Today's Announcement Discussion Thread

Hey Summoners,

We've just posted an announcement for all of our players here: http://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/31133/an-important-announcement-from-the-mcoc-team

We know that you'll have some comments, and we want to hear them. Please be aware, that since this is an ongoing investigation, there will be questions that we are not able to answer at this time.

Comments

Thawnim

So, was it a bug or a hack?

p.s. I applaud the transparency.

Donyb

So I’m assuming that this is the manipulation of defender rating through boosts and suicides that we’ve be bringing up since 15.0? And that every ally has been forced to used to stay competitive with the aw scoring system?

Firemouth

So the alliances and players who benefited from this will have any resources taken back, lose champions they bought using the rewards and temporary bans, permanate bans, depending on there history, and all alliances that lost out to this error/ cheat will be awarded the prizes they should of had?
I guess this won’t get answered by the powers to be as it’s to the point and requires a direct answer.

Kabam Miike

Thawnim wrote: »

So, was it a bug or a hack?

p.s. I applaud the transparency.

It wasn't really either, it was more so that some very technically inclined folks may have been able to scrape some data from within the game mode that could have revealed this information to them. We do want to reiterate that this was restricted to the Alliance Wars information we referenced.

Kabam Miike

Donyb wrote: »

So I’m assuming that this is the manipulation of defender rating through boosts and suicides that we’ve be bringing up since 15.0? And that every ally has been forced to used to stay competitive with the aw scoring system?

No - what you're referring to is a completely different aspect of Alliance Wars but is one that we are looking into in terms of feature design. That is not an exploit, and is not against any rules. What we are discussing here is something very different.

Run477

So just so I understand, does this mean that all defenders will now be visible and we will see defender rating at beginning of war?

[Deleted User]

Firemouth wrote: »

So the alliances and players who benefited from this will have any resources taken back, lose champions they bought using the rewards and temporary bans, permanate bans, depending on there history, and all alliances that lost out to this error/ cheat will be awarded the prizes they should of had?
I guess this won’t get answered by the powers to be as it’s to the point and requires a direct answer.

Right now we can't comment too much on an ongoing investigation, but we have rules and banning policies in place for those that use exploits or cheat within The Contest. The scope of anyone that would possibly be impacted here is also very limited, due to the nature of how this information was accessible.

It was however quite important to us that we share our findings in a transparent way, as well as advise why you will soon see some temporary changes in AW.

Apache

Was this the cause for all the Maintance?

Thawnim

Ad0ra_ wrote: »

Firemouth wrote: »

So the alliances and players who benefited from this will have any resources taken back, lose champions they bought using the rewards and temporary bans, permanate bans, depending on there history, and all alliances that lost out to this error/ cheat will be awarded the prizes they should of had?
I guess this won’t get answered by the powers to be as it’s to the point and requires a direct answer.

Right now we can't comment too much on an ongoing investigation, but we have rules and banning policies in place for those that use exploits or cheat within The Contest. The scope of anyone that would possibly be impacted here is also very limited, due to the nature of how this information was accessible.

It was however quite important to us that we share our findings in a transparent way, as well as advise why you will soon see some temporary changes in AW.

So, these changes will be in effect immediately?

[Deleted User]

Run477 wrote: »

So just so I understand, does this mean that all defenders will now be visible and we will see defender rating at beginning of war?

Not defender rating as a BG or anything. You’ll just see their PI, Class, rarity, and champion now.

OLLYG

My alliance has lost the last 7 wars unbelievably considering we're a great team we might lose one here and there I'm guessing this could have been the reason?

Plantesan

So does this mean you are turning the higher tier war matches into low end tier matches (a la we can see the opponents champs?)

If so, why? It’s bad enough we are having to bend over backwards for you folks to make diversity a thing...now you are making it that much more of a temporary cakewalk by letting people adjust their teams that best counter the new nodes.

UpGrade1_1

So just to get this right
Some people modified their displayed PI and DEF Rating to AW‘s?!

Kabam Miike

Apache wrote: »

Was this the cause for all the Maintance?

No. The Emergency Maintenances were caused by a server load issue due to Tests of Valor. Emergency Maintenance are only caused when there are severe issues that are causing game servers to crash. We do not enter an emergency maintenance state to perform changes to content. This is what our scheduled Tuesday maintenances are for. In the past, we have had to enter an unscheduled Maintenance to perform changes to content, but have always given as much notice as we possibly can. We do not make changes to content without letting you all know first.

Panchulon21

Oh man!

hungama01

What kind of exploit u are technically pointing out...
we aren't able to understand...
do u mean alliance sharing their pi or diversity... can you clearly make us undeestand....

Khead03

In my opinion all info needs to be hidden. From champion class and pi. War isnt about skill atleast hide that in the top tiers so maybe people don't have it so easy to get 100%. I'm glad changes are always being made but in my opinion skill should be brought back into the higher tiers

Micklownick

one snide comment and then back to constructive...

Cupcake Wars!! YEAHH!!!

okay, will opening up all information on AW maps help narrow down these 'technically inclined' folks and help you identity them faster? Or just opening it up to everyone so no one can get the info while you close the 'leak' so to speak?

Can I respectfully say cupcake wars one more time?

