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Solution to Piloting Alliances in AW

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Comments

  • Tjk602Tjk602 Posts: 85
    Kabam Lyra wrote: »
    Tjk602 wrote: »
    Mike or adora, can you respond and acknowledge this is an issue? I also submitted a ticket and have video showing alliance piloting. These piloting alliance should be disqualified from season rewards

    Hi!

    If you've witnessed suspected cheating in game, submitting a support ticket is appreciated. We take violations of the terms of service seriously and will investigate the situation. But keep in mind, we will not discuss any actions taken with third parties. So you will not be updated on the status of your report.
    Kabam Lyra wrote: »
    Tjk602 wrote: »
    Mike or adora, can you respond and acknowledge this is an issue? I also submitted a ticket and have video showing alliance piloting. These piloting alliance should be disqualified from season rewards

    Hi!

    If you've witnessed suspected cheating in game, submitting a support ticket is appreciated. We take violations of the terms of service seriously and will investigate the situation. But keep in mind, we will not discuss any actions taken with third parties. So you will not be updated on the status of your report.

    I submitted a ticket and got no response back. Can I PM you the ticket number?
  • THX135THX135 Posts: 83
    It sounds like everyone is concerned with piloting in AW. Piloting in other areas of the game have been going on for as long as I can remember and I started playing 6 months after the game was released.

    If AW piloting is the primary concern why not take away the reason alliances are piloting....defender kills.

    Before seasons started AW was meh in the rewards department. Many top alliances didn't even play 3 wars a weeks. If Kabam removes defender kills...again, and makes each node in all tiers more difficult then it would reduce piloting.

    Top alliances are already fighting in AW fully boosted and using items to top off before each fight. Piloting isnt really impacting item usage that much. When tier one wars are determined purely on number of defender kills that is what is driving people to pilot.

    From a personal perspective I don't care if the other alliances use a pilot. They want to have their best player take all the shots. We don't pilot but if other people don't mind playing 30 accounts then that is up to them. Its a hard thing to sustain piloting an entire alliance for 3 wars a week.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    ArmandStar wrote: »
    we're used to zero feedback, yes, but it won't be necesary in this case.
    if they target the known culprits in the top alliances, everyone will know. if nothing changes, everyone will know they didn't do shi

    Can't argue that. But it would be nice for them to confirm that they are cracking down on things. Not even by saying who is on there list but just something like "we know this has been a concern for a large number of our players so we have taken this action..... Against 500 users. We take the safety and protection of our player base seriously".

    That would break privacy indirectly because they could say they took action on 500 Players, and the first thing those Players would do is come to the Forum or go to Reddit and say they were banned. They don't discuss actions taken on Accounts. It's between them and the owners.
  • I'm concerned w it across the board. I think the recent spike in comments and concerns is based on 1- the new war seasons and rewards which have increases the push for top spots and 2- the video.

    But again, I mentioned aq earlier. It's all cheating for rewards. Not a fan of it tbh.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    If that's your way of justifying Account Sharing for AQ and AW, its falling on deaf ears.
  • MattScottMattScott Posts: 587 ★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    your account was not used by someone else in your alliance with another device.
    I let my husband and daughters play on my account at times but that is not account sharing.

    Do you log out and she types in your information from another state with a different deviceID that’s never been logged to your account before?

    Come on. Get serious. Same deviceID, same account, not account sharing.
  • chunkyb wrote: »
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    chunkyb wrote: »
    They don't need 2fa or any other more difficult method. They have server logs. Keep it simple. Use hardware id's, build a user profile, monitor.

    They do, in fact, do all of those things already. They could, and probably should, do more, but every time someone claims this is a simple task, I'm compelled to point out that in the general case this is not a simple task.

    It is one thing to say Kabam could do more, and should do more. I'm right there with you. It is when someone says they could snap their fingers and find them all that they are completely unaware of what's involved or what is possible, as well as what perfectly normal legal customers do all of the time that they would have to distinguish from account sharers using nothing but the information within the logs they have access to.

    From all your posts, I do realize your area of expertise (or at least assume to know some). I'm also quite experienced at working server logs to build a user profile. Not an account.. But a nameless profile with habits and "tells". I'm also experienced at analyzing those profiles to make reasonable guesses about particular things surrounding those profiles. It's not really that hard when it comes down to it.

    Setting aside the question of how accurate the people who do this actually are on average, to do this effectively requires automation. Even if a human being can easily tell what's going on with server logs, without a way to automate that analysis there's not enough people to analyze all the server logs of the game.

