Identifying competitive cheaters in overwatch

The following message has been posted at two different places: the reddit's competitive overwatch section and blizzard's european english forum*. They got deleted pretty soon (less than 48 hours) and the account with which I posted them banned without any warning from anyone, while their respective rating where near 65% of approbation (reddit) and at least +11 up-vote (blizzard's forum). I let you guys interpret what it means with respect to how corrupted the competitive community of overwatch is.

I obviously encourage everyone with some sense of integrity and honesty to spread this as much as he can, the community needs it.

IDENTIFYING COMPETITIVE CHEATERS IN OVERWATCH:

Hi everyone,

It's been a bit more than than one week that overwatch has been released, and even if there is yet no official competitive game mode (probably because of the lack of an effective anti-cheat), the competitive scene which started during the closed beta is still active with the very same corrupted (and surprisingly long-living) cheaters (aimboters).

As a guy who thinks that overwatch is a very promising game, both in itself and in the forthcoming competitive scene (people from different background seems to gather there), it seems obvious to me that if we don't want (competitive) overwatch to be corrupted by blatant cheaters as CS:GO is, then acting right now is the way to go.

The goal of this thread is therefore to make a list of competitive cheaters (team, nick, alt-nick, cheat used, official ban status) supported by:

- community-proofed movies (one needs to support a claim of cheating with more than one action),
- judged by highly experienced and skilled players (judging that something is possible or not is by no mean a democratic process).

One has yet to be a little cautious about the two previous points.
On the one hand, the average player tends to accuse highly skilled players of cheating quite easily (because of his lack of both mechanical and mental skills to accept not being part of the top). On the other hand, his very same lack of skill coupled with his will to dream makes him easy to fool. Those are usually the worst ones, because they'll do everything to protect their (cheating) hero(es).

Now, note that one can be a highly experienced FPS player and yet defend known cheaters, say, by lack of integrity or intelligence. Indeed, it is not rare to see skilled players cheating to "boost" their skill (often to sell dream and live out of it) trying to protect themselves by denying that other competitive cheaters are as blatant as they are. Also, let us point that most experienced FPS players lack some intellectual aptitudes to even notice the difference between what is effectively possible from pure fiction. On the contrary, some experienced players have a "delusional" ego to sometimes accept that one can be much better without cheating.

So, how to deal with all that? Well, let's just try. If you're a very experienced and skilled player (please, by that I do mean being part of the very top in one skilled FPS), feel free to contact me and comment.


LIST OF POTENTIAL CHEATERS: the convention is "team nick/alt: cheat used (sources) [skilled players judging with confidence level of cheating/non cheating in percentage], ban status"

- C9 Reaver: aimboting fearlessly (say, all of https://www.twitch.tv/tehreaver/v/65672119) [AIM7 100/0; hrs 100/0; loc 100/0], not yet banned,
- C9 Surefour: aimboting fearlessly (all overwatch content at https://www.twitch.tv/surefour) [AIM7 100/0; hrs 100/0; loc 100/0], not yet banned,
- C9 Grego: aimboting fearlessly (say, https://www.twitch.tv/gregomyeggolive/v/68472353) [AIM7 100/0; hrs 100/0; loc 100/0], not yet banned,
- EnVyUs Taimou/uomiaT: aimboting fearlessly (all overwatch content at http://www.twitch.tv/timothylol, http://plays.tv/u/Taimou/videos) [AIM7 100/0; hrs 100/0; loc 100/0], not yet banned,
- Rogue TviQ: aimboting fearlessly (say, all of https://www.twitch.tv/tvique) [AIM7 100/0; hrs 100/0; loc 100/0], not yet banned,
- LG Gods: aimboting fearlessly (all overwatch content at https://www.twitch.tv/gods_live) [AIM7 100/0; hrs 100/0; loc 100/0] not yet banned,
- Creation Esports BromaS: aimboting fearlessly (say, all of https://www.twitch.tv/bromzor/v/69938666) [AIM7 100/0], not yet banned,
- ...

