made an account specifically to reply to this
i'm a comparatively new ut99 player only playing because my dad showed me it as a child, i'm 23 years old.
I play ut99 competitively in tournaments (yes they still happen in 2025) both duels and ctf's on a rtx 3060TI 1000hz mouse 1200 dpi and keyboard with a 240hz 1920x1080 monitor with a hyperx headset with a fully tweaked out ut99 client for maximum performance and advantage. I have 12+ years of tryhard fps experience with most arcade shooters i average around a 2 - 6kd. This is a pretty common setup and story for a ''good'' ut99 player today, peripherals and client matter A LOT and most newer players play ut99/quake knowing this is where the good fps players are. I purely got into ut99 because i knew it would have good players. Playing on windows XP with most likely a crap mouse and kb from 2006 and expecting to be good is so beyond stupid i can't even tell you not trying to be mean.
I am most likely a player you would feel like is cheating, i have been both banned once (unbanned now) and hackusated by older veterans, i usually either am top 3 in ctf/dm or first, so listen to me
lets get the ignorant insecure shit out of the way first, cheating is rare it doesn't happen often.. over the years the community has developed numerous ''ways''..... to figure out the legitimacy of someones gameplay through things like registering exact shot locations with a rigid aimbot always having the same coordinates of course spectating being effective as well but there also ways to list executables connected to the process of someones client and detect memory injections such as dll's which is the job of an ANTI CHEAT. Of course, there are bypasses and people don't get banned instantly and some cheats are more hidden as there are numerous expert scripters and coders playing UT99 today that can develop unique undetectable scripts and exploits. Having played ''competitively'' in tournaments and pugs for a while now i've only witnessed 2 real cheaters in the last 5 years, realistically i would up that number to maybe 5 with a few possibly having wallhacks or some other unique less advantageous cheat.. but let me make this clear cheating is RARE not nearly rampant enough to be used as an excuse.
using ''cheaters'' as an excuse is so common by skilless players now, you actually see more hackusators than actual hackers typical for fps games and the thing is they are almost always very bad players. It is YOU, you are bad. You've missed out on years and years of FPS development or you simply don't try hard enough or you simply aren't built for it.
You have to realize that it is 2024, 2025 at the time of commenting this.. a large portion of the ''expert'' players you are playing against are young guys 18 - 30 with insane setups with perfectly tweaked ut99 setups for competitive play who have been playing shooters or ut99 since a child as in my case, when i started playing ut99 back in 2020 i could beat 90% of pub (public matches) players instantly like you with aim and speed alone always being top 3 or first in dm's and ctf matches. I have everything fully tweaked out including my pc and ut99 client. This gives me smooth aim, close to instant input, directional clear audio, i have around 1000 fps with a 240hz monitor that basically gives me instant visual feedback, i have everything keybinded, i have all visuals such as shadows and brightness tweaked so i can see everything better, i have 120 fov ... i have at least 12+ years of tryhard FPS experience.. and you know how it goes with children that learn something from an early age. I know where you're going, i know where you're going to spawn, i know where every weapon is, i know where you're probably going to go, i know what when and how and i know how to execute things so i can kill you.. and i'm definitely not the only one that knows this.. this is called ''gamesense'' combine that with good aim fast movement and i will always beat someone like you. This is how you should approach ut99 in 2025, expect everyone to be a godlike killer machine compared to the 2000's, not cheating. If you wanna be certain make sure you're up to par yourself because you can't judge without knowing what you're talking about and like you said you have always been an average player even back then.
UT99's community is a mix of Veterans and young players with the younger ones most likely playing ut99 because they did so as a kid or know someone who did, i only know a few older veterans that truly excel in 2025, you would expect all the veterans to beat the newer players but that's just not how it goes if you can't adapt to the new tech and haven't been exposed to the competitive nature of modern fps games. After ut99's/quake/arena shooters rise and fall the fps genre became insanely competitive and rigid and everyone had to try harder each year as everyone got better, so the longer you've been playing since then, the crazier you are. You would need to have been truly godlike back then to beat a decent player now without too much adaptation in peripherals and branching out in fps games, most likely relying on map control. That is how much the skill ceiling has grown specifically in Aim and Movement there is just no way you can compete if you haven't been playing. It is pretty common to see names you've never seen perform very well with good aim and movement and you can basically assume they're young-ish new players coming from other fps games out of curiosity.
Now this all sounds dramatic, but there is a beauty to it as well, you will see the true final potential of UT99's gameplay if you spectate a good 1v1 duel between 2 skilled players just look up a modern duel video on youtube. Okay sure, i might not have been able to convince you yet but not everyone can be cheating right? Join a deck-16 server and just spectate some players, you will start to see the difference in movement and aim with the worse players usually being the ones refusing to adapt to new tech new clients.. you will see it in roughness in their aim (either no raw input, old client, or bad mouse) with the crosshair snapping all over the place, lack of mirroring in movement (mirroring is essentially guessing where the enemy is aiming and moving the other direction to throw off their aim, modern technique, also a form of gamesense) general lack of speed and control over where they're going.
If you really wanna compete and not delusion yourself into thinking every good player is a cheater, get a modern computer download a tweaked out client from a pub servers discord and work on the fundamentals like aim, movement, map control.. spend a year doing that. it's not even age that matters, as the difference is only in reaction speed which is milliseconds anyone can move a mouse around everyone has muscle memory and everyone can press keys and in an arena shooter you can dominate with pure map control and tacticality, you can train your aim in Aimlabs or Kovaaks, and you can practice movement in the thousands of bhop maps. But you won't do that and the good players will do that and then players like you will wonder how it is even possible to play like that and call every second good player they face a cheater in chat.
Again, i've only seen 2 real cheaters in 5+ years in the most competitive side of ut99. Surprisingly the game still has a decently active administrative presence with those 2 cheaters being gone in a day and the other in a week. Haven't seen a single cheater in a long long time.
TLDR; you're inexperienced, playing on an ancient egyptian setup, cheating is rare, get better.
peace