    Automation is also important for another reason. Rarely are human beings simply allowed to peruse all of the live data of a game including logs. In a forensic investigation, an investigator is usually given full access to everything everywhere. But that's for a specific limited engagement under special circumstances. That wouldn't be tolerated operationally for a game operator. You'd have to implement procedures that could be used continuously within the access control limits of the game operators. And keep in mind, most people are unaware of the fact that simple rules like "developers that have access to code have no access to live data and vice versa" are extremely common in the game publishing world, even though that rule doesn't make sense on the surface to someone building enterprise systems in any other context.

    And remember, in this game even a 99.99% accuracy percentage means you could be banning dozens to hundreds of players erroneously in every wave. If you are looking at one single player and you end up being 99.99% certain they are cheating, you might be comfortable banning them. But when you automate that and have it search across hundreds of thousands or millions of players, that confidence level becomes unacceptably low. It is easy to be right when you're asked to do something dozens of times, or even hundreds of time. But to always be right when you're asked to do something millions of times is a task no reasonable person could claim is "not hard" because the percentages start to pile up against you.
  • EbbtideEbbtide Posts: 292 ★★
    edited February 2018
    Kabam Lyra wrote: »
    Tjk602 wrote: »
    Mike or adora, can you respond and acknowledge this is an issue? I also submitted a ticket and have video showing alliance piloting. These piloting alliance should be disqualified from season rewards

    Hi!

    If you've witnessed suspected cheating in game, submitting a support ticket is appreciated. We take violations of the terms of service seriously and will investigate the situation. But keep in mind, we will not discuss any actions taken with third parties. So you will not be updated on the status of your report.

    That doesn't work. You can submit proof to the game team and frequently no action takes place. Also, as was mentioned, not revealing to the community why players are banned does nothing to ease them. I would much rather know why someone is banned to show actual proof rules are enforced and that cheaters are banned.

    As an example, I frequently see that there are players who have access to 5-star Ultron Classic. He is only obtained by finishing the Labyrinth 100%. Many are legitimate, but some are clearly not possible to have obtained. Profiles with 2/35 5-stars or less could not possibly have beaten it, and many don't even have awakened fighters. I always screenshot the Arena Trio they have (which will include Ultron Classic, as that is the only way I know they have him), and then an image of their in-game profile, showing their roster is way too low to have cleared the Labyrinth 100%. Anytime I have submitted that, no reply is ever given to me from Kabam, not even one at least acknowledging that the issue will be investigated.

    Months later, with these same screenshots in my phone, I see several of these names still exist in this game, and have joined Alliances. It's likely they modded the game, which now means that any Alliance can now face a penalty for unknowingly bringing in a cheater that Kabam failed to act on, even when warned about it (months in advance).

    The same problem persists with the Account Sharing and Piloting, as there is a major non-enforcement. We don't have to speculate at all about this. A player has twice been caught doing it, and no action has been taken.

    Unfortunately, any great ideas presented in this thread about how to catch people mean absolutely nothing if no actual enforcement occurs. When you have the cheater on video admitting he did it, and even admitted it directly to Kabam, there's no way you cannot enforce the rules. The whole community is aware of this and watching, and a massive precedent is being set.
  • LeNoirFaineantLeNoirFaineant Posts: 8,638 ★★★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    If that's your way of justifying Account Sharing for AQ and AW, its falling on deaf ears.

    @IceHeartBlack it is still technically account sharing and @GroundedWisdom says that there is no lesser way to break the rules. And no, GW, at no point did I justify account sharing for AQ and AW. If you reread my post you will see that your take on my post is baseless. I was merely showing your statement to be false with a reductio. Even Kabam recognizes that not all rule breaking is the same, that's why there are different punishments for different infractions.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    If that's your way of justifying Account Sharing for AQ and AW, its falling on deaf ears.

    @IceHeartBlack it is still technically account sharing and @GroundedWisdom says that there is no lesser way to break the rules. And no, GW, at no point did I justify account sharing for AQ and AW. If you reread my post you will see that your take on my post is baseless. I was merely showing your statement to be false with a reductio. Even Kabam recognizes that not all rule breaking is the same, that's why there are different punishments for different infractions.

