This community is not “the” GoW community, it is a small subset of it. There have been plenty of comments in other threads about all the top 100 players not in top 100 guilds. So if those in this forum decide to follow an arbitrary self-imposed limitation, they will be at a disadvantage to other guilds/players who are not on the forums. The other issue is that “disregarding their success in competition” is only a useful deterrent if they care about your opinion. If their goal is simply to place higher in order to get better rewards, your disdain doesn’t change a thing.
So I appreciate the sentiment you’ve expressed, and would share it if it were more effective (like in a closed environment). But in the context of an online game with a user base far beyond the reach of our forum posts, it falls short. Regardless of our utopian preferences and desire to self-police, the devs are the only ones capable of dealing effectively with things like this. And I’d go a step further and say it’s also their obligation, and that the current response of not setting clear rules is effectively endorsing this type of undesirable behaviour.
Very thoughtful. Setting aside the ethical considerations of inter-guild collaborations for just a moment, and setting aside the even more important issue of bots, hacks, cheaters, and trainers, all indeed weighty, there is another issue at play. How can one make a rule that is virtually impossible to enforce? We have some sharp IT people in our guild who do not know. I imagine the development team has pondered this issue many times and have yet to come up with a viable way to solve this knotty problem. These are not stupid people and I wish I had an answer for them. It is often said that if guns are outlawed, then only the outlaws will have guns. Anyone have a real solution?
Hypothetically speaking, if these top guilds still stay on top there is no negative consequence for them from this self-imposed limitation, and even if it were at some point (highly doubtful a below top100 guild makes the jump to the top spot by engaging in “sister guild activities”), if standing up for what is right would also always result in the best personal gain then wrong would not even exist.
And lets be frank here for a moment, i think we can safely assume that it is more likely for the “sister guild activities” of the higher up guilds, guilds from people that actually read and comment in these forums, being of greater impact than any those activities from lower ones.
They do care about a steady member flow into their guild, which might take a hit from their guild being destained for their dirty tactics. It used to work in the past in many games i played, maybe it doesn’t anymore, maybe the player core of online games is just too tainted now, i don’t know.
But what i do know for certain is that crediting guilds that use these shady tactics by calling it “good strategy” does nothing to clear the muddied waters.
@beanie42
Yes but… This forum is still a ‘fair sample’ of higher level players. I play 99% on console. Some weeks I’ll only get to Rank 1 plus a bunch of matches and during these “down weeks” I’ll finish 15-20k in Rank. There are only a few dozen from Xbox One users posting here. So extrapolating perhaps only 1 in 1,000 users or less are on this forum. In addition ,on console the clubs have lots of the exact same stuff as posted here.
@Saltypatra
Playing under your ability in a coordinated effort is boosting / point shaving. It always is harmful in the long run, and should not be allowed in a healthy environment. Time to have the Developers do a few minutes of sports research. Allowing cheating is a bad idea to the integrity of the game.
There are several ways to catch low-hanging fruit, which I am sure your guild mates came up with (and which I am equally sure the devs have thought of). I’m kind of loathe to discuss them on the public forum, but I suspect that Ashasekayi’s post has already started these wheels moving at Infinity Plus 2.
That’s a good point. And while the forums may not have enough of the entire community, maybe we do have enough of the top players/guilds for it to have an impact.
Sorry for muddying the waters a bit. But my main point is that if the devs say something is allowed and OK, it’s a bit strange for us to try and enforce the opposite. Also, I don’t think the devs should be abdicating there responsibility so that we even have to try to figure out our own solution. We wouldn’t need to worry about how effective community policing might be if they took a clear stand and presented clear instruction and consequences.
Just adding my 2 cents here. To solve two problems.
One problem is new players not realizing that one troop in defense is a likely result of them not creating a defense team at all and Guild Wars puts their PvP defense team in as a substitute. This happened with one of our players.
The second problem is the underhanded way some teams want to take advantage of having one defender to further their own results.
A simple solution to the first problem would be to have a small warning screen that
informs that you have not set a defense team. Play cannot proceed until a full team is in place.
Does this solve the second problem. No. People can set up a useless 4-Troop defense team instead of a single troop.
To solve the second problem requires some numerical advantage to winning defense battles or doing your best to win the defense battles. Which is another story and I am sure that the Devs have already considered defense points. We are most of us in the same boat with regard to defense teams and the AI. Deducting points for losses may be the answer here or being more positive - adding points for defense wins. Or both. This looks like a real headache.
Hence their reluctance to offer a concrete solution at this stage. It’s probably going to require a major update and we know they are deep into migrating the game.
I am not sure that abusing their messenger is going to win hearts and minds.
Equating collaboration with cheating is nonsense.
Edit: I’m not sure that policing this problem is possible.
Oh gosh, yes, but there is a limit to what can be discerned. But alas, despite concrete evidence being presented numerous times in weeks past, little has been done as of yet. Again, these developers are a small group up to their proverbial eyeballs in alligators, so I can at least cut them some slack. These issues do need addressing though. Thanks for your reply.
The first problem is a bug, and a warning screen won’t help. We’ve had members where the game has changed the defense team without them doing anything. So fixing the bug is necessary, a warning screen will only handle some of the scenarios.
An automated system that detects cheating sounds cool, but that isn’t specifically what people were asking for. Even an answer like “it’s not allowed but we don’t have a way to detect it” would at least be a clear direction. Emails and chat logs being submitted can assist in identifying instances without any sort of update or additional code, but we simply don’t know whether there is any point submitting that evidence (since it isn’t clear if collusion is violating anything or if there will be any consequences for it).
I also don’t think asking for a clear answer instead of “wait and see” is “abusing the messenger”, and I’m trying to be very respectful with my statements and questions. I don’t envy the position @Saltypatra is in, but I still think the community deserves a clear “yes” or “no” to the very direct questions of “is colluding with another guild allowed” and “if it is proven that players break the rules, will they be punished”. If we have those answers we as a community can help in the education and policing of players, and with brain-storming ideas to help the devs. Right now we’re in limbo about the goals/desires of the devs, and that’s not a technological limitation, it’s a choice to not draw a line in the stand (or share it with us). I’m just asking for communication…
“Equating collaboration with cheating is nonsense.”
Just to clarify I assume you are talking about two guilds sharing information, teams, strategies, scouting etc and not the situation of two guilds who specifically set defense teams to assist each other obtain maximum points?
I think these two situation are significantly different to be able to have a harsh view of the latter.
I’ve got an idea. What if all guilds in one bracket (for example first) made their GW defenses of one peasant for the whole week, and all guilds would do the perfect score then? 10 x 1st place and 1500 gems for everyone?
Is THAT a cheating or still not?
Devs, what do you think?
To all other guilds that may have been involved in public callouts from a Black Dragon member: sorry, we are facing a “sensitive point” in our guild so we may speak wrong.
Appreciated. As an ex-member of Royal Fire, from which Black Dragon spawned, I know some of your crew. Good luck with re-building and regaining momentum.
I’m sorry to hear all of that but I’m mostly sorry to hear you and @Eika are leaving, especially like this.
I wish you both all the best and will miss you both around here.
