by Waco Kid » Thu Jan 20, 2011 4:42 am
A few years ago a clan fell apart (another game) when the head guy was ousted in an internal power play. He responded by publicly outing himself and several (most) members of his former "elite" clan as cheaters, giving details on the cheats they used and a lot of details of how they were doing it.
Up until then no one had caught them, because they were good to begin with. I had suspected as did a lot of people because they were a little too good but no proof even from detailed specing. It was funny because the same guys who had defended them as "skillful players" were then saying they suspected something all along. Oh well.
Clans are really the mechanism that spreads cheating in large amounts. It starts with the non cheating "hacks" to play with packets and time delays to give an advantage over simple skill, but with a group things happen that don't happen with an individual. If you'll start changing packet and time adjustments for an unfair advantage over those that use default, you already have the mindset to cheat, and with more people someone will eventually try it and involve his clan friends.
You will catch people who get miraculously better overnight with no valid reason for it (although buying a new state of the art gaming computer can make a player much better overnight), you may catch hacks that have a signature in the logs like a GUID roller does (if SG has one, no idea if that's the case for this game) you won't catch the good players who cheat and research the cheats first, especially in clans where everyone tends to be normalized at a higher base skill level than average and information on cheats is much more easily distributed to a group. You might suspect because they log out and back in with each map change (but there are semi-legitimate reasons to do that as well), or they seem to know where you are, they look behind the hiding spot when your there but don't when your specing them and no one is there, but those aren't proof of cheating like the obvious newbie kid using a wallhack is, and they have big screens, hi rez mouse and fast machines and connections and run stereo sound that explains a lot of their ability (or so they will claim).
The good hackers love to catch the not so good ones, because it diverts the heat from them. They love that guy who is obvious because it gives the impression that all cheaters are obvious, when most are not. Good hackers mirror good players. They are the best of the best.
As far as IP's, you are right in some cases, that you get a range that can be tied to a tight locality, but that isn't always the case. For instance for roadrunner dsl in san diego, where I am at, I could get a large range in 24.x.x.x or 66.x.x.x with a modem reset. There was no higher granularity. That means to permanently ban a road runner user from san diego by ip you needed to ban every road runner user in san diego by IP. That might work for a low player count game like SG, but it doesn't work for most online FPS's as you will be banning many innocent players to ban one bad one. Heck, I remember on one forum I was on they banned all of Britain to stop one poster who was getting around their IP ban, because the IP range of the service provider was the IP range for GB. OTOH I am on ATT now and have a static IP. I could proxy or tunnel or possibly even spoof but I don't bother, because I don't hack, although I have been accused of it when I am playing good, especially when the long range shots seem to be landing, as have many I suppose.
The guy you banned can come back as simply as changing his service provider and having enough self control to keep his mouth shut. Next time he will be better because he knows what the telltale was that got him in the first place. If he wants to be a really good cheater he will get there eventually. Likely he's just a kid with a short attention span who has already moved happily to another game.