DCUO How to Spot Cheating and Speed Hacking

There are a few dimensions of cheating in DCUO, there is the game company SOE that lets it go on, there are the cheaters with their constant head games and lies about how they aren't cheating, there are the cheating enablers who want to make DCUO safe for cheaters by denying it is what it is and making sure the legit players get harrassed for pointing it out, and then there are the legit players who are fighting to make sure the game is fair and ethical. I guess some where in there are the noobs that just don't know what cheating and speed hacking is so this post will address that, after you know and can spot it then you can choose which of those categories you want to fall into outside of the game maker.

This is going to be an on going post that I'll add to as I spot more infractions in my video clips and collect more data online. But below to start off with we'll cover the basics. The main starting point for learning about speed hacking are the posts by chaoticfear on the DCUO PC Forums. The best starting point is this one - http://forums.station.sony.com/dcuopc/posts/list.m?topic_id=31993

The other aspect of this are the head games and lies told by the cheaters and their enablers and I'll create a seperate post to handle the psychology of being a cheat and enabler of cheats.

Here's what you need to know to start spotting the cheats in DCUO.

1. The speed at which a sped up character moves and attacks, they are able to dart around the map and hit several attacks and even powers within a second or two on the screen of the legit player. They get stunned and still be able to move around and attack and shoot off powers and recover much quicker than a legit player can. Everything they do is delayed by 3 to 10 seconds on the screen of the legit player. So they can usually shoot off 1.5 attacks in the time it takes for the 1 attack to render on the screen of the legit player, this shows on the legit player's screen as their Health melting away as they melee with the sped up toon. The attacks the legit player does do normal damage for the normal duration and frequency of a melee session while the sped up toon does 1.5 to 2.0 depending on the hack settings. So an easy way to tell is meleeing with the cheater and watching your health go down to 0 while they'll be at about 50% to 30% health depending on how good the legit player is, this happens every time like a numeric formula always around 50% to 30% for the cheater and 0% for the legit player on Health though on the legit player's screen both toons are attacking each other equally over the same period of time. That's the advantage of being sped up, you get 1.5 of everything your target gets 1 of, including damage and attacks in the same amount of time.

2. The sound and cliche speeches from the toons in Legends. For example Robin has the saying "Be smarter than you look and run" the other Legends toons have their own. If you hear those speeches go off constantly then there's speed hacking going on. Those speeches are reserved for when a particular toon hits a big damage hit or knocks an opponent out or something really signifcant happens like a super charge power is shot off. In sped up matches the sped up characters are constantly hitting these high power hits and knocking people out all the time within a short time period of one another. The sound effect is that they give off their speeches constantly as a result. If you are hearing your opponent team always mouthing off these speeches it is because they are hitting these supposedly rare big power hits all the time. These kind of hits on a normal character takes time to build up a super charge for and has a long reset time once used to be able to do it again. A sped up toon is able to shoot these off pretty frequently and be able to cut down on targets quickly to again give their cliche phrase. If you are hearing these going off all the time and even over lapping each other it means that the match is glitched with speed hackers.

3. The Roll away Run away hack, now very popular since the latest update 5.1 for whatever reason. Normally when a toon is in combat they are stuck in combat speed, this is to prevent opponents from quickly getting out of line of sight or line of attack (LoS or LoA) during a fight. But no way are cheaters going to let game mechanics get in their way of cheating on other people, if you are beating up on a hacker ususally a result of a double team on them, as they approach being knocked out they simply turn their toon away from your attack and instantly roll away from it at a blinding fast speed not normal roll away speed at all. In a normal roll away move the Lunge Interupt attack from the opponent is the counter to that and will Hard Stun the Rolling away character. But in this hack lunging at the rolling toon will not Stun them and more over their roll will move them twice the distance a normal roll does. So on your screen, they roll, you lunge at them and by the end of your lunge they are another roll distance away from your lunge attack. If you keep lunging they keep rolling automatically and stay one roll away from you so that's two rolls in the time it takes to do one, a roll to get away from you and another, triggered by a macro most likely, to avoid your lunge to counter their previous roll. What happens is that by being two roll distances away from combat they are in the non-combat safe area where they start to heal their damage and can move again at non-combat speed with no pause inbetween for the transition from combat to non-combat speed. Again all the advantages of being sped up. Recently I've noticed this on toons that have the green foot print under their name, which means they have fast movement mode on, while in combat and othter red symbols under their name like Defesne debuff. This is a direct hack to undo the game mechanics of not being able to move in fast movement mode while in combat.

On the legit players screen what this looks like is you are about to knock out the little cheating scrub and then they instantly roll away twice, if you lunge at them to counter the roll they are still one roll ahead of you because of the hack, and they start to heal instantly and because they are sped up their healing is sped up too so they usually hit half health in a few seconds of being in non-combat after being nearly knocked out and full health in a few more seconds. And these are the cheaters who brag about how good they are in PvP all day running away like scared little punks from legit players beating them up with no cheats.

4. The sped up clock and Scoreboard popping in the middle of the match. When speed hacking toons are in the match, the clock up at the top of the screen and the ticks that come off of each side goes faster. You can tell this in the Batcave easy. I've had matches where the opponent has stayed in the start area and not come out at all, with both myself and my partner standing on the node having time tick away. To win this uncontested match takes 5 minutes with no speed hacking involved. This is a bench mark to use when judging the speed hacking of a match. With the combination of speed hackers burning down an opponent in just a few seconds, which is completely cheating that is not allowed in the real game mechanics, and having a sped up clock, matches with speed hackers end really really quick or allot quicker than usual with ticks burnt down quick and there still being more time left on the clock than what those burnt ticks would indicate.

Another thing is the popping Scoreboard. In a normal match there is ending music and a pause before the Scoreboard pops up, during this pause all attacking and game play ceases. It's like a few seconds of a cool down after a fighting session. In matches with speed hacking there is no pause or cool down end period with music, the Score board just pops up while you were in the middle of attacking and you press the button to leave by mistake as it is the same for doing a range attack on a controller, you just pop out of the instance before you know the match is over and find your self where ever you were before you entered the qued match. That's a sure sign of having been in a match with speed hackers. We'll just call that Scoreboard pop. The reason for this is that the match ended 10 seconds ago and that is just being caught up with on the server and the legit players' screen, again the sped up players set the pace with their modified files and everyone else is playing catch up to the cheaters.