Like me rephrase that — the guys who figure out the cheats, not so dumb. I would imagine it’s no small task figuring out how to beat the system. That takes guts and brains. But the ones who use it after everyone knows what’s going on — dumb.
Last week, three of us from the Halo 2 clan were playing on Live, trying to stay alive in some clan matches. We meet up with three of Halo 2 best and brightest and have a go at a Multi Flag CTF in Colossus (one of my favorite maps, which makes for some good CTF). You can view the game stats here.
Anyway, once the game starts, things seem normal. I was sniping like a mad man in previous games, so I make a bee-line for the Covenant Sniper. I hustle over, get it before Red does and I get in position for some head shots. Then things start acting screwy. The alert pops up that the Red Team has grabbed our flag. I pull up the scope, zoom in to our base and see something peculiar – Red Teammate #1 one is running into a corner. What’s he doing? Is he going to take a quick leak on our base before he bolts? No one pisses on my flag. I line up his pretty little head and whamo! I pull the trigger. Strange, nothing happens. Whamo! Another shot, deadnuts. Nope, still jogging in place, in the corner. Then everything rushes around and I’m the one running into a wall as he scores. Uh oh. Immediately we know what’s going on. Smarty-pants Team Red is using the “Lag Cheat” to score one for the bad guys.
Over team chat we contemplate quitting and not give them the satisfaction of cheating us, but we’re upstanding Live citizens who never quit, so we decide to wait it out. As you can see, six minutes later they had scored on us thrice and the game ended. Now remember, cheaters are dumb.
On the score screen after the game, I fully expected them to bolt, nary a word. But they don’t. In some sort of retarded reverse psychology, Red Team starts complaining about lag. “You guys must have been lag cheating us!” they accuse. What? The purpose of cheating is to win by any means necessary. So if, as you accuse, we have cheated, we should have won. Makes sense to me. “No, no lag cheating going on here,” we reply. “Whatever, it was lagging like hell, you guys are cheaters,” is their retort. “Again, we didn’t cheat. In fact, it’s blatantly obvious that you guys were cheating and you’ll be promptly left feedback accordingly.” The logic simply baffles the mind. Here’s were it/they get dumber.
“No, you guys were cheating and we’re reporting you!” they lash back. “You know what?” they consider, “if you guys don’t report us, we won’t report you. Deal?” Right. They promptly exit the game and the three of us just start laughing. Feedback is left and we go on our way, satisfied knowing an update is coming and all the frauds out there will be exposed for what they are:
Dumb cheaters. Dumb, I tell ya.
Mike Sklens says
If only you could feel that your feedback was worth anything 🙁
Tony says
I know, I know. The optimist in me hopes that the feedback will make a difference but the realist in me knows it’s a simple drop in the ocean of feedback data Bungie probably deals with on a daily basis.