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League of Legends likely unplayable on Linux / Steam Deck soon due to Vanguard anti-cheat
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this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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Why tf would this need a client-side anti-cheat!?!?!?
It is useless in this game!
I get it in VALORANT. It is hard to detect cheats when mechanical skill is part of who wins but a topdown moba doesn't have any of that!
Correct me if I am wrong but I think this sucks.
There are cheats to be had in a moba, mostly aimbots for skillshots and auto minion farming etc. However, those should be hella easy to detect on a server level and fuck this anti cheat system
At least in Dota 2, macros can give huge advantages. For example, cycling through every meepo to start a poof and blinking takes ~10 inputs in a precise order with an extremely tight timing window. Very mechanically demanding. A macro can execute it perfectly with a single button press instantly. Similar with Invokers Invoke ability for sequenced combos of specific spells.
I honestly have no idea if an equivalently demanding sequence of inputs exists in LoL.
You think anticheat will stop this? lol
My keyboard has macros. No PC software required except to create/modify.
With little effort you can also turn a raspberry pi into a programmable input device. There are also HDMI to USB dongles that capture video if you need to capture/process frames. I own one.
All Riot is doing is making the cheats (if they even exist for LoL) stealthier.
This has nothing to do with cheating. They got tired of support requests coming in. If that wasn’t the case they would have had a solution for Steam Deck/Linux users to go with the announcement.
Completely agree that there are a ton of ways around client-side anti-cheat. There have even been cases where pros have been caught with mice with in-built macros that spoofs themselves as a kb+mouse combo in in-person tournament settings where the computers are completely controlled and the players can't install anything.
I was answering specifically the point about mechanical skill in MOBAs.
I have never played Dota and when reading this I am too scared to start.
The heroes are vastly different from one another, and are very different in terms of skill ceiling and floor. Meepo and Invoker are considered the two most mechanically demanding heroes, and should never be played by a new player.
Contrast this with Bristleback, whose gameplay consists of right-clicking an enemy and spamming W, then turning around and running away if they fight back too hard. There's also Sven, whose gameplay consists of using a stun ability, right-clicking an enemy, and they're probably dead. Axe, whose gameplay consists of running in and hoping people are stupid enough to hit you, and using your taunt ability to force them to do it if they aren't.
Finally, there's Sniper. You right-click enemies. That's about it. He has a slow and a long-range nuke spell, but if you've right-clicked an enemy you're at least helping.
Of course, higher skilled matches change things drastically and more complex teamwork and ability use is needed at those levels, but for a new player, these heroes are all very simple and straightforward to use.
Your comment reminded me of a time years ago when I watched a movie with Mandarin subtitles with a guy from Hong Kong and he said "I know the characters, but they don't make any sense".
Don't worry, Meepo is probably the hardest character, or atleast one of the hardest characters in Dota. Most other heroes are much easier. The game is still pretty hard, but because mechanical skill is less needed compared to game knowledge, it's not much harder than League (still even League is quite hard, but that's the nature of mobas.)
it's intrusive anti-cheat-software operating on a system level where it could be a viable attack vector. thats what sucks.
what also sucks: this will make one of the most played games in existence unplayable on linux. and only so riot looks like taking a problem serious, that is probably much smaller than people think.
other than that: mobas absolutely require mechanical skills, that cheats could assist you with. there impact might not be as obvious as an incredible high hesdshot rate, but being able to consistently last hit creeps will give an ever increasing advantage over your opponent, canceling certain animations will increase the damge you are able to dish out over a given time frame and seeing the trajectory projectiles will follow makes them easier to dodge.
hell just supplying more information than the standard ui can be a huge advantage: knowing what your opponets buy, or invest there leve ups in all the time, displaying their cooldowns and stuff like that.
League cheats basically play the game for you. Although cheats that tell you if someone is on the bush, tracks every timer for you, shows possible jungler positions etc. are very powerful; the egregious ones that people more often complain about CS for you, auto target skillshots, kite and even flashes/moves away from dangerous abilities.
So yeah, league cheats have come a long way.