What exactly is Kabam doing to fix cheating in AW?
Greywarden
Member Posts: 843 ★★★★
What I'd like to talk about is what is Kabam working on to ensure people aren't cheating in AW or rather, what are they planning to do to fix this? With the diversity fiasco you pledged to be more transparent, well I'm asking for transparency here. What exactly are you working on to fix cheating in AW? I won't even discuss AQ which is such an obvious whale milking fiesta that there is no hope to get anything done there.
The current 7 day bans aren't cutting it. Allowing people to cheat via fraudulent units, piloting, war match collusion, purposely tanking during the off season ruins the competitive spirit of AW seasons that Kabam says they want to protect. Let me be the millionth person to say you are not holding up that end of the bargain Kabam.
Cheating with the exception of extreme piloting is probably more rampant now than it was before seasons and the answer to that is 7 day bans?
These cheaters are allowed to get an unfair advantage against the "fair to play" community and then get an incredibly light slap on the wrist AND GET TO KEEP THEIR ILL-GOTTEN REWARDS?!?!?!? How exactly is that fair to the people who aren't cheating. The edge they received by cheating is actually being rewarded. You caught bank robbers and you're letting them keep all the cash they stole?!?!
As a "fair to play" player that occasionally spends a decent amount on the game I am very dissatisfied, what reason do I or anybody else in the community have NOT to cheat? If we all cheated we'd all get 7 day bans and all come back to our rewards we received via cheating. At least in this scenario we'd all be on equal ground.....
The gap the cheating community is getting over the rest of the community is only going to widen if you allow these types of things to continue. A few examples I have to try and fix this are below:
1) Increase bans to 30 days. This allows the rest of the player-base to catch up to people that cheated to get their rewards. If you're going to allow them to keep the rewards then you should make sure they can't use them for the current or upcoming season. You really only have to do this once and I'm sure the amount of people that cheat will go down dramatically.
2) On top of deducting points from alliances that cheat you should also freeze their point total for a week. Seems harsh and gives them no way to recover a reason but just like the above if you do this once you'll never have to do it again.
3) To deal with tanking during the off-season maybe taking away the +/- during the off-season or making them something really low like +1 or -1. Off-season ratings tanking is happening even in platinum, not just master!
The current 7 day bans aren't cutting it. Allowing people to cheat via fraudulent units, piloting, war match collusion, purposely tanking during the off season ruins the competitive spirit of AW seasons that Kabam says they want to protect. Let me be the millionth person to say you are not holding up that end of the bargain Kabam.
Cheating with the exception of extreme piloting is probably more rampant now than it was before seasons and the answer to that is 7 day bans?
These cheaters are allowed to get an unfair advantage against the "fair to play" community and then get an incredibly light slap on the wrist AND GET TO KEEP THEIR ILL-GOTTEN REWARDS?!?!?!? How exactly is that fair to the people who aren't cheating. The edge they received by cheating is actually being rewarded. You caught bank robbers and you're letting them keep all the cash they stole?!?!
As a "fair to play" player that occasionally spends a decent amount on the game I am very dissatisfied, what reason do I or anybody else in the community have NOT to cheat? If we all cheated we'd all get 7 day bans and all come back to our rewards we received via cheating. At least in this scenario we'd all be on equal ground.....
The gap the cheating community is getting over the rest of the community is only going to widen if you allow these types of things to continue. A few examples I have to try and fix this are below:
1) Increase bans to 30 days. This allows the rest of the player-base to catch up to people that cheated to get their rewards. If you're going to allow them to keep the rewards then you should make sure they can't use them for the current or upcoming season. You really only have to do this once and I'm sure the amount of people that cheat will go down dramatically.
2) On top of deducting points from alliances that cheat you should also freeze their point total for a week. Seems harsh and gives them no way to recover a reason but just like the above if you do this once you'll never have to do it again.
3) To deal with tanking during the off-season maybe taking away the +/- during the off-season or making them something really low like +1 or -1. Off-season ratings tanking is happening even in platinum, not just master!
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Comments
Collusion: just need to filter 2* wars. Could improve the way search and matching work so it is more difficult to manipulate.
Tanking off-season: I see no problem with this tactic. Its a week or two. Anyone has the choice to do it. There r drawbacks.
If they are transparent in what they are doing, they would then be essentially telling the criminals what to look out for. It would be like forcing police officers to be in uniform while going under cover. They know that the player base use social media to communicate literally every aspect of this game. As soon as one player knows that they are looking for ____ when scanning for cheaters, then the cheaters learn how to continue without doing <same> to get caught.
If they are not transparent, then the community assumes nothing is being done because we can't see anything happening. The court of public opinion is ruled by visibility. Unless the cheaters are strung up in the neighborhood courtyard, then every one assumes nothing is being done.
The latter is typically how most companies operate, and they can do this through the earned trust of their customers. Without the trust (like in Kabam's case), we cannot assume they are doing anything because we haven't been given a reason to trust they are.