BDLH

this is a horrible change if only a small number of users had access to this. War is already brokenly easy to clear and defender rating, going suicides, using boosts, etc, already determines the winner in all the upper tiers. If you reveal every champ on every node then there is 0 skill or competition left. You take 5 min to add up the total PI of each side and the winner is known before you start a single fight. If it's a small scale issue, you're further breaking an already awful war and taking away what little skill or competitiveness that still remained. Making it worse for 99% of the players to slow down 1% who can data mine defender data sounds like a good idea to your dev team?

Gamer

What is this epliot dont understand it

Kabam Miike

hungama01 wrote: »

What kind of exploit u are technically pointing out...
we aren't able to understand...
do u mean alliance sharing their pi or diversity... can you clearly make us undeestand....

The information that would have been possible to be scraped through the use of this exploit could have allowed access to the Champion information of the opposing Alliance in AW. This included the identity of Champions that were placed as Defenders, their rank, rarity, and PI.

Degirmencioglu

Isn’t these the same data miners everyone was praising for leaking game information? Yeah, okay. This is why I’m not playing AW. People are doing to much and are taking this game entirely too serious.

[Deleted User]

Thawnim wrote: »

Ad0ra_ wrote: »

Firemouth wrote: »

So the alliances and players who benefited from this will have any resources taken back, lose champions they bought using the rewards and temporary bans, permanate bans, depending on there history, and all alliances that lost out to this error/ cheat will be awarded the prizes they should of had?
I guess this won’t get answered by the powers to be as it’s to the point and requires a direct answer.

Right now we can't comment too much on an ongoing investigation, but we have rules and banning policies in place for those that use exploits or cheat within The Contest. The scope of anyone that would possibly be impacted here is also very limited, due to the nature of how this information was accessible.

It was however quite important to us that we share our findings in a transparent way, as well as advise why you will soon see some temporary changes in AW.

So, these changes will be in effect immediately?

Not immediately - the changes will happen after next week's maintenance on Tuesday evening.

Firemouth

Ad0ra_ wrote: »

Firemouth wrote: »

So the alliances and players who benefited from this will have any resources taken back, lose champions they bought using the rewards and temporary bans, permanate bans, depending on there history, and all alliances that lost out to this error/ cheat will be awarded the prizes they should of had?
I guess this won’t get answered by the powers to be as it’s to the point and requires a direct answer.

Right now we can't comment too much on an ongoing investigation, but we have rules and banning policies in place for those that use exploits or cheat within The Contest. The scope of anyone that would possibly be impacted here is also very limited, due to the nature of how this information was accessible.

It was however quite important to us that we share our findings in a transparent way, as well as advise why you will soon see some temporary changes in AW.

Thank you for answering my question, I hope you do let us all know what the outcome from your findings are and what your actions are, this is the best way to discourage others from trying to take advantage in the future if they know you have a zero tolerance and will give out strong punishments.

[Deleted User]

OLLYG wrote: »

My alliance has lost the last 7 wars unbelievably considering we're a great team we might lose one here and there I'm guessing this could have been the reason?

No - that's not the case. There are some pretty big limitations on who could have possibly benefited from this information, and we are still working to confirm even that. Additionally, having access to this information wouldn't not have created 'unbelievable' losses. It's not a manipulation of game data, it would have just been possible to review certain stats for strategy planning purposes.

Micklownick

ForumGuy wrote: »

Wait wait wait, this "exploit" is gonna ban people?

I'm not one of the ones who used it, I didn't really know much about it because the way you changed war made me not care about it much anymore.

But back to the question I asked, should they really be banned for this? I'd just like reasons because it's there for us, they just understood it better than others I guess, wouldn't that be on your part and not theirs? Would be a whole alliance ban or warning or something?

Kinda funny that a guy who swears he wasn't doing this is banned. Granted this is annoying and yet a further detriment to AW....sigh...please make it fun again sometime soon....BUT on a positive note I hope you ban the living bejesus out of the players who made 'fixing' AW an even slower process due to this 'exploit'

VigotheCarpathian

Gamer wrote: »

What is this epliot dont understand it

Me either... This is very vague. Some clarity please

Kabam Miike

Plantesan wrote: »

So does this mean you are turning the higher tier war matches into low end tier matches (a la we can see the opponents champs?)

If so, why? It’s bad enough we are having to bend over backwards for you folks to make diversity a thing...now you are making it that much more of a temporary cakewalk by letting people adjust their teams that best counter the new nodes.

We know that this isn't the most elegant of solutions to this issue, but until we have completely investigated this possible exploit, and can put a fix in place to put an end to it, this solution will mean that no Alliance will be at a disadvantage because they are playing the mode legitimately.

Kabam Miike

Khead03 wrote: »

In my opinion all info needs to be hidden. From champion class and pi. War isnt about skill atleast hide that in the top tiers so maybe people don't have it so easy to get 100%. I'm glad changes are always being made but in my opinion skill should be brought back into the higher tiers

This isn't a long term solution, and we do plan on reinstating the hidden information in higher Tiers in Alliance Wars as soon as we can put a stop to this potential exploit. We are also still working on refinements to Alliance Wars, but that's a conversation for a different thread!

VêNDëTTå

Cheating is cheating! See ya!