**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Comments
That’s a nuclear option I could get behind. Sucks for people actually taking a trip and doing it, but that has to be a very minimal amount of people. MOST of these magical trips have to be mercs
if someone "took a trip" to do the legend run before re-appearing at its original location, there is a high chance he gave its ID to a merc to do the legend run for him ! if you can't ban him, at least disqualify him for the legend run.
The fact is, most of the end game is "insignificant" in the sense that only a tiny percentage of the players actually experience it at any one time. Act 7 is insignificant, Map 6 and 7 are insignificant, Master rewards are insignificant in that sense. The problem is that's not how we judge the end game and the top tier rewards. If we judge the end game and the top tier rewards in the game based on how many people get them, they aren't important enough to *add* to the game in the first place.
There's lots of reasons why cheating and mercenary behavior is bad for the game, but the biggest one is that it fundamentally erodes player's notions of fairness. Even if you aren't competing for those rewards, the idea that the game is rewarding cheaters erodes your confidence in the fairness of the part of the game you're playing. If cheating is allowed at the highest levels of the game, who knows how much of it is happening here. And by extension, why not cheat if everyone else is doing it.
Ultimately, Kabam can't eliminate all cheating from the game. What they can do is give the impression that it is intolerable, and actions will be taken against it, and if the players want a game with the fewest amount of limitations it is up to them to treat cheating as equally intolerable. This stuff can't really happen in a complete vacuum. For every merc there must be dozens of customers, and hundreds of people who indirectly benefit from those customers, and thousands of people who know about those hundreds of people. Kabam has to do their part, and we have to do our part. If we want a game that isn't jerked around by the actions of a few cheaters, we have to treat the behavior as equally intolerable. And if the playerbase has too many people who think this is perfectly fine, then we need to keep squeezing them out of the game until there aren't.
The people who think these actions are overkill, or think the cheating that goes on in the game is no big deal, are sitting at the base of the mountain of cheating that's holding the entire thing up. They need to change their minds, and we need to let them know that attitude is itself intolerable.
I will say that Kabam hunting down mercs has up to now been a game of cat and mouse, and the mice keep learning how to better avoid the cat. The game need to change to guillotine and mouse, where the mouse doesn't get a chance to learn how to avoid the guillotine. We don't need to train the cat to be smarter, we need to change the game into something the mouse no longer wants to play.
That's theoretically possible.
The real problem is that there are tactical responses to forcing players to "be home" and there's absolutely nothing to be gained from teaching mercs one more counter-surveillance technique. We've basically been doing the analogous equivalent to breeding resistant bacteria. We find one thing the mercs are doing and ban them, they figure out what that one thing was based on who was banned and do something else. Eventually, through dumb random chance you breed a semi-competent merc.
Instead you want to deploy a spectrum of overlapping drugs designed to give the microbes no way to evolve resistance. They are just banned, and they don't know why.
Of course you could have 3 peoples playing each 8hrs/day non stop during 3 days...
In fact, arena bots too. Would Kabam look at how many accounts in arena top 500 are operating 24 hours endlessly during that 3 days?
The other thing that is often suggested is even worse: two-factor ID. How could two-factor ID be worse? Because it makes mercing safer for clients without making it harder for the mercs. Suppose you implement some kind of two-factor ID that involves codes or something similar. I could send the merc the code when they needed it to log into my account, so this doesn't hurt my ability to hire mercs at all. Meanwhile, once I'm done with that transaction I don't even have to change my account password. I know the merc cannot get back into my account once he completes his task, because only I have the two-factor generator. So I don't even have to worry about giving out my password, because my password no longer matters. I send the merc a token number to get in, and that's the only time he can get in.
So yeah, the two "obvious" panaceas recommended by others over the years, biometric authentication and two-factor authentication are both completely useless to stop mercs. Games that have implemented two-factor authentication in the past, like say Blizzard using tokens for World of Warcraft, were not using them to stop mercs, they were using them to stop people from hijacking other players' accounts. If I have 100% control over who can log into my account and when, it actually makes it much safer to hire mercs.
Therefore, I’m not entirely sure where the harm would be in Kabam coming out and stating anyone not completing the Legend run in their home location is automatically disqualified
To answer your question, I would have to explain what I think Kabam is doing that Miike is describing, then describe how that works technically, explain how countermeasures would work, how counter-countermeasures could be deployed, and what the ramifications of all of that would be on the players. That's unfortunately something I would love to do ('cause, you know, DNA) but no longer willing to do while we're in this particular situation with the mercs.
It is not a dumb question. It is internetworking 101, internet fundamentals 150, network security 205, and basic forensic analysis 301.
Every move kabam does against the dark forces will be applauded.
I have never win this title and I have never tried to because I know there are so many mercs out there.
Once it's on again I'll probably never win this title, but at least i'll know someone who actually deserves it did.
Problem is, Mercs will always exist. The demand creates them, and the system can't stop them. It's far easier to break a lock than it is to create one, after all.
You just need to make the penalty to be found out harsh enough to discourage people from mercing or allowing mercs to access their accounts.
Upon suspicious activity, send the player an in-game mail, stating that you found “xxx accessed your account on yyy date” and ask for a reply and explanation with supporting proof within 3 working days. Failure of which to provide will result in a permanent ban from the game.
It’s harsh enough, and open enough to decide on a case by case basis.
Kabam has lots of login data from us. So only out of the ordinary instances get flagged (like suddenly appearing in a different country for a day and back in the original country shortly). If someone genuinely traveled, I'm sure they would have some sort of proof that they did.