Quick guide for a relatively hacker-free BO2 experience.

[The-Man-In-Black]

So after a week of playing BO2 and seeing just how bad the hacking supposedly was, I think I'm in a pretty good position to say what is and isn't going on.   The prevalence of hackers on BO2 is wildly overblown, and you can easily play the overwhelming majority of your games without an issue.   Coming from someone who has the aiming skills and eyesight of Mr. Magoo, I truly believe that the majority of hacker reports are coming from people who just suck at the game worse than I do and want to blame their poor play on anything other than the fact that they just suck, and claiming "teh haxorz" is an easy target.

 

So with that said, what's the best way to play BO2 in 2018? 

 

1)If you actually care about getting flagged on sites like this, use an alt account.  The chances of stumbling into a modded lobby are very small, but they're not zero.  After 5 days of playing BO2 on an alt account without incident, I decided to play with my main account since I have a lot more unlocked.  Half a dozen games later, I may have come *this* close to actually stumbling into a modded lobby:  Virtually every name was colored, and I jumped in in the middle of a conversation that 2 players were having about popping zombie trophies.  Fortunately, nothing happened.  I'm honestly not sure if I'd even give much of a damn if the trophies did pop since I know I didn't cheat, but I decided it wasn't worth the aggravation and switched back to my alt account.  With that said, I have played over 200 games and jumped into and out of another 100-200 lobbies (for various reasons, including cheaters, jumping into games where the score was already way too lopsided, and simply because I hated the maps.) before I stumbled into my first suspected modded lobby.    I've played about 50 other games since that incident with no further issues. 

 

2) Decide whether or not you want to install the DLC.   Honestly, the DLC puts you at a significant disadvantage.   Most of the legitimate hackers and cheaters have the DLC installed, so playing only the core game means you'll be largely isolated from cheaters.  I'd say I was able to play well over 90% of the core game maps without incident.  When I installed the DLC, that number dropped to between 70-80%.  And keep in mind that I was hopping from lobby to lobby between each and every game trying to get a feel of how many hackers/cheaters are out there.  If you aren't lobby hopping and play several games with a lobby you know is legitimate, you could very easily play 90%+ of your games without incident as well even with the DLC installed.  

 

3) Oddly enough, I was able to find a wider variety of games just playing core.  I was able to jump into Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Kill Confirmed while almost never waiting for a lobby.   When I installed the DLC, I was relegated to TD and the occasional game of Domination.  Kill Confirmed was dead in the water.  IMO, if you don't mind the lower variety of maps, I think just playing the core game is actually the better experience at this point.

 

4) The most popular cheats are:  (1) A cheat where the player appears to be having an epileptic seizure on-screen, firing around at random.  In reality, anybody who appears on field of view dies instantly.   You'll be able to spot these players almost immediately as the rack up kills very quickly and the replays are a dead giveaway.   Scorestreak and aimbots are a very distant second and third.   Aimbots *may* be more prevalent as they may be harder to spot if the cheater has half a brain, but eventually you'll end up on the wrong end of a double- or triple-kill and you'll be able to spot the aimbot as clear as day in the replay, as they will snap from player to player with perfection in a way that humans can't.  Scorestreaks are pretty obvious as they call out vsats, dogs, swarms, etc. immediately.   I saw exactly one person running in the sky, and another person carrying scorestreaks up and down walls. 

 

5) Good players =/= aimbots and cheaters.  Some players are just that good.  Watch the replays and you'll be able to tell the difference.   That said, if you see someone cheating, just leave.  Nobody cares about your W/L ratio in a game that's been out of date by half a decade.  You can report them if you want to waste your time, but Treyarch wasn't doing all that much about cheaters when the game was still current.  I doubt anyone is even bothering to read the reports now. 

 

6) Immediately leave any lobby where you see someone with a brightly colored name (typically, red or green.  But I've seen blue as well, along with names that cycle through colors).   There is NO way to do this legitimately in the game and colored names are a dead giveaway of a cheater.    I have yet to see a single player with a colored name who was playing legitimately.   Green seems to be the most popular color, and my guess is that they want to appear as a teammate rather than an enemy in game. 

