AOE-II Is "stream-sniping" the apex of moral deviation?

[Lokalo]

Apex of moral deviation is picking mirror in game with 42 cvis.
Also, people are cunts. If they wanna cheat, they will find a way to cheat. It is matter of character, not game or streaming.

What's wrong with picking mirror? I don't do that, although I sometimes could understand it if people keep picking gurjaras or hindustanis, just getting mirror. At least in my opinion usually civ pickers make people pick mirror, so I would say stop picking civ I guess...

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

Coming out from nowhere and getting 2k3: RollsRoyce + Hope + Mr.Bean and counting
I never played RR but against the others, it's so hard to have a clean idea about what's happening. I still remember a game vs Bean where he lost the sc to my tc but he managed to sneak 2 ranges in my base and spot my sneaky stable in his base at the same time; i wish i still had the screens Kappa

I don't know much about how he is playing, but RollsRoyce has been 2k1 on Voobly more than 10 years ago already. So being 2k3 on DE now does not sound unrealistic.
Hope and Mr.Bean I think are newer/younger and have not been high-rated (at least in 1v1) 10 years ago, but many of the Vietnamese players were already 2k-2k2+ back then. I have no idea how they behaved compared to now, but if you gain 100-200 in rating in 10 years by cheating, I believe it's not worth it.
I'm not defending them at all, just want to say that they probably would not suddenly be <2k without it.

What I remember though is that several Vietnamese 2k+ rated players were involved in account-sharing on Voobly. BacT is not part of this group anymore it seems like, but some of you might remember that he once was disqualified from a tournament too (https://www.aoezone.net/threads/disqualification-of-bacgioifro_o-and-vns_fast_.95559/).

 

[TopperHarley]

Technically MS could already ban Songsong for what he did for RBW qualifications according to code of conduct & community Standards for Xbox. streamsniping / spec cheating would be even more justified reason and many other games do ban people who streamsnipe streamers.

Hopefully tournament admins like @Chrazini are aware of these issues especially when these players played in RBW qualifiers and likely to sign up for future tournaments

What i would suggest as a punishment for (proven) cheating:
2 year ban from all major tournaments (admins would need agree on that but dont see a big problem).

2 years hurt enough to hopefully have a deterrent effect, but gives the chance to rehabilitate later on

Obviously banning for life is another option (would apply this to Alperen)

 

[Timotheus_]

Apex of moral deviation is picking mirror in game with 42 cvis.
Also, people are cunts. If they wanna cheat, they will find a way to cheat. It is matter of character, not game or streaming.

I agree that that is the 1v1 apex.
Team game apex is picking Briton + Mayan flank, Frank + whatever is the current 2nd best pocket civ every single game

Glad I was around for the voobly days of team games. Yes, there were sometimes large waits for games – but at the least you could see if it was worth hosting a TG in the first place, and also you could chat with people in the lobby. And while it was fun being able to pick civilization for approximately 1 week in DE, that got old really, really fast.

 

[Daniel]

https://youtu.be/pWLlmM2KsJE?t=18415 VOD Proof

https://i.imgur.com/vB8OQlk.png

Adding to that
a year ago I think I was about to vs winner of dragonstar vs songsong in redbull?

I do not speak Vietnamese so it could've been anything, and I wouldn't be able to tell. but sus.

 

[Michaerbse]

Gotta be honest, while I was aware of some suspected (and few proven) cases in the past, this thread is quite shocking. The evidence presented by Dragonstar should be pretty clear proof of a group of people committing systematic and ongoing cheating in tournaments as well as on the ladder. I really hope that admins will consider that. Imo neither of them (at least Badboy, SongSong, Hope, TieuQuy, Mr.Bean (who had been a proven stream cheater before)) should be allowed to participate in any tournaments for at least the next year, rather 2 given the seriousness of these cases.

Hope and Mr.Bean I think are newer/younger and have not been high-rated (at least in 1v1) 10 years ago, but many of the Vietnamese players were already 2k-2k2+ back then.

Hope aka QuangTri had also reached 2k on voobly.

 

[Influenza]

Song song was kutatoxa on voobly his reputation wasn't great back then, i guess that is why he changed his id, he certainly has great skills but being on you stream while playing you can't be defended from a sportive perspective, sadly there aren't rules outside tournaments, another good reason why we should have either ranked lobbies or at least a black list like in voobly.

I'm pretty sure him changing his I.D from kuta to SongSong actually started when he was scamming people who were paying him for aoe2 lessons.

