Solution to AW Manipulation/Piloting
DTMelodicMetal
Member Posts: 2,785 ★★★★★
I recently came across this image on this forum which shows line chat history of a top alliance. The line chat history is a schedule 16 very strong alliances in MCOC use to find AW matches so they can avoid going against each other. The 16 alliances have been inked out so that this post doesn't violate Kabam's Terms of Service.
Allowing this sort of AW matchmaking manipulation, as well as AW piloting, is detrimental to the integrity of MCOC and discouraging to alliances with aspirations of moving up AW tier ranks once Alliance Wars Season 1 begins. Imagine if the NFL made their schedule so that the Patriots never played the Seahawks, or the Steelers never played the Ravens, or the Chargers never played the Raiders, because doing so would allow certain teams to have "better" records. Same goes for the NBA - the Lakers never playing the Celtics, the Warriors never playing the Cavs, or the Raptors never playing the Thunder would be bad for business.
For forum members who prefer video games, extend the metaphor to EVO - Infiltration never fighting Fuudo, Justin Wong never fighting Tokido, and Daigo never fighting Snake Eyez would make EVO much more boring to watch. I'm not saying that the best should only fight the best, only that according to Alberto Braga (game designer in the recent video done by @Ad0ra_ and @Kabam Miike), the best intentionally avoiding fights with the best goes against the entire purpose of Alliance Wars Seasons.
While I don't have a suggestion for preventing AW manipulation as described above, does anyone else think alliances who utilize AW piloting being disqualified from Alliance Wars Seasons rank rewards could solve the ongoing AW piloting problem?
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AW "piloting" is account sharing and is already a bannable offense. I don't think explicitly changing the penalties for that conduct would do any more to reduce it. Anyone willing to risk a ban will also risk losing rewards.
I didn't know that, thanks for filling me in. And you're right, there's nothing wrong with searching for AW matchups at different times, especially when considering differences in time zones. Nevertheless, I hold my position that intentionally avoiding worthy opponents takes away from the integrity of competition. A wise man once said, "To be the man, you gotta beat the man!"
The number of members posting on the forum about AW piloting gave me the impression that many alliances have been piloting AWs for an extended amount of time without consequences. I personally haven't come across many instances where piloting seemed to be an issue in AW. With my alliance being 1 tier away from receiving 6* shards, the amount of accusations that piloting is common in top tier alliances motivated me to further comment on such behavior. Given Kabam's recent response to players using 3rd party software, I'm hopeful that AW piloting and AW piloting accusations won't be issues for much longer.
And i love the response from Tier 3 AW experts.
lol I missed the part where someone claimed to be an expert
On the contrary. It's against TOS, regardless of how long it's been going on and who has been doing it.
It’s not being scared. I was in a top 5 ally. And they do it so they don’t have to spend. 3 wars that would cost $200 and only earn you 700 more shards was not worth it. You could do two for free and not give kabam$. It was a pact by top allies to all spend less.
It sure has. But with multiple people having multiple devices to play on. Or playing from Starbucks WiFi will change your IP. So if you can figure a PRACTICAL and here’s the bigger one. PROVABLE then I’m all ears.
@MattScott I spoke to a relative who has substantial experience in cyber forensics. According to him, unless someone takes steps to disguise their location with something such as a virtual private network (VPN), companies such as Facebook/YouTube have no problem determining the location from where their users access their websites. Kabam isn't Facebook or YouTube, but the analogy is still valid.
Starbucks and other similar internet providers offer unprotected Wi-Fi , so unless someone is taking steps to disguise their location, using Wi-Fi in public locations wouldn't matter. It would be hilarious if multiple alliance members claimed to consistently play the game from the same Starbucks location, despite living 100s to 1,000s of miles from each other.
Considering what I was told about companies being able to pinpoint their users' locations based on their Wi-Fi, it would seem Kabam could crack down on AW piloting if they chose to do so. Not being able to do this because of players using VPNs or other methods would raise a red flag when 99%+ of players are able to have their locations verified.
But it isn’t against TOS to use VPN. So, how could they PROVE it. Suspicious? Sure. Most likely piloting? Sure.
But could they ban someone without PROOF that all those players don’t VPN into the same Starbucks?
Piloting / account sharing has been rampant for the longest time already and Kabam has shown (so far) that they’re not taking serious action against it, other than the once-in-while mention that accounting sharing is against the TOS. As obvious as it may be at times, I’m guessing it’s something difficult to 100% prove without a doubt. I’m sure they consider things like account hacks and credit card fraud to be much more serious than account sharing at the moment. Until they start to enforce the TOS of account sharing, piloting/merc service will remain. It’s really only a problem in the top ~25 or so alliances.
