Forum

Thanks Slick to point that out. There is a reason why other leagues are “cheat free” and people don’t whine.

Lets use an AC soft on ETF2L and stop banning everyone with ACT’s word as the only proof.

Josh has said nothing, other people have stuck up for him

What i do know is that he thinks the situation is ridiculous

Well tbh, ETF2L’s anti-cheat system has always been a complete mess. I mean, just look at the system.

Helliana – The Player gets a ban on a steambans website (I’m on a few of those since those bans are added by server admins, I was on one of them one time for a ‘stickybomb aimbot’). He then admitted to using cheats in a public on a single occasion. Banned for 1 year for an incident that is not related to the league. (Anakin apparently wasn’t on the admin team at the time but had a personal grudge due to being kicked out of his team. Anakin was the person who identified the steambans ban… he later became an admin).

Pikalash – Banned for wallhacking. No public evidence provided. I was however shown an avi clip to help promote his cause. This avi clip the admins (at the time) said was clear proof was a well known STV bug. In the clip, Pikalash was tracking a player through a wall. It was the very corner of the wall. At some points in the clip he was shooting bullets into the corner of the wall (the player was still behind it). Sounds clear cut enough right? …………… The enemy player was BLEEDING! Scatterguns do not go through walls. STV demos cut corners to keep the file size down. The STV had the positioning of Pikalash and the enemy scout slightly wrong, most likely due to lag. At one of the I-events, Wotr played a PCW against some team with reptile playing for the enemy team. Reptile played a stunning game, hitting almost all of his shots. Some players thought he was ‘dodgey’ so they recorded a STV demo. On watching the STV demo, it looked OBVIOUS that he was hacking. He was looking at walls and then suddenly flicking to someone’s head. Everyone who was watching the demo (standing around a computer) thought we had something huge here…. until a point in the demo came where Reptile killed a scout through a wall. I don’t even mean… strafing the wall. He was standing still, aimed and shot through the wall and got a headshot. It was clear in that one instance, he was not hacking. After looking through the clips again it was also clear that we reacted too quickly. All of the shots were either justified by lag, a good aim or a STV bug. (Anakin apparently wasn’t on the admin team at the time but had a personal grudge due to being kicked out of his team).

After discreditting that clip from pikalash, the admins refused to show me anything else saying there were multiple instances like that one, however I told them that clip didn’t show him hacking and they simply said it did and was enough, but they had other magical clips that showed him wallhacking but wouldn’t give them out. Pikalash banned for 1 year.

Payard – Banned for aimbotting. They actually got this one right, though again, they wouldn’t give out evidence. It was only after seaching through a tonne of available demos to me (as I was in his team at the time) that you could see that the ban was correct. The public still never got to see any demos but Payard admitted hacking anyway (I think) so it is irrelevent.

Kondor – A well known established player for many years, he had a ‘strong’ aim and dodgey hit reg (Russians generally do). After a PCW against Winney’s team with some heated argument (and a screenshot showing Winney flaming Kondor and saying he will get banned)…. he gets banned for aimbotting. This sounded like a complete grudge case, the evidence was all there to suggest that the admin team had a personal issue with the player after a heated argument and a loss against his team. No evidence was provided to show he was cheating. The player has since played at LAN events with no skill drop (an aimbotter who suddenly removed his aimbot tends to SUCK BALLS) as they are used to concentrating on movement skills over aim). Kondor as far as I’m aware played some great games on LAN and as far as I know again… most of the Russian TF2 community doesn’t think he cheats. He was always known as a ‘dodgey’ player, but that was all. No evidence provided, banned for 1 year.

Now, I could go on about 100 cases where players have been banned, have provided demos to the public and the only reply we have heard from the admins is ‘Well he probably didn’t cheat in that particular game, but we have demos where he did cheat’…. when we ask for even the game details, the admins won’t tell us, so even if the player does have the demo for the game in question, he can’t upload it as the admins won’t give out that information.

I’m sure the admins do a good job in catching a lot of genuine cheaters, Payard is a good example and I’m thankful for it. But there is some clearcut bias and grudge bans going on in this league and quite frankly, it is filthy. The whole system needs a complete rework if we are to have faith in their very shoddy system.

