TLDR: A player altered their level, joined hardcore multiplayer lobbies and killed the players inside despite PvP being disabled.
Since you can’t really report players for this kind of stuff, except for in steam, I’m just posting my experience here. I hope Crate considers this event and implements some measure against it.
On Saturday (June 4, ~5:00pm EST), while I was browsing for a HC game at my level, I saw about 5 lobbies.
In one of them, I saw a level 50 Saboteur playing with a level 65 player. The saboteur seemed pretty geared, like, the complete Ulzuin set. I didn’t think anything of it, as I was only looking for level ~30 lobbies.
A player I had played with the day before was on a level 32 character, and I connected to their game. They were relatively new, already a week or two of playing, they had multiple level 30 characters. I typically had >300 ping with them, and downloading another game in the background caused small lag spikes.
We played for 3 minutes before a Saboteur joined our game. I recognized their name, and the helmet in their portrait, but they were now level 30.
I let the host know about the player through chat, saying I thought I just saw them in another lobby. My game began to lag due to my background download, and I was surrounded by 3 heroes. I quickly killed them before another lag spike, and when my connection recovered, I found me and the host to be dead. The Saboteur had disconnected.
I acknowledged the ‘You are dead’ notification, went into my options, and disabled cloud saves; starting the process to revive my character’s unfair death. I had only done this once before in the past, I won’t go into my reason.
With my level 30 character now not dead, I browsed for another hardcore lobby of my level. There was now only a single hardcore lobby that wasn’t locked, and it was the same host from before, playing with their only other level 30 character. I joined the game.
Not a minute later, the saboteur joins too. Still level 30, he starts running around me at 500% movement speed. I laugh in chat, saying he killed me and the host before. In one execution (the Nightblade’s dual-wielding attack), the saboteur kills my character again, but this time in devil’s crossing. I’d call that an unfair death.
I added both players from my recent players list, not knowing which one was the cheater, but the player (a steamrep.com link) told me to download a program and how to revive my character. They also said about themselves: “Im an asshole. Nothing more I can say about it”.
Later talking to the host, he didn’t want to play anymore.
That’s the story.
I could post more about the player, but it doesn’t matter much. They have another alt-account that is VAC banned. So, they like to cheat?
This is the first time I’ve encountered cheaters doing this, but it seriously kills the game. Reviving HC characters is extremely dishonorable. yeah I know. Public Hardcore multiplayer already suffers with so few players, as most of them opt to play with friends they know in a locked lobby. Well, having a password doesn’t stop a cheater from joining…
I would host myself if my router even had UPnP or let me forward my ports, but it doesn’t.
Is it right to post this in Feedback?