This is rhetorical question that will most likely be answered by many. Depending on how long it lasts before getting deleted or locked.
I myself will NEVER compromise my integrity and will NEVER cheat. Specially for a video game. But recent events have made me start to wonder… What exactly prevents others from cheating?
We have laws and rules in every society to prevent harm being done to others. If those laws or rules are violated then their are consequences to those actions. Sometimes the Justice system gets in wrong. But overall… we are okay with it because we understand the necessary element of it.
The devs do an alright job of policing cheating in the game. You’ll see players get banned at least once a week. But you won’t really know it. You’ll just see guilds be less than 30 and a name disappear from the leader boards.
Yet, nothing seems to be done about cheating outside of Ranked PvP.
We as players don’t have free speech when it comes to here or in game global chat. And they have that right as a company. Don’t get it twisted folks. We are players under a Monarchy type rule. The fact that they are so open to our feedback both impresses and frustrates the hell out of me. Because you know they’re listening or reading. Yet, are either not doing anything about it… Or are trying their best to remedy an issue… But following policy which says… “we do not discuss other players with players”. So we as players never know what’s going on.
Those of you that have read this far… Please continue to read.
What brought on this post was a situation with Guild Wars. I’m going to lose a lot of people right here. Cause you most likely don’t care about Bracket 1. I myself didn’t either until I found myself amongst the mess that it is. It’s almost gotten to the point that I don’t know who to trust anymore. Outside of my guild every one and their mother could be colluding. Or could be using trainers. Or could just have 30 amazing members that kick butt in GW. The point is…I DON’T KNOW! So while trying to enjoy the game… More often than not I’m getting pulled away to deal with politics of the game. In the back of my head… All I hear is the devs statements of protecting players because they don’t want a negative environment.
Well, unfortunately devs. You have created one. Every single player that has played for longer than 3 months has as at least one issue with the game. That may just be unpreventable and common. Yet, still seems fixable.
Forgive me for making this personal but I’m losing a long time member. Because the “AI” or “RNG” has ruined the game he loves. You have no clue how depressing it feels to lose an important guild wars match on the second turn you make. After that the AI keeps looping until either you lose or have zero chance of coming back to win the match. By that happening, you make the players feel like they not only let themselves down, but their guild mates down. When they themselves knew there was nothing they could do to counter it.
Which is why I’m making this post today. Cheating more often than not is rewarded in this game. And though a player could get banned. If a guild cheats. Not only will any proof of it be ignored. But any attempt to try and discourage the cheating by making it public. The devs will protect the guilds in question and prevent any public discussion about it. The out come to that is…8k DM’s, countless tickets submitted, and players themselves trying to come up with solutions for issues that shouldn’t be that hard to solve. Yet, the only solutions… Fall on the devs to make happen. I love this game. And I want it to succeed. I want the people behind it to be rewarded for the great product. I’m not quitting the game and will be here until they close down the servers. But it’s becoming harder and harder to talk others out of quitting. When it’s clear… To succeed in this game you have to sell your soul in one shape or form just to compete. Many are not willing to pay that price. But then again… If you don’t have ethics or believe in a higher power. Why not cheat if there are never any consequences to it?
Thank you for your time.
Synopsis:
I’m trying to express that currently cheating is happening. It’s clear to those that see evidence of it. Yet nothing seems to change or happen in regards to Guild wars to prevent/punish cheating.
Instead we just see the ramifications of what cheating, crazy AI, and censorship causes by players leaving the game.
I don’t need to know what is being investigated and what isn’t.
I just want to know “what player was banned (including invite code)” “what guild they were in” and “what the penalty was”. As a weekly or monthly report posted for anyone to see. Some sort of real consequences to a guild/player.
They won’t do that because they are afraid it’s too negative. I’m arguing, that by not sharing that info… They are making the game negative and just not aware of it.
Exactly, you don’t know. And i won’t pretend to know too. But from my part i can believe there are guilds very, very organized and dedicated into achieving nearly perfect runs on each GW day with 9000+ points. When you have a nearly full collection this is more than likely to happen.
But of course, i wouldn’t discard the possibility of collusion and some individuals cheating.
If they would start to discuss, publicly, what is being done then the cheaters would try to hide their actions even more. You are a smart player, but you are naive to imagine that if Sirrian would pop up and say…
“Hey mates, we just figured out how people are managing to screw two potatoes together and shoveling it into their CD drivers to get 5.000 gems every day. Now we are addressing the issue by removing the “potatonator.exe” from the game and exchanging it for a “carrotaholic.crickey”. This should work just fine!”
… it wouldn’t instantly give clues to the cheaters that they sould try using carrots, iron nails and glutten-free superglue.
Yes, i’m being ridiculous to make my point, but don’t get me wrong. With all due respect the thing is, these are standard issues and procedures in game industry…
As much as we would like to discuss everything we think is wrong in this game with the devs in a tea party, and impose our view of how they should conduct their business, sometimes you must understand that they have their own vision and ideas for the future of GoW. And they will listen to us, to their best effort, but they must also ignore most of our suggestions.
I’m…honestly not sure which point you’re making. I got a little lost somewhere between “GWs have major problems” (it’s been discussed to death; we need to see what the solution ends up being), “the AI cheats” (the devs have said it doesn’t, so prove it if you claim it does), “there are no consequences for cheating” (people do get banned), and “I want to know the outcomes of cheater investigations / punishments” (you’re not going to). I’m not trying to be argumentative; you honestly and truly lost me.
Short version though?
Why not cheat if there are never any consequences to it?
Because there are consequences, and people do get banned. That’s why not.
