How to reach out as whistleblower?

I translate this to mean that it’s never going to be fixed. They will consider anyone who reaches the cap a cheater and we all know what happens to cheaters. That cap, maybe unintentionally, is one of their flags for cheating much like Krinklegate (and I absolutely love that name!) and the maps. There are probably others we’re not going to know about until it happens to one of us. It’s their company and their business and they can run it however they want to and set whatever rules they want. I just don’t have to support them.

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There are always two sides to a story. If someone plays a ton I am guessing 24 hours of playing regularly is highly suspicious as most of us sleep at a some point. Did someone else help to play in the same players account? I am guessing this is unacceptable?

Also if a bot plays the timing patterns would be different - once again humans would play with maybe different kinds of pauses as opposed to a bot…

I am sure the developers are aware of all these things and more, and if they say too much it will just help cheaters to develop more sophisticated programs, which makes it difficult to discuss it all on a public forum, or even send too detailed replies to players.

That said as the one particular account of a certain famous player is at stake here, maybe they can at least say something about it so everyone’s minds can be put to rest so they don’t fear being the next victim of getting an account snatched away.

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I believe the account was locked out due to the gold glitch. The devs then investigated the account and decided that the player was cheating retroactively. So their thoughts I suspect are why go in and ban an account that is already locked out.

Meanwhile because they “banned” the player they won’t confirm nor deny that is the reason the player can’t access their account due to ban policies. It’s been a few weeks and the situation has been a PR nightmare for the devs so if they if they thought the player was legit the player would be back in the game by now.

It’s not unprecedented that someone cheats for years until the devs decide enough is enough. I believe bans are pretty subjective which is also why they don’t discuss them with the public. And if I’m correct and the player was banned retroactively then perhaps reaching the gold cap was the final straw.

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We have to keep in mind that every game has its fair amount of cheaters and I’m sure there’s always some forms of cheating around that isn’t detected - until it eventually is - or stays undetected. Devs/Mods say there’s a system in place to prevent but they understandably don’t go into much details - but that leaves also some room for the question “is there really a (good) system in place?” Because we don’t get told f.e. monthly numbers. Personally I’d release a monthly list of the banned out invite codes with or without a short reasoning - just as transparency and maybe also for the reason of deterrence. At some point, if the system does what it should surely there’d be a name on that is more well known and it would generate a minor shockwave for similar users. Another question: is the placed system working correct this time or is it Krinkle’ing around again just with less people detected?

Or was this, as you write just the final straw or another coincidence how small the odds ever could be? I’m fully in on the opinion that I don’t trust anyone - neither those player(s) I don’t know, nor the devs that I also don’t know. Maybe even some player-sided mistake was made, f.e. player tried or did cheat on gow or another game with something as public as “cheat engine” and accidentally left the program open and something reacted.

Or maybe devs just don’t know how to implement a wide-ranging fix by capping some ressources without unbalancing a few thousand golds manually and just refuse to do a wide ranging cap on some ressources for some ever so simple reason as to “we didn’t anticipate someone to hoard that much”.

Either way, if innocent, it is a disgrace how things are handled.

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I’ve never known personally a player that was banned that was innocent. I have however saw players report being banned on here and then unbanned. I’ve never saw someone report being banned on here that was innocent but still remained banned after this long of time.

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Obviously you’re forgetting the “Krinkle Mas” debacle that auto banned a bunch of people for simply using the card that was given. Which was clearly not a cheat, yet the devs remained nearly silent about the sheer number of auto bans with a 50 gem apology to the entire player base and a hot fix nerf to the card.

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then i hope everyone knows all the other caps or are there none for gems or treasure maps or so?

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Players were innocent and unbanned. The only delay in communication was due to the holidays.

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the caps for all resources would be this same 2.1b number, since that is a cap of the data type used to store the numbers, and not some number picked by the devs. Essentially, gold is the ONLY resource that could ever realistically even approach this number. Other resources are just not earned in big enough numbers to even have to worry about it.

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Don’t mind me walking in with my 2.1b gems :sunglasses::rofl:

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As a survivor of “the incident”, I personally prefer Krinklemess. :joy:

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One common method is that when a moderator makes a post, they have some option to flag the post for unique visual formatting – this is usually used in combination with performing a moderator-level action (such as locking a thread) but you could probably find a similar feature for general (moderator) use.

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I don’t want to make a complaint about a staff member. I want to make aware of a situation that is quite a bit more complicated and far-reaching than it appears to be perceived. I’m quite sure a support ticket isn’t the proper place for this, it doesn’t fit any category, so it’s unlikely to ever reach anybody. Back when we still had a Community Manager to interact with I would have tried private mail, the option no longer exists though.

GoW has 3 Community Managers - myself, Bramble and Jeto.
The best way to reach one of us is to write a ticket or leave feedback in the forum.

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So just making sure, is @OminousGMan no longer around?

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OminousGman is actually Associate Producer for Gems of War now :slight_smile:

It’s been great having him as a Producer coming from CX as he’s really in tune with what sort of feedback we receive from the community and he’s always been fantastic with the bug reports and helping prioritise community concerns.

He’s still a part of our daily community meetings but as Associate Producer he’s able to help us make improvements to how we priorotise community.

I know there’s a bunch of outstanding things to improve and it’s a team effort, not just Gman, but he is an asset in that position for sure.

In general, improvements are being made behind the scenes regarding community and communication. It does take time to get these things moving though, especially in a way that’s noticeable to the community itself. I’ve been incredibly happy to see a senior team member personally looking at some longstanding community reported bugs recently as a result of some of these changes and am excited to see things improve over time.

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Update:
We’re looking at adding some stuff in 7.3 for this if it fits in the schedule. Not just for Gold but the other resource types as well. It will probably need to be included as part of future updates as well.

I believe less than 0.008% of monthly active players are affected and the ones we’ve seen were all cheating if I recall correctly.

I’ve asked the team for further information so I can follow up on it more to ensure no one close to the cap are playing legitimately - in which case we’ll give them a headsup so they can spend their gold before they hit the cap.

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:zipper_mouth_face: :vulcan_salute:

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She looked into the OP account and saw no evidence of cheating. Later retracted when she realized the OP account was not the one was locked out or banned for cheating.

It’s one of the many reasons why no should do bug reports for other players accounts. It can easily confuse folks who assume the issue is related to the account posting about the issue.

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it does need someone to “start” the planned “improvements” and not only live by full-bodied announcements that aren’t more than some mildy warm air.

it needs just one contact person that offers some in depth knowledge about the game(s mechanics), that manages to sift through the forum for approx 1h daily (most of the time much less, after each bugpdate much more), also during weekends, capable of answering concerns and delivering messages/bugs to devs with top priority - especially after some updates. further just one dev that reacts to that delivered mail by that above contact person that then top prioritizes exactly on those reported issues exactly when they’re reported.
best case would be to have both above persons combined as one.

you know what would be awesome? having some realtalk q&a once a month f.e. on a moderated discord server - or revive a twitch stream session - both with the purpose of players getting some answers on questions they have, pitching ideas for the game etc - so the players not only have to follow some underinspired new gamemodes. Just ask and listen to what players want/need in the game, what players dislike etc. - you could also make some polls or just grab a handful of active community players and ask for their opinions and ideas. or just trust feedback of your beta testers and w0rg on that feedback before releasing stuff.

community is still here after all the years of gems of bugs.
I salute to your noble plans of wanting to improve communication I just fail to believe in those words for now.
be encouraged and proof all of us wrong.

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