Why Don’t Cheaters Repent?

[king reza the great]

 

Why Don’t Cheaters Repent?

I’ve been playing 0 A.D. for several years now. In the beginning, it was incredibly engaging and enjoyable — sometimes I would play for 6 or 7 hours a day. But over time, my enthusiasm has faded. These days, I only play one to three matches at night. One of the main reasons for this decline is the rampant cheating in the game. And let’s be honest — we all know where most of these cheats originate.

Some people argue over the definition of cheating, so let me offer a simple one:
Cheating is when a player has something that helps them gain an advantage, which their opponent does not.

Tools like ProGUI or Auto Snipe are not just personal cheats — they benefit the entire team. For example, they can automatically send resources to teammates, creating an unfair advantage.

Cheaters often respond with, “If you don’t like it, stop playing,” or, “Just install the cheat yourself.”
Worse still, the developers seem indifferent. They’ve taken no real action against this issue and even allow these tools to be shared openly in the forums and mod selection menus.

This has driven some players away. For example, Mari quit the game. I myself have grown disheartened. Even players like Breakfast have stopped participating in many matches due to the presence of cheaters.

Some people naively claim these cheats don’t really affect gameplay. But I’ve seen it with my own eyes: how players like Nubdude and Stockfish became embarrassingly weak when they stopped using cheats — even if temporarily. I also saw how Leopard and H.herle became noticeably stronger after installing cheats — though thankfully, they eventually listened to me, removed the cheats, and returned to their previous level of performance.

Lastly, I want to share a personal story. Two years ago, I used a cheat — hacked Autociv. But after two months, I realized that winning through unfair means brought me no real joy. So, I stopped. I repented.

So here’s my question:
Why haven’t the other cheaters repented yet?

 

[TheCJ]

If its so obvious who cheats and you have such a big problem with it, why do you play with them?

Does anybody force you to play with the "cheaters"? And before you say anything, thats entirely different to 

1 hour ago, king reza the great said:

“If you don’t like it, stop playing,”

as you can still play with like, 80%+ of the players who dont use anything remotely "cheaty".

 

Also, god forbid people play a casual game in a way that brings them joy... Like, I play mainly with the historical patch cause I dont like certain imbalances in vanilla. Likewise, players that use an auto trainer probably do so because they dont like the clickyness of vanilla. I see no problem with that.

0ad has no real cheating, as cheating would be something like a "violation of competitive integrity by usage of undisclosed or unallowed modification", but there is not competitive integrity, since the game is not competitive (unless youre talking about 1v1s, which could be considered competitive, but in that case just dont play against the "cheaters").

If you want a teamgame you participate in to feel "competitive", talk to the people in the lobby, manage the players expectations until everyone agrees what this round means to them and then youll have a good time.

[TheCJ]

1 hour ago, king reza the great said:

Why haven’t the other cheaters repented yet?

So the short answer is: There is nothing to repent. Trying to have fun when playing a video game is not a sin.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Undisclosed.

Players who use automation mods, and presumably map hacks (I’ve never observed someone use map hacks) do not disclose this before game start, and avoid/ignore any discussion of this.

I think fair gameplay is fun gameplay so I don’t play when there is a cheater. 0ad does not need to be competitive like an esport but the game itself is a competition (we are trying to win right?) so yes it needs to be fair by default. If any player could select a 2.5% handicap without anyone knowing it would probably make the game less fun. We’ve had this discussion so many times, everything has already been said but the problem remains.

[TheCJ]

well, you are claiming its undisclosed and at the same time, whenever this comes up everyone seems to know who the "cheaters" are. Which one is it now?

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think fair gameplay is fun gameplay so I don’t play when there is a cheater.

Between map randomness, fluctuation in player performance due to outside factors, hardware used, time spent playing the game before this round, there is no "fair gameplay".

That the autotrainer provides any statistically significant advantage remains to be proven.

2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

we are trying to win right?

well, I cant speak for everyone, but I am not. I am trying to have fun and improve.

[Seleucids]

 

 

On 12/07/2025 at 6:18 PM, king reza the great said:

Mari quit the game

He has a life.

 

On 12/07/2025 at 6:18 PM, king reza the great said:

I also saw how Leopard and H.herle became noticeably stronger after installing cheats — though thankfully, they eventually listened to me, removed the cheats, and returned to their previous level of performance.

@leopard any comments?

 

On 12/07/2025 at 6:18 PM, king reza the great said:

Why haven’t the other cheaters repented yet?

