Players rave and rant about the wonders of kernel level anti cheats, and how games like Valorant barely have any cheaters compared VAC secured Counter Strike...
From my experience with fighting games, people are also prone to mislabeling others as smurfs when they just know one or two more things about the game that give them an edge. I’ve observed replays in Street Fighter 6 that people claimed were smurfs, but they were absolutely playing at the level their rank said they were.
The only way to stop it is to stop letting people play with strangers and to go back to local LAN sessions, or for games to be private only with temporary invite codes that have to be shared manually, with a maximum number of users allowed.
Online anonymity really has ultimately harmed us as a species and conferred little if any benefit.
There are plenty of ways to curb cheating. It still happens in fighting games too, but the way the genre works makes it far less prevalent. FPS games these days are largely designed around things that are hard for humans but easy for computers to do while looking like humans. Just spitballing, but if aiming was less of a concern, like it might be in the likes of old James Bond games or Metroid Prime, there are other ways to build competitive strategy around an FPS besides how well you can get your tiny crosshair to line up over a tiny target. Otherwise though, I’m with you on it being inevitable. There’s no way to truly stop it.
I’m a fan of projectile-based objective-based shooters like Tribes. It’s a shame they are not more popular. Just the nature of the game design makes aimbots nearly useless.
From my experience with fighting games, people are also prone to mislabeling others as smurfs when they just know one or two more things about the game that give them an edge. I’ve observed replays in Street Fighter 6 that people claimed were smurfs, but they were absolutely playing at the level their rank said they were.
The only way to stop it is to stop letting people play with strangers and to go back to local LAN sessions, or for games to be private only with temporary invite codes that have to be shared manually, with a maximum number of users allowed.
Online anonymity really has ultimately harmed us as a species and conferred little if any benefit.
There are plenty of ways to curb cheating. It still happens in fighting games too, but the way the genre works makes it far less prevalent. FPS games these days are largely designed around things that are hard for humans but easy for computers to do while looking like humans. Just spitballing, but if aiming was less of a concern, like it might be in the likes of old James Bond games or Metroid Prime, there are other ways to build competitive strategy around an FPS besides how well you can get your tiny crosshair to line up over a tiny target. Otherwise though, I’m with you on it being inevitable. There’s no way to truly stop it.
I’m a fan of projectile-based objective-based shooters like Tribes. It’s a shame they are not more popular. Just the nature of the game design makes aimbots nearly useless.