Alliance War - Season Issues (Again) [Merged Threads]

So the last week of season has started and yet again, we are penalised for an alliance cheating against us. Our potential top 3 rewards have been taken away from us by an alliance we reported and subsequently docked and we don’t get the points back.

When are Kabam going to stop treating seasons, a game that we invest thousands in as an alliance to compete, with such little regard for those alliances that play fair and get penalised?

We’ve averaged 5 deaths all season and we somehow get punished for another alliance cheating.

We can’t name alliances on the forums but the leaderboard now speaks for itself.

Comments

rwhack

In season 1 and 2 kabam bent over backwards to accommodate an alliance that has been docked in consecutive seasons.

My alliance had suspiciously low death counts this season and last and right after the opponent had bans and point docks. In the Olympics if the gold medal winner uses PEDs the silver gets the medal. Piloting and modding is using PEDs. Simple fix is to award losing team the win.

Kabam after very quickly to punish my alliance when we marched into a shell. Funny how arbitrarily they choose to act.

DocJC

@Kabam Miike @Ad0ra_

Is any action going to be taken? It’s utterly ridiculous that alliances that get piloted against with clear evidence considering you just docked them, have no recourse. We were undefeated until the offending alliance decided to pilot against us and die once (which clearly they aren’t capable of without cheating).

The players only recourse is to go to Apple because Kabam seems to simply just not care.

Even the offending alliance doesn’t care because they will still get masters rewards regardless. The offending alliances should be punished much harsher to actually be a deterrent for them piloting otherwise this will continue to occur again and again.

There should also be restitution made to the alliance that was piloted against. All it takes is for Kabam to manually give those teams the wins.

You sure were quick to remove points from teams without any actual evidence in seasons past. Now when you have actual evidence you do nothing...

Do better Kabam. Your entire player base is watching and is not happy with what they are seeing. While your’re at it remove points for defenders remaining on the map and set up a playoff system for alliance wars.

GroundedWisdom

Wait a second. So the other Alliance cheated and you were docked? That doesn't add up. If this is a repeat occurrence, I would start questioning what's going on in-house.

Grub

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Wait a second. So the other Alliance cheated and you were docked? That doesn't add up. If this is a repeat occurrence, I would start questioning what's going on in-house.

No we were not docked...

rwhack

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Wait a second. So the other Alliance cheated and you were docked? That doesn't add up. If this is a repeat occurrence, I would start questioning what's going on in-house.

No. They got docked. We lost to an alliance that was docked

IronicFist

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

Wait a second. So the other Alliance cheated and you were docked? That doesn't add up. If this is a repeat occurrence, I would start questioning what's going on in-house.

Let's nip this foolishness in the bud with a um purely hypothetical scenario:

Alliance A (Master level) cheats to get the win over Alliance B (Master Top 3)
• Alliance A is docked from Master to... lower down in Master
• Alliance B is knocked out of top 3 contention

Who suffers more, the cheating alliance or the clean alliance?

GroundedWisdom

Okay, so I misunderstood. I thought they were docked after reporting.
I can't say I agree with awarding an automatic Win because the other Ally cheated.

Bgpmpn

The resources used to try and get top 3 is washed down the toilet by a team that cheated. Kabam you allow the standings to stay the same even though you have evidence of cheating? As a customer I don’t feel as if that’s warranted at all. Either refund all resources used for the team that was cheated on or give them their correct standings in the game. That’s the right thing to do.

Vale84

Legend wrote: »

So the last week of season has started and yet again, we are penalised for an alliance cheating against us. Our potential top 3 rewards have been taken away from us by an alliance we reported and subsequently docked and we don’t get the points back.

When are Kabam going to stop treating seasons, a game that we invest thousands in as an alliance to compete, with such little regard for those alliances that play fair and get penalised?

We’ve averaged 5 deaths all season and we somehow get punished for another alliance cheating.

We can’t name alliances on the forums but the leaderboard now speaks for itself.

I am gonna agree on this statement. More over, a further look in depth as to be taken towards the remaining plagues effecting seasons:

1) Presence of matchmaking rooms with most of master allies in them:
avoiding each other, they turn seasons into a mere "match lower allies and see who gets the sloppiest one leaving nodes up". If you guys ( @Kabam Miike ) would bother to keep a close eye, you would notice that the only difference in point made by the top 1 to 7/10 is the defender left by the lower allies they match. That is why Season "fever" has gone. None cares anymore, everyone lives it like a t4 arena which you do out of boredom for rewards.