If you still haven't realised, after 5 months, A27 has already patch up most cheats. ProGUI and ModernGUI have become incompatible and autosnipe lost to my manual micro. Reza you should read the source code and some forum topics when you have time.

Edited 11 hours ago by Seleucids

[Seleucids]

19 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I’ve never observed someone use map hacks

Because it doesn't exist? It's a theory made up by Geriatrix as an excuse to insult people and a pretext to ban those he doesn't like. 

 

21 hours ago, king reza the great said:

hacked Autociv.

This also doesn't exist anymore. That was A25.

Edited Sunday at 15:08 by Seleucids

[Seleucids]

@BreakfastBurrito_007 why not stop spectating and start playing?

[king reza the great]

3 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Firstly, I am glad that reza-math survived the invasion against his country. 

Secondly, I don't know what he is talking about. I assume it's PTSD from the explosions, because his claims about the existence of cheats and his accusations against these individuals don't hold. 

Those who accuse Stockfish and Noobdude of cheating: can you provide just one piece of technical evidence to show that they are cheating? Could be irregularities in logs or infeasible moves in replays. @Stockfish is simply pro and the jealous haters are salty

 

He has a life.

 

@leopard any comments?

 

If you still haven't realised, after 5 months, A27 has already patch up most cheats. ProGUI and ModernGUI have become incompatible and autosnipe lost to my manual micro. Reza you should read the source code and some forum topics when you have time.

Hi. I mean the below cheats:

Progui

Select box for sniping

Auto start

Also i 100% disagree that a27 could decrease effect of these cheats. In addition a27 itself is a broken version with broken champs.

Edited Sunday at 15:30 by king reza the great

[king reza the great]

20 hours ago, TheCJ said:

If its so obvious who cheats and you have such a big problem with it, why do you play with them?

Does anybody force you to play with the "cheaters"? And before you say anything, thats entirely different to 

as you can still play with like, 80%+ of the players who dont use anything remotely "cheaty".

 

Also, god forbid people play a casual game in a way that brings them joy... Like, I play mainly with the historical patch cause I dont like certain imbalances in vanilla. Likewise, players that use an auto trainer probably do so because they dont like the clickyness of vanilla. I see no problem with that.

0ad has no real cheating, as cheating would be something like a "violation of competitive integrity by usage of undisclosed or unallowed modification", but there is not competitive integrity, since the game is not competitive (unless youre talking about 1v1s, which could be considered competitive, but in that case just dont play against the "cheaters").

If you want a teamgame you participate in to feel "competitive", talk to the people in the lobby, manage the players expectations until everyone agrees what this round means to them and then youll have a good time.

Because they present in all op games if i dont play with them i have to spec all time.

[guerringuerrin]

@king reza the great, regarding the cheats you mentioned I think people don’t feel guilty about using certain mods because they don’t see them as cheats, and I believe very few players actually 'cheat knowingly' using maphacks (which I assume we can all agree are cheating) or actually hacking the game sourcecode to exploit other stuff.

But one of the biggest problems is that every time this discussion comes up, it feels like we’re starting from scratch, constantly forced to redefine everything or debate overly relativistic arguments that ultimately go nowhere (difference in hardware settings, fluctuation in player performance due to outside factors?? ).

The essence of fair play in any competitive setting isn’t absolute equality — which is impossible — but a shared agreement on which mods/systems/handicaps, etc are accepted in a competitive environment and which aren't.

The problem in 0 A.D. is that such an agreement doesn’t exist. And the current stage of development make it impossible for hosts to technically enforce their requirements — they must rely on trust, or manually review replays to detect automation or unfair behavior.

That said, those who’ve read my opinions on this topic know I have a somewhat ambiguous position — one that’s unsuccessfully tried to bridge both sides. Given how completely I’ve failed at that, I’ll just say this: I’ve also felt frustrated like you, and only by letting go of certain ambitions — which I think are nearly impossible to resolve in the game’s current state — was I able to enjoy playing again, even with people whose views on 0 A.D. I don’t share.

I even feel like the overall toxicity has gone down a bit.

I miss your early cav harrass gameplay. There's so much ecobots like me out there 

I really hope you come back to play and enjoy the game with all of us!

Edited Sunday at 19:05 by guerringuerrin

[leopard]

On 13/07/2025 at 5:45 PM, Seleucids said:

@leopard any comments?

People have opinions—I still use ProGUI, though. But I use it mainly for the Quickstart version, which some might consider cheating. I haven't updated it yet, so I don't get any eco benefits.