If you think about what piloting really is, it is no different than having 30 skilled players in an alliance (but that’s hard to do I know). If you have 30 skilled players who communicate well and can clear their AW lane without deaths, that alliance has no disadvantage to a piloting alliance.
The problem is to successful large ally, you need a combo of spenders, grinders, and killers. Everyone benefits from each other. The skilled (possibly less spending player) gets all the SA rewards, and the whales (possibly less skilled) let others run their account to get the better war rewards.
Define "provable." I have been asked to demonstrate that two different separate people were using the same computer account. Given reasonable parameters and enough data to analyze, I've been able to do that to a sufficiently high degree to satisfy criminal prosecution requirements. Usually, the way to discover this is going on is that the people doing it believe it isn't possible to do, and get careless in ways they don't realize are giving the game away.
People who think using VPNs or shared Wifi somehow simulates account sharing have no idea how this actually works. IP addresses are part of the equation, but they probably aren't used the way most people think. This isn't a tracing problem like on TV shows. This is closer to a traffic analysis problem, like in military intelligence. There are some traffic patterns that account sharing can generate and non-account sharing for all intents and purposes cannot generate. And it is difficult to guess at which is which without first learning how the game works. People with access to the data can "norm" the data to learn what is and is not normal. They can then create criteria to catch abnormal traffic patterns, focus on those, and then find the thing that is normally not possible in a non-sharing environment.
Again: everyone I've ever caught believed their actions were impossible to catch. That's what made them catchable. They *think* they know what is and is not detectable or determinable. And they only have to make a mistake once.
This is not the place for a course in traffic analysis or game cheating. But I will toss this out: IP address only says where your internet originates. But there are ways to determine whether the same device logged into the game twice with two different accounts that has nothing to do with IP. For example, unless your alliance mates are willing to constantly uninstall and reinstall MCOC, on iOS you can determine two different logins came from the same device using the value from "identifierForVendor" which assigns a unique identifier to an app for a device when it is installed. The ID is guaranteed to not change for a single installation of an app on a device. It will be different if the app is uninstalled and reinstalled or for the same app installed on two different devices. Given access to this information, IP address is unnecessary for determining if two logins came from the same device. But it can still be useful in other interesting ways.
@DNA3000 addressed this perfectly. Most people's understanding of disguising internet activity is inaccurate. Anyone who knows how to effectively do so is likely partaking in actions well beyond the category of piloting their teammates' accounts in a video game.
Providing additional details would violate Kabam's TOS. Multiple veteran players (2+ years of playing/LOL Exploration/members of a top 10 alliance at some point) have confirmed the AW matchmaking manipulation strategy detailed in this thread has been going on for 2+ years, one veteran player gave details that it started with 10 alliances and expanded from there.
@Hulksmasshh I was agreeing with you 100% until this part of your post. Not because you're wrong, but because supporting the view that skilled alliances will win no matter the opponent allows piloting alliances to continue cheating to win the other 9 out of 10 of their AW matchups.
@MattScott Difficulties with developing a successful large alliance does not justify piloting accounts to gain an advantage with rewards. Like the new AW points system, AW Seasons is a big step in the right direction to make AW reward skillful play above all else. Violating Kabam's TOS shouldn't increase rewards by going unpunished and is (dishonorable) skillful manipulation, not skillful playing.
@DNA3000 You nailed it. I wouldn't be surprised if you've collaborated with or heard of the relative I was alluding to in my last post.
I think piloting should end too.
I’m saying why it happens, and how it’s hard to prove. But i do not want it happening at all. Regardless of the reason.
Yes, I missed that point. Thanks for clarifying, and I apologize for not asking for more details.
I don't think reading is the issue. I think one issue is you resurrecting a dead thread. The other issues contain:
1. VPN is not against TOS.
2. Piloting is against the TOS.
How does Kabam balance the two to crack down on #2 but allow #1. And they cant make VPN against TOS because it would effectively remove people from the game.
P.S. All this in a way that players accept
Wasn't expecting this thread to come back. But since it did, the above image is evidence of a matchmaking technique used for years that caused war ratings to be so high.
I don't see the relevance of this anymore. Piloting should be our complaint, and I saw this SS over a year ago. Its nothing new and is allowable even now within the rules. (Even if I hate it). With the new seasons, some top alliances are almost encouraged to face other top alliances to prevent them from gaining a win bonus. Not to mention the matchmaking problems.
A forum member asked these questions on February 2nd, before AW Seasons started. The forum member was ignored.
This announcement was made on March 13th, over a month after players had said they were concerned this could happen.
Why be responsible when it's easy to be lazy and still gave whales what they want?