Cognitive bias - When your beliefs get in the way of reality...
OICURMT!
Posts: 161Beta Tester
I was on last night and heard a *LOT* of moaning about cheaters. While there were cheaters on last night, what I found interesting is that some people who were accused of cheating were, in fact, not.
This got me thinking of a post I authored a while back regarding attributes that go into gaming. In this vein, I thought I'd re-post my article here.
For those who look at this and think TL;DR and feel the need to say so, your comments are not really necessary as it only placing emphasis on how some are an indictment on the education system.
FYI: I'm an engineer and love data, analysis & interpretation. It was curiousity that led me to do some basic research into the topic below.
If you feel like contributing to the poll, please do so. If you feel like lying when you submit your poll numbers, then you are most likely one of the cheaters that people talk about... (think about it
). Perform the reaction time test five times and post the average in the poll category...Original POST on the TOG forums: April 23, 2017 (with minor edits)
I recently heard a lot of whining on the TOG AAPG server regarding people who "don't miss" so they much be hacking to "I shot you first" or "Take a hit!"... So I thought I do some research on the topic as it relates to the human ability, both physical and mental.
Everyone thinks themselves a G-O-D at the game, with most people who call out others basically suffering from the ultimate in Dunning-Kruger
Let’s take a look at a few key parameters regarding gaming, in no particular order:
1. Reaction time
2. Accuracy
3. Health
4. Visual efficiency
5. Object recognition
I’ll present my argument and supplement with graphics and sources. I’ll also take the K.I.S.S. principle for our readers who would rather not be bored with the details.
Reaction Time
As we age, we get slower physically. So the first item to consider is our reaction time. There has been a lot of research on the subject, with conclusion all agreeing that as we age, we get slower. But the question is, how much slower and can we quantify the results?
There was a very simple experiment performed to ascertain reaction time as a function of age using nothing more than a yardstick. ( Reaction Time vs. Age )
They concluded that if you in the 14-24 age group, your reaction time is on average 35ms faster than someone in the 46-60 group and 20ms faster than those in the 36-45 group. So we conclude that the reaction difference is great enough that he who actually does shoot first will win, especially considering your ping time to the server, as the predictive algorithm calculates out the time differential between shots (note, time at this point, not accuracy, which is a different matter).
Accuracy
Two things are involved in accuracy. 1) micro-muscular movements, which tend to get more macro as we age (you don’t see a lot of *OLD* brain surgeons still performing do you?) and 2) tracking an object…
Best way to test these out for yourself is to download this really cool program called “Reaction” ( reaction speed test ), which will humble the [TOS Violation] out of you… ha ha. It will show you not only how accurate you can follow a target, but the reaction time as the target moves around the screen… again, prepare to be H-U-M-B-L-E-D !
Here are my results...
If you don’t want to download the program; try, Human Benchmark - Reaction Time Test, which is for reaction time only.
There was a survey done for CS:GO using reactiontime, so it might be worth doing for this community to see how TOG does… I suspect “The Older Gamers” will bear out the conclusions of studies, if we are all honest on reporting the results.
Health
I’m only going to discuss one topic here and that’s vision (any others could open a can of worms). As we age, our ability to see also deteriorates. In particular, floaters and glaucoma can be real issues.
Probably the best research on the effect of glaucoma on our ability to react was published in 2015 (Effect of Age and Glaucoma on the Detection of Darks and Lights (PDF Download Available) )
In a nutshell, reaction time to light and dark increase at a rate of between 15-23ms/yr. The graphs suggest that a person at age 50 with glaucoma should expect an average of 100ms slower than a 20 year old (baseline only with a gap between 20 and 50, which is a shame, as it would nice to see an entire graphic for the full population). Basically, if you have glaucoma, get to your doctor.
Other things to consider with respect to vision are color-blindness, which might actually be an advantage in the game depending on the type of color deprivation a person suffers from. Again, big can of worms, but I thought it interesting as I’m going to experiment with using my shooting glasses to see if my gaming improves (they have six different lens colors I can choose from).
Another topic that could be included is arthritis, which I suffer from, but to be honest, it’s too broad of a subject to consider, so we’ll stick to the above only.
Visual efficiency
How sharp are your eyes? Two factors, contrast and acuity. We generally don’t worry about acuity as this is corrective via glasses, but what about contrast?
Visual Expert Human Factors: Visual Forensics of Older Drivers
Contrast sensitivity assessment in different age group in medium and high spatial frequency
A Review of Literature Relating to Web Accessibility and Ageing
Looks like us “oldies” have one more thing to make us “rage” against the young ones…
Object recognition
This has two components to it. In games, there are both audio and visual inputs. The main problem that most of us are not aware of is that the brain has to sync these together in order to make sense of them, and this costs time.