 

[Rayne]

I don't know much about how he is playing, but RollsRoyce has been 2k1 on Voobly more than 10 years ago already. So being 2k3 on DE now does not sound unrealistic.
Hope and Mr.Bean I think are newer/younger and have not been high-rated (at least in 1v1) 10 years ago, but many of the Vietnamese players were already 2k-2k2+ back then. I have no idea how they behaved compared to now, but if you gain 100-200 in rating in 10 years by cheating, I believe it's not worth it.
I'm not defending them at all, just want to say that they probably would not suddenly be <2k without it.

While I am not saying you’re lying here (or defending/accusing anyone), I have no recollection of this name and I knew what I’d like to say was literally everyone from around 1950-2250 from 2008-2013 since that was my level around those years. I either saw them or played them personally. What was his aka?

Also on the subject of rating, while I have no clue about the scene anymore, I do side with Shades a bit on any “suspicious rises.” You can say sure, this guy was 2k back then (years), but there is not the slightest guarantee someone can enter the 2200 or even 2300 range (whether or not this is DE vs voobly arguments). That’s for even one map or more than one (voobly vs DE). Getting 2200 is ball busting enough for the first time, and 2300 is even harder because the best players start to stand in your way.

If someone is x rating where x is less than 2200 or 2300 and they’re there for years, they tend to stay there. It’s what I have seen, I see it in the other game I currently play, and it generally doesn’t seem to change. I don’t believe it is because lack of talent, it is other various reasons. Some special cases in my mind when it came to “suspicious rises” were of course Viper being one of them, Riut another, Sletten, and a Brazilian named Mahori (if anyone remembers/knows this guy). There can be others if I think surely, like the now infamous Cain who was sadly a proven fraud. All others besides him were legit, especially Sletten who got 2400 in like 2 years (from 1950) when everyone said Viper used his nick. This was not the case, and Viper actually only used his nick twice and Sletten got so tired of the crap everyone was saying about him that he asked Viper to not ever use his nick again. Source for that: a convo I had with Sletten since we were friends and I directly asked him if Viper boosted his nick to 2400. We also played many games over time when he was 23+, and he always matched the level and his personality in chat.

So basically, I kind of side with any suspicions on meteoric rises out of nowhere, but not accusing anyone while currently on my very hot soapbox since California is burning.

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

While I am not saying you’re lying here (or defending/accusing anyone), I have no recollection of this name and I knew what I’d like to say was literally everyone from around 1950-2250 from 2008-2013 since that was my level around those years. I either saw them or played them personally. What was his aka?

Just RollsRoyce or for some time Sida_RollsRoyce.
This is one of his accounts: https://www.voobly.com/profile/view/123541346/Ratings
He played with Vietnamese teams in several TG tournaments. But he indeed did not play many ranked 1v1s, so if you played mostly 1v1s and not many TG vs. Vietnamese 2k+ (I think they mostly played Nomad and Arabia TG among Vietnamese players), maybe you did not face him.

But we also have to consider that some of the Vietnamese players used to change their account names all the time (and on Voobly you can only see max. 1 previous name) and often played on 2-3 accounts, so it is also very likely that he played a good portion of his games outside of tournaments under different names.

 

[IvIaximus]

What's wrong with picking mirror? I don't do that, although I sometimes could understand it if people keep picking gurjaras or hindustanis, just getting mirror. At least in my opinion usually civ pickers make people pick mirror, so I would say stop picking civ I guess...

Nothing particularly "wrong" but it annoys me to no end.
Why stop picking civ though? This is same discussion we have about maps. I enjoy eastern euro civs due to historical proximity, architecture and general design of those civs. My most played civ are Slav, Celt, Lithuania. None of them is particularly OP. But since my oponents are afraid of me picking gimmick civs, they opt for mirror/gurjara/hindustani in case I do not allow random.
In the end, either I go random and play civ that I do not enjoy, or I turn off random and my oponent has to play mirror/gurjara/hindu which I suppose is not enjoyable for him either. Lose/lose situation just like in case of maps.
It also shows, that balance is lacking even in arabia games, leave alone any mixed, water, closed or any other "weird" map.

 

[_Donatello_]

What i would suggest as a punishment for (proven) cheating:
2 year ban from all major tournaments (admins would need agree on that but dont see a big problem).

