Alliance Wars: Regarding recent actions taken on Alliances
Maximus_Spankerson
Member Posts: 445 ★★
While many applaud recent action Kabam has taken on a number of alliances stemming from various war infractions or feel like punishments haven't gone far enough, I would like to take a moment and explore this topic a bit further. Specifically, when punitive action was taken on entire alliance for deeds of an individual member, without revealing a sliver of details to the leader and officers.
What Kabam has done here was institute a form of collective punishment framework. As in, attempting to discourage individuals from violating terms of service by threatening to punish entire alliance for their deeds. That is Kabam's solution to creating a fair and competitive environment for their ecosystem -- holding players hostage. Whoever you are reading this post, you can very well be next. All the effort, planning, resources and, yes, in many cases, money you put in to reach that next war tier can go down the drain at any moment due to action of any one of 29 other individuals in your alliance. You will be punished through no fault of your own having done nothing wrong. I am sorry, but how is this EVER ok?. Kabam spins this as an action against the alliance, not an individual. That, of course, could not be farther from the truth. Just ask the 29 individuals who have no idea what just happened and why.
Instead of building controls to and properly designing their ecosystem, they allow season 1 pilot wars results stand. And now, they are "making an example" by punishing entire alliances for actions of a single member.
Easier said than done you say? Not really.
1) If this is a championship, create brackets and make alliances face each other to determine champion and order underneath (eliminates all colluding).
2) Either fully eliminate account sharing or legitimize it on limited basis. This "Account sharing is against ToS, but we are not gonna do anything about it unless you play AW" stance is amateur hour...
All of this is beside the point. Kabam must immediately revisit this recent action and have a dialog with leaders of effected alliances.
Disclaimer: my alliance was not a part of this action, but many of my in game friends were. Some are fantastic and truly honorable individuals who do not deserve this.
What Kabam has done here was institute a form of collective punishment framework. As in, attempting to discourage individuals from violating terms of service by threatening to punish entire alliance for their deeds. That is Kabam's solution to creating a fair and competitive environment for their ecosystem -- holding players hostage. Whoever you are reading this post, you can very well be next. All the effort, planning, resources and, yes, in many cases, money you put in to reach that next war tier can go down the drain at any moment due to action of any one of 29 other individuals in your alliance. You will be punished through no fault of your own having done nothing wrong. I am sorry, but how is this EVER ok?. Kabam spins this as an action against the alliance, not an individual. That, of course, could not be farther from the truth. Just ask the 29 individuals who have no idea what just happened and why.
Instead of building controls to and properly designing their ecosystem, they allow season 1 pilot wars results stand. And now, they are "making an example" by punishing entire alliances for actions of a single member.
Easier said than done you say? Not really.
1) If this is a championship, create brackets and make alliances face each other to determine champion and order underneath (eliminates all colluding).
2) Either fully eliminate account sharing or legitimize it on limited basis. This "Account sharing is against ToS, but we are not gonna do anything about it unless you play AW" stance is amateur hour...
All of this is beside the point. Kabam must immediately revisit this recent action and have a dialog with leaders of effected alliances.
Disclaimer: my alliance was not a part of this action, but many of my in game friends were. Some are fantastic and truly honorable individuals who do not deserve this.
9
Comments
In football Just imagine an individual getting a 10 yard penalty rather than the team.
How would penalty kicks in soccer work? I mean the goal keeper wasn’t party to the infraction right?
The pitcher in baseball balks so why does they rest of the team have to pay the consequences?
Collective punishment (per your citation) is an act of retaliation that extends beyong parties involved. Just how is MCOC retaliating against parties not involved in the team sport where cheating took place?
It’s heartbreaking for all your efforts over a 2 month span to be wasted over reasons unknown.
It’s heartbreaking for all your efforts over a 2 month span to be wasted over reasons unknown.
Then they can form cheaters alliances and mess up their own game experience.
I disagree at using team sport analogy here. When an individual athlete is caught for using performance enhancing drugs, he gets suspended. The team does suffer by the virtue of that athletes absence, but that's all. Ever heard of an NFL team lose season standings because players get caught for steroids? Rarely do results of games get overturned (if ever), even if one team unfairly won on a missed penalty. So, no, this analogy doesn't work here. Not to mention, everyone knows why the team is being penalized.
I truly hope you are that sure in each and everyone of your 29 loosely affiliated alliance mates and none of them do anything that will effect you... regardless of choices you make..
