Hope Kabam can Take Strict Check on Pinch-hit in The Necropolis

Think that through a bit longer. If someone were to hand their phone to another more skilled player for them to complete content, how would that be wrong or detectable? Hiring a merc is effectively the same thing and could even be exactly the same thing, depending on how close you are to the person. It is not something that can be enforced. As long as they aren’t trying to make top ten, this is a very subjective thing to crack down on.

You can't be serious. People have had their accounts permanently banned for using mercs. Last season of bgs people were banned for using mercs.

For those that want to be trolls and disagree, let’s talk process. Explain to me how you would detect this while also protecting players from false flags? How are you dealing with the workaround that people can just have someone else play on their device? An opinion without a method is worthless.

TheHeroDeserved

Using mercs is cheating, and that's the end of that discussion. It's not a subjective thing and hurts the game and players.

captain_rogers

There is two points you forget
Handing over your phone to your friend means 99% of time they are doing it as a favor(no money involved).
But in case of mercs it involve monetizing the game, which is against tos.

Also I seriously doubt players do know real life friends/colleagues who play mcoc? Most of us are isolated gamers, know one plays this gam in my college except me. Most of them play mainstream games like battle royale games.

People are disagreeing cause you are advocating for cheating. They have plenty of ways to detect account sharing.

Yes, mercs are strictly against TOS and always punished with permaban. As bad as selling accounts.

You can't be serious. People have had their accounts permanently banned for using mercs. Last season of bgs people were banned for using mercs.

Yes, mercs are strictly against TOS and always punished with permaban. As bad as selling accounts.

Yeah I'm very aware of this. I don't know if you meant this for me.

Most mercs are sitting in Asia making their living from these services. And Kabam can easily detect if an account suddenly jumps from US to China and back after finishing the content (most obvious mercs). Many people got banned for that violation in connection with 7.1/7.2 Mythic Legends Run or Incursions Legends Run.

JessieS

While I would never hire someone to play the game for me because wasting money on a freaking mobile game is insane if I actually find someone skilled in real life who plays the game I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to have them go over the crazy content like Abyss and stuff that I would never bother with otherwise . Sadly this game doesn’t seem to be popular enough or at least I haven’t met anyone in real life who plays it . So yeah I see zero problems if you are lucky enough to find people irl who will help you play the game

smdam38

I still don’t get the merc thing. Is there just these guys or gals, because women can play games too, just sitting around swiping and tapping better?

And people are paying money for it?

I remember one time I was showing my son how to play on like act 3 and he almost immediately got a message about piloting.
So it’s almost like they look at your playstyle.

Hiring a Merc is not the same thing. It's Fraud. You're comparing something that cannot be policed like handing someone your phone, to paying money for a service that not only breaks ToS, but can be considered fraudulent because they're accepting money for a service they don't have any proprietary claim to. Account Sharing has and will always be on the radar. Nevermind getting paid to do it.

Define a “merc”. You say it is cheating for someone else to play your account, and perhaps so based on ethics. So we can move on from the right of wrong of it, and just focus on this OP asking for something that he shouldn’t. This post is about detecting and banning based on whether a “merc” is being used. So let’s get into the process for that. If Kabam started detecting based on IP addresses: 1. Won’t that create false flags if you log in from more than one device in more than one location? You’ll say: you can tell when suddenly you log in from India when you were in the US. So we’ll ban all people that went on a flight to India then? And when the “merc” lives down the street or in the same state from you? Maybe people should get banned for traveling more than 100 miles in a day? 500 miles? What is your threshold? 2. Someone else using your device will never be detectable, so you won’t really be able to stop this. Perhaps the game must require a fingerprint verification every 10-minutes or so? You don’t verify correctly, you get banned?

In conclusion, the OP calls for a new level of enforcement without thinking about how absurd it would be to do so and without thinking about the fact that trying to do so will limit how players can play the game. While the opinion on rolling something out for this is just that (an opinion), no, Kabam should not try to crack down on this due to the inevitable failure that it would be. They can’t even get parry mechanics right.

smdam38

Fraud sounds stupid regarding an online game.
If someone is willing to pay someone else to play a mobile game for them? Who cares.

Get rid of the mod hackers.

