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Ok Sim-Monsters, we need to talk.....


CMDeerfoot

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I was debating on weather or not I should post this, but the more I think about it the more it needs to be addressed IMO.

As of late, I've seen more and more where people are regularly accusing fellow competitors of hacking during events; now while some of it is more on the lines of playful jabbing, a good portion of said accusations are meant to be serious. This year alone in the league I own (RoR MT Pro), we have 2 people that have been accused of hacking for weeks on end; even after my fellow officials and I do everything within our power to check over things and make sure they're on the up and up. One of said drivers even agreed to using a modified version of the original suspension setup he had on his truck, as there were folks who were complaining about the setup saying it was unfair; however, after checking through the truck file, there was nothing done to it that would've broken any of the rules my league has on truck modifications. At this point, I honestly think I'm in a no win situation. If I don't do something, people are gonna get even more ticked and possibly stop running in MTP events; but I can't go and punish somebody for breaking a rule when I have zero proof of any wrongdoing and no way of gaining any proof either. But if I did go and boot the driver in question out with any evidence, I would completely undermine the integrity of not only my league, but myself as the owner and as a member of this forum.

The fact of the matter is this, we have NO WAY of truly preventing any form of cheating 100% because RoR has no anti-cheating measures. RoR was created as a vehicle simulator, not a purpose built racing game such as iRacing; so I highly doubt there was never any thought put into a making a system to keep people from "cheating" in a race. Now would it be nice to have some sort of anti-cheating engine? Absolutely, but does anyone honestly think that the folks who made RoR are gonna make an anti cheating system for this archaic version of the game, just for one tiny insignificant community to use? Yeah, didn't think so; and I highly doubt there's anyone on this site who's gonna drop everything to make it themselves either. One of the only ways we'd ever have an anti-cheating system is if someone built a whole new game from scratch with said system, but again, who's gonna step up and do that? At the end of the day, it all comes back to the fact that we seem to have forgotten that we play this game for fun; now granted there are times that you need to be serious, but not every single second of every event. I can even admit that I took things WAY too seriously when I first started, but I had my wake up call when I started throwing a temper tantrum after wrecking out of an event I knew I could win; especially since we're not running for money or prizes, just stats in a Google Doc.

I'll say this much, this constant whining and complaining that everybody and their brother hacking is getting really old, really fast; and the quicker a lot of you realize there's very little (if anything at all) we can do to prove, disprove, and stop any form of cheating, the better off we'll all be. If things get to the point where running my own league stops being fun and becomes a chore, I'll shut it down without any hesitation; I have enough headaches to deal with as it is. There was a time that I thought we were all here to have fun racing virtual monster trucks, but I honestly wonder if that's the case anymore.

 

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I've seen this before when I've run on one of the .38 servers. One person has modified a Monster Energy to handle much different than stock v4 trucks. We had him switch trucks in the mini comp, and he then started to privately attack the officials saying that he would have won if he were in Monster Energy (he had lost and wasn't performing like normal). Back on topic, well stated Chadwick. Folks just don't play games like they used to.

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I don't race leagues so i am not taking anybodies side here. As a outsider i would like to say ' don't the real guys change there trucks up to accommodate a track like gearing or shock setups I think that would be more realistic as long as they don't go to crazy with it. Different trucks with different setups is more realistic to me. You guys could set tuning limits on gear and shock set ups, and If you don't know how to tune your truck then get some help or just stay out of the big leagues its for the big boys and big boys don,t cry.

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Very well put Chadwick, but i feel you left out one important detail as to why people my think others are cheating:

 

When ROR First started to gain popularity with ROR Monster Jam way back in the early days, most everyone drove using a keyboard. I believe one or two people were using wheels, and were very tough to beat. Over time, people started bringing in PS2/3 controllers, and began burying everyone with keys. This was the first time i remember hearing people complain about others hacking/cheating with their trucks. It wasn't the case, but because these devices offered better control of the trucks it made it seem as though they were. Now, we've got people using all sorts of devices and controllers to help them gain an advantage.

 

In the early days of ROR, you'd have to drive the truck into a corner straight to get it settle and glide around the corner, now with these controllers, mixed with modified truck files that some leagues allow trucks to slide into the corner WAY earlier than they used to, allowing for excellent corner exits. The control these days with such things is absolutely ridiculous. Which is where i think the crys of "HACKER!" are coming from. You might be a driver using a PS3 controller, and have an absolutely perfect pass, yet someone who has a Logitech G27 will totally outrun you.

 

The way to fix this and make things more competitive? Edit the tracks. Add more grip to them. Make it to where everyone has to drive back into the corners straight and the trucks will again begin to hike up on to wheels. It'll make things interesting again. The recent KOTH at the old RMR proved to be pretty challenging, as well as the RORMTP event on the Mankato Figure 8. Those surfaces were tacky, tricky, and tough on the trucks and the drivers. Made the playing field a bit more level.

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Let me just state this right here. I could care less about people who hack if they wan't to be the winner fine let them it's not like it will ruin you'er personal life. But if they lose and start whining, raging, and start to freestyle on the track while people might be racing or free-styling themselves until they get a re-race or a redo then I start to get annoyed.
(For you people who do these things) Yes it is a great feeling when you win racing or freestyle however that does not mean you always will. If you lose the next time it's okay there is nothing to be ashamed of. And I can see where people can get these ideas from it is mainly because during a race they might glance and see that their opponent is a half truck length or so behind them and still end up losing lots of this is because of internet connection reasons not FPS. I'll stop rambling now. 