 

7) DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED GAME INVITATIONS.  I tend to get an increasing amount of unsolicited game invites, particularly after leaving a game that has a cheater in it (I've gotten over 50 from about 20 different people).  You do not know if the game invitation is from a legitimate player or someone inviting you to a modded lobby.   It's best just to avoid the situation entirely.  One person with a colored name tried to claim that he accepted a random game invite, ended up in a modded lobby, and got the color of his name changed and he can't change it back.  Most of the other people in the lobby were calling bullshit, and he left the lobby before the game started, so I don't know if he was full of shit or not.  With that said, even with this anecdotal report, it's still best to avoid unsolicited game invitations entirely. 

 

Overall, if getting back into BO2 is your thing, you can still easily have an enjoyable experience with minimal interference from cheaters.  My personal opinion is to play the core maps and don't download the DLC; the DLC only overloads you with maps that seem to be generally unpopular anyway, exposes you to more hackers, and leaves you with less game choices as most of the DLC players want to stick to Team Deathmatch.  My guess is that people who own the core game are willing to play more varied game modes in an effort to make up for the lack of map variety, and there are far fewer cheaters. 

Edited April 15, 2018 by The-Man-In-Black

[DARKB1KE]

I still don't believe they can pop trophies for other players.  I suspect people have been giving them their account login details to get the Big Leagues trophy.  I've been in multiple modder lobbies in "search and destroy" and nothing bad has happened to my account at all.  They could care less about normal players. 

 

[The-Man-In-Black]

It's very possible you're right, but I don't want to say that everybody who has reported it happening to them are all liars with no proof.  I think it's just a safer bet to just say there's a razor-thin chance of it happening so people can decide for themselves if it's worth it.  There's really no harm in being a bit cautious.

 

My main goal in writing my post, though, is to bring light to the fact that the reports of hacking in general (trophy related or not) are widely overblown.  There's plenty of reasons not to want to play BO2 any more.  Hackers really aren't one of them.  There aren't enough to matter.

 

 

[bandwagner]

On 4/29/2018 at 1:39 AM, DARKB1KE said:

I still don't believe they can pop trophies for other players.  I suspect people have been giving them their account login details to get the Big Leagues trophy.  I've been in multiple modder lobbies in "search and destroy" and nothing bad has happened to my account at all.  They could care less about normal players. 

 

 

This just happened to me. Playing black ops 2 online after many years away, and didn't realize this was something that was happening, which also means, unfortunately, my trophies did sync. Looking at "Players met" from the match I was in, a bunch of the same trophies popped for everyone else in the match except "Xperthiefan08". It looks like he launched the hack on the rest of us. 

 

I just hid my trophies for BO2 (doesn't really matter to me for this game). Are there any other steps I need to take to be proactive about this so I don't get flagged?

[MMDE]

10 minutes ago, sirisabeast said:

I just hid my trophies for BO2 (doesn't really matter to me for this game). Are there any other steps I need to take to be proactive about this so I don't get flagged?

 

If you've hidden them, you won't get flagged. If you hadn't synced them, there's a way to delete them by deleting local user without syncing the trophies.

 

Anyway, so far, at least on this web site, you haven't received any reports or flags.

 

I do however still see the game on your profile. Remember to earn a trophy in any game sync it and then update your profile on this web site for the hiding to take effect.

 

I'd get it hidden as soon as possible, because the game is reported quite frequently. It should however not be a big problem, because you can have 2 flagged games hidden on your profile and still appear on leaderboards etc.

Edited May 23, 2018 by MMDE

[DARKB1KE]

1 hour ago, sirisabeast said:

This just happened to me. Playing black ops 2 online after many years away, and didn't realize this was something that was happening, which also means, unfortunately, my trophies did sync. Looking at "Players met" from the match I was in, a bunch of the same trophies popped for everyone else in the match except "Xperthiefan08". It looks like he launched the hack on the rest of us. 

