Improvement to Cheat Detection (and Consequent Bans)

Official News
83

would you answer my question, please?

84

Itā€™s a weekend. People need their rest.

1 Like
85

Officials should clearly define whether assistant analysis software or MOD is cheating or not, and if not, unlock these people. If so, please donā€™t release it.

86

To be honest, Iā€™ve seen screenshots of these players. I really donā€™t think itā€™s fair to me because I donā€™t use this software, but whether itā€™s cheating or not depends on the official definition criteria.

87

I think that itā€™s all defined already.
If youā€™re not doing things all by yourself and have some sort of aid thatā€™s doing that instead of you, itā€™s illegal.

1 Like
88

I think so too. After all, when I analyze an image, I take a screenshot and then draw and calculate by myself. And people who use software donā€™t have to work so hard to get results directly.

89

You are thinking class levels here, not hero levels. You can speed up hero levels by buying the Deathknight Armor and Rings of Wonder, you still need to play the game, a lot.

90

He probably means buying actual xp with infinite tiers
image

I think itā€™s 500 per tier VII also IIRC

1 Like
91

Yes, class levels, they donā€™t increase your hero level though. If you want to brag with your position in the hero level leaderboard, meet the level requirements of some high-end guild you want to join or just see a four digit number in your profile thereā€™s no way but to grind it out.

92

As long as we are being cheated out of mana and extra turns, this statement is false. Waiting more than two years for that to get fixed, and the failure to fix it is cheating players out of GW wins, event sigils, gold, trophies, and seals. If it isnā€™t intentional, it shouldā€™ve been fixed by now.

2 Likes
93

I think I have come up with a reasonable solution for the people most affected by disgusting cheaters. The people who did not cheat were directly cheated out of rewards they earned on the leaderboards by horrible people who cheat.

I think the only proper option is to give rewards to all players who did not cheat as of the time of the ban. Beautiful, kind, excellent, honest players were harmed by disgusting, pathetic, lying cheaters. Letā€™s restore the things lost to those wonderful players instead of giving another thought to the liars and cheaters who honestly need to spend less time playing a game and more time reading a book on ethics so maybe they wonā€™t always be a useless waste of space.

2 Likes
94

Very much agree with that

95

Get 'em Salty!

96

A week with no answer.

97

Whatā€™s to be answered actually?

Extracting stuff from game files is not bannable (like stats, troops, strings, etc), as you are not changing the file itself, you are copying parts of a file into external subfiles.

Modifying the game files themselves in any way IS bannable.

1 Like
98

What would interest meā€¦are investigations still ongoing? Or do Devs act on specific hints by other players?

99

Theyā€™re never going to discuss their internal cheat detection process or the current status of any cheat investigations.

100

sorry about thatā€¦I am used to Wikipedia

101

To some extent, keeping mum about investigations and techniques actually works here, as does making bans periodic instead of as discovered.

Some people just like to cheat, so if they figure out exactly what they did to get detected, theyā€™ll come back with a better way to cheat thatā€™s harder to detect. But if you ban just some % of the crowd and you miss that guy, he gets bold and figures heā€™s outsmarted the devs. Then when he does get banned later heā€™s a little more confused.

So when he comes back with cheat 2.0, heā€™s less confident. Maybe he survives another round of bans. It doesnā€™t make him feel like he wasnā€™t caught. Heā€™s not getting feedback on if his new technique is going to work, so heā€™s more likely to get frustrated and give up.

So my speculation is:

  • Yes, they are still actively looking for cheaters.
  • They did not ban everyone they caught this time.
  • Next time they will ban a mixture of old and new.

What I do wish, and I think this is an issue @Saltypatra needs to get in front of, is that everyone were on the same page about the bans.

In Discord today someone in #ask-a-dev was claiming there should be an appeals process. I was confused, because there is an appeals process. But they have an interesting chain of evidence that leaves me frowning:

  • A screenshot of a person with the ā€œCommunity Managerā€ role linking to your post and explaining to leave a support ticket with an appeal if you want a second look.
  • A screenshot of a ticket response, signed by a dev, informing them ā€œthere is no appeal processā€.

So I think the community team and the devs need to get on the same page. Do players get to post an appeal, or not? Or, alternately: explain that guy deceived me with false screenshots.

4 Likes
102

What i would like to understand is whether the bans really get reviewed case by case as Kafka made a contradictory statement in another thread.

Also i would like to know whether this detection process has any margin of error on banning innocent people.