MP cheating Q...

[homercles]

So im trying to get into the JA MP stuff and join FFAs that are explictly labeled as "no force powers." Yet there are people in there that are clearly using force powers, along with other mysterious things. Im new to MP and find this frustrating as h3ll. So, im wondering what i can do about this? Eg. how do I cheat?! Or how do i deal with these fools?

[Amidala from Chop Shop]

No one is cheating, it's a "bug" in the game. If even one Force power is disabled, for instance only Lightning disabled, the loading screen will say "No Force Powers", even though all of the other Force powers are still there. I wish it said "Partial Force Powers" or "Limited Force Powers" instead. It was the same way in JK2.

[nabroc]

Just switch servers, sometimes a server is labeled as non-force in the list, although it does allow for some force powers to be used (like lightning may be off but everything else on). This has nothing to do with people cheating on MP, it's server settings (did you check to see if you could distribute force points?). As to the other 'mysterious' things, unless you describe 'em I'm afraid nobody can comment on those.

[AxVegetA]

(kinda off topic)

I am absolutely sure there are some people with some scrip that allows them to turn absorb exactly when i am pulling or pushing.

Is that true, or they can read my mind 49 of 50 times?

[homercles]

So if this is a "bug" why cant I use force powers? NONE of my powers work. Am i doing something wrong with set up or something?

 

Along the line of "mysterious things," i am seeing people make themselves invisible for a short time or change their appearace from a jawa to a human, etc. Things i never saw or used in the SP campaign.

[nabroc]

AxVegetA, you're sure they've turned absorb on and it ain't the ingame push/pull-back defense mechanism? Haven't seen this phenomena myself yet, although I mostly play non force unless I'm on a siege server. If it's true, I don't see how this can be done with the ingame scripting language (how to check if someone is about or even currently using the force against you? I don't even see commands for a simple 'if then, else' structure and nothing to determine what players are doing, with the help of scripting commands. If such cheating is actually going on, they hacked into the engine at some point and are not just using a script.

----

fukhed, have you distributed your force points upon force powers after joining the server (profile->force powers) - unless you do so, you don't get to use the forcepowers. Those players going invisible on you is probably due to them using 'force-distraction', you should be able to counter that with 'force-seeing'. The model changes isn't a cheat that harms MP gameplay, you can do this yourself by typing /model jawa into the console or calling your profile and switching to a different skin - if it bothers you that the skins are changed instantly, then under game options there's a setting 'defer player models', set this to on and the skin change will only take place upon their next respawn.

[homercles]

Sweet, thanks nabroc. I will that a shot.

 

Another Q, in FFAs are there bots + real people, or just real people?

 

Also, im quite convinced that cheating is used alot. How do i tell if someone is cheating? I cant remember the server, but i slashed and hacked this guy for 10 seconds and all he said was, "you cant defeat a jedi." He never died, but i die after like 1 second of hacking.

[Rumor]

Originally posted by fukhed

Sweet, thanks nabroc. I will that a shot.

 

Another Q, in FFAs are there bots + real people, or just real people?

 

Also, im quite convinced that cheating is used alot. How do i tell if someone is cheating? I cant remember the server, but i slashed and hacked this guy for 10 seconds and all he said was, "you cant defeat a jedi." He never died, but i die after like 1 second of hacking.

 

dude clients cannot have different damage settings, etc. due to the ****ed up hitboxes (due to lag mostly) you can swing and hit ppl for 10 minutes and hardly touch them and they do it to you and it kills you in one hit.

 

there is one kind of hack that is made for JA. its an aimbot/wallhack and its a piece of ****.

[StormHammer]

I got accused of cheating on a Siege server a couple of hours ago, just because they couldn't kill me for what seemed like an age. "StormHammer's cheating! He won't die!!" I couldn't help but lmao. I actually took the time to explain that the Tech on my team (who was in close proximity all the time) was constantly 'healing' me.

 

Later on in the same match, I was down to 3hp, but because I was still standing after I'd killed this same person yet again, up went the cry... "StormHammer's cheating!"

