Cheaters in Call of Duty Plagued by Hallucinations; Ricochet's Cheater Detector
Activision is inventing new ways to make life miserable for cheaters in Call of Duty. Ricochet not only disarms these „players,” but also torments them with hallucinations.
Forced disarmament is not the only interesting way to fight cheaters implemented by Activision. "Players" cheating in Call of Duty must also face hallucinations.
The system, which is already actively working in Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0, was discussed by the team responsible for the development of the Ricochet anticheat on the brand's official blog. The hallucinations in question are copies of player characters visible only to cheaters.
- They are not controlled by artificial intelligence and have no effect on gameplay, points, etc. They simply mimic the behavior of one of the participants in the current session.
- Importantly, the clones provide the same information that people who use cheat tools in the game receive. Thus, cheaters cannot detect that they are dealing with an "illusion".
The developer cites two uses for this mechanic. The first is - of course - to collect data on the operation of cheats by making it easier to detect cheaters (especially the less obvious ones), who will revealed themselves by responding to the "hallucination." The second - to spoil the fun of such "players" so that they quickly regret using cheats.
In addition, Activision mentioned a withdrawn hindrance for chatters ("quick sands" that slowed them down) and the effects of the hardware manipulation detection update mentioned in May (after two weeks of implementation, the use of this type of cheats dropped by 59%) but also the fight against abuse of the player reporting system.
- "Malicious reporting" has been added to Call of Duty's security and compliance rules as a punishable action: from temporarily blocking access to the player reporting function, to resetting virtual possessions and permanent bans in network mode.
- The system of automatic penalties for reports has been temporarily removed until improvements are made.
The Ricochet team promised further development of the security feature and the fight against cheaters. There is no expectation of a complete victory, but such measures should discourage at least some of them.
