EA drops the ban hammer on Battlefield 3 cheaters, stats-wiping boosters

[Shawn Knight]

EA and Dice are working at a feverish pace to ban cheaters and boosters in Battlefield 3. According to multiple tweets on the game’s official Twitter page, the team has already banned and stats-wiped hundreds of accounts this week and they don’t plan to show mercy anytime soon.

Those in charge of Battlefield 3’s Twitter account are encouraging gamers to take screenshots of a suspected booster’s Battle Report as evidence when submitting a complaint. Twitter followers are being asked to send a DM (direct message) to @battlefield with a link to said Battle Report. Alternatively, users can visit Origin’s help center to report cheaters.

One of the more recent boosting techniques involves misuse of the repair tool as an engineer to gain tens of thousands of points in a single game. Such boosting would be extremely obvious to other players at the Battle Report screen and if reported, would likely result in a stats-wipe.

A separate tweet tells us that a patch is in the works, but as of right now there is currently no ETA for it. The patch is also said to reduce the intensity of tactical flashlights which are deemed by many to be extremely overpowered.

A multiplayer beta for Battlefield 3 was launched in late September that allowed gamers to play Operation Métro on the game type Rush. The beta was subsequently hacked just days later to allow user to host their own servers and unlock alternate game modes and features.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/46252-ea-drops-the-ban-hammer-on-battlefield-3-cheaters-stats-wiping-boosters.html

 

[Mister_K]

Good to hear, Activision here you go, learn something.

 

[Burty117]

artix said:
Good to hear, Activision here you go, learn something.

+1

 

[Guest]

that is one way to boost BF3 sales

 

[Guest]

surely metro is stat padding

 

[Guest]

As with all online betas... stats are wiped before general release.

 

[gwailo247]

Is boosting cheating or just exploiting a legitimate part of the game? Shouldn't they just patch whatever the problem is to make it go away?

 

[TomSEA]

"Shouldn't they just patch whatever the problem is to make it go away?"

Easier said than done - hackers can be pretty sophisticated and especially at the release of a new game there will be all sorts of holes that the designers missed out on.

Like the article said, they're working on patches now for it, but you're talking millions of lines of code for this game and you have to make sure the patch isn't worse than the problem.

I don't blame it on the developers, but on the sense of entitlement that a lot of gamers seem to have. The reason you play a game is for the challenge. If you can't get a score that satisfies you, then instead of cheating, just play another damn game that you do better at. I have no idea why that's so hard to figure out.

 

[gwailo247]

TomSEA said:

Easier said than done - hackers can be pretty sophisticated and especially at the release of a new game there will be all sorts of holes that the designers missed out on.

Well that was my question, was it a hack or an exploit? Hacks are one thing, but if the designers left something that allows people to powergame, I don't think that should be something to be banned over. If its a "normal" game function, that a player can exploit to get points, it should be up to the company to fix it, rather than punish the player for finding it.

Hacks are another matter, that's just plain cheating.

 

[Guest]

@gwailo247

"One of the more recent boosting techniques involves misuse of the repair tool as an engineer to gain tens of thousands of points in a single game."

Essentially, a team\squad-mate will damage a vehicle or EOD Bot, then a player will repair and get points. Rinse repeat, for an entire match! Where do people get the attention span, is what I'd like to know.
When you're in the heat of the battle and your tank or heli is damaged and a teammate repairs it, they deserve the points for being a team player. It's a shame people exploit this.

I've actually spawned on a quad mate only to be killed instantly by an enemy who was standing in front of him. Took me 2 times before I realized they were boosting.

 

[jetkami]

Whatever, I caught a virus and next thing i know I got banned by punkbuster for cheating. No one believed I was not cheating so after 2 years of play my Bad Company multiplayer is banned forever...wonder how many more innocent victims this will produce.

 

[Guest]

That was just bugs exploit; I'm more interesting with the real hackers using software to circumvent anti-cheat system.

 

[Guest]

All I know is yesterday I started asking battlefield twitter alot of questions and got my answers in about a min of asking them. They have been helpful and I think the video I posted opened peoples eyes because after that it was on people were pulling battlelogs and reporting the cheaters. Why its important as a player to do so? well the reasons being is they steal the ribbons for mvps and 9 times out of 10 if your on the cheaters side then you will lose the game.

BTW my whole gripe has been on the PS3, I dont own it for 360 or PC.
Peace!

 

[gwailo247]

Guest said:
Essentially, a team\squad-mate will damage a vehicle or EOD Bot, then a player will repair and get points. Rinse repeat, for an entire match! Where do people get the attention span, is what I'd like to know.
When you're in the heat of the battle and your tank or heli is damaged and a teammate repairs it, they deserve the points for being a team player. It's a shame people exploit this.

I've actually spawned on a quad mate only to be killed instantly by an enemy who was standing in front of him. Took me 2 times before I realized they were boosting.