2) Matchmaking system making point 1) possible with its exploitability.
Matchmaking is hugely flawed. All you need to know is matching times of each ally and you can easily both avoid each other AND pilot matches the way you want. Being the forum i can't make names, but there have been 2-3 allies since season 1 literally controlling all master matches to their advantage, sending their lapdogs on proper scheduled matching times to fight against allies being not part of the "SISTEM" representing a threat.
All this time, you at Kabam thought to be controlling Seasons at your wish while truth is the system is so easy to manipulate that 99% of allies cheat one way or another.

3) +/- rating showing up during defence placement leading to easily trackable opponents leading into colluding.
Why? what is the utility of knowing the rating gain or loss before starting the war? all it does is allow allies to find their matches and make their able to collude, set up, and even trade a result they need.

EXAMPLE: Ally A, top 3 master, abusing 1) and 2) to get sorted against a platinum 2 ally.

Ally A officer pm to Ally B officer: Hello, we are going to set a no diversity defence full of the worst defenders (5 korgs, 5 imiw, 5 medusas every bg). You won't be able to do even 50 nodes per bg. But if you agree to leave path 5 untouched we can give you normal defence so you ll be able to clear bosses and not ruin your season.

THIS is another exploit going on since forever. Standing no chanches, lower allies are also threatened into an even worse scenario: not being able to clear bosses hence ruin completely their season.

4) Allies colluding in the last days with other allies unable to gain anything anymore
Being able to control matching, friendly allies can agree on matching on purpose with one of them unable to gain any further advantage in the season, hence leaving 10,20, 30 nodes up for the others so they can jump from plat to masters or from top 7-10 to top 3, factually CHEATING into better placement. This has happened plenty in all seasons, expecially in S2, and S3, and is currently in the air for this one too.

SOLUTIONS:

There are several ways, but few very easy ones to stop this poop show tbh:

A) As you did for AQ, at the start of every season's week make leaders/officers able to select how many wars they intend to do giving them options to select which days (day 1, day 2, day 3). Give this application 12 hrs expiration, then use the other 12 hrs to elaborate a pool of allies. For every day, RANDOMLY sort matches by war rating, war tier and prestige.
You can even factor in latest results in the future (allies losing last wars will have a multiplier for a more favourable match).

B)Completely hide +/- gains in defence phase. Quicker partial solution which still will prevent collusion.

C)Defenders remaining is the only exploitable thing in wars aside matchmaking: make them count towards the direct point calculation against the opposing ally, but value it ZERO for season points. That way the only difference in scores will be given by offensive death, which consequently will show the overall best ally.

There's many more option which can be added to further best the system, but those imho are the top priority ones.

Legend

@Vale84

I did suggest this a while ago that I feel fixes the current situation.

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/92277/alliance-wars-season-overhaul#latest

Hatshipuh

Our alliance was docked today due to one player (as far as we know) violating TOS. The entire alliance was punished because of this one players low key deceitfulness to our team, and the mcoc community.

Now I’m all for punishing cheaters. That’s definitely fair and I hope cheaters continue to get punished.
However what is not fair is the other players in the alliance getting punished when we have no clue about this player doing these acts of cheating, whatever they may be. We invest thousands of dollars to compete for top rewards and then to get docked for something we had no clue was happening.

Kabam you need to be able to find a better way to take action against violators of TOS.
I will be asking for a refund of all my money spent this season because Kabam wants to surprise with a dock when we had no opportunity to take action ourself and kick the cheater(s). We invested countless dollars for nothing.

Kabam your system is flawed. Your actions are unjust and generalized. You show no sympathy for your community and many of your summoners would agree.

You need to be able to find a way to allow leadership or the entire alliance to find cheaters within the alliance or have some sort of warning system in place such as an in game indicator that our alliance is being watched due to suspicious activity or something.

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

Solrac_2

If cheaters were banned permanently, it would fix some of the issues.

DNA3000

Hatshipuh wrote: »

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

I hate to put it this bluntly, but it does in fact have zero weight on this decision. My understanding from multiple discussions with Kabam is that Kabam's position is that they are legally required to not disclose. I'm quite certain they are wrong in that belief (if they are right, literally everyone else in the gaming industry is wrong), but so long as they believe this is true there's literally no way for me or anyone else to convince them otherwise, and there's no argument players can make that will change their minds, because they simply believe they have no choice.

