Poll: Monitor based Crosshair overlays, is it cheating?

[J Tyran]

Many of the newer PC monitors, particularly the "gaming" ones can place a crosshair overlay on screen. Sometimes they are pretty plain and in some cases are highly adjustable with several styles to choose from, with really obvious and large ones to barely noticeable with loads of adjustment.

They where originally intended to help with Stereoscopic 3D gaming like Nvidia 3D vision, apparently sometimes the aiming can feel "off" and having a fixed reference overlayed on top of the 3D image can help.

Obviously though the users can switch these on whenever they want on whatever application or game they are using, if a person is playing a first person game for example they can have the monitor based crosshairs and use them for aiming. The "problem" is some games have mechanics where they have no ingame crosshairs and the player must use judgement (or luck) or aim/steady a weapon to get ingame crosshairs, overlayed crosshairs by pass that.

If someone using a monitor overlay gets "no scope" kills it wouldn't show in any kill cam, if they are using any kind of capture card or video grabbing software like FRAPs or Shadowplay those crosshairs wouldn't show either and as its added during the monitors image processing and not a third party app or addition to the game being played I don't think anti cheat software would detect it either.

It could be argued that its an unfair advantage but the counter argument is that anyone could use some tape and stick some crosshairs onto any monitor if they don't have a monitor capable of the overlays or don't want to buy one, the argument quickly descends into "honour" and "playing the game as intended" which I don't think there any real answers to.

My opinion of it boils down to any gaming peripheral, a better mouse, keyboard/keypad, controller can give an advantage but they don.t increase the skill of the player. There is a growing debate about these overlays though and I was curious what the Escapist forum opinion of them would be.

 

[erbkaiser]

I think a flat, "What" is the best responce.

Some people actually are whining that people who can estimate by eye where the centre of their monitor is are suffering from "cheating" by people who use some kind of help to find the sweet spot instead?

In case it isn't obvious, I don't think this is cheating at all.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well in that case anyone that can eyeball the center is also cheating, so in short no I wouldn't call it that. And if you are concerned with people getting perfect aim when there should be none you might want to contact the devs, that should be implemented in mechanics not a social code.

 

[Bad Jim]

I think the game designers should accept that they exist, along with sticky tape and marker pens, and should not try to balance unscoped weapons by removing the crosshair in multiplayer games. They should stick to stuff like damage penalties, which are unrealistic but harder to bypass.

 

[Signa]

How about we just blame the devs for making a gun with 100% pixel-perfect accuracy every time it is fired. "Discouraging" players to not hip-fire by removing the crosshairs, but not removing the 100% pixel-perfect accuracy is not a solution.

 

[DoPo]

Because the sniper rifles in that game were 100% accurate, and always hit dead center of your screen, even when not using the scope.
However, on sniper rifles, when not using the scope, there was no crosshair at all, making them impossible to aim. So people 'cheated' by bringing up the scope, and putting a black dot right in the center of it, to be used when no-scoping.

Actually, unless it was fixed, this was a semi-bug that happened under the right conditions. The conditions weren't weird or anything, but otherwise behaviour of the weapons suggests, it is not supposed to do that. Anyway, if you use the scope, then just remove it, the next shot hits exactly where the crosshairs would be. Or the middle of the screen - same thing. Any other shot would just go somewhere, generally, somewhere in front of you but there is a really big "in front of you" present. Unless you just scope in and out again.

I think I might remember it being fixed but I've got no clue - it has been really long since I've played CS, my interest started waning some time after 1.6 came out and I've only got passing familiarity with Source. I do remember that sniper rifles used to have crosshairs at some point, though, but that must have been way back - probably until 1.3 or so.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Considering how as you mentioned it's no different then manually applying a crosshair on the monitor I'd say it's not "cheating" really.

I despise snipers that are both pixel-perfect and one-hit though. Either take the TF2 route and make snipers not immediately kill or take the CS route and make snipers not pixel-perfect. Alternatively just be Valve.

 

[Tayh]

You're gaining an advantage that the developers did not intend. I'd say it's cheating.

 

[J Tyran]

It seems a storm in a tea cup really, it only affects certain games as well when the mechanics support hip firing. The argument about this has flared up a time or two on places like the Steam forums so I was wondering what the Escapist community would think about it, I don't think its cheating. To me its the same as HIDs that are more convenient or more ergonomic or with more buttons, mice with six or more buttons for example or the keypads that allow you to keybind all the keys you want or need in a small easily accessible area.

Combined with mutli button mice that are more accurate and the hardware macros can give a slight advantage to a player by assigning item or power combos to a single button it gives that edge to a player that can make the most of it, so it might be an advantage over a player with a more standard or traditional setup but not much of one. Some people are epic without them, marketing and bullcookies sells a lot of the stuff.

To me a monitor overlay is the same, an accessory that might help a player that can make the most of it but doesn't increase the players skill or allow abilities that are beyond the game mechanics like an aimbot would.

EDIT;

Please excuse my phone posting, its a mess and I was distracted.

 

[TaboriHK]

If it feels like cheating, it's probably cheating. That's my rule of thumb.

 

[KaZuYa]

Anything which is not freely available for every player is an unfair advantage, even in TF2 seeing some script kiddie trolling everyone about how pro they are when it's all one click spam is just sad. Though TBH there's very few games would gain any benefit from a fixed crosshair.

 

[Winthrop]

Well in that case anyone that can eyeball the center is also cheating, so in short no I wouldn't call it that. And if you are concerned with people getting perfect aim when there should be none you might want to contact the devs, that should be implemented in mechanics not a social code.

I disagree with that. Eyeballing the center of the screen is not the same as knowing the perfect exact center of the screen. Additionally, anyone can eyeball it and better accuracy in eyeballing the center is a skill.

The only game I think of that doesn't give cross hairs when they would be helpful is Killing Floor, where aiming with the sights makes you move slower and no cross hairs are present. In that game, learning to eyeball where the gun shoots without cross hairs is a huge part of the challenge. While that game isn't competitive so cheating isn't an issue, I'd still think of it as cheating but honestly it would only ruin your own experience.

 

[DEAD34345]

I'd say it's cheating, yes. Cheating is acting "dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage" by definition, and since other people don't get that advantage I'd say it's unfair. I wouldn't actually care that people were doing that, but I don't see how it could be argued that it isn't cheating.

If the reticule isn't there for everyone else, then adding an artificial one is cheating, just like artificially making the walls invisible, or artificially letting a computer headshot everyone for you. No-one else gets that advantage, it's not intended, it's cheating.

It certainly wouldn't be allowed in an official tournament, or any other kind of serious setting where the rules are actually enforced. Manually sticking a cross-hair onto your monitor would be cheating too, just more low-tech cheating.

 

[Morgoth780]

Although it probably has little to do with the conversation, I don't see it as a problem in Single player. As far as I'm concerned, players can do whatever they want for single player.

In Multiplayer, macros are largely considered cheating. So I would consider this cheating as well.