I've had a few days off and there have been a number of good parties and such, with old friends and family. The subject of the athletics and cheating came up, I don't know what time of the morning it was but the discussion was quite passionate if a little disjointed at times due to the copious amounts of beer been drank at the time. A few days later and the long and distinguished list of hangovers are coming to an end and I've brewed a number of thoughts on the subject.
The first thing that comes to my mind and its the main point I have with cheating in Quake through the years
You cannot go to the top in Quake by Cheating, you cant sit at Quakecon with hacks on, you cant sit down at any LAN tournament and cheat to win.
So if you cheat to win it seems pointless that you cant be the best at Quake because you'll eventually have to put yourself up there on the world stage and prove your skill. I'll come back to this later, I want to make a few things understood first.
There are two types of cheaters in Quake, the obvious and the subtle. The obvious cheat is there to grief and to cause hassle to the players in the server. Its intent is self evident as the offending player gets other players to leave the server or vote him off on the next map or even record his actions to get his\her arse banned from Quake. This could be a problem with a free game as there is no monetary value lost if the player gets banned. The player does not lose the CD-Key to online play , instead the player will sign up with a different email address. There is nothing more you can really do against this on a public server.
The subtle cheat is altogether different due to the fact he\she tries to hide the fact that they are cheating. They play their game normally, as if the walls are not see through and keep their accuracy under the level of suspicion while still trying to get the edge on their opponents. You'll have to use your imagination to figure out the difference between good control play, luck, clairvoyance or hacks. As we cant know for certain if players are subtly cheating at online games without the player giving it away with ghosting his enemy through the walls or pre-firing at a wall to hit enemy with no justification to do so from a non cheating perspective.
The only motive (that I can see) for a person to sit at home and subtly cheat in an online Quake tournament is a vain effort at achieving some small self worth from the game itself. To be the Big Fish in a small pond. The reasons for this behaviour could be far reaching in the telling signs of poor self esteem and other psychological problems that this behaviour presents. I'm not saying that subtly cheating in QuakeLive will lead to date rape, I could draw a number of parallels of using hacks and using date rape drugs but in the end they are worlds apart. What I'm trying to say is that, to sit alone in a house, using the anonymity of the Internet and subtly using game hacks to win at mid range online events gives me cause of concern for that individual and could not trust that person of any real responsibility in the real world. In my mind that person has some issues and I don't want know about it, I just don't want to know them.
There is another part of the subtle cheat that I'm loathe to talk about. I cant understand the frenzy of the witch hunt that happens when probable suspicion of subtle hacks are unearthed. Maybe its pressure and fury of the community stamping its authority on players and would be subtle cheaters. Evidence is usually scant and debatable, leaving a nasty and bitter taste as you see friend persecuted or an unknown player screwing other players over with dodgy prediction.
ID have not helped the situation by having pathetic cheat protection in place and it seems that this dark and evil side to the game will continue for the foreseeable future, a shame really. Online Games like Quake need credibility to keep going and the farce that is punkbuster doesn't do it any favours, lets hope things change.