At this point, I believe only three things could change this policy. One: the people making this decision leave the company and other people take their place and override that decision. Two: a large enough municipality passes a law that somehow makes this disclosure mandatory, forcing disclosure. Three: Apple or the Google Play store or both make it a requirement to access the app stores, as occurred with lootbox odds.

I honestly wish I could think of another avenue, but I'm currently out of ideas that wouldn't get me banned.

Sirnoob2

DNA3000 wrote: »

Hatshipuh wrote: »

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

I hate to put it this bluntly, but it does in fact have zero weight on this decision. My understanding from multiple discussions with Kabam is that Kabam's position is that they are legally required to not disclose. I'm quite certain they are wrong in that belief (if they are right, literally everyone else in the gaming industry is wrong), but so long as they believe this is true there's literally no way for me or anyone else to convince them otherwise, and there's no argument players can make that will change their minds, because they simply believe they have no choice.

At this point, I believe only three things could change this policy. One: the people making this decision leave the company and other people take their place and override that decision. Two: a large enough municipality passes a law that somehow makes this disclosure mandatory, forcing disclosure. Three: Apple or the Google Play store or both make it a requirement to access the app stores, as occurred with lootbox odds.

I honestly wish I could think of another avenue, but I'm currently out of ideas that wouldn't get me banned.

Treat it like arena if they cheat in aw the get banned from participating in it

unknown

This content has been removed.

Undead

So we got punished today and the account who got banned only had 1 person log in from 1 device and no mods. I know for sure because it was a personal friend of mine. Sadly Kabam likely won't give any explanation for this ban. Really takes the win out of the sails.

Sungj

I know its frustrating but if one person cheats in a competitive alliance content then your entire alliance technically benefitted from it unbeknownst or not.

AxeCopFire

Undead wrote: »

So we got punished today and the account who got banned only had 1 person log in from 1 device and no mods. I know for sure because it was a personal friend of mine. Sadly Kabam likely won't give any explanation for this ban. Really takes the win out of the sails.

So like, if you were cheating and got caught and your close personal friend asked you "Bro, our whole alliance got penalized. Were you cheating?", you would tell the truth and say "yeah of course I was!"

Hint: The correct answer is "no I would lie, just like he did"

Hulksmasshh

Yeah

Hatshipuh wrote: »

Our alliance was docked today due to one player (as far as we know) violating TOS. The entire alliance was punished because of this one players low key deceitfulness to our team, and the mcoc community.

Now I’m all for punishing cheaters. That’s definitely fair and I hope cheaters continue to get punished.
However what is not fair is the other players in the alliance getting punished when we have no clue about this player doing these acts of cheating, whatever they may be. We invest thousands of dollars to compete for top rewards and then to get docked for something we had no clue was happening.

Kabam you need to be able to find a better way to take action against violators of TOS.
I will be asking for a refund of all my money spent this season because Kabam wants to surprise with a dock when we had no opportunity to take action ourself and kick the cheater(s). We invested countless dollars for nothing.

Kabam your system is flawed. Your actions are unjust and generalized. You show no sympathy for your community and many of your summoners would agree.

You need to be able to find a way to allow leadership or the entire alliance to find cheaters within the alliance or have some sort of warning system in place such as an in game indicator that our alliance is being watched due to suspicious activity or something.

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

Sorry but the precedent should go into restoring the lost points and rewards of opposing alliances who were robbed by the cheating alliance before looking into remedying those non-cheaters on a cheating alliance. I’m sure not everyone in a cheater alliance is in on it and there are several legit players, but the fact is those legit players benefit from the cheaters just as much anyone in the alliance. Alliances win together, lose together, cheat together in the AW system. If you’re sick of being caught by Kabam in a cheater alliance then I suggest finding a new one.

Hatshipuh

See this is where you’re wrong. Nobody knows who is cheating and who is not. An alliance doesn’t cheat together unless the players are aware and are in agreement on the cheating. I’m talking about someone cheating and nobody knowing and everyone gets punished. How does the whole alliance benefit from someone cheating their way through arena? Cuz that’s what happened.

Just saying Kabams system is flawed in this way and their punishment system is very lazy.

Hulksmasshh wrote: »

Yeah

Hatshipuh wrote: »

Our alliance was docked today due to one player (as far as we know) violating TOS. The entire alliance was punished because of this one players low key deceitfulness to our team, and the mcoc community.

Now I’m all for punishing cheaters. That’s definitely fair and I hope cheaters continue to get punished.
However what is not fair is the other players in the alliance getting punished when we have no clue about this player doing these acts of cheating, whatever they may be. We invest thousands of dollars to compete for top rewards and then to get docked for something we had no clue was happening.

