AI cheats: Why you didn't notice your teammate was cheating

Cheat Detection Approaches

• Honeypots and decoy targets/loot are used (e.g., unlootable loot, invisible “phantom” enemies), but cheats can often detect the differences the client sees and avoid them.
• Statistical/behavioral detection (chess, FPS, poker) is viewed as necessary but imperfect, especially at high levels where human “perfect” play is common.
• Some suggest server-side “fog of war” (only sending info about nearly visible players) and logging rich telemetry (timings, hit patterns, causality) to spot non-human patterns.
• Others note that automation has distinctive timing/frequency “tells,” but counter‑arguments say humans are also tightly coupled to frame rates and exhibit patterns.

Cat-and-Mouse, and Platform Incentives

• Consensus that cheat vs. anti‑cheat is an endless arms race; good systems delay bans and gather a “novel of sins” to obscure what triggered detection.
• Some claim strong anti‑cheat plus controlled environments (tournament PCs, LAN‑style setups) help, but even that gets bypassed.
• Matchmaking and “engagement optimized” systems blur perception: as players climb, legitimately stronger opponents can feel like cheaters.

Communities, Servers, and Social Solutions

• Many argue the best anti‑cheat is social:
  • Play with friends or trusted communities.
  • Small, community‑run servers/ladders where admins can spectate, review replays, and ban quickly.
• Nostalgia for the era when server binaries were public and ISPs hosted servers; modern centralized services block this and concentrate moderation power.

Motivations and Mindsets

• Explanations offered: vindication after repeated losses, status and reputation, financial gain (boosting/e‑sports), trolling/griefing, or treating bypassing anti‑cheat as a “meta‑game.”
• Some cheaters frame it as a learning ground for reverse engineering and security, or liken it to performance enhancement in sports.
• Others see habitual cheating and tool‑building as fundamentally abusive, “junkie‑like” behavior that erodes trust.

Identity, Punishment, and Ethics

• One camp proposes real‑ID, cross‑game bans and serious real‑world penalties; critics warn of misidentifications, surveillance, abuse of centralized power, and parallels to authoritarian systems.
• Debate over whether cheat developers should be social pariahs versus treated as hobbyists gaining technical skills.

Player Responses

• Some avoid PvP entirely or only play co‑op/private servers; others accept occasional cheaters as background noise.
• A recurring sentiment: the genre of large, anonymous, highly competitive online games is becoming a “cesspit,” and its long‑term viability may depend on better community structures rather than purely technical anti‑cheat.