Call of Duty gives cheaters a unique punishment
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Call of Duty is one of the most popular and competitive first-person shooters out there. Like all competitive online games, however, there are cheaters out there who create unfair advantages for themselves. Call of Duty is trying to crack down on cheaters in games.
Team Ricochet, a department within Activision that focuses on identifying and dealing with cheaters, has implemented cheating mitigation tactics in the past. Team Ricochet has a new addition to the anti-cheat system that will leave cheaters confused and defenseless on the battlefield.
Call of Duty cheaters will start seeing Hallucinations
Team Ricochet announced that cheaters will now encounter decoy players in matches. In a blog post, the team detailed its latest mitigation technique against cheaters, which is called Hallucinations and involves adding decoy characters to the game as mentioned.
Hallucinations are generated by cloning active users in a match. The decoy acts almost identically to a real player and produces all the same information as a real player, but only players tagged as verified cheats can see them. Interacting with one of these decoys will waste time and end in frustration for the cheater.
Hallucinations also act as bait to the cheater. The Hallucinations are placed near players suspected of cheating and if any of those players interact with the decoy, it confirms they are using additional tools to unfairly get the upper hand in the game and can be banned.
Besides the addition of Hallucinations, Team Ricochet has removed an existing cheating mitigation technique called Quicksand. It would slow or freeze the movement of a cheater as well as changing their input settings occasionally. It worked well but proved to be a distraction to legitimate players.
Hallucinations are just the latest mitigation technique to be added. Last year, Team Ricochet introduced a mitigation called Cloaking, which stopped cheaters from seeing or hearing opposing players. Legitimate players can still see the cheater, though, making them easy prey.
The effectiveness of Hallucinations is still yet to be seen, but hopefully, this will be the next step in decentivizing cheating in Call of Duty matches.
