Suggestion with compensating alliances that lose AWs to AW pilots

I can’t say enough how phenomenal it is that Kabam is strictly and consistently enforcing TOS violations with instances of account sharing in AW/AW Seasons. I haven’t been this excited to play MCOC in months. Regarding instances where players/alliances lose out on war rating points and AW Season ranking points, Kabam has explained why their stance does not include awarding alliances that have been cheated the difference in points between a loss and a win. Not everybody wins in these situations, but I get where they’re coming from with this decision.

During AW Season 1 an alliance was unable to find AW matchups and missed out on running multiple AWs. To fix this unique situation, Kabam made an announcement explaining how this allowance would be awarded points they missed out on from missing AWs, but that any extra rewards they received would not affect other alliances’ AW Season rank rewards. With this in mind, would it be possible to extend this same treatment to alliances who have been cheated by players who broke TOS during alliance wars?

Of all the different reasons and explanations players have given on the forum, one that stood out to me was the perspective that in competitive events, if someone is found guilty of cheating they’re disqualified, and victory is awarded to their opponent. I may be biased with a background in competitive/collegiate sports, but to me this perspective is legitimate.

Kabam (and many alliances) know which alliances have been penalized for AW piloting. It seems logical that alliances who play fairly by not sharing accounts should be extended the same courtesy that has been previously awarded to another alliance, especially when that alliance has had war rating points deducted. Otherwise one message that can be taken from this situation is no good deed goes unpunished - play fairly and if you lose to cheaters that’s too bad. What do other players think?

Quick reminder to anyone who comments on this thread:

1) Respect the forum’s privacy rules
2) Keep your posts constructive
- Give reasons for your opinions and don’t disregard others’ opinions because you don’t like them, deliberation is good
3) Please don’t troll or intentionally post to derail this thread’s topic

Comments

Riegel

To lose (50,000 * tier multiplier points) every time you face a cheating alliance, because "there is no way to know if the non-cheating alliance would have won in a fair match up." Is an absurd view point.

They didn't cheat and therefore should get the victory bonus. Thanks for not cheating.

SlowCrimson

According to my knowledge, Kabam compensated 1 alliance for missing war matches. Alliances like ours suffered since we did not receive any compensation. 3 hours wait time no match, went from plat 2 to plat 3. Many other alliances had this issue and were not compensated at all. They took no blame and said the matchmaking was working as intended.

DTMelodicMetal

Riegel wrote: »

To lose (50,000 * tier multiplier points) every time you face a cheating alliance, because "there is no way to know if the non-cheating alliance would have won in a fair match up." Is an absurd view point.

They didn't cheat and therefore should get the victory bonus. Thanks for not cheating.

@Riegel To make sure I’m reading this right, you disagree that cheaters should be disqualified or alliances that play fairly and lose to cheaters should not be awarded wins when they clearly lose to alliances that pilot, or both? Keep in mind my suggestion was that alliances who are compensated are done so at the end of AW Season 2 as waa done last season with another alliance.

For example, if an alliance scores 20 mil points in season 2 but lost 5 AWs do piloting alliances, they would receive 5 AWs worth of points difference - 5 X 70K = 350K points. If 20 mil points is enough for #4 in platinum 2 and 20.35 mil points is enough for the final spot in platinum, this hypothetical alliance would receive platinum 1 rank rewards without moving any platinum 1 alliances down to platinum 2.

Deadbyrd9

Same thing happened to my alliance @SlowCrimson. Missed a match due to matchmaking taking several hours per match during the 6 day period. Went from plat 2 rank 10 to the middle of plat 3 with no hope of getting back to 2

DTMelodicMetal

Riegel wrote: »

To lose (50,000 * tier multiplier points) every time you face a cheating alliance, because "there is no way to know if the non-cheating alliance would have won in a fair match up." Is an absurd view point.

They didn't cheat and therefore should get the victory bonus. Thanks for not cheating.

@Riegel just realized I misread your comment. Sorry for that, I agree with everything you said.

Hulksmasshh

Kabam has cracked down on piloting and all alliances are scared shitless to ever pilot again during season 2. This is the best possible outcome that could’ve happened for the competetiveness of the game. There have only been 3 alliance wars since the start of the season out of 2 months (24 total AWs?). I know every win counts and the final score may come down to 1-2 win differentials, but the alliances who lost to piloting alliances didn’t get ‘screwed over’ as bad as they think in the big picture. Just be happy action has been taken and time to move on to pilot-free wars.