PLAYER TO INVESTIGATE:
all of their team mates and opponents who ever won one map against them. Also, known cheaters from other games that are not saving any of their streams like NicolasTJO**, TorkTJO**, ...


JUDGES:
- AIMER7 aka biggy: #1 dueler in HLDM/AG for more than a decade,
- hrs aka Rikoll: #1 dueler in QW for years,
- locust: #2 dueler in QW for years,
- ...

Remark: hitscan aim mechanics can be decomposed into two kind: discrete-like (rail, snipe, ...) and continuous like (machinegun, lg, ...). The primer is easier than the latter, but both requires at least two to four years of training to reach top level, and these skills are translating more or less well from games to games.

Yet most, if not all, of the above cheaters are no names, with almost no FPS background, or no hitscan aim mechanics (say, for TF2 players playing soldiers or medics). This is already very suspicious. What is even more suspicious is that aiming well in overwatch is much more difficult than in any other arena FPS (where it is already very hard to perform well) for the following reasons: first of all, the hitboxes of light fighters is little, and most of the action is long ranged. Secondly, the ground acceleration when one is switching directions is infinite, which makes dodging much more efficient than in quakeworld, hldm, q3/ql, or any other FPS. Finally, reading what happens in the battleground is very hard beacuse of all the fancy effects one can't remove, and the lack of bright skins. It is certainly illusionnary to think that one can aim as good in overwatch as one aims in any other FPS.

Now, strangely enough, when one digs into the twitch profil of the above guys and looks at how they perform in other games with larger hitboxes, less effective dodge, and easier to read battlegrounds, one would notice that their aiming skill is much worse there than they are in overwatch. Quite surprising, or maybe not?

Remark 2: in most of the above streams, the aimkey is very noticable on widowmaker and soldier 76. For widowmaker, notice that just before they fire a bullet, the crosshair does an instant flick directly to the head of the nearest ennemy, before it comes back at its original position systematically. Yet, when one does a flick shot, surely one does not systematically want to reposition its crosshair on the original position. Moreover, making such a double flick reduces the time-interval in which you have to actually press the fire key, thus making flick-aim even harder than it already is. This behaviour is typical of an aimkey.

In the case of soldier 76, it is the smoothness that is very suspicious: the crosshair is sticking to one pixel, regardless of the dodging patterns (both opponent and performer), of hitboxes (aiming at a dodging dva outside of its robot is actually very hard at middle range) or of the distance. This is definitely impossible.

Remark 3: stastistics like damages given per minute, overall accuracy, or others can help to see players who are too far away from other top players. It surely can be faked, but it gives insights.

PS: I've tried to contact top players from QL. The ones who eventually answered me agreed that there are definitely weird things happening, but they didn't want to give a decisive answer about this situation. I think it's respectable from them: a false accusation is something very bad, this is why I only put above the most blatant guys I've found so far. The list is obviously incomplete as I didn't check everyone (far from it). Feel free to complete it.


*see https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/4m3xo9/identifying_competitive_cheaters/, and http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/overwatch/topic/17612081041?page=1
** up to today (3th of June 2016), I've eventually checked these two players (with bad quality pov movies at youtube) and my conviction is that both are surely aimboting, but the aimbot they use would be of a different genre that is very humanized (for example, it seems to add shakiness when it aims continuously, but "too much" of it!). What is yet very suspicious, is the reaction time, the speed at which the aim is following its target, the big consistent flicks, and how it seems to switch continuously from one target to another one that is very close for no apparent reason. If I had to give a confidence level for them to cheat, I wouldn't go for 100/0 there (the quality of the movies doesn't help), but closer to 90/10. The list is getting bigger and bigger, but this is no surprising: most of these so called "pro" are either no names or have been known to cheat in previous FPS they've played in. Also, if a team whose two damage dealers cheat fearlessly aren't even winning any tourney, there are very good reasons to suspect that all "better" teams contains at least as much aimbotters as the primer one. This seems to be supported by the fact that already three C9 members have been identified as cheating while playing a damage dealer.

Spread this as much as you can.