Manually Reporting Cheaters

[HipHecooblik]

Sly, I am so happy to be a part of this site. Features like this continue to solidify the experience. I'm going to definitely suggest Premium to many others as you and the staff deserve something.

Maybe just a way to make it more visible to the casual browser that they can report a profile they are viewing would be great. An icon or button, perhaps? Not that I would want stuff about cheating being front and centre on honest player's profiles. Only the cheaters should have marks like that on there.

Is there a way to report multiple cheated games instead of just one? So far all I see is the red text message on individual game pages only. Or should we send multiple reports, each one for each game?

An all-encompassing report feature would be best. You see the check boxes you have on the individual trophy lists? Well, what about check boxes for the entire game list of a profile? So, you have a list of all games reported, then from there the reporter can detail what is wrong with each reported game in a text field. his may be much less confusing than the individual trophy check boxes, but if both can be applied, that would be great too.

Well then it seems we are focusing on the anti-cheating measures at the moment, so I will give suggestions and feedback. Off the top of my head:

Firstly, the Dirty leaderboard should be removed. The cheaters should be getting no spotlight.

Secondly, trophies and stats of flagged profiles should be hidden to the public. Only the flagged user, while logged in, should be able to view their profile. Take a look at how mega popular Xbox stat site, TrueAchievements.com the dominating site, treats this. All achievements and stats of the flagged user are removed completely along with a red icon next to their name. Of course, this site can come to a compromise which I bring up here. Removal of trophies, stats, and possibly ability to manually update (much less load for you on the server) with the profile stats and trophies only viewable to the user while logged in. This is a great compromise, as cheating users in the past have said they liked the site's stat system and all. Well, now they can enjoy all of that, without the community having to see their stuff.

Lastly, if the previous cannot be put into place, there needs to be more explicit visibility that a profile has been flagged beyond a simple leaderboard stat removal. Most browsers do not know these people did anything wrong, especially viewing the trophy cards.

Maybe a community poll on some of these things would suffice in the future on seeing if they should be implemented.

Great work so far with the manual reporting, I am surprised at how much progress already. If you need any staff to work alongside other staff on reports, don't hesitate to give me a holler. I can only imagine there needs to be a couple more to make it less of a load on you all. Thank you all for your hard work. Already miles ahead of anything on the net, stacking on additional great features only solidifies this as the best!

Edited November 19, 2012 by HipHecooblik

[killerJAZZ420]

Sly, I am so happy to be a part of this site. Features like this continue to solidify the experience. I'm going to definitely suggest Premium to many others as you and the staff deserve something.

Maybe just a way to make it more visible to the casual browser that they can report a profile they are viewing would be great. An icon or button, perhaps? Not that I would want stuff about cheating being front and centre on honest player's profiles. Only the cheaters should have marks like that on there.

Well then it seems we are focusing on the anti-cheating measures at the moment, so I will give suggestions and feedback. Off the top of my head:

Firstly, the Dirty leaderboard should be removed. The cheaters should be getting no spotlight.

Secondly, trophies and stats of flagged profiles should be hidden to the public. Only the flagged user, while logged in, should be able to view their profile. Take a look at how mega popular Xbox 360 stat site, the dominating site, treats this. All achievements and stats of the flagged user are removed completely along with a red icon next to their name. Of course, this site can come to a compromise which I bring up here. Removal of trophies, stats, and possibly ability to manually update (much less load for you on the server) with the profile stats and trophies only viewable to the user while logged in. This is a great compromise, as cheating users in the past have said they liked the site's stat system and all. Well, now they can enjoy all of that, without the community having to see their stuff.

Lastly, if the previous cannot be put into place, there needs to be more explicit visibility that a profile has been flagged beyond a simple leaderboard stat removal. Most browsers do not know these people did anything wrong, especially viewing the trophy cards.

Maybe a community poll on some of these things would suffice in the future on seeing if they should be implemented.

Great work so far with the manual reporting, I am surprised at how much progress already. If you need any staff to work alongside other staff on reports, don't hesitate to give me a holler. I can only imagine there needs to be a couple more to make it less of a load on you all. Thank you all for your hard work. Already miles ahead of anything on the net, stacking on additional great features only solidifies this as the best!