In the sake of fairness, I think those alliances who lost to piloting should be awarded the victory bonus. But there will be plenty more opportunity to win more wars. The top 3, master, plat+ brackets are all up for grabs now. If you deserve that spot you’ll have earned it throughout the next 2 months, not cause of anything that happened the first week.

DNA3000

DTMelodicMetal wrote: »

During AW Season 1 an alliance was unable to find AW matchups and missed out on running multiple AWs. To fix this unique situation, Kabam made an announcement explaining how this allowance would be awarded points they missed out on from missing AWs, but that any extra rewards they received would not affect other alliances’ AW Season rank rewards. With this in mind, would it be possible to extend this same treatment to alliances who have been cheated by players who broke TOS during alliance wars?

In another thread I suggested a possible remedy for dealing with alliances that were the victims of other alliances detected and punished for cheating. I'll copy-paste the actual suggestion here but the original post with some additional context is here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/401490/#Comment_401490. The suggestion roughly parallels what you are talking about in the quote above.

DNA3000 wrote: »

I've thought about this problem for a while now, and the only "fair" remedy I can think of is a seasonal compensation calculation. Whenever an alliance is the victim of a cheating alliance (that Kabam detects, of course) that is noted. At the very end of the season all bracket positions are calculated based on the points earned, without taking cheating into account. Once every alliance's bracket placement is established, then for every alliance that was the victim of a cheating alliance their total points are modified to include some compensation factor for that cheating incident, for all cheating incidents. *IF* that higher score would have placed that alliance into a higher bracket, that alliance gets the higher bracket rewards without altering the rankings of any other alliance. This compensates alliances for being the victims of cheating, without penalizing any other alliance while you are doing it.

In other words, if you end the season in 8th place in Gold 1, but you encountered three cheating alliances and when we add however many points we decide to add as compensation for that cheating (deciding what this should be is a separate complicated discussion) you now have enough points that you would have ended up in 148th place in Platinum 3, then your alliance gets Platinum 3 rewards, but none of the Platinum 3 alliances gets bumped to make room for you.

It would probably substantially delay seasonal rewards going out, and the question of how many points to award a cheating victim alliance is not a trivial one. But something like that might work.

DTMelodicMetal

DNA3000 wrote: »

In another thread I suggested a possible remedy for dealing with alliances that were the victims of other alliances detected and punished for cheating. I'll copy-paste the actual suggestion here but the original post with some additional context is here: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/401490/#Comment_401490. The suggestion roughly parallels what you are talking about in the quote above.

DNA3000 wrote: »

I've thought about this problem for a while now, and the only "fair" remedy I can think of is a seasonal compensation calculation. Whenever an alliance is the victim of a cheating alliance (that Kabam detects, of course) that is noted. At the very end of the season all bracket positions are calculated based on the points earned, without taking cheating into account. Once every alliance's bracket placement is established, then for every alliance that was the victim of a cheating alliance their total points are modified to include some compensation factor for that cheating incident, for all cheating incidents. *IF* that higher score would have placed that alliance into a higher bracket, that alliance gets the higher bracket rewards without altering the rankings of any other alliance. This compensates alliances for being the victims of cheating, without penalizing any other alliance while you are doing it.

In other words, if you end the season in 8th place in Gold 1, but you encountered three cheating alliances and when we add however many points we decide to add as compensation for that cheating (deciding what this should be is a separate complicated discussion) you now have enough points that you would have ended up in 148th place in Platinum 3, then your alliance gets Platinum 3 rewards, but none of the Platinum 3 alliances gets bumped to make room for you.

It would probably substantially delay seasonal rewards going out, and the question of how many points to award a cheating victim alliance is not a trivial one. But something like that might work.

I missed that thread/post, thanks for posting it. I’m glad there are others who think players who play fairly deserve compensation for losing to cheaters.

DNA3000

While we are at it, I thought about another problem with the current system of punishing cheaters. Right now they are having war ratings points removed. That makes sense on the surface, but it creates a new problem: they now get to fight easier fights against weaker alliances, which will quickly cause them to recover those war rating points. They still will end up with fewer points, but when we punish an alliance in this way we also punish the poor shmucks who have to now fight them. We are basically punishing a college athlete who cheats by forcing them to compete against high school student athletes. It isn't fair to the high school athletes.

