ARENA MERCS, PILOTING... SAME THING?

We all know Kabam has finally addressed the piloting situation, and it has made the AW playing field much more fair, and FUN. I have had an amazing time so far in season 2, and I’m glad Kabam is cracking down on piloting to make this a fair playing field.

With that said, one of the other BIGGEST issues in the game are MERCS logging into other peoples accounts to complete tasks specifically for ARENA.

The reason why this is such a problem is because it makes it impossible for there to be a realistic chance for a person like myself to land in the top 150 in the 5* FEATURED ARENA. People like myself who can’t spend hours on end playing for 3 days straight, have a disadvantage because there are players who pay MERCS to play for them during the hours they are unable to play. For one, I refuse to do this because I don’t want anyone playing on my account, and 2, I can’t afford to pay someone the amount of money it would take to be able to compete with all these guys scoring 40+ MILLION points for the most desired champs.

KABAM, My ask on behalf of the community is to change the way these 5* featured champions are paid out. For instance, instead of paying a 5* featured champ to the top 150 players who are competing at ridiculous UNREALISTIC scores for everyday plays (such as myself who is in a top alliance), why not put that 5* featured Champion in the final milestone? I think this is fair and you don’t have to necessarily make it an “easy” milestone to achieve, but realistic!

If this is not doable, you need to reconsider expanding the top “150” to maybe the top “800-1000” players. Many many people spend countless hours on so many different parts of the game, and quite frankly, we still have lives and JOBS. I work 70+ hours a week and I can’t play during work. My only alternative is to pay someone to play on my account when I cannot play, but I refuse to do this.

Let’s make the contest a FAIR playing field in ALL aspects! Not just seasons....

Comments

DaMunk

I'm very grateful they cracked down on piloting. I'm not sure how much it's mercs or bots doing arena, probably both. Yes they need to crack down on them too. I'm more concerned with people using mods in war. Seems like about every 5th war we still fight someone cheating. It's definitely gotten better but still happening, people have just gotten a little smarter about it. They will just use mods on very hard nodes. The contest needs to be fair! Gets old writing tickets to support.

DarkestDestroyer

I’m pretty sure over 50% AT LEAST are using either bots, or having more than 1 person play the account for them to gain a champ.

Bet nothing gets done about this though.

unknown

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Dragonfei

I'd actually like to argue this a little bit, because it's not nearly as prevalent as you might think these days, especially since the last big crack down.

The last featured 5* arena, I know the person who got the #1 placement (Muzz). He did it himself, and while the score was certainly high, it wasn't bot high, or an unachievable high. 96 million is high, but it's doable. Quick math on the unit/money spend and my own roster put it solidly into "achievable with resources" territory for me. He definitely paid for the refreshes on his 6*'s to do it, without question, so there was money/unit spend involved.

Just because it isn't feasible for everyone doesn't mean that it's not possible to do in a legit way.

Also in the first Bearded Cap 4* arena I placed 15th with a score of 19.6 (or 19.3 can't remember) million when the cutoff was in the 13 million range. Again, it's a lot, and I definitely spent units to refresh my 4/55's to do it. It can be done with stubbornness, a challenge from an alliance mate and quite a few hours spent.

You make a valid point about mercing, but the consistent and constant problems that arena used to have isn't nearly as bad as it used to be back in the day, so figured I'd hop on and say that since I have first hand experience.

DTMelodicMetal

Some bots or scripts auto fresh champs with units. You fight one or a few rounds, then run the bot or script and can go to work, go to sleep, or o do something else while you cheat your way through arena. This method increases MCOC revenue but denies honest arena grinders the chance to earn certain arena champions through fair play.

The cracking down on AW piloting/modding has been the best thing Kabam has done since I stared playing MCOC last year. Cracking down on the same terms of service violations in arena would cement Kabam’s statement about doing everything in their power to make MCOC a fair game for all players.

DNA3000

DTMelodicMetal wrote: »

Some bots or scripts auto fresh champs with units. You fight one or a few rounds, then run the bot or script and can go to work, go to sleep, or o do something else while you cheat your way through arena. This method increases MCOC revenue but denies honest arena grinders the chance to earn certain arena champions through fair play.