I don't think using ProGUI makes you a better player; it just helps you avoid forgetting the obvious actions. It's like driving an automatic transmission car—you won't make basic mistakes because the car handles the gear shifts for you.

But I enjoy driving manual cars. And honestly, do you think an automatic car can win in a race? If it does, then the drivers of the manual cars probably aren't that skilled!

 

Also, on a racetrack, everyone comes with different vehicles. There are certain standards, but everyone makes tweaks here and there—and the winners are still the best drivers!

If you make compatibility checks mandatory, mods from people like me are mostly ignored.
I believe that when it comes to competitions involving money or formal ranking, mods shouldn't be allowed.
But what we're playing now are just friendly matches—some people really need to stop taking a loss so personally.

reza always thinks that I am still the noob I am when I first started and stayed noob for a while, but I don't think progui did anything to improve my game.
I learned from @Seleucids @Mentula guides + observing other players etc
also people like @Player of 0AD @MarcusAureliu#s  @vinme mentored me during the voice chats + in game chats
also bullies helped me grow! their brutally @#$% opinions made me realize some dumb thinks I did during game.

Always improving, but spontaneous improvisation is the key.

Edited Monday at 18:04 by leopard

[TheCJ]

I like the car analogy.

The first analogy I came up with was shoes; when you play soccer (or any other sport during which you run around a lot) with your friends, neighbours or acquaintances, there are no rules for which shoes you use. And the shoes are how you interact with the ball and the game, so they're like a GUI. If you want to, you can play in high heels and make it extra hard on yourself. Or you play normally, with general sports shoes. Or you are very competitive and you get yourself special soccer shoes.

Only when you start playing your sport professionally, youll begin to encounter rules regarding your footwear.

And autostart is like cheating in a race by starting 0.5s too early; in a professional setting, youll get punished for that, but when you're just running around with your friends nobody cares.

[borg-]

22 hours ago, leopard said:

People have opinions—I still use ProGUI, though. But I use it mainly for the Quickstart version, which some might consider cheating. I haven't updated it yet, so I don't get any eco benefits.

I don't think using ProGUI makes you a better player; it just helps you avoid forgetting the obvious actions. It's like driving an automatic transmission car—you won't make basic mistakes because the car handles the gear shifts for you.

But I enjoy driving manual cars. And honestly, do you think an automatic car can win in a race? If it does, then the drivers of the manual cars probably aren't that skilled!

 

Obviously, this makes you a better player because it masks your flaws. Being better or worse than another player requires several evaluation points, and one of them is the ability to manage everything that happens on screen, especially in an RTS game.
If you use a script that does these things for you, it's obviously an advantage and shouldn't even be discussed.

Your analogy exemplifies exactly what I said. A manual car may not be faster than an automatic, but there's a chance of shifting into the wrong gear and breaking gears in a manual car, which isn't possible in an automatic. That's exactly what you do when you use scripts to mask your mistakes.

Edited 18 hours ago by borg-

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

8 hours ago, TheCJ said:

nobody cares

This is an assumption that one player makes about 7 others. And when they find out they lost because someone was cheating, the answer is "chill out its just a game". Awesome argument guys.

Usually all 7 other players are unaware that this advantage exists, and even the minority of players who know that such mods exist do not grasp the magnitude of advantage that automation scripts provide. The discussion about the game being "non-competitive" is very convenient when cheaters use it to downplay the negative gameplay consequences that results from cheating. Funny enough the "competitive" nature of 0ad has been used to justify the same automation scripts by players who claim that their mouse can't click fast enough to compete with players who have "better" hardware. No player can click faster than even the cheapest mice allow, and some players even prefer not to have a mouse. Even more funny is that an auto-clicker which people have claimed to be in-use in 0ad would be considered an automation script and therefore cheating. The hypocrisy is mind boggling.

I also totally reject the car analogy because in this case the automatic car is simply faster.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

9 hours ago, TheCJ said:

And autostart is like cheating in a race by starting 0.5s too early; in a professional setting, youll get punished for that, but when you're just running around with your friends nobody cares.

I find this autostart argument pretty sad, and I have heard it from several players. Are you really that hell-bent on making the fastest possible start just for such a small gain? I think players should accept that it is impossible to achieve the "perfect" start, and instead put in effort to learn a fast start that works for them.

The point is not that autostart gets you such a massive gain, it doesn't, its that the principle behind it is depressing.

[Atrik]

5 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The point is not that autostart gets you such a massive gain, it doesn't, its that the principle behind it is depressing.