 

I just hid my trophies for BO2 (doesn't really matter to me for this game). Are there any other steps I need to take to be proactive about this so I don't get flagged?

Lucky you.  Modders usually don't care to pop trophies.  I've messaged over 80 of them and no luck so far.  Half of them don't even know what trophies are.  All they care about is winning endless games using their "scripts"

Edited May 23, 2018 by DARKB1KE

[SirPigFace]

luckily I completed the online trophies (apart from zombies) when I first bought the game so people popping trophies wasn't a thing. I was playing at a friend a few month back and he ran into one of these guys and every trophy popped apart from DLC ones (not sure if it would of popped them if he had them). When I finally decided to do the zombie/DLC packs I completed as many as I could solo to avoid this online mess and manage to find a few players on here which I completed a lot of trophies that required more than one person.

 

Help for anyone going for the DLC's to avoid hackers as best they can -

 

Die Rise - 6 trophies can be done really easy solo. 3 Diner Turned and the Easter Egg require 4 players
Mob Of The Dead - 9 trophies can be done really easy solo. Only the Easter Egg requires 4 players

Buried - 9 trophies can be done really easy solo. Only Easter Egg requires 4 players

Origins - This is the only DLC that is easier/requires you to do the majority of the trophies with at least one player. You can get 3 trophies on your own pretty easy (Turning on all generators, 4 challenges & riding tank). The staff trophies can also be done solo but I am not sure how difficult it is. Luckily I found a guy who knew all the steps for each staff and upgrade so it was pretty easy for me ? I just babysat the zombie for most of it. The rest all require help from another player.

 

 

[JohnCenaSong-]

On 25/07/2018 at 10:52 AM, SirPigFace said:

Mob Of The Dead - 9 trophies can be done really easy solo. Only the Easter Egg requires 4 players

Mob only requires 2 players to complete the Easter Egg, this is the only DLC EE I completed because it is by far the easiest and only requires 1 other guy. I didn't have a fantastic partner (he wasn't bad by any means) so Origins didn't go so well, and eventually he moved on. As a pair we managed to finish TranZit from the base game and Mob of the Dead without much trouble.

 

I could theoretically still do Origins but I find solo zombies (or zombies with anyone who doesn't talk) quite tedious... But enough about my circumstances lol.

 

The only ones that require 4 players are Die Rise and Buried. Meanwhile, TranZit from the base game can be done 2 seperate ways, one requires 4 but there's an alternative only requires 2.

[ArmoredSnowman]

On 4/14/2018 at 11:40 AM, The-Man-In-Black said:

So after a week of playing BO2 and seeing just how bad the hacking supposedly was, I think I'm in a pretty good position to say what is and isn't going on.   The prevalence of hackers on BO2 is wildly overblown, and you can easily play the overwhelming majority of your games without an issue.   Coming from someone who has the aiming skills and eyesight of Mr. Magoo, I truly believe that the majority of hacker reports are coming from people who just suck at the game worse than I do and want to blame their poor play on anything other than the fact that they just suck, and claiming "teh haxorz" is an easy target.

 

So with that said, what's the best way to play BO2 in 2018? 

 

1)If you actually care about getting flagged on sites like this, use an alt account.  The chances of stumbling into a modded lobby are very small, but they're not zero.  After 5 days of playing BO2 on an alt account without incident, I decided to play with my main account since I have a lot more unlocked.  Half a dozen games later, I may have come *this* close to actually stumbling into a modded lobby:  Virtually every name was colored, and I jumped in in the middle of a conversation that 2 players were having about popping zombie trophies.  Fortunately, nothing happened.  I'm honestly not sure if I'd even give much of a damn if the trophies did pop since I know I didn't cheat, but I decided it wasn't worth the aggravation and switched back to my alt account.  With that said, I have played over 200 games and jumped into and out of another 100-200 lobbies (for various reasons, including cheaters, jumping into games where the score was already way too lopsided, and simply because I hated the maps.) before I stumbled into my first suspected modded lobby.    I've played about 50 other games since that incident with no further issues. 