These new VAC ban rules play into the same category. My account was hacked at some point. The hacker loaded up CSS during that time. My instant concern is that he is doing 1 of 2 things. 1) He’s checking my steam ID to see if he can sell the account (low digit accounts sell well)…. 2) He’s hacking on my account which will give me a VAC ban.

My account was hacked over a year ago and to this date, i’ve not been VAC banned on it. I think i’m in the safe with that one, but what if the situation was different… If he did hack during that brief spell on a secure VAC server, my account would now be VAC2 banned, and in 1 weeks time, I would be banned from ETF2L for 2 years because of it despite never cheating in TF2, a source game or any game competitively.

If even 1 or 2 cases out of the 170 vac banned account (or something) that ETF2L have got hold of, follow that example, then that is outright unfair on those players. Ontop of that. I couldn’t give A SHIT, if any of those 170 players have cheated in Counter-strike source, and to be honest, I couldn’t even care if those players have cheated in a Team Fortress 2 Public server. All I care about, is that cheaters don’t cheat in matches that I play against them. I care that cheaters don’t cheat when trying to play the game competitively to gain an edge over other players trying to play the game fairly and legit. Those are the players who NEED to be banned. Anyone else who is getting banned is simply part of a glory push by admins trying to get an ego boost for ‘catching cheaters’ even though it’s completely irrelevent to league.

Now this is my opinion. But admins should be getting rid of cheaters who cheat in the league. Anyone who is suspected of cheating (outside the league (in different games or public / pickup tf2)) should be MONITORED. If I was running a league, all of those players with VAC2 bans would not be banned, HOWEVER…. they would have to provide information to their new steam account. They would also be required to record a first person demo in every single game they play in the league. The admins would randomly request a demo on a regular basis. If they fail to provide a SINGLE demo it would result in a 1 month ban, if they fail to provide a SECOND demo (after not giving the first) the player would receive a season long ban. This would continue indefinately however after several requests of demos (which find no evidence of cheating) the amount of requests would be toned down. All evidence reguarding convicted cheaters would be released. Yes, it’s annoying to have someone question your work, and there will always be people with no clue who will insist a friend of theirs is not hacking even though the evidence is blatent. But who cares, at least players will have faith in your league.

I will tell you straight up right now. If these VAC2 bans get implemented with the proposed system that the admins have suggested, my team will be leaving this league. (We allready play without Josh allready so it’s not so much about him). I’ve heard rumours of a few others that will follow suit but I don’t really care.

In short, use some common sense when it comes to anti-cheat. You are there to catch cheaters in the league. Get your glory from finding the ones that actually effect the play of the league. You find those cheaters, you will forever have my admiration and respect. But getting your glory from banning a large list of players in irrelevent scenarios only makes me doubt your abilities and doubt that every other previous AC case is simply a grudge.

It’s been a long time since I wrote an essay like this, but something needs to be done before you make a huge mistake.

Well said.

I *cannot* support a league that will try to pull the wool over our eyes. Banning someone who cheated in a css public for LONGER than someone who banned in an etf2l official?

Stinks to high heaven. We’d be playing 2 seasons without josh anyway, so really, i’m not doing this for my team.

I’m doing it for the next guy who gets banned because they attracted the wrong attention – which could be anyone.

This “we answer to no one” attitude has got to stop and this is the only way i can place my vote of no confidence.

All I care about, is that cheaters don’t cheat in matches that I play against them. I care that cheaters don’t cheat when trying to play the game competitively to gain an edge over other players trying to play the game fairly and legit. Those are the players who NEED to be banned. Anyone else who is getting banned is simply part of a glory push by admins trying to get an ego boost for ‘catching cheaters’ even though it’s completely irrelevent to league.

+2
(my other self takes over sometimes, sry.)

How does the league come to decisions such as the VAC BAN one? I’m really intrigued into how this was agreed to be a good idea. Is there a select group of admins/players that sit down and logically think step by step about implementing something like this.. I feel slightly uneducated into how the anti-cheat system works…. at the moment I believe you’re fucking your own community over, you intend to exclude players from participating in what basically is the heart of the TF2 scene, because they have cheated in another source based game? That’s actually pretty disturbing

AcidRenix’ wall-‘o-epic-truth

+1

Spot on mate.