Why not cheat? (A public letter to the devs)

I think the allegation is there is account sharing and/or botting going on to inflate scores.

My anecdote on “Is someone really playing 10+ hours a day” is to never underestimate the tenacity of a nerd who has dumped hundreds of dollars into a game.

I played EVE Online for a while in a very infamous corp for one of their most deadbeat, useless squads. In one of our temporary homes, there was ONE MAN who did more damage to us than any of our opponents in large-scale space wars. This son of a gun camped the gate between two of our bases for 14+ hours daily. He was amazing at evading our kill teams, and since he flew a cloaking ship there was only so much that could be done once he got away.

He tormented us for months, long enough that some of the more frequent trade escorts sort of made friends with him. (His one ship couldn’t do much vs. a real escort, the people he picked off were too greedy to wait for escorts.) Turns out he’s disabled and unemployable. So he survives on whatever government assistance he has and has literally nothing else to do but play games. All day.

There’s a bunch of him out there, not all of them in his state. Back in college I probably put at least 7 hours daily into EVE. I guarantee you there’s enough college students to fill the GoW leaderboards.

Me, personally, I get maybe 2 hours to put in on a good day. You kids can have the leaderboards and fight over who’s botting. Until rank’s based on something other than “I spent more time on a phone game than you” I can’t compete.

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I am not sure if everyone remember this thread. But it is worth a mention.

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Also, as long as the Devs cant confirm that the Guild Wars is close to clean from cheaters, and give us a fair answer around this, I think there should not be any Guild Wars at all. As said before Guild Wars was created because we needed a fair mode, without cheating. The latest 2 days we have had 2 threads, the one yesterday IMO got really easily locked, its clearly for me looks like the Devs locks these threads fairly early, because they are afraid new players will enter these boards and get the wrong signal about the game. But lets be honest with ourselves, many of us, include myself have lost the faith in Guild Wars months ago, this mode would be fun if it was close to clean, but it is not, and that is why we cant call it Guild Wars, either…

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How exactly would the devs determine what is a “weak” team now? The unique defense solution was a great idea for adding some small amount of variety. However, it made detecting guild collusion (with any level of certainty) impossible. There are plenty of teams that don’t look obviously weak (like 4X peasants) that colluding guilds could use during their matchups.

I’d have to disagree with this. I don’t believe the people that go out of their way to use trainers or collude would stop just because there were less reward gaps. To be sure, those people are just as motivated by being at the top of a leaderboard as they are by gaining extra rewards.

As for the OP, I used to play in Bracket 1 for a long time. But, it was quite clear to me from the very beginning that it would never be a clean, competitive mode. The more a person ignores that fact, the more frustrated and angry they will get. Eventually, I joined a less competitive guild because I just don’t have the RL time to devote to a lot of game play. The upside of that is that I don’t have to deal with the topic of cheating in Bracket 1 any longer. That makes the game far more enjoyable and makes me less likely to ragequit… again.

All that said, I don’t believe in “name and shame” solutions, especially in games like this. It won’t stop a cheater from cheating. It surely won’t solve Bracket 1 issues. You’ll still have people that are convinced something shady is going on in Bracket 1 no matter what. All it would do is increase negativity and make people even more frustrated when they don’t see the name of the person they think is a cheater posted.

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That thread got side ways quick and the comments had nothing to do with the actual topic.
I’m hoping that doesn’t happen here.

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Yeah, but generally we have seen these threads fairly early get locked. The thread yesterday did not have to get locked even if a few added comments that had nothing to do with the topic.

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This I disagree with completely. As an end game player guild wars is one of the only things that drives me lately.

So no do not remove guild wars, but do make it better.

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Thats right. At least in several top guilds, GW teams are designed really powerful and skillful, and there are always more to research than imagined. So, one of the suggestions is to pay efforts on researching, testing and communicating instead of those boring pvp or exploding, for the GW.

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I do say, remove it temporary, ban most of the cheaters or get new tools to get them, and get it up again. Get me now :wink:

To not say i disagree Eika, but honestly it wouldn’t change a lot in a mathematical sense.