As depressing as to make weekly threads about quickstart and trainer without bringing anything new to the debate.
Using the description "unfair advantage" and "cheat" based on false facts that "it's undisclosed" and "make players much stronger". I don't need to go over the list of players that switched it on and off and for whom it didn't make any difference at all, the first post of this thread already start by lying about this, and lies about it are vital to give reasons to even talk about this; just as much as the "undisclosed" lie. At lot of feature makes it impossible to argue that it's attempting to be stealthy but here we are.

 

Concerning using analogy with cars, automatic transmission cars are just mechanically superior, so yes, they ultimately are slightly faster.

1. On a very simple circuit race, the gain of a tenths of seconds every turns still won't make worse drivers beat better ones but equally skilled drivers might increase their relative win chances.
2. On complex races, like Dakar rally, the advantage is simply not worth even thinking about, because the car and driver performance have much more factors to consider.
3. I'm no expert in car racing but afaik most race embrace automatic transmission.
4. Automatic transmission only get such name because of it's ancestor where the mechanical solution wasn't figure out yet, and required for driver to have a stick to shift between gears.

Now unlike the automatic transmission system, autotrain isn't ultimately faster then vanilla autoqueue or clicking a batch every time. Sometimes smaller batch are better. Maximizing batch does actually sometimes lead to more building idle times.

 

Still those features have tremendous upsides :

 For quickstart, it's much better to get you into a state of flow/ get adrenaline buildup. This, because now the game get it's intensity increase over time rather then having a apm/adrenaline spike in the 5sec then a plateau til min 3.

 I don't feel that there are any "skill" in making repetitive meaningless actions like re-batching all the time. It takes away brain time to come up with original strategies, and overall put you in a stance of repeating some procedures.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 minutes ago, Atrik said:

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The point is not that autostart gets you such a massive gain, it doesn't, its that the principle behind it is depressing.

As depressing as to make weekly threads about quickstart and trainer without bringing anything new to the debate.
Using the description "unfair advantage" and "cheat" based on false facts that "it's undisclosed" and "make players much stronger". I don't need to go over the list of players that switched it on and off and for whom it didn't make any difference at all, the first post of this thread already start by lying about this, and lies about it are vital to give reasons to even talk about this; just as much as the "undisclosed" lie. At lot of feature makes it impossible to argue that it's attempting to be stealthy but here we are.

I didn't make this thread. My point stands though.

8 minutes ago, Atrik said:

 For quickstart, it's much better to get you into a state of flow/ get adrenaline buildup. This, because now the game get it's intensity increase over time rather then having a apm/adrenaline spike in the 5sec then a plateau til min 3.

Yeah that is extremely unconvincing.

[Deicide4u]

Car analogies for a competitive RTS game? That's bold.

[guerringuerrin]

Just to clarify the topic of automatic transmissions in case I'm misunderstanding due to a language barrier:
In most races, the transmission is semi-automatic/sequential. This means that the driver does actively shift gears, even though the system is electronically assisted.
In most of the cases, no driver would choose a fully automatic gearbox, because deciding when to shift and when to downshift is key to optimizing the car’s performance (for overtaking, entering/exiting corners, etc.). And this is why going to non-gaming-related analogies can be so confusing and creates dead-end discussions.

BUT if wanna keep playing with the analogy... I would compare the semi-automatic transmission to my customTrainer mod. In this case, the system automatically finds an idle barracks and assigns the units there, instead of stacking them in a barracks that’s already busy—something that forces you to constantly search for the darn idle one. We could even consider this a bug in the game, and this system comes to fix it while still respecting the “non-automation principle” (okay, I’m getting philosophical here).

Now, fully automating production can result in a competitive advantage between two players of similar skill, if one of them has to spend less attention maintaining their population high while the other has to carry out repetitive production tasks. It’s also something hard to quantify—it’s more of a qualitative difference, since you can’t measure, for instance, how distracted someone might get in the heat of the moment, forgeting to check it's military production. And this is fairly obvious.

The trade-off is that you lose control over batch sizes at any given time, and that can affect your economy at certain points. But you can toggle autotrain on and off. So a player could activate it during moments when they’re focused on battle and know they have enough resources for autotrain not to hurt their economy. Meanwhile, the player without autotrain is forced to constantly pay attention to their production.

Atrik usually argues from the perspective of gameplay preference, which I think is totally valid. Others (like me) argue from a fair play and competitive balance standpoint (please, serious arguments—none of that “I have better hardware” or “I woke up more noob than yesterday” stuff), and I think that’s also valid. In fact, this is a discussion present in many RTS games.

