I’ve been sinking quite a bit of my free time into All Points Bulletin lately and I’ve been having a blast. The issue I’ve been having lately though is the rampant cheating. Or rather, the perception of rampant cheating. I am enjoying a 50-80% win rate (depending on how much caffeine I’ve consumed that evening) and for me the wall hackers and aimboters are a nuisance that can usually be overcome just by outplaying them (getting the drop of them, changing up guns/tactics) as opposed to attempting to out shoot them. For some of my gamer buddies though this is not the case. It’s not really the fact that they are losing a round that they find appalling, but that they are utterly convinced that the competition is not legitimate. Now there have only been a few rare instances where the players in question were stupid enough to make it blatantly obvious that something was not quite kosher, but there mere fact that this is even possible brings so many situations into question. While the game itself has a mild underpinning of frustration (hell any FPS does) this is just jet-fuel being pumped onto that fire.
The GamersFirst official developer blog has made numerous references to the problem but, as of yet, has not delivered on any of their impending threats. Here’s the latest snippet discussing the issue:
Cheaters (aimbotters)
It keeps baffling us that people are cheating in one moment, then paying for premium, and then continue cheating? Seems really odd, given the amount of money you will be risking for something that literally only will help you aim. We have ON PURPOSE not kicked hackers for over a week to monitor what they are doing. That clearly will change. One semi-famous aimbot site realized that we had caught a slew of their users over the weekend (though we did so silently), then they stopped their own hack, and then earlier today re-enabled it. Sigh… when will they ever learn. Anyway – before Open Beta we will perform various changes, which will be good for the game, and bad for the aimbotters. Long term we have a more radical solution to the issue, which we will share when it’s ready
. In the short term we also have what we think is a good solution, and you should see the beneficial effects of that by Open Beta.
They have repeatedly stated that they are withholding punitive action in lieu of some future judgement day but that this point I have to say that such yammerings are starting to sound like the boy who called wolf. Action needs to be taken soon, even if it’s just for show. Again, it’s not the actual cheating that is the major problem, it’s the perception of it’s existence and that nothing has been done about it yet. The number of players willing to tolerate the frustration of possible unfairness is dwindling and this will cause many to either venture into the dark side or walk away from the game entire.
The developers have set a tentative date of May 18th for the launch of Open Beta which, if the above post is an indicator, should see the introduction of at least their “short term” solution.