The best paper I’ve found on the subject is "Older age results in difficulties separating auditory and visual signals in time"
Bottomline is that as you age, your vision and audio inputs are not quite in sync anymore. Your ability to hear doesn’t change much from a frequency perspective (amplitude is compensated for by increasing the volume). Your vision is changed at two levels. 1) Contrast and 2) acuity, both which result in visual “lag”…
This is just scratching the surface of the problem, so next time you get pwned by an eleven year old, remember, your old fat-[TOS Violation] is playing the game up to 500ms behind him. That’s HALF A SECOND !
OIC!
Reaction Time Poll for https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime
- Your reaction time12 votes
- <500.00%
- 51-1000.00%
- 101-1250.00%
- 126-1508.33%
- 151-1758.33%
- 176-20025.00%
- 201-22525.00%
- 226-25025.00%
- 251-2758.33%
- 276-3000.00%
- 301-3250.00%
- 326-2500.00%
- 351-3750.00%
- 376-4000.00%
- 376-4000.00%
- 401-5000.00%
- 501+0.00%
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In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
Comments
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
Runs on mine "as-is"...
Windows 10
Version 10.0.18363 Build 18363
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
After extracting, and running the file, it stays minimized on the taskbar or conversely keeps reinstancing itself when I click on it.
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
You only pointed out the individual skill elements, which is fine to a certain point, however game knowledge, game sense and sound are other really big factors for success, specially in this game.
As a person who gets hackused all the time, even though I am the second highest ranked person in this game, it is important to remember experience is a big factor in-game and everywhere in our lifes. I am not saying it isn't possible a really high ranked player to cheat, but it is less likely.
It really makes me laugh when I get accused by new players, they don't have any background on the game to backup themselves.
I totally agree with you about our ego. Sometimes we get blind by it and forget, with age, with X and Y, our condition will only get worse, reaction speed will only get slower from this point, etc. Plus, theres also very talented people out there, and some of those come from other similar FPS games. Won't take them long to learn the maps and understand the rythem of this game.
Small suggestion for everyone, please spend at least sometime spectating the suspect.
If you're curious I am 27 yo and got an avg of 201 ms reaction speed, which is OK I guess.
Over 2k Golden Hawkeyes.
Definitely lots of whiners, however (nothin' new really)! They'll hackuse without ever spectating. I keep to myself unless I've spectated someone for a whole match and captured video of them actively tracing through walls / no recoil / switching to a corner without hearing someone / etc.
The key to the game is without a doubt knowing the map you're on, using headphones without any other audio aside from the game going on, the hardware you're playing on (144Hz/144fps/1ms), your ping time, and the skills you've mentioned already. If you're multi-tasking you're just askin' for it.
End result, I've gone from 201ms back then to 233ms now...
Age, What a b*tch
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
My englisch is not good enough to tell you how good i think this is.
~160ms btw. you old slow cows!
Im 33
Of course the debate of reaction speed vs. skill level is highly situational: anticipating and enemy move will always be better than reacting to the visual. But sometimes there is no indication when an enemy will pop out of a doorway 30 m away, and then reaction speed (and fast micro-muscular hand eye coordination) is suddenly one if not the key factor.
In general I'd say: less self-importance and 'training always beats talent' mentality would be great to see. Too many level 50s/60s or some older folks out there who cannot accept the fact that others having success without having played 1000s of hours of AA.
My two cents on spotting cheaters: Only patience and a keen, trained eye will help you. And in my humble opinion, only people of a certain skill level can even attempt to accurately judge gameplay of others.
Hear me out: When I see absolute top level pros in other games like CS, their skills would look like pure magic to me sometimes without understanding the game/map meta. I'd never expect to be able to tell skill from a well hidden cheat. Want proof of that: Pros successfully cheating in front of live audiences of thousands, sometimes for a long time undetected, should be evidence enough. That is why 95 % of people should probably not even begin to judge anyone except for the most obvious cheaters.
And even then, accusations are useless. Collect evidence or a confession and then let professionals decide. And if there's even the slightest chance the person is innocent: Stand back and don't destroy a gaming career over suspicions. Just put your trust in time. Sooner or later all cheaters will mess up and give themselves away. I see that as a fact. If they're dumb enough to cheat, they're not smart enough to hide it forever. That's my take on it...
I think spectating can be pretty dangerous and lead to false accusations. Also I’ve noticed a lot of people who are admin’s who spectate players while having the ghost images on. Talk about confirmation bias. The big question becomes, “hey how did he know he was there,” because the spectator knows he’s there. It’s terribly unscientific.