But the problem is that if we don’t start establishing some shared criteria for this discussion, and everyone argues from completely subjective positions, there’s no way to reach any kind of conclusion.

About quickstart, a simple example: in AoE2 it’s banned. In StarCraft 2 it’s standard—your 4 Drones/Probes/SCVs automatically go straight to the minerals as soon as the game starts.
And we can apply this same example to vanilla AoE2 and 0 A.D. The built-in auto-queue feature in vanilla 0 A.D. is actually banned in AoE2 and StarCraft 2—it’s only allowed in non-competitive matches.

Conclusion: the scope and limitations of what’s allowed in the different ways the game can be played ultimately depend on community consensus and by having ways to enforce that consensus. Right now we keep at zone 0 here

Edited 15 hours ago by guerringuerrin

[Atrik]

46 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

57 minutes ago, Atrik said:

 For quickstart, it's much better to get you into a state of flow/ get adrenaline buildup. This, because now the game get it's intensity increase over time rather then having a apm/adrenaline spike in the 5sec then a plateau til min 3.

Yeah that is extremely unconvincing.

If you wonder why players use it despite being insignificant that's a explanation. Doesn't aim to convince you to use it.

 

14 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

semi-automatic transmission to my customTrainer mod

Also we can note that @real_tabasco_sauce made a sort of autosniping that he push for the main game, and @guerringuerrin also want to facilitate training. Both are respectable work and good feature ideas. As-well, the original thread about autoqueue (now in vanilla) also already mentioned finding a way to resize batch based on resources (there were another thread talking about it but can't find it again because of request search limitations). Now, theses threads just aim to fuel a myth around 'progui' that a handful of players want to entertain,  that need to use lies about nondisclosure, false claim about it's working etc to make it even stand...

[real_tabasco_sauce]

11 minutes ago, Atrik said:

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

1 hour ago, Atrik said:

 For quickstart, it's much better to get you into a state of flow/ get adrenaline buildup. This, because now the game get it's intensity increase over time rather then having a apm/adrenaline spike in the 5sec then a plateau til min 3.

Yeah that is extremely unconvincing.

If you wonder why players use it despite being insignificant that's a explanation. Doesn't aim to convince you to use it.

Its because they want the juice without having to squeeze. That's it. No "adrenaline/timing/flow/buildup".

11 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Also we can note that @real_tabasco_sauce made a sort of autosniping that he push for the main game

This is a slander which you have said before. Stop repeating this lie that I have worked on autosniping. The pr is not related at all to autosniping at all and has been very successful from testing in the community mod.

[Atrik]

10 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

This is a slander which you have said before. Stop repeating this lie that I have worked on autosniping. The pr is not related at all to autosniping at all and has been very successful from testing in the community mod.

What then? "Autonomous retargeting and damage spreading"? Are you having a cognitive dissonance about it? Maybe it doesn't really work out well to develop a 0 click auto sniping after taking a strong stand against more manual features in some threads?
Still don't think it's bad features beside that it's a bit complexifying unit behavior, just funny to see you bug out about it thoughts.

[Deicide4u]

17 minutes ago, Atrik said:

As-well, the original thread about autoqueue (now in vanilla) also already mentioned finding a way to resize batch based on resources

The very first (and obviously) reply after the linked comment was from Stan:

Quote

You'd have to convince everyone it's not cheating in the first place  

My personal opinion about the autoqueue feature that was added to the main game is that it was a bad idea. The feature is justified on a grand-scale RTS such as Supreme Commander where the macro required is truly insane, but not in a classic style RTS game. From this, you can guess my opinion on all other similar modifications.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

15 minutes ago, Atrik said:

What then? "Autonomous retargeting and damage spreading"? Are you having a cognitive dissonance about it? Maybe it doesn't really work out well to develop a 0 click auto sniping after taking a strong stand against more manual features in some threads?
Still don't think it's bad features beside that it's a bit complexifying unit behavior, just funny to see you bug out about it thoughts.

you are the one bugging here. All it does is use an existing system to tell units to attack higher preference units if they are attacking a low preference unit without orders. aoe2 does this, not sure about other games. It is perfectly intuitive, and it is exactly what would be expected of a preference system in UnitAI. You just made up "damage spreading" out of thin air.

PRs go to the game for everyone, and they effect everyone equally. Making and distributing automation mods to be used against those that don't have them (incompatibility checks off) because you think the game design is bad is very different.