Top level player allegedly maphacking in CoH2

I watched all the clips, that's clearly cheating, no excuse man.

One thing I find suspicious is the extremely short reaction time.
Even given (Rosbone's point) many of these cases where something happens at the edge of the FOV are inconclusive due to desyncs, you still need some time to react.


However, how exactly does this hack work?
From the accusations it is assumed that he at least sees some ghost units in the FOV. Or does he just get straight FOV? Does the old FOV indication stay? If he sees everything, why does he sometimes react so "late"? In the example of the assgrens sprinting to support a flanked MG42 against Conscripts, he could have sprinted earlier with similar effect.
Why does all of this happen at the absolute edge of the FOV where we are dealing with synchronization issues, and not 5-10 meters out?

The only explanation is that he actively waits until the edge of the FOV to not look suspicious. But in this case he must have a god-like feeling of the exact FOV of his units and always nail it with accuracy of those 1-2 meters.

It would be good to have the actual replay files or at least full length games as video. What matters is not only when he DID do suspicious things, but also the amount of times when he did not in the same game. And nobody can judge that from mostly 1 minute clips.

One thing I find suspicious is the extremely short reaction time.
Even given (Rosbone's point) many of these cases where something happens at the edge of the FOV are inconclusive due to desyncs, you still need some time to react.


However, how exactly does this hack work?
From the accusations it is assumed that he at least sees some ghost units in the FOV. Or does he just get straight FOV? Does the old FOV indication stay? If he sees everything, why does he sometimes react so "late"? In the example of the assgrens sprinting to support a flanked MG42 against Conscripts, he could have sprinted earlier with similar effect.
Why does all of this happen at the absolute edge of the FOV where we are dealing with synchronization issues, and not 5-10 meters out?

The only explanation is that he actively waits until the edge of the FOV to not look suspicious. But in this case he must have a god-like feeling of the exact FOV of his units and always nail it with accuracy of those 1-2 meters.

It would be good to have the actual replay files or at least full length games as video. What matters is not only when he DID do suspicious things, but also the amount of times when he did not in the same game. And nobody can judge that from mostly 1 minute clips.

The thing that is suspicious with this is the units are so close to the FOW edge in the damning cases, there are no clips shown where he indicates he knows the unit is approaching further off. I think this supports the desync theory that Rosbone mentioned in the first response. Now this is being explained that he is "extremely good at using the map hack" in the video, this seems like a huge stretch as well, you would think someone would be able to find a very concrete piece that people wouldn't argue over.
Why bother building sandbags that long with the volks if he knows pathfinders are approaching at all? Why wouldn't he have taken cover sooner? In a play where he repositions an MG because a con is not visible and at the very edge of FOW, he would have lost that MG if it did not have assgrens right there and supported it, why would he have waited so long to reposition the MG to the point where it was successfully flanked and in danger of being lost or forced off? Oh it's because he is as skilled at using map hack in making wishy washy arguable pieces of evidence as he is at playing the game!

Why bother building sandbags that long with the volks if he knows pathfinders are approaching at all?

What are you asking exactly? The clip has follow camera on, he stops building bags as soon as he looks into the fow and 'sees' pathfinders and stop building the bags immediately.

What are you asking exactly? The clip has follow camera on, he stops building bags as soon as he looks into the fow and 'sees' pathfinders and stop building the bags immediately.

This seems to be the point at which the volks stop, unless I'm watching incorrectly (this is the earliest point where it looks like the volks begin the reaching for their rifles animation instead of having their hands on the ground). I agree that this would be too fast reaction time from Seeking, but on the other hand, why would he wait this long until the pathfinders are at this spot before canceling the sandbags? Why wouldn't he have moved his volks to an optimal position to the green cover right there before the Pathfinders reached their green cover? It would be nice to see this clip at normal speed from Seekings POV for the duration (it only has POV for a small portion). If there are desync issues in the game +/- 1 second (I believe there are) then wouldn't pretty much all of these cases of pre-emptive moves fall within the margin of error?

