aetherial Manipulation on you twice, further hinted at by them using two ice casts on you without a cast bar ever showing up for them on the enemy party menu.
If I remember correctly 2 players using gap closers on each other leads to some wonky stuff happening and the other looking like they are teleporting.
Here is an example.
https://i.imgur.com/bp4eW8P.mp4

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..... pretty sure if pay real close attention one of them is moving around as if they are sprinting WHILE attacking...

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Originally Posted by kayll

Do you have a video with better resolution?
To me it looks like you used a gap closer on a BLM as soon as they used Aetherial Manipulation on you twice, further hinted at by them using two ice casts on you without a cast bar ever showing up for them on the enemy party menu.
If I remember correctly 2 players using gap closers on each other leads to some wonky stuff happening and the other looking like they are teleporting.
Here is an example.
https://i.imgur.com/bp4eW8P.mp4

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The BLM didn't manip to any other players. They straight up blipped out of existence and the ice was casted at the same the player disappeared. The second ice wasn't from an ice attack it was superflare stunning me.

I've never seen manip not do it's travel animation.

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Originally Posted by Valence

What are your evidence, suspicions, things you think are rampant, secret linkshells full of top rankers and whatnot?

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And it would be pointless for anyone to share much about it here. I've seen people make threads and post screenshots and the like and they're all deleted rather quickly and wiped from existence due to the forum's policies on "shaming" people. It's like the one thing that gets moderated quickly around here. The other being obscenities and vulgarity...

...Which is also relevant, because I remember roughly a year or so ago somebody had made a thread full of screenshots of in-game win-trading and cheating in addition to out-of-game screenshots of convos and drama on Discord and the like to further support their claim. Naturally, something like that couldn't remain on the forums, but what exacerbated it was new, throw-away forum accounts (presumably from the accused player(s)) proceeded to flood and spam the thread with vulgar posts for a couple pages to expedite the thread getting deleted.

It absolutely does exist- not to the hyperbolic extent that some people like to claim, but between the inability to say much about or prove it in places like here and reddit, and gaslighting from the people who very well might engage in it- that makes it come off as some kind of urban legend.

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Originally Posted by Ransu

The BLM didn't manip to any other players. They straight up blipped out of existence and the ice was casted at the same the player disappeared. The second ice wasn't from an ice attack it was superflare stunning me.

I've never seen manip not do it's travel animation.

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Do you have a better resolution of the video or not, that would make things very clear of what is happening.
Did you watch the video in my post? It shows what happens if two players gapclose on each other at the same time,they stop in front of you on your screen and then blip into your previous location.
You can see the animation of Aetherial Manipulation both times before the teleport, two Green/Blackish orbs rotating around them opposite of each other.
Anyways heres another video for you of Aetherial Manip doing just that in a duel,also note the green orbs
https://i.imgur.com/cWiC4rY.mp4

Sadly the game is just made out of twigs.

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Originally Posted by kayll

Do you have a video with better resolution?
To me it looks like you used a gap closer on a BLM as soon as they used Aetherial Manipulation on you twice, further hinted at by them using two ice casts on you without a cast bar ever showing up for them on the enemy party menu.
If I remember correctly 2 players using gap closers on each other leads to some wonky stuff happening and the other looking like they are teleporting.
Here is an example.
https://i.imgur.com/bp4eW8P.mp4

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Not trying to discredit you but can you get a better recording of something like this because this is like 144p man

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Originally Posted by Reimmi

Not trying to discredit you but can you get a better recording of something like this because this is like 144p man

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Is there something genuinely wrong my link as well?
Or did you mean to reply to the other person?

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Originally Posted by kayll

Is there something genuinely wrong my link as well?
Or did you mean to reply to the other person?

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Yeah my bad. wrong quote, meant the one you responded to

t100 is not full of cheaters, I would say 95% of it is legit (Light DC)

But from what I personally witnessed, there is 1 known speed-hacker that has been at it since season 4 I believe
They usually reach crystal rank and then stop, but they got t100 in season 5 (V. U.)

There are no rewards for us t100 players so no big deal really, but still, SE should monitor their game mode to ensure everyone has fun.

Still, those cheaters (very few) should not be an excuse for preventing anyone to reach t100.. the leaderboard is literally free on Light/Chaos

There used to be a lot more suspicious NIN LB's, but it's definitely fallen off (alongside the declining NIN population). If there are still cheaters, it seems like they've limited themselves at most to auto-Purify/Guard. Wintrading and sandbagging I think are still around for sure, but obviously it's very difficult to prove without DM receipts or third party tools. Let's just say that a lot of T30 players each season have no business being there, given the way they play.