There are some flaws to a few of these suggestions.

Such as

1.I'd like to point out number 3-more visible indicator of hacking. Sly used to have a large and un-needed banner on the side of the profile showing what games were hacked.

I personally like the red outline. I don't know alot about computers so. This system may have merits since you say some browsers can't load it or something.

2.Saying they shouldn't be able to manually update. Again not a great idea. seeing as some flagged users are premium members. Meaning they actually paid to be able to do that. It doesn't seem fair to take that away from them because of some virtual trophy.

3.As stated above flagged users can pay money to make the site better. so completely removing them from the leaderboards. Also not a great idea imo.

This is my personal opinion and thats all. I don't think they are awful ideas just wanted to get my 2 sense out there.

It's good to see people so into this to throw ideas out though. Good Job

[Sly Ripper]

Sly, I am so happy to be a part of this site. Features like this continue to solidify the experience. I'm going to definitely suggest Premium to many others as you and the staff deserve something.

Maybe just a way to make it more visible to the casual browser that they can report a profile they are viewing would be great. An icon or button, perhaps? Not that I would want stuff about cheating being front and centre on honest player's profiles. Only the cheaters should have marks like that on there.

Is there a way to report multiple cheated games instead of just one? So far all I see is the red text message on individual game pages only. Or should we send multiple reports, each one for each game?

An all-encompassing report feature would be best. You see the check boxes you have on the individual trophy lists? Well, what about check boxes for the entire game list of a profile? So, you have a list of all games reported, then from there the reporter can detail what is wrong with each reported game in a text field. his may be much less confusing than the individual trophy check boxes, but if both can be applied, that would be great too.

Well then it seems we are focusing on the anti-cheating measures at the moment, so I will give suggestions and feedback. Off the top of my head:

Firstly, the Dirty leaderboard should be removed. The cheaters should be getting no spotlight.

Secondly, trophies and stats of flagged profiles should be hidden to the public. Only the flagged user, while logged in, should be able to view their profile. Take a look at how mega popular Xbox stat site, TrueAchievements.com the dominating site, treats this. All achievements and stats of the flagged user are removed completely along with a red icon next to their name. Of course, this site can come to a compromise which I bring up here. Removal of trophies, stats, and possibly ability to manually update (much less load for you on the server) with the profile stats and trophies only viewable to the user while logged in. This is a great compromise, as cheating users in the past have said they liked the site's stat system and all. Well, now they can enjoy all of that, without the community having to see their stuff.

Lastly, if the previous cannot be put into place, there needs to be more explicit visibility that a profile has been flagged beyond a simple leaderboard stat removal. Most browsers do not know these people did anything wrong, especially viewing the trophy cards.

Maybe a community poll on some of these things would suffice in the future on seeing if they should be implemented.

Great work so far with the manual reporting, I am surprised at how much progress already. If you need any staff to work alongside other staff on reports, don't hesitate to give me a holler. I can only imagine there needs to be a couple more to make it less of a load on you all. Thank you all for your hard work. Already miles ahead of anything on the net, stacking on additional great features only solidifies this as the best!

People are not being banned/removed like that, some of you guys act like they just stabbed your mother, I'm not into naming and shaming, profiles don't need a "HEY I'VE BEEN FLAGGED" message, flagged users buy premium too.

Also, I'm finding that more users are being flagged for legit but unfortunate circumstances we'll probably resort to removing flagged games and altering stats to reflect it and adding a threshold to be added to the dirty leaderboard.

[ToMyFallenHomies]

Good addition Sly. For the people going mark-happy -> Some things to look out for:

1) Does one trophy supercede another? Comes up a lot with difficulty modes, very few games force you to play on each separate difficulty for each trophy. For this reason you can beat hard a few seconds before you beat normal or easy. That said, some games require you to unlock the highest difficulty by beating the second highest, or normal, or something. In that case if the hardest difficulty was beat first then cheating did occur... except if DLC or different versions of games allow you to start on that difficulty. Basically don't mark this stuff as impossible unless you know it's impossible. You're just wasting mods time othewise.