Instead, I believe that when an alliance is caught cheating instead of removing rating points they get a temporary multiplier penalty. Their war rating remains the same so they are still matched against equal opponents (in fact, if they are forced to stop piloting they could be matched against superior opponents) but their multiplier is artificially lowered and thus the alliance gets fewer points per war. Say for first time offenders they get a 0.9 penalty for two weeks. That means for the next two weeks no matter how many points they win during wars, they will only get 90% of those points accrued towards their bracket placement. They continue to move up and down normally and their intrinsic multiplier goes up and down with their war rating, but the actual points scored would be lower by the penalty factor. With multiple infractions you could apply a more serious penalty or a longer penalty. The penalty would be adjustable depending on the infraction. And you would not be setting that alliance loose among much weaker competition, which in effect gives them a lot of easy points and makes other alliances who have to face them suffer. Their competition stays hard, but their points drop. That concentrates the penalty only on the alliance that generated the infraction.

DTMelodicMetal

DNA3000 wrote: »

Instead, I believe that when an alliance is caught cheating instead of removing rating points they get a temporary multiplier penalty. Their war rating remains the same so they are still matched against equal opponents (in fact, if they are forced to stop piloting they could be matched against superior opponents) but their multiplier is artificially lowered and thus the alliance gets fewer points per war.

Best idea I’ve heard

Hulksmasshh

DNA3000 wrote: »

While we are at it, I thought about another problem with the current system of punishing cheaters. Right now they are having war ratings points removed. That makes sense on the surface, but it creates a new problem: they now get to fight easier fights against weaker alliances, which will quickly cause them to recover those war rating points. They still will end up with fewer points, but when we punish an alliance in this way we also punish the poor shmucks who have to now fight them. We are basically punishing a college athlete who cheats by forcing them to compete against high school student athletes. It isn't fair to the high school athletes.

Instead, I believe that when an alliance is caught cheating instead of removing rating points they get a temporary multiplier penalty. Their war rating remains the same so they are still matched against equal opponents (in fact, if they are forced to stop piloting they could be matched against superior opponents) but their multiplier is artificially lowered and thus the alliance gets fewer points per war. Say for first time offenders they get a 0.9 penalty for two weeks. That means for the next two weeks no matter how many points they win during wars, they will only get 90% of those points accrued towards their bracket placement. They continue to move up and down normally and their intrinsic multiplier goes up and down with their war rating, but the actual points scored would be lower by the penalty factor. With multiple infractions you could apply a more serious penalty or a longer penalty. The penalty would be adjustable depending on the infraction. And you would not be setting that alliance loose among much weaker competition, which in effect gives them a lot of easy points and makes other alliances who have to face them suffer. Their competition stays hard, but their points drop. That concentrates the penalty only on the alliance that generated the infraction.

While that is neat idea, I don’t think that much engineering needs to go into it. When an alliance is caught piloting, they’re basically ****. Leaderboard score removal is a very harsh penalty in the season structure. Many of the alliances who got caught (high-profile ones at least) will probably disband or have their core members leave on to other alliances who were not penalized. If those alliances continue on, they would be at an appropriate war rating (300 rating isn’t really much) and the fact that they’re no longer piloting means they’ll be worse than their piloted rating. So while in theory your idea would be the most fair, I don’t think Kabam should dedicate any more resources to developing a system like that when leaderboard score removal will do the job just fine.

DNA3000

Hulksmasshh wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

While we are at it, I thought about another problem with the current system of punishing cheaters. Right now they are having war ratings points removed. That makes sense on the surface, but it creates a new problem: they now get to fight easier fights against weaker alliances, which will quickly cause them to recover those war rating points. They still will end up with fewer points, but when we punish an alliance in this way we also punish the poor shmucks who have to now fight them. We are basically punishing a college athlete who cheats by forcing them to compete against high school student athletes. It isn't fair to the high school athletes.

Instead, I believe that when an alliance is caught cheating instead of removing rating points they get a temporary multiplier penalty. Their war rating remains the same so they are still matched against equal opponents (in fact, if they are forced to stop piloting they could be matched against superior opponents) but their multiplier is artificially lowered and thus the alliance gets fewer points per war. Say for first time offenders they get a 0.9 penalty for two weeks. That means for the next two weeks no matter how many points they win during wars, they will only get 90% of those points accrued towards their bracket placement. They continue to move up and down normally and their intrinsic multiplier goes up and down with their war rating, but the actual points scored would be lower by the penalty factor. With multiple infractions you could apply a more serious penalty or a longer penalty. The penalty would be adjustable depending on the infraction. And you would not be setting that alliance loose among much weaker competition, which in effect gives them a lot of easy points and makes other alliances who have to face them suffer. Their competition stays hard, but their points drop. That concentrates the penalty only on the alliance that generated the infraction.