2 years hurt enough to hopefully have a deterrent effect, but gives the chance to rehabilitate later on

Obviously banning for life is another option (would apply this to Alperen)

I totally agree, same as they tried in sport, first time 6 months ban, second time 2 years but if you get cought again you should be banned for life.

Im also shocked with the evidence in this thread, but with the money now in the game its very attractive for players from low income countries.

And streamsniping on ladder lol how low can you go, I think also "cheating" behavour like this (sniping, share account, have friend spectate) should be punished for all involved, some tournaments use this rating for seeding

So to take example if Viper play on Daut account to make his ladder rating higher so he qualify for tournament both Daut and Viper should be banned from this tournament.

 

[Influenza]

I wonder what is being said in those discord voice chats during the tournament games. It's probably nothing game-related, because high level players would never cheat because fair competition is held to the highest regard among skilled players. To be sure though, I would like to request well respected player @ACCM to translate some of the video for us. I know he will give us an unbiased

Spoiler

,

accurate account of everything (he's about to compete in the Red Bull LAN for goodness sake!) Thank you in advance ACCM for clearing everything up so the AoE2 community has nothing to worry about when it comes to cheating!

 

[Nicov]

I have to say that lately Songsong has become a solid 2k5... at digging his own grave lol

 

[Sitaux]

I wonder what is being said in those discord voice chats during the tournament games. It's probably nothing game-related, because high level players would never cheat because fair competition is held to the highest regard among skilled players. To be sure though, I would like to request well respected player @ACCM to translate some of the video for us. I know he will give us an unbiased

Spoiler

View attachment 202894,

accurate account of everything (he's about to compete in the Red Bull LAN for goodness sake!) Thank you in advance ACCM for clearing everything up so the AoE2 community has nothing to worry about when it comes to cheating!

don't bring accm into this plz 11 songsong is probably his friend so it wouldn't be cool to make him denounce anyone

 

[LeLong]

We all now that some behaviors such as lamming, trash talking and so on are still debatable in the community... some tournaments even prevent such things such as lamming, or lamming before minute X, claiming the lucky-element involved..

But if there is one thing that pisses me off is spec-cheating/stream-cheating! Man this is almost like maphacking, what is the point of adquiring an horrendous info advantage vs your opponent by watching his stream, this is obviously abolished in tourneysby enforcing rules such as private games, stream-delay and so on... but i get "stream-cheated" often... and by often i mean on a daily basis by a different number of players, some of them with quite some frequency.. and some don't even bother in hiding it anymore 11 which is a shame...

Note: for the ones who are "lmao st4rk just add a stream delay, i won't, i lose the live interaction with my chat, and i'm not gonna do it.

Let me show you an example of what i'm talking about:
I played a Bengali war vs SongSong! very good player btw!
View attachment 202877

But problem is... i felt i was going quite well... got pretty confident after i killed SongSong scout at 10:06!

Right after that, i started scouting his base... and to my surprise, he was doing a semi bengal fast-castle, almost totally open.. sides wide open, not fully walled... and he had no information till this point other than i had done 2 militias...
Was i going for Scouts? M@A? Archers? how could he knew?

We work with two options now!
1) Clairvoyance
2) SongSong on my chat watching my moves and countering them by actively looking my no-delay stream! (ty chat for the printscreen)
View attachment 202879

And SongSong supernatural power's work quitewell! he suddenly feels like.. let me make one skirmisher and send EXACTLY at where St4rk is massing up archers!
View attachment 202880

^^ what a natural talent this guy has man... i envy such instincts... how to even counter that?

He obviously gonna deny it!
He was watching me ofc, such a big fan, and forgot to close my stream.. happens quite often!
But there are other guys who even pause... and spot my sneaking vills (happened to me more than once 11)
vs some players it's quite impossible to "surprise" them...

Why have we fallen that hard? those motherfuckers made me sad...

?. you lose and tell me snip?
1. I also stream while playing
2. 2nd monitor i use read chat. come my chanel and check. ( I reply to my viewers) . how i can watch your stream????
3. i wall one side. and defen one side.( gold) . you really 2k3? or 1300 man? you go two milita and go archer?) easy know u what to do
4. and play with u. i just play 70-80% SKIll. don't need snip.
5. lose and don't toxic man. you are good player too.
6. LINK this game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1585805047 check i talk with viewers

 

[Influenza]

don't bring accm into this plz 11 songsong is probably his friend so it wouldn't be cool to make him denounce anyone

I would agree with you if I was naive enough to believe this whole cheating thing was only limited to songsong

 

[BigMaloe]

:grabs.popcorn:

 

[vivifan]

I did watch some of st4rk and some of songsong's stream yesterday, and songsong responded in chat if i chatted, but, that would mean he would have to look at 3 different monitors at once to stream snipe 1, for watching stark, 2, for reading chat, and 3 for his own gameplay while he was streaming also which is almost impossible to do. Songsong has played this game awhile and should have mostly educated guesses on what to expect in-game. The other question I would have is wouldn't songsong play off stream if he wanted to snipe? Why would u show that to viewers?

