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On Counting Cheaters (reprise)

During wipe 12.11 I had a number of very suspicious encounters that I found very discouraging. I strongly suspected cheating. I even wrote a bit about it and ways to possibly estimate the numbers of cheaters: knowing 

But so far in wipe 12.12 I've only had one that strongly struck me as cheating at the time, and another occurrence that seemed coincidental, where I was pretty sure there was a cheater on the map but didn't necessarily think that my killer was the same.  Overall, a much better wipe than 12.11. 

I read on Reddit at the beginning of the month that there had been a ban wave ( ban_wave_today ). I didn't think much about it at the time, except "good riddance".  But today I started thinking about something. When you search for a tarkov username you can see their current level - but if they no longer exist in the system, there is no match.  Now the question is "why might someone not be in the system anymore?"  There are a couple possible answers. Perhaps they changed their username. That might remove their old one. (Maybe, I don't actually know).   Or perhaps they were banned, in which case it definitely seems like their username would be removed from the system.

I don't know if you know this, but I have a blog where I track everyone who I manage to kill and loot and everyone who kills me.  So I gathered up all the user names of the people that have killed me during this wipe and I looked them up.  Some observations:

  • As of yesterday I've run 79 raids, 29 of which occurred after the ban wave.
  • At the time the ban wave, February 2, 2022, I had run 50 raids. 
  • I've been killed by other players 24 times this wipe.
  • 10 people have killed me since the ban wave.  All of them, except one, still has an active user name in the system.  The one exception is from the first raid I ran after the ban wave, three days later.
  • Of the 14 people who killed me before the ban wave, 4 no longer have active user names. For whatever reason.
  • All 19 of my killers who still have active user names are higher level than I am now, excepting one (who is still Level 2). 
The one killer this wipe I was "pretty sure" was a cheater also no longer has an active user name. And the time I was pretty sure there was a cheater on the map (loot vacuumed) I later died (quickly) to someone who now also no longer has an active user name (though I did not think that death was suspicious at the time).

Anyway, make of that what you will. 

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