PvP rankings are a joke

Something like this?

3 Likes

Please see my PM.

We have been aware of this hack for some time and can detect it. If a player is reported and found to be using this hack they are banned immediately.

9 Likes

Thank you for silencing the Peanut Gallery once and for all.

2 Likes

Macros and scripts wonā€™t be so easy to spot and no Iā€™m not going to call out an individual. I just know for certain it is inevitable in any competitive game you will have players that cheat. Some cheats arenā€™t so blatantly obvious as a trainer program or any program for that matter that interacts with the game data.

1 Like

We are always improving the ways in which we detect cheating in the game. Since moving to Unity we will be able to implement even more ways to do so.

7 Likes

Add a couple float delay ranges with pauses and good luck. I appreciate what your saying and what your trying to convey and emphasized to the community today in your postings. Even the best cant catch them all and to be honest burn out attempting to stay one step ahead. Iā€™m frustrated as a mobile player currently. Iā€™m not satisfied even with 4x speed and performing at my level I can barely scratch the top 20,000 with 1k trophies. Thatā€™s my contempt for the current rankings system. Its so implausible that there are that many players of that performance level. And we can talk about the points system in general as well, but I know after this unity switch happens it will be addressed in due time.

3 Likes

Actually no need super cheat detection machine or program. If you see his troop usage, that should tell that he was cheating. Consistently win all 3tr battles in 98 sec using 2xBombot 2xDust Devil? Yeah thatā€™s not humanly possible. For the record Iā€™m not talking about this week performance.

And since he got ā€œluckyā€ not getting banned the first time, I think thereā€™s huge chance he used it again this week. Especially with 4x speed, how can even devs differentiate it with trainer or other cheat program? I mean they canā€™t even detected it when we only had normal speed.

9 Likes

That is exactly what I have told them for monthsā€¦and at one point, he was 400-0 using that teamā€¦

I donā€™t believe that devs can use this kind of data to ban someone (because of the possible false positives)ā€¦
The only thing that they should do for the moment is to check if software X is used or any requests to the server, etc. Of course, if X is an exotic software coming from an exotic country, it will be difficult to detectā€¦

Actually with near certainty they should be able to cache reports server side of activities from third party programs that interface with the app.

1 Like

Understood. Reporting anyone is useless.

4 Likes

Ok. Maybe not completely useless. Thanks for the one you banned, if not for Nono.

2 Likes

I care less about the botsā€¦and more about the guilds that seem to have ā€œsaidā€ bots always in their guild.

If a guild is caught with obvious bots numerous times. There needs to be more warnings/bans/punishments handed out.

I am positive some of these guilds realize they are benefiting from bots.

2 Likes

A long time ago I initially recommended to Sirrian that Guilds benefiting from cheater should have to pay the Gold back. They implement that feature adding to the ill gotten Gold on top of tasks before the Guild can complete further tasks for actual rewards.

@Saltypatra Now In hindsight perhaps I should have recommended pay back plus penalty. So if a Guild receives 35 Million via bots/cheats, The Guild should have to pay back 35+35 (70 Million) after appropriate action is taken against the specific account.

It seems 1:1 payback penalty is not enough of a deterrent of have the Guilds help with self policing their own members for their own interest.

I still have many things to say about that topic. :smiley:

Last fall we recruited someone who turned out to be botting and who got banned. We hadnā€™t suspected anything. It can happen to everyone.
Clearly we were too naive and we have paid a lot more attention to the problem of cheating since that misfortune. We even have taken the habit of consulting the devs each time we had a doubt about one of our members or recruits. But it has become much more complicated to do it since Sirrian and Nimhain have stepped back, or rather it is much more complicated to get an answer.
We also have made it clear in the guild that we were very strict about it and set it as a rule that anyone who would be caught cheating in whatever way would be kicked immediately.
But, in spite of our good will, I am not sure that we are seeing everything and that we will never have someone caught botting again.

I agree that some guilds seem to be more relaxed than others on the question of cheating.
I am just saying that it is not always the guildā€™s fault and that we canā€™t see everythin.

Regarding the question of penaltiesā€¦ I agree that the guild should be penalized for what it unfairly gained thanks to the cheater. I only disagree about the nature of that penalty

When we first decided to consult Sirrian about one of our members, our first question was to ask what we were risking if we were ourselves reporting one of our members. So I have already had this conversation with him back then.

I can imagine than for a ā€œlittleā€ guild, having a gold penalty is a severe punishment. For a top guild that completes many LT each week, it is no big deal. If we had to get a 35 or even 70 millions penalty tomorrow, sure we would be annoyed, but that would probably not even make a difference for our weekly tasks, as now part of our members are regularly saving for big weeks during which we complete a huge number of LTs. I suppose it is the same in many other top guilds.

The only thing top guilds really care about is trophies.
When that guy got banned last fall, we got a 10K trophies penalty. In spite of our efforts, we never really recovered from it and it is part of the reason why we lost the Winter league to Intrim with a huge gap.
I would like it to be very clear that I am not complaining. It was completely fair. I am merely explaining.

So when we report someone, what we expect is not only the person to get banned, but the guild to be penalized for the trophies unfairly gained. We donā€™t care about the gold. Gold doesnā€™t make any difference for the other guilds anyway.

6 Likes

I commented you on you own diligence watching your guild. So perhaps a 1:1 payback (as it is now)makes sense if the guild brings the matter up.

As to your point Gold AND Trophies AND Seals then, its the principal not the implementation. Back in the day bots were cranking out Tasks for resources at an insane rate. I think you completely missed that 35M ( with a x2 penalty) was an example not some hard coded penalty for a little guild.

So to clarify/expand, Iā€™ll use slightly larger numbers for a regular Guild. EXAMPLE a Guild has a proven bot that donated 550M Gold, 4,200 Trophies, 4,500S the guild would have to make up. 1.1 Billion Gold, 8,400 Trophies , 9k Seals before they start making progress again.

There needs to be a deterrent, not oh that bot got caught so Iā€™ll create a new account and start again.

Well thatā€™s lunacy pure and simple. From the players perspective you can not know for certain if a player is ā€œbottingā€. A player doesnā€™t have access to the back end data required for that determination. And fun fact, cheaters donā€™t give a shit, they factor in the risk to their acct/accts and couldnā€™t care less about whatever guild theyā€™re squatting in when they get caught. Your implementation suggestion here just goes over the top the penalize innocent players. I know you mean well but this isnā€™t the answer. As a developer they can influence the opportunity and risk factors, they will not be able to impact that players attitude and desire to cheat.

1 Like

lol

Oh you knowā€¦

Anyone doing unreal amounts of playingā€¦religiouslyā€¦and never without failā€¦and never having days where it doesnā€™t stop creeping at the same rate.

Its not hard to tell when someone is cheating.
I mean, life happens to EVERYONE. No one can literally creep 400-500 trophies a dayā€¦every day.
If they are doing something like clockworkā€¦its botting.

3 Likes

Ok so keep 1:1 first offense then 2x on the second.

Most people are intuitiveā€¦ a guild mate that donates 4,200 Tropics and 55 Million in a week should raise an eyebrow. The issue with no deterrent: your eyebrow goes up and your month goes shut as you are the partial recipient of the ill gotten gains.