2) Is one trophy a subset of another? Much like Platinums themselves, some trophies are required to unlock other ones. If conditions w, x and y need to be complete for trophy z to pop, and a trophy for completing x exists then a player can get z a few seconds before x (because only the platinum always gets its ordering right).

3) Similarly if a trophy can be unlocked by the same event as another one than seeing both unlocked within seconds is not indicative of cheating. In WipEout HD you can get the trophies for completing the last grid, completing the campaign, completing the campaign on gold elite, unlocking all ship skins, and the platinum from the end of one race. It doesn't mean that the player cheated.

4) Is the game easy to avoid unlocking trophies for or fast to plat a second time? For people marking based on 'wow I couldn't get the plat in that time', please look at actual timestamps. Most 100% fast clears seem to be intentional, the player is probably replaying the game and could be getting boosting help (which for some reason seems okay here). If there's no actual problems with the timestamps, then there's no grounds for calling a player a hacker. Players can also avoid unlocking any trophies in some game while still getting close to a lot of the more time consuming ones. This allowing for a much faster 'first trophy to last trophy' times. Someone recently mentioned a game with a trophy for playing 100 hours. You could get the plat in less than 12 (even though intuitively that seems wrong) if the first trophy you got was the one for playing 100 hours.

5) Do certain glitches allow players to get trophies out of order or more quickly then should be possible? Glitch use doesn't seem to be considered hacking here either. If you're going to file a report look into what's possible first instead of making the mods do it for you.

TL;DR: If you don't know a game inside out, you don't deserve to report about it. If there aren't any actual unexplainable contradictions in timestamps, there is no grounds for marking someone as a hacker. This is an excellent feature, please don't allow your ignorance to abuse it. The people who will care most about who has a plat are going to be the ones who know a lot about the plat or have already gotten the plat anyways. This feature isn't automated, don't treat it like it is. Mods are volunteers, they don't deserve poor descriptions or vague cases.

I also think there should be a repeal feature, especially for established players who haven't shown any cheating previously. In those cases it's much more likely to be a misunderstanding than it is a legitimate offense.

Edit: oh gawd the typos

Edited November 19, 2012 by ToMyFallenHomies

[daftprophet]

Good addition Sly. For the people going mark-happy -> Some things to look out for:

1) Does one trophy supercede another? Comes up a lot with difficulty modes, very few games force you to play on each separate difficulty for each trophy. For this reason you can beat hard a few seconds before you beat normal or easy. That said, some games require you to unlock the highest difficulty by beating the second highest, or normal, or something. In that case if the hardest difficulty was beat first then cheating did occur... except if DLC or different versions of games allow you to start on that difficulty. Basically don't mark this stuff as impossible unless you know it's impossible. You're just wasting mods time othewise.

I actually had a question about this in particular. Take Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for example. You can enter the SITHSPAWN code into the in game "cheats" menu so you can play on the hardest difficulty first. Which I did, so is that considered cheating? I never thought of it like that to be honest since it is a part of the game but it's obviously ultimately up to you...just was curious about that particular game.

Thanks

[Roughdawg4]

Good addition Sly. For the people going mark-happy -> Some things to look out for:

1) Does one trophy supercede another? Comes up a lot with difficulty modes, very few games force you to play on each separate difficulty for each trophy. For this reason you can beat hard a few seconds before you beat normal or easy. That said, some games require you to unlock the highest difficulty by beating the second highest, or normal, or something. In that case if the hardest difficulty was beat first then cheating did occur... except if DLC or different versions of games allow you to start on that difficulty. Basically don't mark this stuff as impossible unless you know it's impossible. You're just wasting mods time othewise.

2) Is one trophy a subset of another? Much like Platinums themselves, some trophies are required to unlock other ones. If conditions w, x and y need to be complete for trophy z to pop, and a trophy for completing x exists then a player can get z a few seconds before x (because only the platinum always gets its ordering right).

3) Similarly if a trophy can be unlocked by the same event as another one than seeing both unlocked within seconds is not indicative of cheating. In WipEout HD you can get the trophies for completing the last grid, completing the campaign, completing the campaign on gold elite, unlocking all ship skins, and the platinum from the end of one race. It doesn't mean that the player cheated.