The cracking down on AW piloting/modding has been the best thing Kabam has done since I stared playing MCOC last year. Cracking down on the same terms of service violations in arena would cement Kabam’s statement about doing everything in their power to make MCOC a fair game for all players.

No one is disagreeing with any of this. However, the problem is that under the current conditions in the game it is not possible to simply point at a score and say that was the result of a bot, because all of the scoring I've seen recently was theoretically achievable in a reasonable amount of play time and a reasonable amount of expense by a human being. There doesn't seem to be any fair way to me to assert any percentage of the top scores are the result of bots. Bots *can* generate those scores, but so can humans. There is video evidence of scoring rates that can easily generate those kinds of scores with generally less than eight hours of play a day.

I don't have 3 6* champs, but anyone that does and is willing to optimize masteries can generate about 200k per *round* in the 5* featured arena. And a good arena grinder can sustain about 30 rounds per hour on a fast device. With unit refresh that is six million points per hour. 90 million points is just five hours a day and about $440 of units. The vast majority of scoring in the featured arena is far less than that: just over 40 million generally gets the featured. That's entirely reachable by human gameplay. In fact, without changing any of my set up and using my one 6* and two 4/55 5* champs, I can score about 125k per round and can sustain about 26 rounds per hour. To reach 45 million, which would probably guarantee the featured, I would need to spend about $400 on refreshes and put in about 4 and a half hours per day.

In other words, the top 150 scores in the featured arena are all within the boundaries of what someone like me could do if driven to do it, and what a top scorer could do in just about the same amount of time and money but with better roster and masteries. I'm not saying cheating isn't happening, I'm simply saying the scores alone don't prove it.

DTMelodicMetal

DNA3000 wrote: »

No one is disagreeing with any of this. However, the problem is that under the current conditions in the game it is not possible to simply point at a score and say that was the result of a bot, because all of the scoring I've seen recently was theoretically achievable in a reasonable amount of play time and a reasonable amount of expense by a human being. There doesn't seem to be any fair way to me to assert any percentage of the top scores are the result of bots. Bots *can* generate those scores, but so can humans. There is video evidence of scoring rates that can easily generate those kinds of scores with generally less than eight hours of play a day.

I don't have 3 6* champs, but anyone that does and is willing to optimize masteries can generate about 200k per *round* in the 5* featured arena. And a good arena grinder can sustain about 30 rounds per hour on a fast device. With unit refresh that is six million points per hour. 90 million points is just five hours a day and about $440 of units. The vast majority of scoring in the featured arena is far less than that: just over 40 million generally gets the featured. That's entirely reachable by human gameplay. In fact, without changing any of my set up and using my one 6* and two 4/55 5* champs, I can score about 125k per round and can sustain about 26 rounds per hour. To reach 45 million, which would probably guarantee the featured, I would need to spend about $400 on refreshes and put in about 4 and a half hours per day.

In other words, the top 150 scores in the featured arena are all within the boundaries of what someone like me could do if driven to do it, and what a top scorer could do in just about the same amount of time and money but with better roster and masteries. I'm not saying cheating isn't happening, I'm simply saying the scores alone don't prove it.

I don’t know how bots/scripts work or how to detect them. I do know that other mobile games like Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle banned players who used bots/scripts to run Dokkan Battle’s monthly world tournament mode, which is similar to MCOC’s arena mode (72 hour contest where players use a team of characters to fight different AI teams). Bandai Namco Entertainment routinely administered these bans within 24 hours, sometimes the bans would go into effect before the current World Tournament has finished. Players knew this because it was common for top leaderboard scores/accounts to disappear from the World Tournament Leaderboard both during and after a World Tournament has finished, and social media sites detailed player experiences with being banned for modding/hacking the World Tournament contest.

Everything you said is correct. Ever since one of the game’s top players posted a YouTube video of scoring 1 million points within 10 minutes in the 5* arena players have known how much $ the game’s biggest spenders dish out on 5* arena. That same player also commented that he had used 5 found for the 5* Killmonger arena.