 

2) Decide whether or not you want to install the DLC.   Honestly, the DLC puts you at a significant disadvantage.   Most of the legitimate hackers and cheaters have the DLC installed, so playing only the core game means you'll be largely isolated from cheaters.  I'd say I was able to play well over 90% of the core game maps without incident.  When I installed the DLC, that number dropped to between 70-80%.  And keep in mind that I was hopping from lobby to lobby between each and every game trying to get a feel of how many hackers/cheaters are out there.  If you aren't lobby hopping and play several games with a lobby you know is legitimate, you could very easily play 90%+ of your games without incident as well even with the DLC installed.  

 

3) Oddly enough, I was able to find a wider variety of games just playing core.  I was able to jump into Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Kill Confirmed while almost never waiting for a lobby.   When I installed the DLC, I was relegated to TD and the occasional game of Domination.  Kill Confirmed was dead in the water.  IMO, if you don't mind the lower variety of maps, I think just playing the core game is actually the better experience at this point.

 

4) The most popular cheats are:  (1) A cheat where the player appears to be having an epileptic seizure on-screen, firing around at random.  In reality, anybody who appears on field of view dies instantly.   You'll be able to spot these players almost immediately as the rack up kills very quickly and the replays are a dead giveaway.   Scorestreak and aimbots are a very distant second and third.   Aimbots *may* be more prevalent as they may be harder to spot if the cheater has half a brain, but eventually you'll end up on the wrong end of a double- or triple-kill and you'll be able to spot the aimbot as clear as day in the replay, as they will snap from player to player with perfection in a way that humans can't.  Scorestreaks are pretty obvious as they call out vsats, dogs, swarms, etc. immediately.   I saw exactly one person running in the sky, and another person carrying scorestreaks up and down walls. 

 

5) Good players =/= aimbots and cheaters.  Some players are just that good.  Watch the replays and you'll be able to tell the difference.   That said, if you see someone cheating, just leave.  Nobody cares about your W/L ratio in a game that's been out of date by half a decade.  You can report them if you want to waste your time, but Treyarch wasn't doing all that much about cheaters when the game was still current.  I doubt anyone is even bothering to read the reports now. 

 

6) Immediately leave any lobby where you see someone with a brightly colored name (typically, red or green.  But I've seen blue as well, along with names that cycle through colors).   There is NO way to do this legitimately in the game and colored names are a dead giveaway of a cheater.    I have yet to see a single player with a colored name who was playing legitimately.   Green seems to be the most popular color, and my guess is that they want to appear as a teammate rather than an enemy in game. 

 

7) DO NOT ACCEPT UNSOLICITED GAME INVITATIONS.  I tend to get an increasing amount of unsolicited game invites, particularly after leaving a game that has a cheater in it (I've gotten over 50 from about 20 different people).  You do not know if the game invitation is from a legitimate player or someone inviting you to a modded lobby.   It's best just to avoid the situation entirely.  One person with a colored name tried to claim that he accepted a random game invite, ended up in a modded lobby, and got the color of his name changed and he can't change it back.  Most of the other people in the lobby were calling bullshit, and he left the lobby before the game started, so I don't know if he was full of shit or not.  With that said, even with this anecdotal report, it's still best to avoid unsolicited game invitations entirely. 

 

Overall, if getting back into BO2 is your thing, you can still easily have an enjoyable experience with minimal interference from cheaters.  My personal opinion is to play the core maps and don't download the DLC; the DLC only overloads you with maps that seem to be generally unpopular anyway, exposes you to more hackers, and leaves you with less game choices as most of the DLC players want to stick to Team Deathmatch.  My guess is that people who own the core game are willing to play more varied game modes in an effort to make up for the lack of map variety, and there are far fewer cheaters. 

The reasoning is this: 3arc set up dedicated servers for multiplayer sometime in the last couple years, hence the lack of modders, since they would need to host. Zombies is still user-hosted, meaning the majority of lobbies will probably be modded. So with that in mind, stick with multi, not zombies, unless you're in a party.