    You're being contradictory. Not something you've shied away from doing. It's already been mentioned specifically that two people in the same room, sharing the same device is not what they mean by Account Sharing. If you wanted to get technical, it is, but it's not the sort of thing they are looking to ban.
    You are correct that they take the situation into account when dealing with these things. I was responding to the idea that it is somehow more acceptable to allow someone to say, move you for AQ or AW because you won't be around. It is cheating. I make no bones about that. The whole idea of it being acceptable and a lesser thing is exactly the reason we're still having this debate right now. It is not allowed, and it is against TOS. Having to move in game modes does not justify it.
  • LeNoirFaineantLeNoirFaineant Posts: 8,638 ★★★★★
    MattScott wrote: »
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    your account was not used by someone else in your alliance with another device.
    I let my husband and daughters play on my account at times but that is not account sharing.

    Do you log out and she types in your information from another state with a different deviceID that’s never been logged to your account before?

    Come on. Get serious. Same deviceID, same account, not account sharing.

    Actually if 2 people were roommates, married or otherwise and had opposite schedules they could grind arena while the other slept on one device with one account. That would be the same deviceID, same account, and account sharing. But it wouln't be the same as an alliance piloting AW or letting my daughter spin my crystals. But GW says that all rule breaking is the same so I guess I must be wrong.
  • HulksmasshhHulksmasshh Posts: 742 ★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    If that's your way of justifying Account Sharing for AQ and AW, its falling on deaf ears.

    Hey GW, @LeNoirFaineant was just pointing out the hypocrisy of your statement "Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules."

    The official rules in Kabam's TOS say, "You may not use anyone else's Account at any time and you may not allow anyone else to use your Account at any time."

    If we take a literal interpretation to the rules in the TOS like you suggest, then LeNoirFaineant broke the rules by letting his daughter open some crystals. If cheating is cheating no matter what and there is no lesser ways to break the rules, then he should be punished along with all the other AW pilots / AQ movers.

    But if we don't take a literal approach to the rules in the TOS and realize there are varying degrees of cheating, some much much more severe than others, then we can come to conclusion that while allowing your daughter to spin open a crystal is technically against the TOS, there is no way any sort of punishment should be enforced on that. So not everything is black and white and there are many gray areas that need to be taken into consideration. Is the occasional AQ lane mover as bad as the AW pilot? Maybe or maybe not, that's for Kabam to decide what the gray area is and what crosses the line. But to state that there is no gray area and that something is or is not cheating is pea-brained.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    MattScott wrote: »
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    your account was not used by someone else in your alliance with another device.
    I let my husband and daughters play on my account at times but that is not account sharing.

    Do you log out and she types in your information from another state with a different deviceID that’s never been logged to your account before?

    Come on. Get serious. Same deviceID, same account, not account sharing.

    Same house and same device. As I said thats not account sharing. Thats device sharing.

    Correct. They're just splitting hairs to argue. We're all aware of what Account Sharing is. It involves giving your Login Information to other Players.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    If that's your way of justifying Account Sharing for AQ and AW, its falling on deaf ears.

    Hey GW, @LeNoirFaineant was just pointing out the hypocrisy of your statement "Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules."

    The official rules in Kabam's TOS say, "You may not use anyone else's Account at any time and you may not allow anyone else to use your Account at any time."

    If we take a literal interpretation to the rules in the TOS like you suggest, then LeNoirFaineant broke the rules by letting his daughter open some crystals. If cheating is cheating no matter what and there is no lesser ways to break the rules, then he should be punished along with all the other AW pilots / AQ movers.

    But if we don't take a literal approach to the rules in the TOS and realize there are varying degrees of cheating, some much much more severe than others, then we can come to conclusion that while allowing your daughter to spin open a crystal is technically against the TOS, there is no way any sort of punishment should be enforced on that. So not everything is black and white and there are many gray areas that need to be taken into consideration. Is the occasional AQ lane mover as bad as the AW pilot? Maybe or maybe not, that's for Kabam to decide what the gray area is and what crosses the line. But to state that there is no gray area and that something is or is not cheating is pea-brained.

    I've already responded to that. The Mods themselves have stated that sharing the same device is not what we're discussing. What I'm talking about is the idea that sharing your Account for AQ and AW is cheating. Plain and simple. Something you have never agreed with because we have had numerous discussions where you refused to accept the fact that they would take action against Sharing alone. So I'm not interested in discussing it further with you.
  • I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    your account was not used by someone else in your alliance with another device.
    I let my husband and daughters play on my account at times but that is not account sharing.

    Technically, that is account sharing. The definition of account sharing is: more than one person playing on one account. You might not get punished for such a small infraction (I don't see how it could even be detected) but it is still technically against the rules.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,236 ★★★★★
    edited February 2018
    It's cheating (sharing for AQ and AW). Plain and simple. I've maintained the same position on it for years now. The fact that people are suddenly taking it seriously now that there are War Rewards at stake is comical to me, but it's about time as far as I'm concerned. It's always been against the rules, and not an exceptional situation. It's been rampant. To the point of cockiness.
  • HulksmasshhHulksmasshh Posts: 742 ★★★
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.
    I agree. Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules.