 

They tried to vote to kick me off the server. You know, I can now wear that as a badge of honour. I must have been so good today they felt the need to try and get rid of me.

 

Anyway...it's very, very hard to cheat in JA, especially on pure servers. Some people just need to get a clue about the finer intricacies of the game - and also realise there are some bugs in the game that contribute to the idea that someone is cheating.

 

Rest assured, I never cheat in an online game.

 

*walks away laughing*

[homercles]

Originally posted by Rumor

dude clients cannot have different damage settings, etc. due to the ****ed up hitboxes (due to lag mostly) you can swing and hit ppl for 10 minutes and hardly touch them and they do it to you and it kills you in one hit.

 

there is one kind of hack that is made for JA. its an aimbot/wallhack and its a piece of ****.

 

Well, my ping is < 30 all the time. How does this affect another player's HPs?

 

Sorry, man, as i said in my origial post, im a n00b to MP. And i definately dont suck, but it just seems that there is definately A LOT of "uber" characters on line that are not truly uber.

[nabroc]

I would tend to say it's mostly humans on the FFA servers, never seen a bot on the servers I've joined.

---

As to the cheating, I'm not saying there isn't any cheating going on - for every popular MP game, there are people out there that develop cheats. But we need to differ between actual cheating and harmless stuff like changing to a skin, which ain't available via the gamemenu (like the jawa one) and in addition the server can be set up to allow for the ingame cheats, but then everyone can use those (if a server has cheats enabled, you could type 'fly' into the console to fly, 'god' should give you invincibility ... haven't tried so myself in MP, because I don't play on servers which have cheats enabled. Those servers usually do announce that cheats are on while loading up.

Now actual cheating would be something which is available to one player and not to the others, it's hard to determine the line here - if it's done external by hacking into the game engine it's definitely cheating, with scripts it depends upon who you ask and what the contents of the script is. Some people script the special moves (katas and stuff) to be executed by the press of a single button, some manipulate certain settings like mouse sensitivity during special moves (I've seen people setting the mouse-yaw to a high level while executing the dual saber barrier and wildly spinning around). It's a matter of taste to script such things (I for one don't have a problem with people scripting kata's and such, if they can't/don't want to press 2-3 keys at once - altering the yaw-speed setting is kinda crossing the border though), but it's open to anyone since it's already in the gamecode.

I myself haven't seen any real cheats in use yet, I haven't encountered the auto-absorb cheat described above nor have I seen any invincible players, while cheats where off on the server. If people are using a wallhack, I couldn't care less - that won't help them (very much) in JA, so I don't even keep an eye out to catch those.

[Amidala from Chop Shop]

Originally posted by AxVegetA

(kinda off topic)

I am absolutely sure there are some people with some scrip that allows them to turn absorb exactly when i am pulling or pushing.

Is that true, or they can read my mind 49 of 50 times?

 

I admit I've been too busy to play much JA yet, but in JK2 it was hard to tell someone had Absorb on until someone used a Force power against them, then they developed a blue aura. Basically you had to listen for a humming sound to tell they had it on. So those people you mentioned may have had it on already, but you couldn't tell until you pushed or pulled them.

 

Originally posted by fukhed

 

Another Q, in FFAs are there bots + real people, or just real people?

 

Also, im quite convinced that cheating is used alot. How do i tell if someone is cheating? I cant remember the server, but i slashed and hacked this guy for 10 seconds and all he said was, "you cant defeat a jedi." He never died, but i die after like 1 second of hacking.

 

Sometimes it will be just bots, sometimes all humans, and other times a mix of both. How can you tell? Bots have ping 0, and they don't whine or say dumb things like "bow you noob!", "lamer!", or "saber off = peace".

 

The easiest delusion to fall into when you are a newbie and getting your ass whooped constantly is that "everybody who beats me is cheating". No, they are just more experienced\quicker\talented\skilled\better\lower-pinged than you. You have to realize that not only are some of your opponents veterans of hundreds of hours of playing Jedi Outcast (JK2), some of them have thousands of hours of playing FPS (first person shooters) all the way back to the original DOOM from 1993. How old were you and what were you doing in 1993?

