Hey Ravaldini! Thanks for the report!
And sorry for late reply. In the meantime, April fools and some other stuff got in between.
I converted your .demo file into some video, so its better debatable.
Here the link: https://youtu.be/XriP3iida2I (Don’t wonder, it starts in the video at 00:12)
For the next time: It can be helpful to analyze (/an) a player. That way we see it when a bullet hit someone. But no worries, its still some useful video.
Generally, we need to prove someone wrong, the evidence requirement is rather high. It’s better to not ban some cheater than to wrongfully ban a legit playing player.
I can really get where you come from. There are a lot of shots that look like some kind of wallhack or esp at least. Let’s dive into them. Every timestamp is based on video timestamps (not the clock in the bottom middle).
00:40-00:41 he is shooting at player “13” who seems invisible. A second ago (00:39) there were shots fired from that player that were indeed visible. Expecting there someone seems reasonable to me.
00:42 the head of “elbow” was visible before
01:12 (and before) - player “Mr peepeemilk” was killing him before. Expecting him in the water seems normal, especially because in water you move relatively slow.
01:26 shooting at player “elbow”. That player was shortly visible the second before while Deuce jumped.
01:36 this shot can be interpreted in two ways. Was he expecting him there? Give him the benefit of the doubt. He could argue that he just finished building his bridge and pulled his gun in order to find someone to shoot at. Speaking for that is that he didn’t point his gun directly to that player before.
01:40-01:47 attempting to shoot him again. Definitely not aimbot, because it took so long lol. The 01:40 moment was very rapid. It almost looks like hes shooting at the wall in front of him. However, we are speaking of milliseconds. It needs to be perfectly synced between you and Deuce, which is with a server in between rather unlikely. Benefit of the doubt - it just looks like this due to (unavoidable) lag / latency.
02:06 as soon as he saw player “Mr peepeemilk”, he attempted to shoot him. All the other attempts can be argued with expecting him there/hearing him there.
02:20 this is the first “better” evidence. It looks like he is shooting him behind the blocks (meaning wallhack). However, after that he suddenly appears on the first block layer instead of water (jumping there takes some time). It really looks unintended to me that he gets teleported there. I often see this kind of teleports when server & client are not synced enough. The client sends once a second its current position, everything in between is calculated by the server from the orientation (where he looks like) and WASD keys. I interpret this incident as lag/server-client desync. While Deuce looks to your client like shooting from water, it was likely on his client already standing on the first block layer and seeing “Communard”.
03:18 Player “13” was shot immediately after he was visible. But looks fine to me. Some players have a good reaction time and precision.
03:52 at first it looked to me like he was shooting at a blue wall and expecting player “13” to be there. Until I realized that at 03:51 he came out of his hiding for a little moment. So yea. Definitely not an ESP moment.
Summarizing:
Deuce uses an SMG. It looks a bit to me like “I just need to shoot long enough, until some bullets hit the enemy”. I tried to identify all situations that could be “suspicious” in some way and explained them. The most convincing one was at 02:20, but it can be well explained with lag.
You are right, once he comes out of his cover and sees his enemy, he starts shooting at them. I can understand both the frustration for other players as well as why you perceive this as hack. But it’s not a proof of some hack. Some people are just well trained at first person shooters.
I spent some time to evaluate your evidence and hope that you can understand why its too inconclusive evidence. Nevertheless I do appreciate your report. We do check our trusted players already quite a few times, but if there is proof of a hack we would immediately take action.
Alright this here is entering the field of game politics. This gets quite complex to debate this into detail, as there are arguments for both sides. But as of now, we only ban people who (intentionally) harm the game. And just playing it with skill should be allowed, even if it frustrates others. The trusted rank exists but getting it is rather difficult. We want to have servers that can be played by anyone without being afraid of getting wrongfully kicked.
If I forgot some suspicious moments in that recording let me know. I am happy that you posted this, its way better to discuss a player with some material.
Thanks again for your report and your suggestions regarding votekicks. Suggestions are always welcome but I cannot promise every wish to be fulfilled.