The last Dokkan BattleWorld Tournament I played had ranking brackets go as high as 600,000 players, and recent tournaments have gone at least as high as 1 million (see screenshots below). MCOC arenas rarely reach a number of around 100K players. Because of my experience playing a different top mobile game, I thought that game developers could easily identify when players use bots/scripts.

February 2017 World Tournament Rankings:

May 2018 World Tournament Rankings:

EXØDUS

I don’t believe the top rewards should be catered only to people willing to spend $400-$500. For some people like myself, my wife would have me by the nads. It should be a realistic achievement that still requires work and time. But I’m competing with people who either 1 have WAY more time to play than I do (wish I could play more but it’s not possible), or 2, have an insane amount of money to spend at their leisure.

I think there should be a more fair way to achieve it is all I’m saying. It’s literally impossible for a person like myself to get top 150 without money, or taking 3 days off work.

DTMelodicMetal

*5 odins, I’d edit my previous post but that sometimes leads to comments disappearing

Dragonfei

EXØDUS wrote: »

I don’t believe the top rewards should be catered only to people willing to spend $400-$500. For some people like myself, my wife would have me by the nads. It should be a realistic achievement that still requires work and time. But I’m competing with people who either 1 have WAY more time to play than I do (wish I could play more but it’s not possible), or 2, have an insane amount of money to spend at their leisure.

I think there should be a more fair way to achieve it is all I’m saying. It’s literally impossible for a person like myself to get top 150 without money, or taking 3 days off work.

Simple supply/demand. By making it an elite event that only 150 people earn, Kabam drives up the price, which thereby makes them more money, ultimately. It is a fair way, but it's a harder pill to swallow, because the fair way involves spending money to save time.

In a way, everything top rewards related is catered to the people willing to spend money. When you look at things like the prestige race, potions for AW, and ranking materials, Kabam has almost all of that available through purchase. If you spend the money, you often end up at the top.

That's not to say someone else couldn't get there, but it's a much harder and slower path, often, unless you can dedicate hours of play time.

DNA3000

EXØDUS wrote: »

I don’t believe the top rewards should be catered only to people willing to spend $400-$500. For some people like myself, my wife would have me by the nads. It should be a realistic achievement that still requires work and time. But I’m competing with people who either 1 have WAY more time to play than I do (wish I could play more but it’s not possible), or 2, have an insane amount of money to spend at their leisure.

I think there should be a more fair way to achieve it is all I’m saying. It’s literally impossible for a person like myself to get top 150 without money, or taking 3 days off work.

That depends on your definition of fair. If you can get the same rewards as someone paying a lot more and playing a lot more, many people would consider that unfair.

Part of the arenas have achievement rewards. Those are the milestones, and you are not in competition with anyone else to achieve them. But the rank rewards are a competition. You are competing against other players. If they are willing to do more than you, they will generally beat you. That's generally how competitions work.

New_Noob168

Basically, whoever scores in the top 10 needs lives and not just play games for 3 days straight.

B_mike

tired from this kind of thread, whining about bot or mod in arena
try it yourself, use 3 6* and refresh it with 3 - 5 odins
r u willing to spend? if not, don't dream to get new featured 5* champ
that's the fact,
search verygoots in youtube, and see what I mean, 1 mil in 10 minutes,
90 mil?? 90 x 10minutes = 900 minutes, 15 hours, divide to 3 days, 5 hours a day
no, they don't need to be hardcore grinder to win, what they need only 3 6* champ and a lot of units

Blax4ever

B_mike wrote: »

tired from this kind of thread, whining about bot or mod in arena
try it yourself, use 3 6* and refresh it with 3 - 5 odins
r u willing to spend? if not, don't dream to get new featured 5* champ
that's the fact,
search verygoots in youtube, and see what I mean, 1 mil in 10 minutes,
90 mil?? 90 x 10minutes = 900 minutes, 15 hours, divide to 3 days, 5 hours a day
no, they don't need to be hardcore grinder to win, what they need only 3 6* champ and a lot of units

LOL, are we at the point where a person doesn’t believe 5hrs per day is not grinding.

The addiction is real people