    That's right @GroundedWisdom! Everything is black and white! Gray doesn't exit lol. I let my seven year old daughter spin my crystals sometimes and that's against the rules. I am expecting my permanent ban to come at any time now that I have admitted it on the forum.

    If that's your way of justifying Account Sharing for AQ and AW, its falling on deaf ears.

    Hey GW, @LeNoirFaineant was just pointing out the hypocrisy of your statement "Cheating is cheating. There's no lesser way to break the rules."

    The official rules in Kabam's TOS say, "You may not use anyone else's Account at any time and you may not allow anyone else to use your Account at any time."

    If we take a literal interpretation to the rules in the TOS like you suggest, then LeNoirFaineant broke the rules by letting his daughter open some crystals. If cheating is cheating no matter what and there is no lesser ways to break the rules, then he should be punished along with all the other AW pilots / AQ movers.

    But if we don't take a literal approach to the rules in the TOS and realize there are varying degrees of cheating, some much much more severe than others, then we can come to conclusion that while allowing your daughter to spin open a crystal is technically against the TOS, there is no way any sort of punishment should be enforced on that. So not everything is black and white and there are many gray areas that need to be taken into consideration. Is the occasional AQ lane mover as bad as the AW pilot? Maybe or maybe not, that's for Kabam to decide what the gray area is and what crosses the line. But to state that there is no gray area and that something is or is not cheating is pea-brained.

    I've already responded to that. The Mods themselves have stated that sharing the same device is not what we're discussing. What I'm talking about is the idea that sharing your Account for AQ and AW is cheating. Plain and simple. Something you have never agreed with because we have had numerous discussions where you refused to accept the fact that they would take action against Sharing alone. So I'm not interested in discussing it further with you.

    Oh I agree with you that it is cheating. Logging into someone else's account to move them in AQ, fight in AW, do LoL or any other content is a prime example of breaking the TOS and cheating. But I would not punish every case nor look at every case exactly the same. Does the occasional AQ lane mover deserve to be permantently banned from the game? Probably not, that would be way too harsh. Does the AW pilot who makes thousands of dollars logging into multiple accounts a day to fight in AW / do LoL / do legend runs for other people deserve to be permantently banned? I would think yes or another severe punishment like a 30+ day ban. Does the person who paid someone else to log into their account deserve an account ban longer than the guy who happened to be out on a Friday map 6 night? Yes I would think so also.
  • BornBorn Posts: 228 ★★
    They just need to start cracking down on it plain and simple. Make some examples. If they are found to be account sharing then ban them. If they are account sharing in AW, then deduct points from the alliances AW scores as well. Word will get around and the problem will sort itself out. People won’t want to risk jeopardising their accounts or their alliances progress.

    And just keep on top of it. Then hopefully one day we can have a fair and legitimate contetest.
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Posts: 881 ★★★
    If I know top alliances win mostly because they share their credentials, then I am the moron not doing the same to get rewards and rank better (mostly talking about map 6).

    If all of a sudden, everyone had to follow the rules, the game experience would change for the best. No alliance would stay on the top unless they had committed members. Right now it is a bit depressing to think that people at the top deserve to be there and are right to break the laws to stay there. They should have the same experience as us.

    Of course this is not happening only at the top.

    I do not need to know what the punishment is. I just need to know that it is being enforced somehow. That any alliance could prosper just by being active. It is not just skills, it is time and effort, every day. Vague comments on threads about it still being a violation of the terms, is almost meaningless, we all know someone that uses someone else's account.

    Here is some other idea. Do as other apps do, add devices and accounts to the user profile. Just one more layer on the account to include the players' different accounts, and the players' different devices, with something that identifies that device in particular. If someone needs to use the same device for another account, then those accounts shouldn't be on the same alliance as the other account on the profile (perhaps only enabled through a ticket).

    [Kabam Profile: User Accounts(acc1, acc2, acc3), User Devices (device1, device2, device3)...] where every account belongs to 0..1 alliances. So a new profile logging into the same device shouldn't have accounts on the same alliance as the already registered profile there.
    Only workaround would be to remove the device from the profile, or updated via web (which could be easily audited).

    Idk, there are many ways of enforcing this. I know the devs are probably busy with new content and bug fixing, but I think something more proactive should be done about this.
This discussion has been closed.