Or Seeking is just a very intelligent player, who takes minimal risk of being caught as to why he is always on the edge with FOW.

Or Seeking is just a very intelligent player, who takes minimal risk of being caught as to why he is always on the edge with FOW.

Unless the map hack provides a FOW overlay to illustrate exactly where the edge lies, I find this extremely hard to believe someone would be that skilled to have such precise estimation at essentially 100%. Surely there would be instances people could find where he was pre-emptive sooner.

This seems to be the point at which the volks stop, unless I'm watching incorrectly (this is the earliest point where it looks like the volks begin the reaching for their rifles animation instead of having their hands on the ground). I agree that this would be too fast reaction time from Seeking, but on the other hand, why would he wait this long until the pathfinders are at this spot before canceling the sandbags? Why wouldn't he have moved his volks to an optimal position to the green cover right there before the Pathfinders reached their green cover? It would be nice to see this clip at normal speed from Seekings POV for the duration (it only has POV for a small portion). If there are desync issues in the game +/- 1 second (I believe there are) then wouldn't pretty much all of these cases of pre-emptive moves fall within the margin of error?

I checked frame by frame.



This is the exact FRAME where the volks stopped building, aka there is no point in time before that to show it happened earlier. This is the moment the Volks stop building and the Paths are not spotted yet. Now let's see the 1st frame where the paths are spotted.



Almost a full second passes, the Volks have already picked up their weapons and the spios are about 1m away from their previous position. There is no doubt whatsoever that the decision to stop the sandbags was taken before spotting the pathfinders, no matter what kind of delay you account for.

Unless the map hack provides a FOW overlay to illustrate exactly where the edge lies, I find this extremely hard to believe someone would be that skilled to have such precise estimation at essentially 100%. Surely there would be instances people could find where he was pre-emptive sooner.

That's not necessary, this is a screenshot from mh exposal video. Fog of war is not actually revealed, but can see units through fog of war and their icons on minimap:

In essence I agree with this. Many clips are circumstantial or can be attributed to good and lucky guess work. On AoD he fires the Brummbar into a chokepoint that is the only spot ATGs can position themselves in order to fire on the fuel area. That could just be a calculated guess shot. Directly hitting the ATG can be sheer luck. In other games good players learn standard positions and blind fire too.

However some clips are very suspicious like the Brummbar trying to attack the UKF ATGs in the FOW in the middle of a field (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgd_BxcO8q0) or the one where he (both assuming he is playing as Deadbolt) chases a fresh (?) ATG to the corner of the map (https://youtu.be/X5HG5gH5psg) without having spotted it.


So a lot of things could be explained away by good game sense and lucky guessing or gambling. Many other top players do this too. What I found suspicious however is the frequency of these situations: multiple lucky guesses in one game where other top players might have them 1 in every 5 games or whatever. Otherwise we would see these kind of plays in nearly every tournament match.

Though personally I didn't find the evidence convincing enough to safely conclude he was cheating with all the consequences that that would have. I understand the opinion of the others though.

+1, I appreciate your perspective here and respect your conclusion. I skew a bit in the direction that there was probable cheating based on the evidence provided and do support the ML decision all things considered.

snip

It's good that you checked it so accurately, but if what Rosbone said is true we cannot fully trust the FOV. There seem to be some differences of ~2 meters if I would need to guess.

It is still very quick reaction times by Seaking, but overall many of the short source videos I watched revolve exactly around those couple of meters where we can't tell if Seaking can actually see it or not.

Depending on how the maphack is set up, this would imply that he has to remember the exact FOV of each unit to convincingly fake "true" gameplay. At least for these type of videos, not saying there aren't other shady ones.

Tbh, gaming nowadays becomes more and more popular and you can make actual living out of by becoming competitive or entertaining enough. Its as valid and sometimes as demanding as regular sports.