4) Is the game easy to avoid unlocking trophies for or fast to plat a second time? For people marking based on 'wow I couldn't get the plat in that time', please look at actual timestamps. Most 100% fast clears seem to be intentional, the player is probably replaying the game and could be getting boosting help (which for some reason seems okay here). If there's no actual problems with the timestamps, then there's no grounds for calling a player a hacker. Players can also avoid unlocking any trophies in some game while still getting close to a lot of the more time consuming ones. This allowing for a much faster 'first trophy to last trophy' times. Someone recently mentioned a game with a trophy for playing 100 hours. You could get the plat in less than 12 (even though intuitively that seems wrong) if the first trophy you got was the one for playing 100 hours.

5) Do certain glitches allow players to get trophies out of order or more quickly then should be possible? Glitch use doesn't seem to be considered hacking here either. If you're going to file a report look into what's possible first instead of making the mods do it for you.

TL;DR: If you don't know a game inside out, you don't deserve to report about it. If there aren't any actual unexplainable contradictions in timestamps, there is no grounds for marking someone as a hacker. This is an excellent feature, please don't allow your ignorance to abuse it. The people who will care most about who has a plat are going to be the ones who know a lot about the plat or have already gotten the plat anyways. This feature isn't automated, don't treat it like it is. Mods are volunteers, they don't deserve poor descriptions or vague cases.

I also think there should be a repeal feature, especially for established players who haven't shown any cheating previously. In those cases it's much more likely to be a misunderstanding than it is a legitimate offense.

Edit: oh gawd the typos

Well said man, well said

I think that is the hardest part on reporting a hack for a game is most of the time you need to be familiar on the mechanics of the game before you do so. I think the biggest confusion is on games where you mentioned you need to play X hours. Sometimes there are ways around it and sometimes there are not. Games like When the Seagulls Cry cannot get around the 50 hours since a trophy is awarded to enter the game and that is when the timer starts.

I haven't played Crysis 2 but I assume you can get around the 6 months if you played 1 online game and made sure to not earn a trophy judging from the fastest times.

I actually had a question about this in particular. Take Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for example. You can enter the SITHSPAWN code into the in game "cheats" menu so you can play on the hardest difficulty first. Which I did, so is that considered cheating? I never thought of it like that to be honest since it is a part of the game but it's obviously ultimately up to you...just was curious about that particular game.

Thanks

This is not cheating because it is a code given to you by the publishers.

Edited November 19, 2012 by Roughdawg4

[daftprophet]

This is not cheating because it is a code given to you by the publishers.

Thanks for clearing that up, RD.

[shadowtrophy]

Glad there is a way now to flag cheaters. Who would want to cheat on trophies anyway?

Edited November 19, 2012 by shadowtrophy

[ToMyFallenHomies]

Well said man, well said

I think that is the hardest part on reporting a hack for a game is most of the time you need to be familiar on the mechanics of the game before you do so. I think the biggest confusion is on games where you mentioned you need to play X hours. Sometimes there are ways around it and sometimes there are not. Games like When the Seagulls Cry cannot get around the 50 hours since a trophy is awarded to enter the game and that is when the timer starts.

I haven't played Crysis 2 but I assume you can get around the 6 months if you played 1 online game and made sure to not earn a trophy judging from the fastest times.

Yep, it's easy to misunderstand the timestamps on the time dependent ones. Filtering by date and seeing what started the clock is a good start, but if you don't know the game well it can still be tricky to tell.

What you posted is a really interesting example actually. None of the 100%s for Crysis 2 look intentionally fast, so they all seem to be accidental. They're probably the players who played some online first, couldn't get into it, left the game on their shelves for months and then finally gave it another chance... and as a result of not playing it for so long, they got the fastest 100% times. Kind of ironic really

I checked a few of the top times for Crysis 2 and each one had 'Dedicated' (6 months between first and most recent online match) as their first multiplayer trophy, which is to be expected of any clean sub-6 month clear.

Thanks for clearing that up, RD.