To be honest, I still have my doubts that these cases are the result of one person cheating. It usually involves a number. I wouldn't say always. However, more often than not. It's also hard to believe that no one was aware of anything. It can happen, but it seems to be the number one argument on here.
yup I would want to know automatically know if someone is a cheater in my alliance, these days people can just show there shiny 2 r5 5* and can easily get into any alliance.
also people can name change to run away from anything they did in the pass. all it takes is some collective group to keep tabs on that person.
There was a person who used 1,000+ units of aq potions from alliance mate who sent them so they can finish there path. Died to R3 hood using a trinity...he had a r5 blade. this is Tier 1 war.
After he was booted, he threaten to exposed defense and even said he thought about just leaving mid war to leave.
Luckily there was pics and also video proof of him dieing and getting his team wiped.
the news spread to other top allainces and when he was looked up his name was gone.
in game name was changed, line was deleted, so basically he went on to take a new identity and joined some random alliance to hide out and get rewards.
they had to track his name down by looking as past wars and u can see that person new name.
but hey people don't want people branded but u don't know what kind of people ur recruiting or what they have done.
@VimesVonlip, you are right. In 2* wars, every alliance member was a willing participant and, thus, complicit. I am talking about actions due to one individual's alleged ToS violation -- without details or explanation.
However, I wish kabam would talk about whether they actually thought what they were doing to dissuade cheaters worked. Just look at a recent example, the punishment actually made it easier to get higher rewards. A lower war rating means easier matches, punishing lower rated alliances and making the alliance in question gain as much, if not more points than they lost.
What sort of a deterrent is a punishment that doesn’t make any difference to their final result? It baffles me how any post even slightly critical of the method they used was shut down immediately. Some posts actually don’t break any forum rules, they are just “deemed unconstructive” by mods. I want the game to get better, I want less cheaters. I think the conversation about cheating, (not specific names or players called out) is a very constructive and important one.
I expect this post will be deleted and this thread shut down with the same copy and paste response about how they have made their policy clear. It’s a really sad time in the game at the moment.
I agree with this analogy except for the fact the refs dont whisper to each other who the infraction is on and penalize the team without the coach having any idea who did something wrong lol.
With actions of someone's alliance (one or more ppl), the other alliance loses ALL their points, the entire opposition alliance loses rewards, so why shouldn't the cheating alliance lose all they got? Just tell me why?
The position of not sharing details of punishment is ok and it works where the actual punishment is severe enough, like other companies BAN players for cheating. What is being done here, almost feels like the cheaters are being cheered and motivated to cheat/spend more because why not? Money talks.
If you want a punishment that works, strip 8 million points away and leave the war rating the same. Now they are facing the same competition but wont be able to climb back up.
If an alliance cheats then they should forfeit all AW rewards and matchmaking until the season concludes period.
Everyone gets it except the people who are in charge.
Stripping a lot of points and leaving war rating intact does penalize the alliance more than dropping war rating and doesn't have the side effect of allowing the penalized alliance to fight weaker competition which softens the penalty, but it can be difficult to tune the penalty by tier, and the penalty shouldn't just work for the top tier alliances: it should theoretically work against any alliance at any tier.
I've been advocating a multiplier penalty since season one. You can still penalize season points (you should at the very least take away the points they earned in any way they are found cheating in, plus some punitive extra amount of points as penalty), but you also slap a multiplier penalty for a certain number of wars, say 0.5. Until that penalty expires, you only earn half the points you would otherwise earn, but you remain in the same tier facing the same competition. If you are in tier 1, you still get a x7 mutliplier, but then you also get hit with the 0.5 penalty. In net effect, you have only a 3.5 multipler.
If you are caught cheating in the last war of the season and you are hit with a six war multiplier penalty, that penalty carries over into the next season: you cannot shake it during the "off season." It specifically affects wars within the competitive season. It would be like serving out a suspension in sports: you can't serve those out during the off season. This ensures the full penalty is served out, even if you're caught cheating at the end of a season.
Well said
I wish I could say something helpful besides that I disagree strongly with Kabam's position in this matter, but the only thing I could say in your position is that unfortunately, because one of your members is probably lying, the others will have to pay for that lie until they stop breaking the rules or stop lying about it.
Beyond that, I don't know what else can be done besides trying to watch the other members fight in AW and try to divine out who might be piloting.