Are People Still Cheating at Q3?

[GeneralT001]

Do people still cheat at this game? If so, is there such a thing as a lag switch in Q3. Seems sometimes when I'm in the lead and the game is getting close to the end I somehow "miraculously" start to lag more and the 2nd place guy suddenly gets a heap more frags and wins the game. Seems suspicious...

[dyn]

Yes, some still need to cheat in order to "win". Some will activate cheats after it is obvious they are losing, so that may be the case in your case.

No, the servers are never imposing any lag for any reason, even more, everything is optimized to reduce any delay or lag, from connecting to playing. You may notice our servers always let you in immediately, without delays or timeouts. Also, there is no power balancing active. We did experiment with this long time ago, say 10 years ago, and in general it is not worth pursuing. Even more, often quadfly or similar stuff is enabled, which gives a lot of power to someone for a bit of time.

[GeneralT001]

What about a client side lag device kind of cheat?

[dyn]

Clients cannot make other clients lag.

There were some hacks which produced lag intentionally, so shots towards them wouldn't register, but this had very little success and was limited to older Quake engines. It was also easy to spot, since player was jumping all over the place. Improved prediction code and better engines removed this problem, albeit some hacks still used it even after it was not even effective anymore. There were also some myths circulating around how high-ping players can lag others, but it is untrue. Server talks to each client independently, settings of others have no influence on this.

[GeneralT001]

Thanks Dyn.

[BrianLow]

Man, people have been cheating since the dawn of gaming. What made you think they might stop lol? I just find it moderately amusing nowadays though, especially when it gets them banned.