Kabam you need to be able to find a better way to take action against violators of TOS.
I will be asking for a refund of all my money spent this season because Kabam wants to surprise with a dock when we had no opportunity to take action ourself and kick the cheater(s). We invested countless dollars for nothing.

Kabam your system is flawed. Your actions are unjust and generalized. You show no sympathy for your community and many of your summoners would agree.

You need to be able to find a way to allow leadership or the entire alliance to find cheaters within the alliance or have some sort of warning system in place such as an in game indicator that our alliance is being watched due to suspicious activity or something.

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

Sorry but the precedent should go into restoring the lost points and rewards of opposing alliances who were robbed by the cheating alliance before looking into remedying those non-cheaters on a cheating alliance. I’m sure not everyone in a cheater alliance is in on it and there are several legit players, but the fact is those legit players benefit from the cheaters just as much anyone in the alliance. Alliances win together, lose together, cheat together in the AW system. If you’re sick of being caught by Kabam in a cheater alliance then I suggest finding a new one.

DrFreaky

Yeah, this kind of thing must be change... 29 members can not be penalized bcuz of one guy, since the leader, officer and the others Have no idea that this fool is doing something that violate TOS.... Like you said... I have spent money on this War, bought all the Boosts Offer and now we are all ruined. Yeah, a refund should be fine then.

Worknprogress

I've been in the same situation and feel your pain, but also as someone who has lost wars this season and last season to alliances that a war or two after ours had points deductions while we still lost out on a large amount of season points, I can't really have much sympathy here

rwhack

So dude what should the alliance get that was piloted against? They still have a loss.

rwhack

DrFreaky wrote: »

Yeah, this kind of thing must be change... 29 members can not be penalized bcuz of one guy, since the leader, officer and the others Have no idea that this fool is doing something that violate TOS.... Like you said... I have spent money on this War, bought all the Boosts Offer and now we are all ruined. Yeah, a refund should be fine then.

So what about the alliance they beat by piloting?

DNA3000

Sirnoob2 wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Hatshipuh wrote: »

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

I hate to put it this bluntly, but it does in fact have zero weight on this decision. My understanding from multiple discussions with Kabam is that Kabam's position is that they are legally required to not disclose. I'm quite certain they are wrong in that belief (if they are right, literally everyone else in the gaming industry is wrong), but so long as they believe this is true there's literally no way for me or anyone else to convince them otherwise, and there's no argument players can make that will change their minds, because they simply believe they have no choice.

At this point, I believe only three things could change this policy. One: the people making this decision leave the company and other people take their place and override that decision. Two: a large enough municipality passes a law that somehow makes this disclosure mandatory, forcing disclosure. Three: Apple or the Google Play store or both make it a requirement to access the app stores, as occurred with lootbox odds.

I honestly wish I could think of another avenue, but I'm currently out of ideas that wouldn't get me banned.

Treat it like arena if they cheat in aw the get banned from participating in it

I would have no problem with making it the policy of the game that whenever a player violates the game's rules in a manner which requires penalizing their entire alliance that the offending player must be at least temporarily banned. It must never be the case that the alliance is penalized but the offending player is not. But that currently does not appear to be the case.

Doing so would indirectly indicate to alliance leaders who was ultimately responsible for the penalty. I don't know if that is why Kabam doesn't do this, but if so that's completely bananas.

GroundedWisdom

DrFreaky wrote: »

Yeah, this kind of thing must be change... 29 members can not be penalized bcuz of one guy, since the leader, officer and the others Have no idea that this fool is doing something that violate TOS.... Like you said... I have spent money on this War, bought all the Boosts Offer and now we are all ruined. Yeah, a refund should be fine then.

Technically speaking, they can. An Alliance is responsible as a team. It benefits from cheating as a collective, and adjustments are made because everyone receives the spoils of cheating. As for knowing who it is, that's a separate issue. However, you rise as a team and fall as a team.

CoatHang3r

Hatshipuh wrote: »

How does the whole alliance benefit from someone cheating their way through arena? Cuz that’s what happened.

1)Arena’s advance an account and by extension the ally, whether it’s units funding boosts, new champions being used in AW, or allowing a player more game time than he would be able to commit to on his own which gives an advantage.

2)Account sharing and third party apps are prohibited, Kabam has warned the community about this. This is covered here.

“Using these applications in Alliance Wars can have a negative result for your entire Alliance. This can include a ban for any Summoner that makes use of these applications, as well as a loss of points from your Season Score, and a loss of War Rating, for any Alliance that exhibits the use of these applications.

