So I played my first ever team ranked game and there is a maphacker literally in the first game. I reported this player who is staring into enemy bases through undiscovered fog of war and I got response from Microsoft saying:
“Unfortunately due to technical limitations we were unable to confirm a violation of our Code of Conduct, the [Microsoft Service Agreement] or the [Xbox Community Standards]. Due to this no action has been taken at this time.”
So this player keeps playing unpunished and ruining other people’s games. Is there any hope the team start doing anything with cheater problem?
You presented something, what I call “soft evidence”: He checks enemies through FoW, for me already a strong indicator, but it is not enough for a conviction by the support team: In theory, he could be legit and just watching the nice beautiful fog. Because of that tiny doubt, it’s not enough.
What you need is “hard evidence”. Something, what a player cannot do at all - unless he is cheating. My past reports were only successful with the following proof:
Player has a FoW hack, shift-clicked (important!) something below (black) fog of war, which leads to a perfect snap of the waypoint on that object. A legit player with FoW cannot click on anything under black FoW. Hackers will make that mistake at some point by pure change, got to check sometimes more than a game or two to get that confirmation.
Player has a zoom-hack, which allows him to zoom very far out, the screen even starts getting grey and foggy due to graphical issues/limitations. Sometimes people mistakenly think it’s a cheater, but the other guy only used that perspective change setting. However, once you see a real zoom-hack in action, it is easy to distinguish.
There is another category, kind of a “case-by-case evidence”. Sometimes reports were successful:
Some people leave at the beginning of the game, or after 3/x mins without doing anything. You are happy about the win, but they are actually “cheating”: They abuse by losing on purpose to de-rank and then play properly (or sometimes with cheats) for easy wins. Stats seem legit at first, like ~50% win rate. However, when you check the player’s matches about the average “time to win” and “time to lose”, e.g. through https://aoe4world.com/, then they have on average like 90% of lost matches within 3 mins, and 90% of won matches at 20 mins or so. Normally, win and lose times should be roughly the same, by pure randomness.
I have no idea what the video is trying to show. From your vid, Strawberry (yellow) is only able to see their teammate’s stuff and what they’ve explored… enemy TCs are in complete dark; which is typically how it works. And then when you toggle to “reveal all” through the replay app it shows you the entire map, which is also typically how it works, pretty sure, since you’re in some sort of replay/caster mode. I don’t really get it. How are they “staring into enemy bases” if you’ve, literally, showed their fog of war does not show vision into enemy bases, imo?
Ever watch T90 AoE2:DE casts through CaptureAge where he shows the view of what players see and then toggles to show entire map in comparison? Just seems like that’s what you are doing?
As far as I can tell, Srawberry, litterally, can’t see anything in the black regions (which I’ve highlighted/crossed out in red). And the enemy TCs are in those regions:
I’m surprised the thread lasted as long as it did! There was once a time a few years ago where accusing others of cheating in the forum promptly led to thread closure or deletion
You you must be joking right? The maphacker vision does not translate to the replay system. Bro is snapping into our bases occasionally throughout the game while they even remain undiscovered for him.
Yeah, I don’t personally follow, based on the ‘evidence’ you showed and the words written. But I’m not as familiar with AoE4 and its replay systems – or why you would give the replay as proof and then later say the cheating doesn’t translate to the replay system… but good luck!
I think I got it! The Yellow player is passing the mouse through the Blue’s buildings and that should be impossible as they are in the black part of the map for him (yellow). We cannot select or target a unit/building if it is unexplored, or through the FoW as stated by the gyu above. But maybe it was a technical issue and that’s way the team did nothing.
I need a play by play analysis with timestamps of the video of what the issue is because I still have no clue what we’re supposed to look at, I’m afraid. Trying to decipher a Capture Age screen that flicks on and off in attempt to show something – what, I don’t know – is not the best way to convey an issue. I’m not a mind reader, and it’s not my job to spend 10 minutes trying to fill in the vague blanks. If they want more participation in the thread, I hope they more clearly spell out things.
MS support might have been equally confused. So, equally unable to help