I feel like auto purify is shooting oneself in the foot as much as it can help you purify faster when it actually matters tbh... Same-ish for Guard, how does the program know when to guard and when to refrain?

I imagine it just auto pops it at a certain HP threshold.

That would also mean it's actually capable of reading the damage potency of each hit you take before their actual damage resolution (that is very delayed), else you'd just die from earlier damage even if the program guards when it detects low HP...

My only guess is it reads the logs. I'm not really sure how they work. I feel like they would just get in the way though.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I feel like auto purify is shooting oneself in the foot as much as it can help you purify faster when it actually matters tbh... Same-ish for Guard, how does the program know when to guard and when to refrain?

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I have no experience with cheats in XIV PvP, but back in the day I did do lot of research and hunting for cheaters in FPS games. Lemme tell you, the cheat engines are extremely sophisticated if you want them to be. For example, for shooting games, you could tell the aimbot to introduce a % random accuracy, or to only hit the head every 4th shot, or to introduce an offset/low-FOV aimlock so that it wouldn't look super obvious that you were looking at people through walls.

Anyway, the point is that you can probably tell the engine what exactly you always want auto-Guarded, especially for things that aren't normally reactable. You can ask it to automatically Guard against MCH LB or Miracle of Nature, for example. There are certain things that you'd also almost always want to immediately Purify. Alternatively, it'd be very simple to ask the engine to automatically Purify for you if you attempt to press certain buttons. Say for example, it'll only Purify if you attempt to press a movement key (ie Thunderclap, Icarus, etc), turning any of those buttons into a discount version of Elusive Jump. You could also have it auto-Purify if you make any attempt to press Guard or Recuperate.

I'm not sure if server ticks function on rollback netcode, but if they did, it'd be very simple to ask the software to react to even instant-cast abilities.

magnitudes more people cheat with combat rotation condensers, callout overlays, mechanic overlays and zoomhacks in pve than pvp because pvp has dogshit rewards
which is tbh a good reason to keep t100 prizes as terrible as they are, because last time we had interesting exclusives we had 20+ scripters and wintraders per DC vs the 1-3 we get now

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Originally Posted by rofland

magnitudes more people cheat with combat rotation condensers, callout overlays, mechanic overlays and zoomhacks in pve than pvp because pvp has dogshit rewards
which is tbh a good reason to keep t100 prizes as terrible as they are, because last time we had interesting exclusives we had 20+ scripters and wintraders per DC vs the 1-3 we get now

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pretty much what i said in another forum, if we keep stuff strictly locked to ranked people will be more likely to cheat.
doubly so if the rewards are fomo.

Teleportation is always fun to play against. https://i.imgur.com/k2ZY4Ot.gif

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Originally Posted by Elfidan

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This ones much more egregious, unlike the other gif posted in this thread.
I can't think of any possible ways of moving like that personally, looks like they removed the animation and CD on their Elusive Jump lmao

not much evidence is needed tbh, its an unsupervised ranked mode. people cheat in real life sports that are actually monitored actively, only a fool would believe no one would cheat in an environment where they can basically just get away with it. ive been playing online games since there was an internet. any time there is a ranked ladder or whatever, its all just cheaters. devs should simply remove them going forward.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

pretty much what i said in another forum, if we keep stuff strictly locked to ranked people will be more likely to cheat.
doubly so if the rewards are fomo.

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QUOTE=anna-steele;6297037]not much evidence is needed tbh, its an unsupervised ranked mode. people cheat in real life sports that are actually monitored actively, only a fool would believe no one would cheat in an environment where they can basically just get away with it. ive been playing online games since there was an internet. any time there is a ranked ladder or whatever, its all just cheaters. devs should simply remove them going forward.[/QUOTE]

I know this isn't the point of this thread, but I'd much prefer the ranked mode have much more effective and present moderation if they're going to include ranked rewards, especially the more unique ones like during the Feast again.

If they aren't willing to support the mode enough to deter blatant cheating, especially when provided plenty of player reports and evidence, then they shouldn't include the mode.

That said, one of the great joys of ranked is playing more intense matches with folks closer to your skill level, and I'd miss that aspect dearly if they just dropped the mode, so I'd rather one mode with rank tied in that regard anything extra just so that the more you win, the more you'll be pitted against/with those that win as well.

What we have now isn't terrible compared to before, but ranked matches still dry up mid and late season, especially if you didn't hit Crystal early.

