Thank god it isn’t. But the longer those who abuse it pass by without punishment, the more of it we will see.
Like i said this is totaly fine. If you let your child play (for example treasure maps) you are giving your child play time you would use to earn trophies, so theres no benefit gained.
Im not talking about account sharing within a single household. Im talking about coordinated acc sharing where every player plays at agreed times, keeping the acc active for the whole day, gaining benefits.
I think the devs have better things to do with their time. Mind, this kind of outlandish claim probably merits at least a denial by a dev: @saltypatra? or is this one onto something?
Well that’s a daft question, there’s only 30 players per guild: even the top 50 guilds only accounts for 1500 players, a tiny fraction of the active player base. I suspect only the top 100 or so guilds have more than say 10+ active players in.
It is difficult to talk about the problem of cheating only in general purposes…
There are probably many people who share accounts. Most of the time, it is certainly people who are “helping” members of their family in a harmless way. And it is true that a few people seem to do it on a more “professional” scale.
It is unfair, but it is considered as legit, so that is not what we are complaining about.
Our problem, even with that person who openly acknowkledged to be sharing accounts, is merely about botting. The devs certainly do their best to ban cheaters. But it takes some time : it happens regularly that someone who had finished at the top of the leaderboard one week has been banned several days later. Still that person finished the week first and the leaderboard was wrong.
And the devs recognize themselves that they are not able to detect all the bots and the time they can dedicate to investigating is unfortunately limited.
So some cheaters never get caught.
For all those reasons, it is extremely difficult for a competitive player who is legit to reach the top of the leaderboard. So what is the point of having one if it is meaningless?
same here. i also found ranking somehow not appropriate…
gow team should have divide the ranking according to the player played in the event of the week and start new ranking whenever new week event start…
[quote=“Aelthwyn, post:86, topic:22677, full:true”]It is unfair, but it is considered as legit, so that is not what we are complaining about.
[/quote]
Speak for yourself.
The open and blatant 24x7 account sharing is exactly what I have a problem with. We already know that botting violates the TOS and the Devs have been perfectly clear what their stance is.
When someone openly admits that they’re doing what that person admitted, then the Devs have a responsibility to respond, even it’s to say “sorry, we’re fine with it”. That is where the problem lies, for me. They’ve never said either way how they feel about it. In the meantime, the PVP leaderboard continues to become more and more irrelevant.
I have read every post and I will just drop a few points, sorry for not scanning back through to quote people:
Somebody said the devs have been silent about account sharing, not true, devs have said on several occasions they are perfectly fine with account sharing.
I agree 100% that we need to change the leaderboard over to a % of the playerbase. Though this will not “fix” the problem, it will go a long way to mitigating the feeling that the PvP leaderboard is meaningless.
I could swear I saw a dev state this a long time ago too. It would really help for a dev to make a clear and official statement about account sharing so that this particular issue can be put to rest.
I am not the best forum spelunker so, I have had no success in finding the quote, but I know I saw it because I remember being surprised by their stance.
I continue to hem and haw about whether I agree or not…
On the one hand, it clearly puts that ACCOUNT at an advantage, giving them access to more resources simply based on an exploit of time.
BUT
On the other hand, that account is NOT illegally gaining those resources, they are utilizing man power and giving up time to do so, I could just as easily ask my mother, a night owl who loves Bejeweled to play all night so I could wake up to many more resources… but I don’t. And whether I feel this way or not, it’s not ACTUALLY a matter of right or wrong, but Personal Preference. I prefer to earn my goodies on my own. Period.
So, as I said, I go back and forth on how I feel about account sharing, but I know for a fact I don’t like CHEATING! And so long as the shared account is NOT botting and/or exploiting the game code itself, I understand the devs reluctance to call THAT cheating.
Yes, I’m at a similar place. On one hand, it irks me to see people that have obviously bogus points bragging on the forum or in global chat. I prefer games to be fair and transparent. On the other hand, I know it is a situation that is hard to police if the people doing it use any level of tech savvy and common sense.
At the end of the day, I have friends in the game that are upset about account sharers and bots on the leaderboard. This lessens their enjoyment and excitement of a game they used to love a great deal. To me, that is sad and shouldn’t be ok.
It must have been a LONG time ago because it hasn’t been said since I’ve been here. And I know of at least one case where someone tagged a Dev to see if they would address it.
Personally I don’t really care about account sharing, mainly because without valuable rewards it doesn’t affect me. If I was potentially losing out on something I’d feel differently.
With that said, I do take exception to the “sharing within a household is ok”. Say I work the night shift, and my wife/kids play during the day on my account, so we each play alternate non-overlapping times of day. Why would that be acceptable but other coordinated sharing be bad simply because they are in different households and/or timezones. It’s either one person per account or it’s not, regardless of whether it’s same household, timezone, related, or any other criteria. Anything else is inequitable and unfair.
As far as technically identifying shared accounts, I don’t think that is as trivial as some are making it sound. Using IP’s isn’t totally reliable, and is very easy to bypass. And if it were easy, I’m sure it would have been done already.