Cheaters however existed always and everywhere where competition and high rewards are in question.
There were confirmed cheaters in all of e-sports, maybe with sole exception of fighting games.

Whatever the final outcome will be, this is certainly some quality drama that'll invoke polarising feelings and create apologists and accusers alike.

Not talking about the money part of video games, but the health part. Heard that top e-sport people play 12+ hours a day to stay competitive and relevant (finding metas, strategies that work, etc.).

I'm quite positive that in past COH2 tournaments, top level people cheated. Especially if it was not played in one venue. Don't know what the format was (playing from home, playing from some dedicated arena, venue, or whatever) in past tournaments, but COH2 played from the comfort of home definitely has cheaters.

It's good that you checked it so accurately, but if what Rosbone said is true we cannot fully trust the FOV. There seem to be some differences of ~2 meters if I would need to guess.

A_E said they double checked the ML replays with the live casts and found no difference in the fog of war. I'll take that over Rosbone arbitrarily declaring how consistent fog of war is off the top of his head.

As for the gif Rosbone posted, it seems like something else is going on. 1 frame is not enough to explain about 4m of extra LoS gained in the 2nd clip. There's something else involved.

Agree with this. It's not possible to stop building that fast in-game. If you hit S or whatever hotkey you are using once you see the enemy approaching your own unit takes quite some time to actually stop and get going due to animation and ping. In this clip it definitely looks like he stopped before actually having the unit appear out of FOW.

Does anyone know a way around this? It's one of the more annoying features in the game. It seems like they stop a little faster if you select whatever is building and cancel it but that means that you also have stop controlling the building unit.

Tbh, gaming nowadays becomes more and more popular and you can make actual living out of by becoming competitive or entertaining enough. Its as valid and sometimes as demanding as regular sports.

Cheaters however existed always and everywhere where competition and high rewards are in question.
There were confirmed cheaters in all of e-sports, maybe with sole exception of fighting games.

Whatever the final outcome will be, this is certainly some quality drama that'll invoke polarising feelings and create apologists and accusers alike.

It's practically impossible to cheat at fighting games tbf, you can do like scripts to autoblock, but the problem is everything offline so its almost impossible to pull it off.

Come on, pinpoint accurate "random" shot right into the position of CLOAKED and UNDETECTED ATG?
That alone is well beyond "lucky" or "anticipation".

Not once either, back to back on two different ATGs

A_E said they double checked the ML replays with the live casts and found no difference in the fog of war. I'll take that over Rosbone arbitrarily declaring how consistent fog of war is off the top of his head.

As for the gif Rosbone posted, it seems like something else is going on. 1 frame is not enough to explain about 4m of extra LoS gained in the 2nd clip. There's something else involved.

10000%, I'm sure there is a bevy of "soft hacks" for CoH2 as well, just based on length of game being out and the lack of official development continuing. Honestly, when every single player asked says "yeah this looks like cheats" I don't think you can just hand wave that away by blaming replays suddenly.

It's good that you checked it so accurately, but if what Rosbone said is true we cannot fully trust the FOV. There seem to be some differences of ~2 meters if I would need to guess.

A_E is dropping a video tomorrow that disproves the delay theory and differences in fog of war.

A_E said they double checked the ML replays with the live casts and found no difference in the fog of war. I'll take that over Rosbone arbitrarily declaring how consistent fog of war is off the top of his head.

As for the gif Rosbone posted, it seems like something else is going on. 1 frame is not enough to explain about 4m of extra LoS gained in the 2nd clip. There's something else involved.

Most of us are just going to have to guess. I'd guess that the odds of finding a cheat that doesn't also have malware in it are small. When Blizzard first got hit with cheaters, I just stopped playing online and would do the same with COH if a lot of people started cheating.

Most games have been hit with cheats. I don't know what it would take to get something like Punkbuster working, but it would be nice if anti-cheat could be in COH3 (assuming that there is one).