 

Just hang in there, keep playing, keep moving, learn all you can about your chosen game(s), learn from your mistakes, spectate the leaders to learn from them, and if you see someone doing something that looks like a cheat but isn't (like strafe-jumping, moving very quickly with what looks like "bunny hopping"), ask them if they would teach you. If you are nice about it and they aren't an ass, they might agree to meet you on one of the many empty servers out there (Thanks Raven!) and teach you some tricks. If you try to improve you will, and someday you will be playing Jedi Knight VIII and some kid will accuse you of cheating.

[Kurgan]

Good points all around, 99.999999999999% of stuff people call "cheats" in JA or JK2 are just misidentified.

 

Yes, people who get called "cheater" are usually just victims of bad sports who can't take losing to somebody, or they are accused of having "no honor" or "no skill" (which is odd if they won, since they supposedly had no skill...lol).

 

Scripts can allow you to pull off certain complex moves faster than is humanly possible. However, 95% of the time people can't seem to tell what's a script and what isn't. Good players (who don't use scripts) get accused of scripting, and others use scripts and nobody ever accuses them. So go figure...

 

Most people will tell you that scripting alone will not let you win games, and even being able to script well requires a certain level of skill and knowledge of the game to begin with. It's not a substitute for skill. In my opinion, it's like speed dialing your phone... lots of people use this and forget the numbers! By the same token if you rely on scripts to do the work for you, your skill will deteriorate. That's one reason I avoid the practice.

 

Anyway, then there's lag. A person with 999 ping is going to exhibit weird behavior, perhaps even seem invincible. A person with 4 ping (the host say) is going to seem really powerful if your ping is 400. It's all about learning to compensate for lag in the game and lead your targets. But a lot of times people will confuse lag with cheats.

 

 

If the server is using cheats it will say CHEATS ARE ENABLED when you join. Though there is a bug so that when you load a map after playing the previous map with cheats the message will sometimes still appear even though they are not on. To test you can always type \give all in the console and see if it works. If they're not on, you'll just look like an idiot though. ; )

 

The Absorb thing is simple really. Here is why people are confused:

 

 

In JK2 Absorb cast your player in a blue aura and played a sound to indicate that it was on. Everybody could see it and it was painfully obvious they were using the power. That was the initial out of box release of Jedi Outcast (1.02).

 

In the 1.03 and 1.04 patches Absorb was changed so that when you turned it on NO blue aura appeared. Instead the sound would just play and you saw the icon in your view to know it was on. Once somebody attacked you with the force (push, pull, lightning, drain, grip) THEN the Aura would appear. So you had to listen for the sound to know it was on.

 

 

Fast forward a year and JA comes out. Now you can use Absorb in Single Player and it works just like it did in JK2 Multiplayer (1.02). Use the power and the Blue Aura immediately appears.

 

However, in Multiplayer JA it is different. Turn the power on and you instantly see the Blue Aura effect just like JK2 1.02 MP and JA SP. HOWEVER, while you can see the Blue Aura effect on yourself, NOBODY ELSE CAN. To them you look normal but if they get close they can hear the Absorb sound effect. If they use the Force on you then they will also see the Blue Effect.

 

 

So it's not a script. If you can hear the Absorb sound, you know the power is on. The Blue Aura is just confirmation that they're stopping your Force attack and gaining mana from it.

 

 

 

 

Next, there are all kinds of things that can be mistaken for cheats. As Stormie pointed out, in Siege (or in any team game really) players can be healed by their allies (in Siege the Tech class can heal, in CTF or Team games Light Jedi can use Team Heal). Players can get extra mana from allies in CTF/Team by Dark Jedi using Energize (also present on the Siege_Korriban map).

 

Grabbing the Force Boon accelerates your mana regeneration while its active (you glow). Dark/Light Enlightenments give you Level 3 versions of all the powers on your "side" of the force plus neutrals until it wears off, even if you didn't assign any points to them at the start, as well as Lightsaber enhancements (Saber Offense/Defense) though they won't give you a saber if you didn't have one to start with.

