Solutions to Players Disgruntled from Hackers
Ivanka
Member Posts: 236 ★
I posted something related to this and the thread was closed on the grounds that I was posting about my personal dissatisfaction with customer service resolution.
But it's not about me, really. So... if that's an issue I won't mention myself at all in this post. The problem is much bigger than me. This is about the future of the game. It's about Kabam's ability to turn a profit. It's about new players being turned off on spending in the game which of course threatens the sustainability of the whole thing and threatens all of us.
Cheating recently has become rampant. There's no better way to see this than to go to the leaderboard of arenas in the Beginner Bracket. It's gotten so bad and seems to be getting worse. I've reported 100 accounts but Kabam has only banned maybe 10% of them. Even though many other are very *very* obviously cheating. In my opinion all accounts in the leaderboards of arenas should be scrutinized. Any accounts less than a month old that has finished Labyrinth of Legends and has multiple duped 5 star champions is obviously cheating... look at their account history... if they haven't spent $100,000+ on units to get these champions, they are cheating. Ban them.
But this is only the first step.
Much more important is to send the right message to your userbase. Competing in the featured hero arenas in Beginner Bracket, your first month playing the game, is NOT an easy thing to do. You almost have to spend money to be able to do it because you need to get 3 or more 4* champions and you need units to refresh them. And grinding in these arenas is not easy. It takes a lot of work.
It's possible to play MCOC without spending any money and still have a lot of fun doing it. But the business model of this game, and other games like it, is obviously that if you want to get ahead and get a little advantage... then you need to spend. Spending money is supposed to give you a leg up on the competition and unlock certain features, get new characters earlier etc. 90% of players never spend anything or they spend very little and Kabam knows this. It's how all freemium games work. But then the 10% who do spend, and especially the 1% who are willing to spend a lot- they make the whole thing profitable and they make it possible for the rest of us to enjoy this game for free.
So this is VERY important. I hope Kabam is listening.
The LAST thing you want is for a brand new player that is willing to spend money on this game to be discouraged from playing. You don't want the first message that a player learns to be that there is no point in spending money because the players who have the REAL advantage are not those who opened their wallets... but rather those who cheated the system. You should never penalize someone who spent money on the game for not getting as many points as someone who is cheating and using mods or exploits. Right now... this is unfortunately what Kabam is doing.
The Beginner Bracket right now has so many cheaters in it that I went through and counted. In the Spider-man Stark Enhanced, Spider-Man Miles Morales, and Vulture arenas I assure you I am not exaggerating when I say that between 60 and 80% of all players in the top 50 are cheaters. That means that somewhere between 35 and 40 honest players- players who VERY likely already spent real money on this game in the first month that they were playing it and would therefore be likely to spend more in the future- are being cheated out of rewards that they deserved. These players are going to get the message that they should not spend money on the game. These players are going to be discouraged. Many of them might quit. Meanwhile... most of the cheaters are still active. And I'm sure none of them are spending money on the game.
There are two good solutions to this problem.
Solution 1:
I think this is better but it is more difficult to implement. Look at all of the top 50 leaderboards for featured champions from at least the past month (July), or however long this cheating problem has become so serious. Carefully review all of these accounts. Any account that is suspicious (they have Ultron Classic, they have ANY 5* champions, they have multiple duped 4* champions that they did not earn from basic arenas, other strange or anomalous features) should be flagged as possible or probable cheaters.... and the leaderboards should be recalculated with these players removed from contention. Rewards should then be issued to any accounts that were cheated out of a top 50 finish. But this requires a more aggressive prosecution of cheaters than Kabam has been able to muster so far.
Solution 2:
This one is easier to implement, and maybe better in some ways because apparently it's too difficult to detect this cheating software as I've seen many cheaters go weeks without getting caught.
Instead of recalculating the leaderboards, simply go back and issue the featured champion and 5* shards to everyone who finished in the top 100 or top 200. This would only be fair considering roughly 75% of the winners are cheating. It would help restore good faith and encourage those players who spent money to get these prizes that future investments will not be wasted because of the poor conduct of other players.
I sincerely hope Kabam will consider taking these steps because I honestly love this game and I don't want to see it destroyed or rendered unprofitable.
But it's not about me, really. So... if that's an issue I won't mention myself at all in this post. The problem is much bigger than me. This is about the future of the game. It's about Kabam's ability to turn a profit. It's about new players being turned off on spending in the game which of course threatens the sustainability of the whole thing and threatens all of us.
Cheating recently has become rampant. There's no better way to see this than to go to the leaderboard of arenas in the Beginner Bracket. It's gotten so bad and seems to be getting worse. I've reported 100 accounts but Kabam has only banned maybe 10% of them. Even though many other are very *very* obviously cheating. In my opinion all accounts in the leaderboards of arenas should be scrutinized. Any accounts less than a month old that has finished Labyrinth of Legends and has multiple duped 5 star champions is obviously cheating... look at their account history... if they haven't spent $100,000+ on units to get these champions, they are cheating. Ban them.