Help keep The Contest an honest place. Do not use any 3rd Party Software or Scripts.”
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/47681/reminder-about-the-use-of-3rd-party-software#latest

“We are continually improving the methods that we use for the detection of cheating, including “piloting”, and also continue to refine the manner in which we address behaviours such as this. We will be taking a more aggressive stance, and escalating the punishments to individuals who we have found guilty of piloting going forward, including semi-permanent, and permanent in-game bans.”

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/94671/protect-yourself-against-piloting-bans#latest

Hulksmasshh

Hatshipuh wrote: »

See this is where you’re wrong. Nobody knows who is cheating and who is not. An alliance doesn’t cheat together unless the players are aware and are in agreement on the cheating. I’m talking about someone cheating and nobody knowing and everyone gets punished. How does the whole alliance benefit from someone cheating their way through arena? Cuz that’s what happened.

Just saying Kabams system is flawed in this way and their punishment system is very lazy.

Hulksmasshh wrote: »

Yeah

Hatshipuh wrote: »

Our alliance was docked today due to one player (as far as we know) violating TOS. The entire alliance was punished because of this one players low key deceitfulness to our team, and the mcoc community.

Now I’m all for punishing cheaters. That’s definitely fair and I hope cheaters continue to get punished.
However what is not fair is the other players in the alliance getting punished when we have no clue about this player doing these acts of cheating, whatever they may be. We invest thousands of dollars to compete for top rewards and then to get docked for something we had no clue was happening.

Kabam you need to be able to find a better way to take action against violators of TOS.
I will be asking for a refund of all my money spent this season because Kabam wants to surprise with a dock when we had no opportunity to take action ourself and kick the cheater(s). We invested countless dollars for nothing.

Kabam your system is flawed. Your actions are unjust and generalized. You show no sympathy for your community and many of your summoners would agree.

You need to be able to find a way to allow leadership or the entire alliance to find cheaters within the alliance or have some sort of warning system in place such as an in game indicator that our alliance is being watched due to suspicious activity or something.

The amount of money and stress that goes into seasons seems to have no weight to your decision making.

Sorry but the precedent should go into restoring the lost points and rewards of opposing alliances who were robbed by the cheating alliance before looking into remedying those non-cheaters on a cheating alliance. I’m sure not everyone in a cheater alliance is in on it and there are several legit players, but the fact is those legit players benefit from the cheaters just as much anyone in the alliance. Alliances win together, lose together, cheat together in the AW system. If you’re sick of being caught by Kabam in a cheater alliance then I suggest finding a new one.

Hypocrital statment, you claim “Nobody knows who is cheating or not” but you seem to know for certain the Alliance War dock was just for an arena bot. Okay.. if you really have no idea then you don’t know if banned members are just lying to cover up. The benefit of the doubt should go to legit alliances and players not the word of cheaters. Bottom line, Kabam caught you guys cheating and there’s no deserved sympathy for the act of cheating.

Hopefully Kabam can improve this system because cheating alliances are ruining the whole integrity of seasons when cheaters get away with the same rewards they would’ve gotten had they not been caught, and opposing legit alliances get no compensation for being cheated against.

MrMaat

one person cheat...
your whole alliance potentially benifits...
points scored cus of it...
maybe wins you got cus of it...

so unfortuantly the whole ally needs to be punished.
FRUIT OF THE POISONED TREE.
one person cheats....
the whole tree is poisoned...
all the fruit needs to be discarded....

DrFreaky

GroundedWisdom wrote: »

DrFreaky wrote: »

Yeah, this kind of thing must be change... 29 members can not be penalized bcuz of one guy, since the leader, officer and the others Have no idea that this fool is doing something that violate TOS.... Like you said... I have spent money on this War, bought all the Boosts Offer and now we are all ruined. Yeah, a refund should be fine then.

Technically speaking, they can. An Alliance is responsible as a team. It benefits from cheating as a collective, and adjustments are made because everyone receives the spoils of cheating. As for knowing who it is, that's a separate issue. However, you rise as a team and fall as a team.

1) Top alliance doesn't depend or care of a player or other, No ones tolerate, if ur cheating ur out, and another toptier player comes. No one wants the benefits from cheating, as we can play legit and get the same benefits. theses guys are spending money on this war, so no one wants cheaters on the Group as they can all have a legit player. I want to fall as a team when we are all aware what we did not when only one fool did.