For future reference the general rules seem to be:

Anything ingame - part of the game, part of the online, whatever - is okay. Ingame cheats are fine. Glitches are fine. All forms of boosting is fair game. The only things that count against you are earning the trophies without actually fulfilling the conditions. This includes using trophy hacks, messing with game saves, or using cfw trophy unlocking programs. I believe in spirit it might also include paying someone to get trophies for you, but that would be impossible to enforce.

[daftprophet]

For future reference the general rules seem to be:

Anything ingame - part of the game, part of the online, whatever - is okay. Ingame cheats are fine. Glitches are fine. All forms of boosting is fair game. The only things that count against you are earning the trophies without actually fulfilling the conditions. This includes using trophy hacks, messing with game saves, or using cfw trophy unlocking programs. I believe in spirit it might also include paying someone to get trophies for you, but that would be impossible to enforce.

I mean, I figured as much. Just wanted to clarify that based on your previous comment about difficulty trophies. Thanks

[AlteredFormula]

Dealt with & cleaned up, brought back to the original topic... Carry on!

[Aipher]

I can't seem to report some people. The red text link to report isn't showing?

edit: Is it because some trophies are missing timestamps? In this case it's irrelevant, all of the other trophies were earned within minutes, including online trophies which would be impossible due to closed servers.

Also, would it be too much to be able to report unplatted games which have online trophies earned after the servers had already closed?

Edited November 21, 2012 by Aipher

[Kittens Are Awesome]

I can't seem to report some people. The red text link to report isn't showing?

edit: Is it because some trophies are missing timestamps? In this case it's irrelevant, all of the other trophies were earned within minutes, including online trophies which would be impossible due to closed servers.

Also, would it be too much to be able to report unplatted games which have online trophies earned after the servers had already closed?

He's talking about Motorstorm: Pacific Rift.

There are guys in there who have left out the plat and one other online trophy as to not seem like cheaters. Also, there is this loser --->

https://psnprofiles.com/trophies/MotorStorm-Pacific-Rift/SierraDelta86

He has all three online ranked trophies earned within seconds. Also, they were earned after the servers had closed.

[Aipher]

Actually there is another guy but, as prarpin says, it's for that game specifically. I checked a few days ago and even though the list has been thinned down a bit, there are still some left, without a report link available.

I think it's the fact it took '42 years' to complete that is masking the illegitimacy of it and possibly other games too.

[Hielke6991]

https://psnprofiles.com/100-club/Need-for-Speed-Undercover

Maybe you can just ban the whole fastest achievers list from this game.

[Aipher]

http://psnprofiles.c...peed-Undercover

Maybe you can just ban the whole fastest achievers list from this game.

That one is impossible. NFS: U is an exception because it has retroactive trophies. Several people complete all trophy requirements before installing the trophies patch and achieve all trophies within minutes/seconds after installing the patch.

[Hielke6991]

That one is impossible. NFS: U is an exception because it has retroactive trophies. Several people complete all trophy requirements before installing the trophies patch and achieve all trophies within minutes/seconds after installing the patch.

Oh, I didn't know that...

[DRAGON1NINJA]

I thought them games that took 40 years to plat were hacks... until I noticed I have them myself lol

Those were the games I had before I created my psn so they have no time stamps, they're pretty easy trophies anyway and most are story related.

I hope Sly can fix them

[DragonAwakening]

according to the first post, you can report users whoose trophies are earned out of order.

but lets say for example my PS3 has blinking red light halfway through a game. It auto shutsdown, when restarted, auto restore kicks in and trophies earned are lost, but save file is intact.

So I go through level select, to earn my story related trophies in backwards order, lets say i start playing chapter 9 then 8, 7, etc.

Would that be flagged? Its not cheating right?

Is there any page with some kind of rules of regulations regarding cheaters?

Edited November 21, 2012 by DragonAwakening

[Roughdawg4]

Trophies that show as 40 years means a trophy has no time stamp. It could happen because of 3 reasons

1) If you earn trophies before the firmware was updated. Generally the beginning of your profile could look like this and this is totally fine.

2) If you earn trophies and your ps3 has some sort of error. Its rare for this to happen but it is plausible. I think the leap year glitch caused a few of these. This must be a rare occurance since I have over 20,000 trophise and this has never happened to me.