My overall point was that the cheating in GW goes unpunished. The other issues compound the frustration. As in players possibly cheat to beat the AI. Which is randomly ridiculous. Or they cheat to get higher GW Rewards.
Sorry that my overall sentiment was lost on you @Amadan. I was writing to my audience. Evidently you aren’t my audience.
I’m not disagreeing, and since my guild has never made it higher than Bracket 4 I have no reason not to believe you.
That said, I find your post totally confusing. What method of cheating are you alleging? In your post you describe a player getting beaten on round 2 by bad luck. Are you saying that somehow their opponent caused this to happen?
I get that you can’t discuss specific cheat methods due to (sensible) Forum rules, but all I get from the post is a familiar complaint about streaky RNG/ looping AI. I don’t see how this connects to cheating at all.
The cheating methods I’ve heard about in the past were pretty easy to spot, maybe you can provide some more detail as to why you suspect cheating w/o advertising the method!
That’s the thing. I had to write in a way to give this post the best chance of not getting deleted or locked. So unfortunately if you don’t know already what I’m talking about. It can be confusing… The devs do know exactly what I’m talking about.
I do not hold players responsible for the AI looping. I’m saying that people are quitting the game for a multitude of reasons that are very fixable by the devs.
I have submitted tickets and harassed the support literally for months. Our guild lost several of its best players because they got frustrated of being unable to compete in the LB while being legit. Many people in other top guilds have tried to encourage the devs to act.
You will find the conclusion of the story in the last posts.
I have been informed recently that the player would have been banned a few months ago? If it is the case, none of its guilds has ever been penalized for the tens of thousands of trophies he has gained for them.
So yes, that thread asks a question that is really important… although the initial post is not very clear to me either.
Here is an idea. How about allowing us to see how well our defense scores in war. Not just wins or losses but a score value so we can determine if that team is doing well. Wins and defeats aren’t enough. I want to know if I’m defense took out three troops before the loss. Also show us the defensive stats or scores for all in that bracket for that week. This would help hinder supision of brother guilds setting weak defenses for sister guilds. There I said it. Does it happen? Who knows. They won’t give us the ability to see for ourselves. Just trust them that they are watching. The same people that releases bugs after bugs. The same people that releases OP goblins than have a goblin week. Etc.
(Note: I just checked what “colluding” means in my dictionary. That does not mean that I know what “colluding” means in GoW, as your whole post didn’t explain that at all despite addressing that most people here aren’t in bracket 1 and have no idea what’s going on there. My post therefore assumes that it means that guilds talk with each other and swap places around in bracket 1 on purpose.)
I still have no idea what is going on, but…
The AI has lately been pretty dumb. Ignoring 4-matches and the like. Yeah, cascades happen. Goblins happen. To me as well. But that happens in PVP as well as in GW. And because we are playing against an AI and not against a real person, there’s no way to cheat yourself better. You can, however, cheat yourself to play worse and lose on purpose. That much is true.
However, if my two cents are worth anything, I see the main problem more in the fact that GW is designed to be fought unfairly in the first place by the reward tiers. Given how many gems are being offered to the first place compared to the places just a few below, it’s pretty much screaming at people to do colluding for fairness to equal out an unfair system. I bet if the gem differences between the places would be not so extreme, people would stop colluding because one place more or less wouldn’t matter as much as it does now.
But yeah, what do I know? I’m in bracket 3 and happy that GW is not something that I lose hairs over. Because no one should lose hairs over a game, no matter how fun it is - it’s a hobby and consists of a bunch of pretty pixels, after all.
IMO the most effective anti-cheating mechanic I’ve seen (and I have no idea how GoW could implement it) is to have a special server where you put all the cheaters, and then they compete with each other for their own cheater leaderboard and never see legit players. It takes a lot of them to make it convincing, though.
Plus also it’s good for business. I bet a lot of 'em buy Deathknight Armor every time they reroll. Cha-ching.
The best anti cheating is giving the players more info on scores. It’s that easy. They can’t even police their updates and new troops. Not sure why this is such a hard thing to understand
I don’t understand where the ‘cheating’ aspect comes into this? We (Quimby) have never been out of bracket 1 & we have a solid nucleus of players who regularly score well over 50k a week, myself included.
However, at least once a week I’ll get my ass handed to me out of the blue by the ai, usually by a team I beat easily the second time around - I don’t see how anyone would be able to set up a defence team that specifically cheats.
As for the allegations of colluding, that’s a separate matter & one I would never be involved in or let my guildies be involved in, as far as that goes the devs should be able to see if someone sets a particularly weak defence - that must flag alarms especially in the highest brackets?
More or less, well you see… When a “Daddy Guild” loves veryveryvery much a “Momma Guild”… Well… birds and bees…
Colluding was a practice where two guild would setup easy defensive teams against each other when they were paired in GW to attain the best scores. This way they would “lock” themselves in the same positions for better rewards and prevent others from reaching the same place if they couldn’t surpass these maxed out scores. It was discovered, we had a lot of… discussions… and the practice was, then (the devs didn’t said it wasn’t before when approached with the theory of this), acknowledged as illegal from that point.
Thank you for explaining! See, how is anyone to give a good opinion on this without having any way of knowing these things?
I still believe that making reward gaps smaller would solve a lot of problems… hundreds of gems difference between places should not happen, ever. Maybe 50-100. Maybe a slightly larger gap between brackets (100) and a smaller one (50) between individual places in the bracket. So that people would stop freaking out about a game which is in huge parts about luck. Luck to not get devoured, get a good starting board, have the AI not get too many cascades, have your gem spammer not spam stupidly… the game is largely about RNG. And if RNG plays a big part in something, rewards should reflect that.