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Originally Posted by Post

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Originally Posted by anna-steele

not much evidence is needed tbh, its an unsupervised ranked mode. people cheat in real life sports that are actually monitored actively, only a fool would believe no one would cheat in an environment where they can basically just get away with it. ive been playing online games since there was an internet. any time there is a ranked ladder or whatever, its all just cheaters. devs should simply remove them going forward.

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I know this isn't the point of this thread, but I'd much prefer the ranked mode have much more effective and present moderation if they're going to include ranked rewards, especially the more unique ones like during the Feast again.

If they aren't willing to support the mode enough to deter blatant cheating, especially when provided plenty of player reports and evidence, then they shouldn't include the mode.

That said, one of the great joys of ranked is playing more intense matches with folks closer to your skill level, and I'd miss that aspect dearly if they just dropped the mode, so I'd rather one mode with rank tied in that regard anything extra just so that the more you win, the more you'll be pitted against/with those that win as well.

What we have now isn't terrible compared to before, but ranked matches still dry up mid and late season, especially if you didn't hit Crystal early.

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Yup, if they're not gonna moderate it why should they make rewards for it? makes no sense imo but since when was the last time square actually did something that made sense to us?

In terms of cheats like scripts and speedhacking, I've personally almost never seen them. In the few instances I did find suspicious (mostly in earlier seasons), the players who may have been using those exploits were often compensating for their own lack of skill and game sense. On balance, it didn't seem to help skew matches in their favor--it was just annoying (and even exploitable, in the case of scripting).

As for wintrading, it's also fairly rare, but even in cases where players were obvious about it (one person repeatedly throwing for another on the same job), moderation has been spotty. It's more often the case that people report the offending parties en masse and nothing happens. Moreover, there's a grey area--someone doing 0 damage and healing in a crystal-rank game is obviously up to something, but a more moderate amount of sandbagging comes with plausible deniability. Are they throwing? Or did they just decide to queue up drunk on a whim? Is it coincidence or conspiracy? Say there's 10 players in queue, with one good MNK and one bad MNK. You might be able to prove that the good MNK is benefitting from putting the bad MNK on the opposing team, but you can't prove they're working together. (They often aren't, I find.)

There's also the matter of deliberate sabotage. Rather than throwing games to benefit an accomplice, there are some players who throw games to spite people on their team they have a grudge against. Moderation is also near-nonexistent on this matter.

The low player population and lax moderation creates a game state that can be manipulated by those with bad intentions. Even so, the vast majority of people just want to play the game, and the vast majority of the leaderboard in any given season is legitimate. If you want to grind ladder, you shouldn't let the few bad actors discourage you. If you're skilled, you'll climb.

These problems would be alleviated if we had more players in queue. Combined regional data center queues in 7.0 please ;-;

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Originally Posted by hexxxx

In terms of cheats like scripts and speedhacking, I've personally almost never seen them. In the few instances I did find suspicious (mostly in earlier seasons), the players who may have been using those exploits were often compensating for their own lack of skill and game sense. On balance, it didn't seem to help skew matches in their favor--it was just annoying (and even exploitable, in the case of scripting).

As for wintrading, it's also fairly rare, but even in cases where players were obvious about it (one person repeatedly throwing for another on the same job), moderation has been spotty. It's more often the case that people report the offending parties en masse and nothing happens. Moreover, there's a grey area--someone doing 0 damage and healing in a crystal-rank game is obviously up to something, but a more moderate amount of sandbagging comes with plausible deniability. Are they throwing? Or did they just decide to queue up drunk on a whim? Is it coincidence or conspiracy? Say there's 10 players in queue, with one good MNK and one bad MNK. You might be able to prove that the good MNK is benefitting from putting the bad MNK on the opposing team, but you can't prove they're working together. (They often aren't, I find.)

There's also the matter of deliberate sabotage. Rather than throwing games to benefit an accomplice, there are some players who throw games to spite people on their team they have a grudge against. Moderation is also near-nonexistent on this matter.

The low player population and lax moderation creates a game state that can be manipulated by those with bad intentions. Even so, the vast majority of people just want to play the game, and the vast majority of the leaderboard in any given season is legitimate. If you want to grind ladder, you shouldn't let the few bad actors discourage you. If you're skilled, you'll climb.

These problems would be alleviated if we had more players in queue. Combined regional data center queues in 7.0 please ;-;

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lol Win traders are waaaay less obvious then that, they will never have zero on healing damage or time on crystal.
The only way you can find them is if you see them in a game with the same people repeatedly and even then mod staff is not gonna do anything, you cant prove that they're win trading so they get off scott free every time
But yeah alot of the cheaters/wintraders will do stuff at the start of the season 90% of the time or just not do it at all because theres nothing to be gained after winning X amount of times.