The current system is not a deterrent for cheating. They slap the top alliances on the wrist, take away 1 million war points, then drop there war rating by 600. So in now a masters alliance is down facing plat 2 alliances. Basically cruzing for the remainder of the season to finish back in masters or plat 1. Meanwhile those in plat 2 and plat 3 get crushed by said alliances and risk falling out their current spot.
If you want a punishment that works, strip 8 million points away and leave the war rating the same. Now they are facing the same competition but wont be able to climb back up.
Stripping a lot of points and leaving war rating intact does penalize the alliance more than dropping war rating and doesn't have the side effect of allowing the penalized alliance to fight weaker competition which softens the penalty, but it can be difficult to tune the penalty by tier, and the penalty shouldn't just work for the top tier alliances: it should theoretically work against any alliance at any tier.
I've been advocating a multiplier penalty since season one. You can still penalize season points (you should at the very least take away the points they earned in any way they are found cheating in, plus some punitive extra amount of points as penalty), but you also slap a multiplier penalty for a certain number of wars, say 0.5. Until that penalty expires, you only earn half the points you would otherwise earn, but you remain in the same tier facing the same competition. If you are in tier 1, you still get a x7 mutliplier, but then you also get hit with the 0.5 penalty. In net effect, you have only a 3.5 multipler.
If you are caught cheating in the last war of the season and you are hit with a six war multiplier penalty, that penalty carries over into the next season: you cannot shake it during the "off season." It specifically affects wars within the competitive season. It would be like serving out a suspension in sports: you can't serve those out during the off season. This ensures the full penalty is served out, even if you're caught cheating at the end of a season.
And now, they buy a new alliance with a high war rating (plenty of abandoned alliances available. Ever wondered why people keep smurf accounts as leaders in those alliances instead of outright deleting the alliance by leaving it?) To add the finishing touches, they change the name and tag of the alliance they bought to be the same as their last alliance
Simply banning alliances from getting rewards also won't work. These cheaters would just move to/buy their place in a different alliance. This is more problematic because to make space for these cheaters, honest players might get kicked from their alliance
So permanently ban the cheaters? Yeah, that won't work as well. They'll buy another account and come back
So what's the solution? (I know people won't like mine) Don't make AW the only way for end-game players to progress quickly. Spread out the rewards more evenly. Buff AQ rewards! Don't make AW season rewards so widely different between brackets!
I remember Miike once saying that AW was supposed to be the way to gain champs and AQ the way to rank up those champs. Hence why AW didn't award catalysts and AQ doesn't award crystal shards. All that balance got thrown out of the window with AW seasons.
Kabam knew perfectly well what the outcome would be when they designed AW seasons. S1 and S2 AQ was a perfect example of how far alliances are willing to go to secure end-game rewards which are only available to a limited number of alliances in different brackets (alliance swapping, buying, using placeholder alliances to prevent other alliances to get t4c, buying high prestige inactive accounts to maintain alliance prestige, etc). But of course potential to milk thousands of dollars more from these "top-tier" alliances was impossible to ignore. So expect more game-breaking defenders to be realeased mid-season, followed by various rank-up offers and then the release of even more broken offence champs which render all champs useless on defence, which is followed by even more rank up offers, and the cycle continues (oh, and expect lots of bugged mechanics and champ interactions, unannounced nerfs and other stuff as well)
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And now, they buy a new alliance with a high war rating (plenty of abandoned alliances available. Ever wondered why people keep smurf accounts as leaders in those alliances instead of outright deleting the alliance by leaving it?) To add the finishing touches, they change the name and tag of the alliance they bought to be the same as their last alliance
Simply banning alliances from getting rewards also won't work. These cheaters would just move to/buy their place in a different alliance. This is more problematic because to make space for these cheaters, honest players might get kicked from their alliance
So permanently ban the cheaters? Yeah, that won't work as well. They'll buy another account and come back
So what's the solution? (I know people won't like mine) Don't make AW the only way for end-game players to progress quickly. Spread out the rewards more evenly. Buff AQ rewards! Don't make AW season rewards so widely different between brackets!
I remember Miike once saying that AW was supposed to be the way to gain champs and AQ the way to rank up those champs. Hence why AW didn't award catalysts and AQ doesn't award crystal shards. All that balance got thrown out of the window with AW seasons.
Kabam knew perfectly well what the outcome would be when they designed AW seasons. S1 and S2 AQ was a perfect example of how far alliances are willing to go to secure end-game rewards which are only available to a limited number of alliances in different brackets (alliance swapping, buying, using placeholder alliances to prevent other alliances to get t4c, buying high prestige inactive accounts to maintain alliance prestige, etc). But of course potential to milk thousands of dollars more from these "top-tier" alliances was impossible to ignore. So expect more game-breaking defenders to be realeased mid-season, followed by various rank-up offers and then the release of even more broken offence champs which render all champs useless on defence, which is followed by even more rank up offers, and the cycle continues (oh, and expect lots of bugged mechanics and champ interactions, unannounced nerfs and other stuff as well)
/rant