 

[vivifan]

Also why is Viper being brought up in this?

 

[T90Official]

I'm not sure about some of the other things on this thread, but St4rks examples and accusation of cheating in this instance is completely misguided and unfair to SongSong in my opinion. Everything seemed perfectly normal to me. Instead of posting a screenshot of a dead scout and typing out things to prove my point I made a little video here. I think the original post is completely unfair to SongSong and misrepresents the situation.

Here's the vid where I show the situation

I don't think St4rk is lying on what he believes but I find him to be in the wrong here. It's been known for a while that names can stay in twitch viewer list after you've closed the stream and honestly if people are like me, it's very common to have an AoE2 stream on one monitor while queueing in the next. I've also had someone's stream up and minimized it on my other monitor while playing them dozens of times.
I felt the need to speak up because it's very easy on the internet to just like a post and assume it's true before fact checking. Accusing people of cheating without proper evidence is right behind cheating in my eyes and I think we should be very careful about labeling someone as a cheater if the evidence isn't there. As for the other things on this thread I agree it's very sketchy and should be looked into, but the origin of the post isn't based on any cheating IMO.

 

[F1Re__]

@T90Official hes on stark chat for nothing right ? also he didnt wall left side, he did pretend to tho 11 tbh had many suspicious instances like that, and it doenst make sense at all the way he played. btw i was watching both stream when happened and his decisions make no sense based on no info whatsoever..
and again guess what, what hes doing in stark chat.. and oh guess what again, he left 3 mins after stark found out and start complaning
fyi: you can popout chat stream and put anywhere you want... (super small window)

 

[miguelzin]

https://i.imgur.com/ZBYsrtn.png Hope playing vs Kasva in RBW qualifiers ( look at badboy and songsong streaming their games in spectate to help him )
https://i.imgur.com/LLWJVpO.png Mr Bean vs Argh
https://i.imgur.com/MokE8I0.png TieuQuy vs Blackheart (songsong sitting in the same lobby feeding info using spectate )
https://i.imgur.com/9HGZKUt.png Bean playing vs Dark in RBW (Badboy and songsong both present in same voice chat )

man i almost vomited looking at this, all those guys should get banned tbh ._.

 

[Huehuecoyotl22]

I think like in many cases, like the one with St4rk, we can't say a certain behaviour is a proof of stream cheating, random, intuition, experience...

But what Dragonstar (and Daniel) posted should not be allowed in any tournament, independent of what they talked about. In rated games it depends on what they talk about. Other people have also been in chats with their friends during ranked games, but not provided information on the opponent, so it would depend on their words. In probably any tournament however, I would think that it is against the rules and would have at least lead to a disqualification from the specific tournament at first occasion and a longer ban if it happened more than once.

 

[Rayne]

Just RollsRoyce or for some time Sida_RollsRoyce.
This is one of his accounts: https://www.voobly.com/profile/view/123541346/Ratings
He played with Vietnamese teams in several TG tournaments. But he indeed did not play many ranked 1v1s, so if you played mostly 1v1s and not many TG vs. Vietnamese 2k+ (I think they mostly played Nomad and Arabia TG among Vietnamese players), maybe you did not face him.

But we also have to consider that some of the Vietnamese players used to change their account names all the time (and on Voobly you can only see max. 1 previous name) and often played on 2-3 accounts, so it is also very likely that he played a good portion of his games outside of tournaments under different names.

That account reeks of a smurf at least. I’ve been around some of the 2k “tg players” and they were only 1800 or 1900 tops. He definitely must’ve played a good deal of 1v1s because otherwise getting 2k with 50 wins and 21 losses is unusually impressive when you’re a tg player (or it’s someone else). I must’ve ran into him since I never really avoided anyone with a red flag. I know I got smurfed by Ellvt a few times.

Also I don’t know if that rating is even higher with decay.

 

[Akos04]

Just for sabotaging his Red Bull seeding he deserves a long ban