In the current state of the Kabam/Player relationship, IMO they only way Kabam could have been able to dig themselves out of their current hole would have been a public flogging of MXIV. Unfortunately, that wouldn't have the long-term effect simply because it would have been Kabam caving to a mob's wishes.
Kabam, damned if they do, damned if they don't...
People know when peeps get banned esp those in top alliances. The question though is whether the ban durations are reasonable. Since investigation process cannot be disclosed, we can only assume the duration reflects the severity.
As for top allies, I see not just one but many that need looked into. You dont really know much about recent scandal if you think ur suggestion woulda done much. Several top alliances disbanded due to bans recently and in the past.
I couldn’t disagree more. Nobodies saying “we need kabam’s ways of finding cheaters and their entire process!” We are saying that kabam should be more open with who gets banned. When someone gets caught piloting for example. Don’t say “an alliance member of yours has cheated we aren’t telling you who lol”. Say “X and Y members in your alliance have been caught piloting.”
Then it’s up to the alliance what to do with them. Because at the moment people just aren’t owning up to being the one who cheated. Every day on reddit and the forum it’s “someone in my alliance cheated, we don’t know who, they aren’t telling us who they are, it’s a really bad environment and the alliance might disband to prevent further deductions.”
It wouldn’t be like police officers having to be in uniform while undercover, it’s more like them carrying out their investigation and after all of it saying we arrested this guy. At the moment it’s like if someone in a company stole from them and the police just said “someone in your company stole from you, as a result we will not tell you who did it but we will take some of your product away from you.”
We need 2* wars removed completely. (remove to +/- rating and give reduced points for weaker champs)
We need to actually do something about those who are still piloting.
Fair point.
But I disagree with the "let the ally sort it out" simply because piloting and cheating are often ally-driven. Yes, the ally leadership should be made aware of the offending members, but it should be up to Kabam to handle punishments.
Damnit, I came here to say that!
We need to distinguish punishments from penalties. When one or more players in an alliance does something prohibited by the game during an alliance event, the alliance improperly benefited from that and it is the alliance that is penalized by Kabam. As a completely separate issue, if a specific player breaks the TOS then Kabam should also punish that player for breaking the rules.
But alliances are managed by the players, and the players can and do have the right to decide who can be members of that alliance. Alliance officers have 100% control over who joins and who leaves or is kicked out forcibly. As it is the players who are both responsible for and have full authority over membership, the players should know when the misconduct of a player is negatively affecting the alliance. They should still be able to "sort it out" when it comes to players that are acting against the best interests of the alliance. If Kabam won't inform alliances of player misconduct that is penalizing the entire alliance, then it is Kabam itself that is literally responsible for the penalties being assessed to players that are not doing anything wrong themselves.
If only Kabam knows the source of the penalties and Kabam doesn't act to eliminate the source of those penalties upon other players, then Kabam is the one at fault for the problem by definition. Only people with both knowledge to act and the power to act can be held responsible for anything. The players have the power to act but not the knowledge to act. Kabam has both but isn't acting to protect innocent players from penalties they cannot avoid.
There's no issue with tanking on the offseason, there's nothing really at stake in the off season other than shards and some war rating. As I have stated in another post, no alliance is entitled to face a strong defense. There is a huge difference between colluding with an ally to place a weak defense to give the other ally insane multiple war points for winning with 0 deaths, and an ally deciding on their own to throw wars because they do not want to go hard to win. Understand the distinction
I don't think there is a specific issue with deliberately losing a war either. It might violate the spirit of competition on paper, but it isn't against the rules to deliberately lose one war. The problem with collusion is not that one side is giving up, which is how some portrayed the issue. The problem is that one side is deliberately handing the other side a lot of free points in exchange for getting a lot of free points in return. You can give up if you want to give up: there's no rule that says you must put maximum effort into ever war and there's no way to police throwing a match anyway: it isn't hard to simply not fight well and spend nothing.
as for 2* wars, that's easy — search for opponent after defence is placed, and search till you find decent opponent +- one tier from current in plat+ and the same tier for lower alliances. what could be easier?
I don't think you understand the 2* problem. You just handed colluding alliances a collusion tool.
For sure. There is a difference between the two, one being perfectly ok and the other really giving an ally a completely unfair advantage and a ton of free season points
If the game matches alliances based on rating and how strong the defense that is placed is, then you don't have to directly contact other colluders at all. Every top tier alliance that places 2* defenses will now get matched with other alliances that place 2* defenses because that's the only fair match within their tier, and since there's no reasonable reason to place 2* defenses except if you intend to play point games, you can then settle the terms after matching has taken place.
But I shouldn't have assumed that the intent was to look for matches based on the strength of the defense placed, because that's not obvious. In general, it is highly problematic to require defense placement prior to matching unless you intend to use that information as part of matching because that incurs a very high cost: it takes alliances a significant amount of time generally to fully place an entire defense. You could change the way war set up works to have saved defensive placements or other ways to accelerate this, but then you're no longer within the realm of easy to implement solutions.
They're still going strong.