The money aspect can’t be detected, so that is not relevant. I’m sure some have good friends in this game that would do it for free. So this is again morally subjective. You pay somebody to play the game for you, then you have crossed a line, apparently. While some may be appalled at the concept, you still have this serious issue of detection without false flags. The only solution is to flag any account that changes locations by a certain distance in a certain amount of time. Since there are many workarounds to that, all that will come of this is banning accounts that didn’t actually do anything wrong by using a very flawed algorithm, which restricts how players can play the game as well as how they can travel. Meanwhile, people are still going to merc completely undetected by this algorithm. Ultimately, I’m against policing behaviors that are indirect to the software itself, especially when there is no fair way to do it.

Colinwhitworth69

Not sure the point of this thread. Of course Kabam hunts for mercs and will in Necropolis. Can’t catch everyone.

So ether you use mercs or are a merc. We know they don't use IP address. You can play on multiple devices in different areas and not get banned. What op is asking is reasonable. Don't cheat and you don't have to worry.

Yes, and that’s what is being done (one aspect of it). If your account/device moves from USA to India within a second, it can’t be real or are you travelling faster than lightspeed? So yeah, moving any long distance in an impossible time will get you flagged and probably banned.

smdam38

I’ve never used mods or hacks or had someone play my account.

That one message just made me go other side on mercing.

What is the harm of mercing?
Someone is still playing the game straight. Who cares who it is.

If i can help my little dude get higher up to make it easier then that’s ban worthy?

Not even what I did. Showed how parry and dex works and got a warning.

Pikolu

Remember the story quest mythic runs? Remember why they stopped? It was because too many people would hire mercs to do the content for them and instead of investigating every single account that ran it, kabam just said heck it and removed them entirely. Mercs are one of the many reasons why we can't have nice things in the game.

Yes, everything that violates TOS and some federal laws or what it‘s called (if money is involved/you pay for it) … will get you banned. I mean, they have all rights for their game and can ban anyone anytime without giving any reason.

Egregious IP hopping detection may or may not be used currently. The OP is asking for Kabam to do better, which means increasing the stringency of the detection algorithm. There is no conceivable way to create fair detection for the majority of merc instances. Nobody has proposed anything reasonable here, and nobody can explain how to prevent a workaround. Overall, the OPs suggestion is not well thought out, as is the case with every response that I’ve seen so far. I suggested an absurd thing like fingerprint verification, because that’s where this argument actually leads.

Fraud is what it is. If you're offering services for something that you have no authorization to charge for, does not belong to you, and breaks the terms of use, then it's Fraud. Whether or not they ever pursued legal action, it's still liable.

I'm pretty sure those people who had money stole off their credit cards during the discount unit scandal didn't think fraud sounded stupid regarding an online game.

You know what sounds stupid getting someone else to advance you in a game cause you lack the skills then parading around like those are your accomplishments.

Most people that merc do so because the cost of units exceeds the cost of the merc. I have heard of people getting help for free. I can only think of one person who is clearly “merc’ing” who is lame enough to then brag about what he “accomplished”, and I call him out every time.

I think we’ve established that paying a third party for game services and/or account sharing is a violation of TOS. You have one guy above that hints that a federal criminal investigation should be opened to determine that a transaction was made (LOL). Other people can’t explain how to turn IP jumping detection into an accurate science that would avoid false flags. The devil is in the details. Choose your battles. Mercs will never be fully detectable, but mods will. Kabam isn’t even catching all of the modders yet. I see them in BG every season.

I'd like to know how I implied a Federal investigation.
The bottom line here is it's wrong. It's against ToS, it does absolutely nothing for the person who hires someone because they don't gain the skills they need, and they jeopardize their own Accounts.
If you're under the impression they can't take action or tell the difference, then you're justifying a wrong behavior with an outlier case of something that can't be detected. By all means, keep making excuses for it. We'll see you post when your ban comes in.

Chaostice

Actually, I play my account all alone which you can check it from others. The key is that there is so much advertisement of mercs filling my discord and other chat APP these days. I just want to point it out. And the sad fact is that plenty of mercs who I have known since I began to play mcoc 7 years ago are SAFE and just listed their price of the exploration of the Necropolis last morning.(I got this news from my friend in the same alliance) So it's just an advice for Kabam to pay attension to the risk of pinch-hit in the Necropolis in my opinion.