Enjoying this conversation though, and all the different ideas/perspectives being shared (even those I disagree with ). Hopefully this helps the devs when they get time for this, and lets them know what the community actually wants.
Account Sharing story w/ Solution/Joke
It was awhile back, but the very first week I played Gems I needed extra Glory to buy a single copy of the weekly offered Glory troop. At this time on console the only way to reasonably get a little extra Glory was to grind Treasure Hunt and hope for the best.
I asked my fiancé to play a Map of TH. It was the first and last time she ever touched Gems.
Solution/Joke:
If your IP changes you must play a round of TH.
I don’t see what is wrong with account sharing, imagine 2 little 12yr old brother playing with daddy credit cards and they don’t have enough money to get 2 different account to collect every troops? You expext them to pay twice to get vip level 15? This is ridiculous
I play on console, which seriously limits the portability of my account. When I am out of town for work, you’re saying it would be inappropriate for my wife to log in to my account, collect my daily rewards, donate to my guild, or maybe do a daily task or two? How about this: my wife is an ICU nurse and sometimes works five 12-hour shifts in a week. She’s in a somewhat competitive guild and in weeks like that, sometimes has difficulty hitting her trophy and seals quota. Would you object to me logging in on her account and grinding PVP for a couple hours so she can hit her weekly minimums?
The problem with this whole argument is where do you draw the line? Three roommates playing in shifts around the clock on the same machine would probably be viewed as “abusive”, but the examples from my household probably wouldn’t offend anyone. In between are all sorts of scenarios that are different shades of grey. It’s easiest for the devs to say “There really isn’t much we can do about account sharing, so we limit the rewards available for people doing this sort of thing so any reasonable person would see that it isn’t worth their time.”
I think it’s not just the ratings but the rewards. I mean… 1st place = 25000 gold, 2500 souls, 50 gems!?, 11 runic stones. that’s RIDICULOUS. I play 12 ranked pvp games and I have more than all of that except runic stones. I always max my guild seals from pvp wins alone and typically get up to around 5000 skulls or whatever. i work 40 hours and own an online business I tend to in the evenings. that many games eats up a lot of time and there are zero rewards for me, other than tier rewards. which at lvl 175 are miniscule for me. its really just the gameplay that i enjoy, but damn! i wouldn’t mind more rewards from long hours of pvp.
I mean if some people want to get to top spots for some personal accomplishment, I agree, its next to burn out status to do it. but I mean, they need to give pvp rewards to anyone that participates. not just rank 1000+.
The problem of sharing accounts is difficult because there are very different situations.
When I started playing, my son was playing with me. We first had our own guild before we joined Anonymous together 2 years ago. He was about 10 then. I have helped him reached PVP tier 1 and done treasure maps for him more than once. After a while he slowed down and joined a casual guild, and I stopped helping him to focus exclusively on my own account. He has completely stopped playing for about a year. Who could have told back then if it was him or me who was using his laptop? How would it be possible to avoid this kind of famlily sharing?
I don’t know if some of the veterans remember Charles? “He” appeared our of nowhere at the fall of 2015 and openly said on the recruitment thread (on the old forum) of the guild that he joined that they were 16 people sharing the same account. He was progressing incredibly fast and reached lvl 1000 in a few weeks. Back then levelling was much slower and Mr Sammy and dhjl, the first 2 lvl 1000, although they were playing many hours each day, had needed 8-10 months to reach lvl 1000. Charles’s guild had then a few high performers. During a few weeks, it has been absolutely impossible to compete with that guild, which reached the top 10 very fast. And then Charles disappeared when he reached lvl 1000 and was never seen again, and their guild went back to the normal progression of a competitive guild.
Of course I consider it as totally unfair, but technically that is legit.
Between those 2 extremes, where to draw the line? How to deal with the problem fairly when some situations are undetectable? Should the people who have the honesty to admit they are sharing accounts be penalized while the others are not?
What about the guy working 12-hour shifts who has his buddy on the other side of the planet help by playing his account. He can’t get help simply because they aren’t living together? And how much playing is OK. Logging in just to check tributes, or maybe playing an hour, or is unlimited shared play OK but just within a house? It’s too subjective, too many possible scenarios and potential to abuse. My point (and I apologize if it wasn’t clear the first time) is simply that sharing accounts is either OK or it’s not. Saying “it’s only my wife” or “because I travel for work” or other specific reasons/excuses is simply ranking one persons time/situation as more valuable than another’s. Keep it simple, allow it or don’t. Whatever is done do it across the board, because proving why you’re special and somebody else isn’t would be a flawed and unfair system.
I think we’re saying more-or-less the same thing. Namely, that you can’t really make distinctions when it comes to this kind of thing. The devs have either explicitly or tacitly acknowledged that account sharing is OK, with the consequence apparently being that no (single) normal human can make the top of the PC/Mobile PVP leaderboard.
). Hopefully this helps the devs when they get time for this, and lets them know what the community actually wants.