Sick of the defenders of aimbots in these forum threads. Either purposefully being obtuse, disassembling, or just genuinely ignorant seems to be what many defenders of cheaters are.
So here is a breakdown 101 of how to spot an aimbotter with videos.
First off, what is an aimbot for those that don't know. An aimbot is a hacking program that is a 3rd party program that runs in conjunction with a game to give the player in an FPS to auto track and lock on for shots. There are various degrees of sophistication of aimbots and other hacks that may be provided by a cheat program.
So why do aimbots exist? People like to win, to troll, or both. Doesn't matter. There has always been a large group of players willing to cheat their way to the top since the invention of FPS games. In fact in almost all competitive activities with a prize at the end you'll encounter cheaters. This goes for real life as well as games. Examples are Lance Armstrong with biking, or most professional soccer players with flopping, or Brady with deflated footballs and stolen practice footage. People cheat and they always have and always will.
Because there is a ready made crowd of people willing to cheat, there is now a demand for a product. There are many entrepreneurial developers out there willing to make cheats for people willing to pay. I am not going to point out the places to find such companies on the internet that make such programs, but they aren't exactly hard to find. Being hard to find wouldn't be a good business model.
I know many reading this right now that are good people are feeling particular outrage and possible injustice of it all. Might be asking, "Why doesn't Blizzard stop these companies from making cheats? Isn't there some law against them doing this?"
The answer is basically no. Blizzard has no authority to stop another company from making a legitimate software product just like another company can't stop Blizzard from making their products. Also, cheating isn't illegal. Frowned upon, but not illegal. Soccer floppers don't get sent to jail. Tom Brady is still pitching balls and not rocks (although humorously some might debate that point). the only authority that runs a given competition can do is basically kick out the cheaters. This means Blizzard can ban people that cheat. Just like the NFL commission could ban cheating players and that's about it.
So who are these cheaters in games? There can't possibly be that many of them right? Wrong. Most people playing software games have been willing to cheat or use a trick outside the stated rules to win at one point or another. We all do it. This is human psychology 101. If we think we can get away with it while not hurting others then we humans tend to cheat. I can post links to huge studies on this, but suffice it to say that everyone cheats at something for some reason.
So now the real problem is dealing with cheaters. As players we have basically one tool, that is our ability to spot and report cheaters. About all we can do. It's up to Blizzard to do the rest. The problem is many cheaters like cheating and don't like being caught. So many are on these forums disassembling anything related to shining a light on how they operate. This is why I am making this post. Maybe it helps some people recognize these cheaters in this and other FPS games. If cheaters don't think they can get away with cheating they tend to not cheat as much. Which is another thing those psychology studies tend to point out.
The thing about cheaters, is they tend to fall into 2 main categories. Those that don't give a duck. Also, there are those that don't want to be caught, but actually use the cheat to make it to the top of the competition. The former are usually pretty easy to spot and truth be told, are a bit rarer indeed. They have no problem with blatantly cheating and letting the world know they are cheating. Whether they are being a pure troll, or think they are deluding themselves into some misguided vengeance upon a specific competitive system they are willing to go out of their way to ruin the fun of others. Simply put they are trolls. There are other forms of trolls in games to be sure, but the worst are cheating trolls. In FPS games, these kinds of cheaters use the cheats to extreme that can be done. Teleporting where they shouldn't be, killing everything in a manner that shouldn't be possible, and just crashing the game as often as possible are all things these guys attempt to do in FPS games.