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You know, personally I don't take that seriously to be called a hacker. But, in my opinion. You don't have to ignore the person starting this crap. Y'all need to be a little more assertive and use discipline. People tend to get way out of hand when the littlest subject turns into a nightmare later on. Chad, you are a great owner of this league, and good person to race with, and it's honor to race with you in other leagues. But if something like this gets out of hand, do something about (like take away their event points, ban them from the league for a week, etc.). It's just my opinion on this, don't any of y'all take this seriously. Chad, I'm really sorry to hear that this kind of stuff gives you headaches and I hope the best of luck to y'all in the league.

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This is a topic that will never go away. The irony of it all is people thought this game was free of this kind of crap in the early years but the reality is there was people running altered truck files as far back as RORMJ, I know for fact of 4 people that were running altered settings in SM season 2 alone. Three of which are highly respected members on here. The truth is people on here have personal vendetta's against certain individuals (I know I can put Mark's name here without causing a problem because we know its all true) and use the argument of cheating to either try to tear that person down emotionally or because they do not want to accept the fact that it is just a video game and just like anything in life, there are people who can do it better then you.  

 

A perfect example would be last years MROR world finals, if anyone can recall Mark got called out for running a GD The Legend with a slightly altered shocks2 with the front chassis nodes set to non contactable. Meanwhile Chris Hamilton's Titan, in which he won the Freestyle portion of the event, was also altered but nothing was said about his truck at all. Ontop of that I was even running an altered Max-D, which I had run several times during the year, with non contactable front chassis nodes and altered shocks2 line. Why? Well (no offence to the track makers that helped during the year) there was several tracks with obstacles that I would come into and the truck would hit the nodes and get punted over constantly (this even still happened at the Vegas show for me with the changes).

 

My example is not to cause further conflict nor do I honestly really care at the end of the day, its just a game. I personally love the ability to alter a truck to handle in a fashion that is most comfortable for the driver (case in point: SMRA). If people want to bitch, there is nobody forcing them to take part in events or even be part of this community. People wonder why I do not race much, this is the exact reason why. It is almost physically impossible for a single event to go smoothly without some dickhead bitching about something. I play this game to relieve stress, not add further drama to it. Some people need to have a reality check and put their priorities in better order.

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Let me just state this right here. I could care less about people who hack if they wan't to be the winner fine let them it's not like it will ruin you'er personal life.

Definitely. I haven't been on for a while so i haven't seen any of these things, but whether or not said threats are true, if people are modifying trucks outside of some league's rules, let them cheat. If they want to win by cheating, let them. They'll know they were in the wrong and have to either admit it to get it off their minds, or they'll have to know that they won unfairly. I don't know about other people, but I don't know if I could be able to go back to the league they cheated in or any league for that matter for a while.

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Its a lot of the problems listed in this thread that caused me to stop running events. The constant B!tching about hacking, pointless drama just to get attention, unnecessary altered trucks that don't make it realistic. Seriously. I want to be able to hop on my computer download the track, make a qualifying pass and have fun. I don't want to have to spend hours practicing, or altering my truck or spend $250+ on a decent wheel just to possibly win a race. I have been a part of the RoR Monster Truck community since basically the beginning and I have only won one event. and I ran a lot of events back in 2010 and 2011. I mean these same discussions about the community going on the downhill have been happening for years and it isn't getting any better. As long as there is a sim-monsters.com, there will sadly always be these problems. I just don't see these issues that we have been having for 2-3 years getting better.

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For the whole Keyboard vs. Steering Wheel thing, couldn't there be different classes? Sorta like how you don't see a 2WD off road racer competing with a 4WD 

Also call me crazy (I probably will) but I personally don't like the concept of qualifying into an event to run at

You can win with a keyboard, pretty sure Johan uses it and he does well. And theres really no better to do it than qualifying in, Just gotta get better at racing.

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If you race because you only want to win then you should not be racing, you should race to have fun and enjoy what brought all of us together in the first place.Sure it's nice to win but I'd rather have fun even if I do absolutely terrible (See Fall Madness 1, I had fun because everyone else had fun even though competition wise I did poorly). If you cheat because you would rather win than have a good time then you shouldn't be racing. As far as the hacking/cheating goes it needs to stop, I don't really race because I simply can't but even before that those comments were pretty ridiculous. I've been on both sides of it albeit more in reference to freestyle than racing because of my ability to make almost any truck do whatever I want it to (I use keyboard). Does practice help? Yes it does, if you want to learn a truck or several trucks go play around with those trucks by yourself for 20-30 minutes and see what you discover.

 

Most of us came from MTM2 because we wanted more realism and we all know we will never get that from the official games they put out because that isn't what sells. The number one rule for every league should be to have fun and just enjoy what we have and the fact that it's free and entirely community driven is something I that I think is constantly taken for granted. Race to have fun and if you happen to win then that is just a bonus. If I ever run a league some day in the future I won't be competing in it because I've had more fun running events and watching people go from saying they don't expect to do well and then watching them win.... that is more enjoyable for me than it is if I won every event I've ever entered. A short message to anyone that's reading this and sort of undecided or worried: Race because you want to, you don't have to impress anyone with how well you do. Anyone that's ran an event before remembers if everyone had a good time and just enjoyed being there.

 

One thing I miss is seeing a big scale event have most of the competitors stick around throughout the entire event and even some that aren't in it want to stick around but anymore it seems as soon as they're able to they leave. I know some events run late and not everyone can stay up but when you have an event chat with 30 people and after the first 4 trucks freestyle you're down to 15 people... it kind of sucks. Also no one mentioned it in here yet but I've seen far too many race chats get way out of hand with the same accusations or spamming of links and it makes it difficult to keep track of what's going on sometimes without having to scroll forever to find whatever you were looking for.

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