Microsoft needs to respond to this growing use of cheats. We here love the game, but playing against cheaters is not cool.
I still hope to directly solve the problem of cheaters from a technical perspective
If it doesn’t work, or have community players manually identify cheats (by hanging out videos that may cheat and eliminating the cheater’s name to protect privacy)
Determine whether it is a cheat through a form of voting and impose more severe penalties on the cheat (such as banning their account and all accounts associated with family sharing): for example, banning for half a month or one month instead of twenty minutes or one or two days
If they don’t want to apply a permaban then the idea of marking these players is a must.
If I’m queueing for a game and I got a marked player in my team I prefer to dodge the game. I don’t want to play with people using cheats, despite they are in my or in the other team.
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It’s sad that this guy is still playing, I already reported him in January, and even made a post here in the forum.
Probably the only way to get him banned now is to make youtube evidence videos.
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yes you can do it, then he would be banned for ~3 days… like the player mentioned in my example… kekw
huh?!
I reported also some BLATANT cheaters along this week, no one of them got banned.
This is getting too serious, to the point the game is near unplayable right now.
Nor is there any communication from developers at least to say that they are aware of it and are working on it. Just silence, and they keep closing threads about cheaters like they are trying to cover it up. The reason they give is “this is not the place to report players, go to support”, then you report via support and they do nothing.
You lose A LOT OF TIME recording it and uploading to YouTube just to get a generic “we cannot verify that the player did maphacking”.
i reported for ~6-7 times. At the beginning I did record video as support. However, I believe they don’t watch the video at all, just rely on in-game replay. So recording video is a waste of time.
Agreed, I got the same response despite it being blatantly obvious from the start.
Update !!!
Thx
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Did you reported just using the ingame feature?
Make sure to check on that person after a few days.
Hopefully it was not just a short temporary ban…
Please update us again.
That was an actual perma.
I wish it wouldn’t take such an gargantuan effort to achieve it. But congrats I guess.
Thanks everyone for your input and information here! We are always striving to do our best to find and ban any accounts that are cheating in Age IV and your help is vitally important with this.
First of all, I’d like to thank Magges for starting this thread and submitting the reports through Support. We did need to gather additional information to positively identify the reported player and the match in which cheating was observed. The video evidence provided through Support was very helpful for the team and, as stated, action was taken based on the information provided.
There have been more reports and evidence submitted resulting in additional actions against the reported account. Please note that we are unable to share further details regarding this since it could jeopardize the integrity of our moderation system.
The moderation team works hard to verify cheating reports and take action on accounts based on reports received in-game and through Support. If you notice an account cheating, please always report this in-game or through Support, even if it has been banned or reported before. We especially encourage you to include video evidence when contacting Support. Other helpful information is:
- Your Steam ID or Gamertag.
- Reported player’s Steam ID or Gamertag (if available).
- Date and time of incident.
- Screenshots of the behavior.
- Replay files (if available).
A notification will be sent out after the report is reviewed indicating whether action was taken or not based on the report. Per the Code of Conduct, “The type of enforcement action is based on the type, frequency, and nature of the violation.” The specific action also depends on any previous history of disciplinary action on the account.
If you receive a response that no action was taken, and you have evidence of cheating, or notice an account cheating again after action was taken, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Support. Sometimes, due to technical limitations such as being unable to locate the offending player’s account or other factors, we are unable to take action. When this happens, please update the Support ticket or create a new one with other additional details to help the moderation team investigate further. They can take another look at the report and review any additional information. Please also make sure you have also blocked the reported player in game to prevent any further negative interactions.
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When you say report in-game you mean while in the match or after the match? Does anything change reporting in match or after the match? Is more useful (because match ID or something like that is included in the report) to report in the match?
More questions regarding cheating… Does developers roadmap have in considerarion something about fixing the cheating, include some anti-cheat or something?
Thank you.
Hello, and thanks for all the feedback and direct messages from you developers!
For the future it might be helpful to know what kind of additional information is of most value to you or even usable by you (or for the support) (game numbers of aoe4 world, timestamps of games with a short description, since screenshots are usually not really meaningful (in case of map hackers this is e.g. a mark in the dark of the map… kekw), general information how the support proceeds that we players know which information we have to show, since it is very time-consuming to create such a video.
I can understand that there is no open communication on how to deal with cheaters, but then tend to say that due to “technical limitations” no action could be taken, specific enquiry should be made to the reporter, as this feedback seems incomprehensible without further information to the reporter. I am also of the opinion that you should also get this feedback in case of a permanent ban. Due to the last message I have unfortunately noticed that the support is not yet able to check already confirmed players for cheating again, which the player can do if he knows that the cheater is playing again, for example.
And what’s the point of blocking players - I haven’t understood that yet… Maybe you can explain the point of it to me. Thank you with kind regards
Magges
You can report in-game either during or after the match and both are helpful. Here’s how to do so:
During a match:
Use the ‘Esc’ key and choose ‘Player List’ and then click on the player’s icon.
At the end of a match:
The Report icon will be next to the player’s name in the Overview section.
For a roadmap, I don’t have one at this time. It is something that we have made sure that the team is aware of.
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Any information about the cheating you observed is helpful for the investigations. As mentioned, this can include videos but also can be the date and time, screenshots, replay files or match ID. Additionally, any details about the nature of the cheat you observed are also helpful.
The response about technical limitations can come up for a variety of reasons. Sometimes this can be because there is not enough information provided in a Support request but can also occur for other reasons. I suggest replying back to that Support email for additional information on the particular case.
I appreciate your feedback on the process that it is continually being reviewed in order to help players have the best experience possible.
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See this reddit thread about a blatant cheater operating for years with support doing jackshit: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/1cbtcys/how_a_cheater_looks_like_will_microsoft_do/
This situation is a joke, the dude even openly admits on reddit to cheating and that he does it because so many people do it. It’s just insanely frustrating to know that someone can go one for so long and there’s nothing that will be done against them.