While that is neat idea, I don’t think that much engineering needs to go into it. When an alliance is caught piloting, they’re basically ****. Leaderboard score removal is a very harsh penalty in the season structure. Many of the alliances who got caught (high-profile ones at least) will probably disband or have their core members leave on to other alliances who were not penalized. If those alliances continue on, they would be at an appropriate war rating (300 rating isn’t really much) and the fact that they’re no longer piloting means they’ll be worse than their piloted rating. So while in theory your idea would be the most fair, I don’t think Kabam should dedicate any more resources to developing a system like that when leaderboard score removal will do the job just fine.

It does the job when it comes to the direct punishment for the alliance in question, but are you okay with them dropping in rating and thus lower level perfectly innocent alliances being forced to fight them? You say "many" alliances will likely disband. The rest of them under the current system will be matched against much lower alliances. I think this is a reasonably important separate problem to address. Do you disagree?

GroundedWisdom

I'm not entirely convinced dropping is a drawback. Assuming they're playing fairly after the reprimand, the system falls into its natural order. Meaning they will win or lose based on their own merits. If an Ally is cheating to get to the top, it will have to return based on fair skill and ability.

Hulksmasshh

DNA3000 wrote: »

Hulksmasshh wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

While we are at it, I thought about another problem with the current system of punishing cheaters. Right now they are having war ratings points removed. That makes sense on the surface, but it creates a new problem: they now get to fight easier fights against weaker alliances, which will quickly cause them to recover those war rating points. They still will end up with fewer points, but when we punish an alliance in this way we also punish the poor shmucks who have to now fight them. We are basically punishing a college athlete who cheats by forcing them to compete against high school student athletes. It isn't fair to the high school athletes.

Instead, I believe that when an alliance is caught cheating instead of removing rating points they get a temporary multiplier penalty. Their war rating remains the same so they are still matched against equal opponents (in fact, if they are forced to stop piloting they could be matched against superior opponents) but their multiplier is artificially lowered and thus the alliance gets fewer points per war. Say for first time offenders they get a 0.9 penalty for two weeks. That means for the next two weeks no matter how many points they win during wars, they will only get 90% of those points accrued towards their bracket placement. They continue to move up and down normally and their intrinsic multiplier goes up and down with their war rating, but the actual points scored would be lower by the penalty factor. With multiple infractions you could apply a more serious penalty or a longer penalty. The penalty would be adjustable depending on the infraction. And you would not be setting that alliance loose among much weaker competition, which in effect gives them a lot of easy points and makes other alliances who have to face them suffer. Their competition stays hard, but their points drop. That concentrates the penalty only on the alliance that generated the infraction.

While that is neat idea, I don’t think that much engineering needs to go into it. When an alliance is caught piloting, they’re basically ****. Leaderboard score removal is a very harsh penalty in the season structure. Many of the alliances who got caught (high-profile ones at least) will probably disband or have their core members leave on to other alliances who were not penalized. If those alliances continue on, they would be at an appropriate war rating (300 rating isn’t really much) and the fact that they’re no longer piloting means they’ll be worse than their piloted rating. So while in theory your idea would be the most fair, I don’t think Kabam should dedicate any more resources to developing a system like that when leaderboard score removal will do the job just fine.

It does the job when it comes to the direct punishment for the alliance in question, but are you okay with them dropping in rating and thus lower level perfectly innocent alliances being forced to fight them? You say "many" alliances will likely disband. The rest of them under the current system will be matched against much lower alliances. I think this is a reasonably important separate problem to address. Do you disagree?

If the alliance stops piloting, they would be more or less on an even playing field with the alliance they match at their new war rating. Again, 300 rating reduction isn’t much at all. For example, a 10th ranked alliance before the penalty is around rank 35 now after the deduction. Not a huge drop and the “innocent” alliances aren’t at a huge disadvantage. If the alliance continues piloting they face harsher punishments and possible bans so they’re hurting themselves way more. In a perfect world yes your idea would be better than the system is now. But I’d rather Kabam focus time on many other aspects of the game than a specific multiplier deduction system against piloting alliances.

unknown

This content has been removed.