3) Someone is using jailbreak software to unlock the trophies. Apparently it does not give it a time-stamp when done like this. If you consistently see this in a profile, they are hacking. Take SKS-KOK for example, he has 40 years for platinums all over his profile. Either he is the unluckiest person in the world, or he is jailbreaking.

Unfortunately since there is no way to prove which category someone falls into, you do not want to label someone a cheater if they aren't. The good news is if people are hacking the trophies this way, they are probably hacking other ways so they could get caught so it would work out in the end.

according to the first post, you can report users whoose trophies are earned out of order.

but lets say for example my PS3 has blinking red light halfway through. It auto shutsdown, when restarted, trophies earned are lost. but save file is intact. So I go through level select, to earn my story related trophies in backwards order, lets say i start playing chapter 9 then 8, 7, etc.

Would that be flagged? Its not cheating right?

If this is the only incident found on your profile, I think you would definetly have a case to prove you are legit and I would like to believe you would win as well. Shit like that can happen, its only when you see things like this happening over and over again it becomes suspicious.

Edited November 21, 2012 by Roughdawg4

[sergiiinhu]

I want to know why was i flagged on STREET FIGHTER 4 if i where using MY GAME SAVE DATA from my FAT 40gb that got YLOD years ago and don't tell me that was from time stamps because the last trophies i earned there(and in other games) weren't sincronized with the server . so i think your way of reporting people has to be improved.and one other thing that is missing here is ANY of us can change the date and time of our console and any one can get plat in a day , hours ,depending on the game even if the game takes a week to platinum using the date and time change(wich i think you cant report just for that ). SO with that said i think that when reporting PLEASE have knowledge of the game you are reporting and if possible ask first before reporting. if this not enough do you want video proof of my fat ps3 and then getting the F******* YLOD and the new slim one ? both of them non jailbroken.

Instead of this shit the people should be reporting companies that produces games with trophies that no one in the world can win plat because of a bug, glitch ,etc...example:FIFA FOOTBALL PS VITA HOME AND AWAY TROPHY

[Orlay_]

I tested, a long time ago, to see if you can change times on the PS3 to mess with trophy times because I wanted to see if I could make a trophy take negative years.. ya know, for laughs. It does not. Trophies earned are based on the server you're connected to, regardless of the time on your PS3.

I will add, for future ragers, that capitol letters and curses only make you look ignorant in text. We get that you're angry, but who honestly reads those kinds of posts without the derp voice in their heads? I was also flagged for what I feel are unfortunate circumstances. I realize that this flag on my account causes people to judge me unfairly and even hate me on sight. I even realize that being legit and being called a hacker/cheater/otherwise is not really a pleasant situation to be in. That said, the flagging system is still being perfected and only through trial and error can the administrator and developers see what works and what needs tweaking. Patience and respect go a long way because honestly.. no one cares if you're mad.

[sergiiinhu]

oh really? then why do i have trophies with no timestamps on my ps vita? . i will prove you that your wrong about the timestamps with the free game that i got today i even changed the date of my vita to get more lifes on TREASURES OF MONTEZUMA BLITZ,im going to change the date to days later and im going to get a trophie on zen pinball 2 ,this one :

From the Depths of Despair

Perform a successful bang back with the Captain America ball. Perform a bang back by nudging the table at the right time as the ball heads down an outlane.

and when i got it i will tell you the date.

Edited November 21, 2012 by sergiiinhu

[Orlay_]

You can change the PS3 time on your console to trick the games into think you've been playing long enough to achieve the trophy itself, but the date on the trophy pop wont be 6 months in the future. It will be the day, the actual day, you earned the trophy.

[Sly Ripper]

oh really? then why do i have trophies with no timestamps on my ps vita? . i will prove you that your wrong about the timestamps with the free game that i got today i even changed the date of my vita to get more lifes on TREASURES OF MONTEZUMA BLITZ,im going to change the date to days later and im going to get a trophie on zen pinball 2 ,this one :

From the Depths of Despair

Perform a successful bang back with the Captain America ball. Perform a bang back by nudging the table at the right time as the ball heads down an outlane.

and when i got it i will tell you the date.

Change your clock to 2013, earn a trophy, sync, look at the time on this site. It will not say 2013.