So its basically someone cheesing the game. Strange that the designers did not anticipate someone endlessly repeating ANYTHING that gives you points in a game. I still don't think they should be penalizing players for it, that's on them. I hate cheaters as much as anyone else, but that's why its called an exploit. Where do you draw the line at legitimate use vs "cheating"?

They should just cap the maximum points obtainable through repairing stuff. I can't expect that would require recoding the whole game.

 

[Burty117]

gwailo247 said:

Guest said:
Essentially, a team\squad-mate will damage a vehicle or EOD Bot, then a player will repair and get points. Rinse repeat, for an entire match! Where do people get the attention span, is what I'd like to know.
When you're in the heat of the battle and your tank or heli is damaged and a teammate repairs it, they deserve the points for being a team player. It's a shame people exploit this.

I've actually spawned on a quad mate only to be killed instantly by an enemy who was standing in front of him. Took me 2 times before I realized they were boosting.

So its basically someone cheesing the game. Strange that the designers did not anticipate someone endlessly repeating ANYTHING that gives you points in a game. I still don't think they should be penalizing players for it, that's on them. I hate cheaters as much as anyone else, but that's why its called an exploit. Where do you draw the line at legitimate use vs "cheating"?

They should just cap the maximum points obtainable through repairing stuff. I can't expect that would require recoding the whole game.

+1, This is just an exploit, I noticed I could do this when I was playing the Beta on the caspian boarder map. I'm suprised its taken this long to hit the news.

The moment I started repairing a tank I thought it gave a huge amount of points. Surely a small patch would be required to simply change the amount of points users get from this?

 

[stewi0001]

Honestly I don't care if people heal, resupply, or repair like crazy. It's the hackers that ruin the game. I know they are mostly trolls but I wish I could send them to a real war front to give them a little taste of reality.

 

[DanUK]

Glad to see they're nerfing the flashlights which are currently pretty ridiculous. I was hoping they would have done that after the beta but was disappointed to see on release day that you could still blind someone in broad daylight from 30 metres.

I encountered my first cheater the other day (was nice to go that long without seeing one!), he was like 100-4 and single handedly raping the other team, but before the game was even up he was banned so that's cool.

 

[Relic]

Took them long enough, but at least they are slowly getting to it. Now to the patch, we're coming up on one month here and still no ETA which is a little disappointing.

@gwailo247 Some stat boosters who exploit (repair EOD) are being banned while others I read are just getting reset. Their are many ways to 'boost' your stats, this is just a dead giveaway. And I'm not to sure banning is the right call here since this isn't cheating, I'm much more comfortable with a stat reset and warning. A bigger issue is the hacked servers out there that are giving millions to billions of XP which turns anyone into a rank 145. I'm not sure how DICE is handling that as many unsuspecting individuals join what they may think is a legitimate server and now have hacked stats.

 

[lipe123]

1. EA/Dice has done NOTHING since release to address really easy to fix problems (The Q key is hard-bound to a function and cannot be used for anything else)
2. You don't know that a server is boosted/hacked and just getting one kill on such a server basically destroys your stats. So instead of giving VICTIMS of these shite servers a rollback they blame them and wipe their progress in game?
3. The game still constanly crashes and teamwork is totally non existant since the commander role was removed.

Just another example of a popular PC game going down the toilet with little to no support and terrible testing/quality control. (The demo released a month before the game worked better than the actual game does for me) Bottom line is the game is just one huge frustration instead of fun.

 

[Burty117]

lipe123 said:
1. EA/Dice has done NOTHING since release to address really easy to fix problems (The Q key is hard-bound to a function and cannot be used for anything else)
2. You don't know that a server is boosted/hacked and just getting one kill on such a server basically destroys your stats. So instead of giving VICTIMS of these shite servers a rollback they blame them and wipe their progress in game?
3. The game still constanly crashes and teamwork is totally non existant since the commander role was removed.

Just another example of a popular PC game going down the toilet with little to no support and terrible testing/quality control. (The demo released a month before the game worked better than the actual game does for me) Bottom line is the game is just one huge frustration instead of fun.

I wouldn't say its got no teamwork, you at least work as a squad and that works pretty well. I agree though, a commander role would have been useful as it seems that squads get split up to often or go down the same path and keep getting killed. I wonder if they will ever add that back in a future patch/expansion maybe?

 

[Guest]

I don't care about boosters, just ban the hackers and cheaters as they ruin the game. There are still guys who have ridiculous stats and who have been reported several times but EA and DICE don't do anything about it.

 

[Guest]

I think that boosting isnt cheating...if the devs didnt find it and now its being shown, why should the person doing it get banned? Just patch it or lower the points you get for repairing...(but if you lower to much whos going to want to repair?) IMO I think its dumb you want to ban someone for your mistakes. How about dealing with other issues in the game that need to be delt with b4 going on and getting mad about someone boosting over your mistake.