 

Bacta lets you heal up, and you can grab more ammo and shields from ammo and shield recharge stations. Also Techs in Siege can give their teammates ammo (by dropping Ammo Dispenser batteries).

 

 

 

And of course none of this takes into account server settings. People can change the damage that sabers do (saberdamagescale command) they can also change the game speed (default is 25), the mana regeneration rate (default is 200), saber blocking, saber lock probability, etc and tons of other stuff.

 

So if in doubt, check the server settings. What you think is a cheat may in fact simply be a server cvar.

 

 

Back in the JK2 days I often had people join the game I was in and ask why they suddenly couldn't \amsit. The thing is, \amsit was part of a MOD, and not part of the actual game. Once you auto download a mod from a server, often you forget you are running a mod (in your base folder) and so this is why people would join and suddenly think an admin was cheating if he could \amsleep them or something or if their emotes weren't working.

 

Don't let your base folder get cluttered with crap... take a look at it now and then and see if you need to remove anything.

 

 

Occasionally bugs in the game will happen that look like cheats. These are usually termed "exploits." But for the most part, if you're playing on a PURE SERVER and it didn't say "CHEATS ARE ENABLED" when you joined, be skeptical, and don't assume somebody is cheating. Ask yourself: is there a mod running? Weird server settings? Lag? Am I just upset about losing? etc.

[homercles]

Yea, thanks for all the advice and tips guys. I think part of it is that i do get upset when i get my a$$ handed to me on a regular basis, but im sure there are non-normal things going on when ONE guy in FFA has 20 kills and the #2 guy has 3.

 

Also, i can be full health and shields and get knocked down to < 10 HP in an instant (like 2 seconds). But whatever, i suppose it is just n00b pains.

 

BTW, my ping is consistently < 30.

[Amidala from Chop Shop]

Originally posted by funhed

ONE guy in FFA has 20 kills and the #2 guy has 3.

Check the number of minutes the players have been on the map (the last column when you press Tab). The guy with 20 kills might have been there for 15 minutes and everybody else less than 5 minutes.

 

Also, i can be full health and shields and get knocked down to < 10 HP in an instant (like 2 seconds). But whatever, i suppose it is just n00b pains.

You are beginning to understand, young Padawan.

 

BTW, my ping is consistently < 30.

Lucky. But one more excuse out the window.

[g//anarki]

Originally posted by funhed

Yea, thanks for all the advice and tips guys. I think part of it is that i do get upset when i get my a$$ handed to me on a regular basis, but im sure there are non-normal things going on when ONE guy in FFA has 20 kills and the #2 guy has 3.

 

Actually, this is a pretty normal thing in JA. Most players aren't very good at the game at all. I've beaten people with a score of around 50-19. (in JK2 also)

 

Also, i can be full health and shields and get knocked down to < 10 HP in an instant (like 2 seconds). But whatever, i suppose it is just n00b pains.

 

Some things do more damage then others. Especially in JA with the locational damage. Headshots with a saber can kill in one hit while a torso/arm/leg shot will do less.

 

Edit: This game isn't very hard but the game mechanics take a while to get used to if you haven't played JK2 MP. Take your time and learn from how other people play. (if they're better players than you are) Keep an open mind and don't assume right away that someone is cheating or hacking.

[AxVegetA]

Thanks kurgan and amidala about the absorb thing, it makes perfect sense.

 

I have been acused of cheating cause one noob couldnt hit me while i was dueling someone else. That happens everytime in diferent situations, like the elevator jump on head bug (also pull will kill them )

 

I feel better now that i know its very hard or almost imposible to cheat (really cheat) in MP.

[Butt_Whisper]

I seen a guy in koriban siege map, as the rebel dual sabor (jedi knight chick with horns), keep turining invible. I think he was using MT, because i kept heraing the noise it makes, but when i pick that class to play, there is no MT. any ideas?

[Luc Solar]

Read the manual and learn the very basics of this game?

 

It's not one of those games where you choose your Fighter based on what powers he/she has. Skins make no difference in that regard. You have to choose force powers yourself. (Player profile >> force powers)