I can tell exactly… And I mean EXACTLY… Where another player is by sound. I have tested this with my monitor off.
Watching somebody play gives absolutely no indication HOW they are doing what they’re doing. I hear a lot of admins and players who say they can tell when someone is cheating; that they have experienced detecting cheats. Suggesting you can watch someone and tell 100% that they’re cheating is ridiculous, in my opinion, based on what I know.
There is so much miss information out there about the accuracy of spectate mode and… guess what… Demorec.....that it amazes me. I’ve tested this stuff and can tell you the output is not trustworthy. Due to NDA issues, these things can’t really be addressed properly.
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About demorec and spectating being accurate, also true but wasn't that the beta testers job to provide feedback to the developers and fix it?
Over 2k Golden Hawkeyes.
This has been a test of the emergency flame-fest system. Please do not adjust your set.
Demorec was (and still is) flawless... from the server point of view. It's a straight dump of everything the server "sees" and predicts from it's PoV only, not the client nor spectate. If you expect some kind of magic, well, forget it.
Spectate mode, not so much, as described by [Dev]Kartigan in a PODCast he did on AAPG Youtube [Operation Podcast Episode 21]
In life, there is no respawn... why should there be in a game?
I am confused, what am I exactly expecting?
Over 2k Golden Hawkeyes.
Even with this imprecisen its actually possible to safly detect cheaters.
You're definitely right there, many people see what they want to see and having the ghost images on helps with that a lot. Sound is everything in this game and if you don't have the same experience in listening for it, then how would you be able to tell cheat from skill at all?
Also, THIS. First hand experience tells me there is no such thing as a 100 % cheat detection method, neither from software, nor from spectating with "thousands of hours of game knowledge". And spectators tend to forget there's also team comms that they can't hear.
But I do also agree with Arkeiro, there are kinds of cheats that are very easy to spot, and there are circumstances where tracking through walls by sound just isn't feasible (e.g. often at longer distances).
Personally though, I would rather be accused with video evidence that I can give a statement on, than some piece of software that I am supposed to trust 100 %.
Sad you can't share this with us, but this has been an interest of mine for quite some time. A few months back I did some extensive tests comparing player view to spectator view. And from there you can see the accuracy is not great, but it's also not suuuuper terrible:
I have not done the same for player vs demorec vs spectator view yet, mainly because there has been a bug with demorec that ruined all the recordings I did so far, but that would be an eyeopener I believe... Becaaaaause:
I really think the test would show that demorec mit more on par with spectator view than with the client view. I suspect the main loss of detail through compression happens on the way to the server, than on the way from server to spectator. That would explain some of the symptoms with the server side hit detection being noticeably less reliable, because the server predictions are just not holding up with the erratic movement and gameplay in PG, just like the spectator view doesn't.
But no tests means I can't make a call on that.
So yeah, I would LOVE to get some insight into that. If someone has access to a server with demorec that people play on regularly and could send me a file, I might have time to make a comparison of those three (without any NDAs
Edit: How on earth can some stuff happen earlier in spectate view, when the footage in not compensated?
Cheers man
Well, my best guess there is that in some of the actions, like the grenades exploding and dropping/picking up stuff, even on a client side hit detection server, the server is authoritative.
Meaning, for dropping the weapon e.g. the flow goes:
start holding button down > client to server: "I'd like to drop the weapon" > server drops weapon (shown in demorec) > server to client: "confirmed, weapon is dropped, play the animation!". Same for pickup. Maybe to ensure, that this world object can't be picked up at the same time by different people and get "duplicated".
And for the grenades it almost seems like the server does some global syncing where it tries to make the nade explode for everyone in real time, not "client time" as you could call it. And it can know beforehand, because at the point that the nade is being thrown, the time of detonation is already fixed in the future. So I guess when the server sends all other players the detonation time, he subtracts half their ping time to sync it all up.
WHY on EARTH you would go to those lengths, I don't know... But it sure is some interesting detail
You can see that in this video at 8:18:
When you slow it waaaay down on YT, you can see that even after I killed the guy at 8.20, the server just goes "idgaf" and a random grenade pops out of thin air.
So what I would guess is, the guy had a high ping, and on his screen he had already started the animation of throwing and thus the server just went ahead and created a world object for the dead guy anyways
On a SSHD server my kill confirmation would have probably come in first and the server would have decided to not create the object.
The weird workings of AA I guess
My mate shot the enemy while he´s holding his weapon.
After he was dead and the round was over, the dead guy magicly lost a grenade