But this is only the first step.
Much more important is to send the right message to your userbase. Competing in the featured hero arenas in Beginner Bracket, your first month playing the game, is NOT an easy thing to do. You almost have to spend money to be able to do it because you need to get 3 or more 4* champions and you need units to refresh them. And grinding in these arenas is not easy. It takes a lot of work.
It's possible to play MCOC without spending any money and still have a lot of fun doing it. But the business model of this game, and other games like it, is obviously that if you want to get ahead and get a little advantage... then you need to spend. Spending money is supposed to give you a leg up on the competition and unlock certain features, get new characters earlier etc. 90% of players never spend anything or they spend very little and Kabam knows this. It's how all freemium games work. But then the 10% who do spend, and especially the 1% who are willing to spend a lot- they make the whole thing profitable and they make it possible for the rest of us to enjoy this game for free.
So this is VERY important. I hope Kabam is listening.
The LAST thing you want is for a brand new player that is willing to spend money on this game to be discouraged from playing. You don't want the first message that a player learns to be that there is no point in spending money because the players who have the REAL advantage are not those who opened their wallets... but rather those who cheated the system. You should never penalize someone who spent money on the game for not getting as many points as someone who is cheating and using mods or exploits. Right now... this is unfortunately what Kabam is doing.
The Beginner Bracket right now has so many cheaters in it that I went through and counted. In the Spider-man Stark Enhanced, Spider-Man Miles Morales, and Vulture arenas I assure you I am not exaggerating when I say that between 60 and 80% of all players in the top 50 are cheaters. That means that somewhere between 35 and 40 honest players- players who VERY likely already spent real money on this game in the first month that they were playing it and would therefore be likely to spend more in the future- are being cheated out of rewards that they deserved. These players are going to get the message that they should not spend money on the game. These players are going to be discouraged. Many of them might quit. Meanwhile... most of the cheaters are still active. And I'm sure none of them are spending money on the game.
There are two good solutions to this problem.
Solution 1:
I think this is better but it is more difficult to implement. Look at all of the top 50 leaderboards for featured champions from at least the past month (July), or however long this cheating problem has become so serious. Carefully review all of these accounts. Any account that is suspicious (they have Ultron Classic, they have ANY 5* champions, they have multiple duped 4* champions that they did not earn from basic arenas, other strange or anomalous features) should be flagged as possible or probable cheaters.... and the leaderboards should be recalculated with these players removed from contention. Rewards should then be issued to any accounts that were cheated out of a top 50 finish. But this requires a more aggressive prosecution of cheaters than Kabam has been able to muster so far.
Solution 2:
This one is easier to implement, and maybe better in some ways because apparently it's too difficult to detect this cheating software as I've seen many cheaters go weeks without getting caught.
Instead of recalculating the leaderboards, simply go back and issue the featured champion and 5* shards to everyone who finished in the top 100 or top 200. This would only be fair considering roughly 75% of the winners are cheating. It would help restore good faith and encourage those players who spent money to get these prizes that future investments will not be wasted because of the poor conduct of other players.
I sincerely hope Kabam will consider taking these steps because I honestly love this game and I don't want to see it destroyed or rendered unprofitable.
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Comments
Solution 1. Assume that the top 50 players are cheating. Review the accounts to verify that they are cheating and then act accordingly. Examples of suspicious accounts include players with multiple duped 4-star heroes that they did not earn from arenas -- meaning they bought a bunch of crystals to get their roster -- as well as players with any 5-star champion.
Players with simple rank 1/10 un-duped 4-stars such as those from RoL who modded their way to the top of the ranks with their 300 match unbeaten streak have nothing to worry about. That's not suspicious at all.
Solution 2. Assume that the top 100 or 200 players are cheating. Reward all 200 the featured hero plus 5-star shards. This is viewed as the better solution since many of the top 200 can get their featured hero duped plus additional 5-star shards.
I don't think these two solutions would be taken seriously.
So... nothing important, really. It totally makes sense that they would completely ignore my suggestions.
Though action was too slow to make a difference for me and any other players who shared the bracket with me last month... in the last arena that I competed in in Beginner's Bracket I combed through the leaderboards and found ONLY 1 obvious cheater. I will open a ticket to report him.
This is a huge improvement compared to 2 weeks ago when I found no less than 30 just among the top 50 (and couldn't search for many accounts because they were written in Chinese or Russian characters- so there were probably more).
So... kudos to Kabam for cracking down.
However, the equally serious problem of players screwed out of prizes they fought for and earned remains. Please do something about this.