If a cheater is to be found, let’s say in a month, and banned it won’t matter how much he robbed from honest players during this period. Sure, the honest players would get less rewards during this month. But if the devs would halt GW during the whole time, then the honest players wouldn’t get anything during the period…

Yeah, not an ideal solution, and it surely leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But still… it’s better to gain less, than to gain nothing. I guess this is why the devs opt out to keep the events running unless something really drastic happens.

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Echoing other sentiments here, I’ve never heard of a game company ever publically call out any player for cheating, or encourage any discussion of specific players involved in suspected cheating on their official forums. These are affairs between the company and the player, and public discussion just contributes to negative sentiment and paranoia. If people are so bent on shaming others, I suggest they start a private community for it elsewhere.

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Ivar I just wish I was able to see that Guild Wars especially Bracket 1 could become clean, but after 1 year, I have a feeling that Bracket 1 has cheaters there that have cheated since the very begging of Guild Wars, with other words Ive lost most of my faith of this mode.

I am moment in a casual guild that is in Bracket 3 and try to enjoy GW tho. I do come up to Bracket 1 again the day the rats get caught.

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I don’t think that’s what is being said here. It’s not to shame people but for it’s that I can’t trust the devs to police any form of cheating without our help. Not to bash the devs but history shows me they are too busy to even notice some of the things they release weekly. It’s up to us to police cheating yet they hold back the tools the community needs to do so.

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A name and shame thread won’t change that. You’ll still have to trust that the devs are doing their best to catch cheating. Anyone that cares about that sort of thing already notices people that vanish from the leaderboard and whole guilds that lose a ton of players at once. It’s obvious that they do ban people. Yet, that knowledge isn’t enough for some people. A name and shame thread won’t change that because there will still be people and guilds that some people “suspect” are cheating that won’t be listed.

Do you think they caught these people or it was the community? I think I know the answer to that question. Again things like infernus is still broken. Bugs takes days to fix. OP goblins takes weeks to correct and some would claim still broken. Second turn team destruction is proof. Etc. when they don’t have time to correct their mistakes please tell me when they have time to police without our vigilance? They need us to police their game do they not? If so give us the information we need to do so. Like defense scores not only for our guilds but others. What our own defense scores or stats it achieves. I’m not even asking for how the wars even scored. That’s already been proven the devs will deny us any information on that. I know they don’t want the PR of calling out cheaters or even acknowledging they exist. Trust they do. Seen proof myself. It was one of our guild mates that caught it. Not the Devs. So tell me again how we should just trust the devs to catch them.

According to Sirrian, they’ve caught some botters through their on server detection code. Since I know that kind of code is ubiquitous in games, I have no reason to believe they don’t also use it. So, no, it isn’t “only” the community doing their job for them. Of course, I’m sure that many cheats have been caught because someone in the community raised the alarm.

As for trusting them, that’s up to the individual. Let’s say they name and shame everyone they caught last month. There are guilds people still suspect are cheating. Those guilds are still there alive and kicking. So, how does the name and shame thread cure the trust problem? It doesn’t.

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readed the entry from the beginning to the end( big respect AWRYAN ), so when I started play this game about 3,5 years ago, the game was fantastic and purely logic
ther was no ranking, guild wars and rewards, everything started from with the introduction bigger and more and more rewards, the bigger the win, is the more you want it win, it’s simple. why developers do nothing with cheats, or they be doing it quietly ? it’s also simple!
(but I will not write it directly because it probably I will violates rules and maybe dev give me a ban, but most of you all thinking players, know why this is happening ($$)). the question is: what we all can make as organized community? Thank you all for your attention. Terrorist

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Where are you coming up with this shaming thing? All I’m asking for is the tools to control my defense better and help policing others In my bracket with stats on war. It’s done in Other games. Sorry but win or lose isn’t enough to know if your defense is working. When a few hundred points changes win or failure shouldn’t we have enough information to make that decision? Along with that it would give us the ability to detect when guilds are up to fishy things. No one here asked for shaming. Not even the OP. We are asking for more Info for multiple of reasons including to watch over the game we have invested money and time into.

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None of my posts had anything to do with tools for defense. My posts only concerned the OPs request for the devs to start a name and shame thread.

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So let’s wait and see what happens from this.
No point in debating things further since they do have a plan.