The second kind of cheaters are harder to spot. Mostly because they don't want to get caught. Still, there are degrees of subtle-ability here though. Most of the aimbot hacking programs for sale but the various companies that sell these things are very sophisticated in allowing a user to not be found out. It all depends on how the user configures and uses the cheat program. Bad or new users to the cheat program tend to do what this Bastion does in this youtube video:
https://youtu.be/l06M8qmtQAs?t=24
You can read the description for the break down, but here is the general gist of what is happening. The user doesn't have the aimbot configured for smooth play. The user is basically fighting for control of the cursor at times while the aimbot is trying to drag the cursor back to the nearest target it can and shoot it. Most aimbots have a radius range at which they decide to lock onto a target when the user hits the fire or lock-on button. Also, the user never configured the bot to not lock onto targets behind obstructions. So the user can be seen several times shooting at targets behind the walls while tracking the targets movement. The last tell-tale sign is that the lock-on aspect of the aimbot is configured for the straight path from the cursor to the target. This results in a "snapping" motion of the cursor that is very unnatural for human hands to reproduce. In fact it's impossible as the human hand can't quite draw a line that straight with a mouse at a fast speed. Don't believe me? Fire up paint and draw a perfect free hand line with your mouse at a speed you'd try to lock onto a target in an FPS. To save you the trouble, the answer is you can't. It's beyond human physical ability just like we can't breathe underwater on our own.
If you are having trouble seeing in that video of the Bastion of what I am describing, I slowed it down in another video to show it frame by frame here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O3531X634o
When I posted these videos in other threads, they were dismissed by many. Again I am not sure if it is cheaters dismissing evidence to cover up their own cheating, die hard Blizzard fanboys that can't possibly believe Blizzard games can be hacked, or the genuinely ignorant. Doesn't matter. The fact is that the Bastion in the video above isn't being very good at trying to hide his cheating due to sheer ineptitude in his use of the hacking program. Oh to head off the argument once again that the snapping motion in the video is caused by the "20.8" tick rate, I'll state right now that such argument is absurd. 21 FPS is more than enough frames to see mostly smooth motion. Yes the game has interpolation going on, but any straight line interpolation is going to be measured by pixels on the screen for movement and not by inches. Here is a video link of a different bastion that is not using an aimbot. Although there is also tons of footage of normal killcam and POTG videos on youtube of normal not cheating players that show the same thing as this video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIcSxjCh7g8
What this video shows is how normal people track targets in an FPS. The mouse tends to be jerkier when tracking targets. When panning to a new target people always over correct and don't stop pixel perfect on the exact spot on a person's head. Everyone does that. Even the pros. The difference between a pro FPS player and the average good one is basically experience at knowing where to shoot a new target while not being a target themselves. It is not having perfect robotic coordination. A pro player may have reactions in terms of movement, using abilities slightly faster, and knowing every square inch of a map, but they can't draw a perfectly straight free hand line in MS Paint with a mouse and stop on a pixel.
Which brings us to the next point of my post. Those cheaters that are really good at hiding their cheating. Again these hacking programs can be configured to allow the aimbot to not lock onto targets behind walls, not lock onto targets until the user already has the mouse within a very close pixel radius distance around the target, to move the mouse in a less linear or straight line fashion when locking on, and to not always target track the head but spread in a body shot or two. Truth be told, when cheaters are being that good then chances are you won't be able to spot them more than likely. Even I have a harder time spotting players cheating that well and I have much experience in trying to spot cheaters. Still even the best cheaters slip up. Unfortunately, the current spectate implementation in Overwatch prevents most cheaters from being seen when they slip up unless it's caught on a random PotG replay. Blizzard seriously needs to implement a better spectator mode in the game as such modes to help keep down cheaters.
Still, there are tons of videos on youtube of people trying to spot the really good cheaters in various FPS games. Counter Strike is notorious for cheaters and there are a ton of cheater spotting videos to look at. Most of the commentators do a pretty good job at pointing out why that person is cheating and how.
Truth be told, Blizzard, like every other company, will never be able to stop cheaters from cheating. Hackers have more time and aren't stuck to a release cycle for their products like big game companies are. So anytime a big game company changes their security, the hackers will very quickly adapt their programs in response. Yes before that Blizzard will collect some info on those cheating during that time frame before the hacks have been updated and some players may be banned. Still, most wait for the hackers to update their software and then go right back to cheating until Blizzard can do another release cycle to update their security again.
Which makes reporting cheaters a more effective strategy than relying upon big game companies so long as said game companies are willing to respond to reports while giving players the ability to make good usable reports on cheaters. This means better spectator mode and in-game video capture tech for when a spectator spots a cheater. As well as a dedicated team by said big game company to go over such reports.