**WINTER OF WOE - BONUS OBJECTIVE POINT**
As previously announced, the team will be distributing an additional point toward milestones to anyone who completed the Absorbing Man fight in the first step of the Winter of Woe.
This point will be distributed at a later time as it requires the team to pull and analyze data.
The timeline has not been set, but work has started.
There is currently an issue where some Alliances are are unable to find a match in Alliance Wars, or are receiving Byes without getting the benefits of the Win. We will be adjusting the Season Points of the Alliances that are affected within the coming weeks, and will be working to compensate them for their missed Per War rewards as well.

Additionally, we are working to address an issue where new Members of an Alliance are unable to place Defenders for the next War after joining. We are working to address this, but it will require a future update.

A possible solution to the unfairness of cheating, losing points and fighting in a lower tier.

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Comments

  • Tanz0rTanz0r Posts: 33
    We are in plat 2 and today we faced a master alliance that dropped for cheating. I am not sure how this is fair for us to match an alliance with a roster way larger than ours. If we drop a tier I won’t be spending money on this game anymore.
  • Archangel442Archangel442 Posts: 158
    Why not just limit the opponent pool to other alliances caught cheating for a few matches?
  • SupermanojSupermanoj Posts: 87
    edited October 2018
    Things aren't so black and white to say 'Oh you cheated so therefore you can't possibly have any way to be in the tier you're in'

    When the majority of piloting was stamped out you saw plenty of alliances take a fall from grace because the majority of those accounts were eye candy and nothing more. In the ones that were recently punished it's more than likely there was a small element of the alliance that was cheating. They still have the skills, defenders and items to demolish lower tiered alliances. Which is why keeping their war rating but reducing their season points makes more sense.

    A few extra shards make no difference at that level. The loss of season rewards is a bigger blow to their progress.

    The only punishment that gets dished out by lowering their war rating is to the opponents who are actually at that level and facing an impossible match up. Failure to understand this basically means because you haven't had it happen to you it then you don't want to consider the effect it has on those that do.
  • Zuko_ILCZuko_ILC Posts: 1,503 ★★★★★
    Yes, Kabam, we all laud and extol your efforts and actions for punishing cheaters in AW. That's not the complaint. The complaint is dropping those cheaters into lower tiers, so they can steamroll legitimate alliances fighting tooth and nail in the gold and platinum brackets.

    A run-in with one of these can unfairly cause hard working alliances to drop from a bracket; especially towards the end of a season.

    It seems ludicrous to me there should be even more collateral damage caused by the cheaters.

    I offer a solution:

    Point Debt

    What is point debt?
    _______________________________

    1) It's an active and passive solution to AW cheating.

    2) When an alliance is caught cheating, instead of getting points deducted, they keep their current score (maintaining their relative bracket) and the would-be point deduction is added as debt.

    3) Half their points from any AW would go to paying off the debt (again, to maintain their relative bracket). Once their debt is paid off, they can start earning all their points towards their score again.

    4) Any debt not paid off at the end of a season is deducted from their final score.

    All they need to do is at end of season review the data and make adjustments. If same alliances caught again you will move up.
  • Why not block alleged cheaters from joining wars for a time related to how many offenses they were proven to cheat? i.e. cheat in 7 wars, can't join 7 wars. Or alternatively block their account from certain content (such as ineffective boosts... let them use the item just don't let it do anything)

    Hey Kabam, how about bringing around the gold quests for those of that play according to the rules?!
  • Archangel442Archangel442 Posts: 158
    Why not just limit the opponent pool to other alliances caught cheating for a few matches?

    Because that could be a great situation for higher alliances. All range of brackets cheat.

    Isn’t that what we’re discussing though? That the cheaters getting dropped puts them in a great situation against weaker alliances? Keep the rating adjustment, keep the point loss, just limit their search pool to others caught cheating... if that means they have a long search to expand the ratings to someone else who cheated, even if they end up in an easy war, is that a problem?
  • SkymastrSkymastr Posts: 46
    Mainer123 wrote: »
    Heres an idea. Kick the MFers out of the season. If you cheat in the Olympics Do you get silver instead of gold. Hell no
    Perma ban simple and easy
  • MarriMarri Posts: 260 ★★
    I have a solution: Allow cheating alliances to finish the season, then apply a 'disqualified' debuff, giving them no season rewards.

    Alternatively, permaban any cheating alliance member. Then check how many points that member scored in war, deduct from War Total and recalculate. It should result in a loss in most cases. Also correct the score + rewards for the other alliance.

    Give out the shards and gold and such on a weekly basis (say a day after last war finished?) so you have time to prevent sending unfairly earned shards to alliances and then not being able to retrieve them.

  • Archangel442Archangel442 Posts: 158
    Why not just limit the opponent pool to other alliances caught cheating for a few matches?

    Because that could be a great situation for higher alliances. All range of brackets cheat.

    Isn’t that what we’re discussing though? That the cheaters getting dropped puts them in a great situation against weaker alliances? Keep the rating adjustment, keep the point loss, just limit their search pool to others caught cheating... if that means they have a long search to expand the ratings to someone else who cheated, even if they end up in an easy war, is that a problem?

    Because it still gives them an easy win since the pool is so small. A master could go against a gold or a gold go against a silver.


    Again though, isn’t that what’s happening anyway? Master alliances getting dropped to low play tier, gold tier getting dropped to silver... at least if they are matched against each other, it’s not punishing the alliances that’s didn’t cheat... beyond that, the gold alliance playing the master in your example is an additional punishment, and while the master alliance gets an easy win (as they already do) the gold alliance that would be getting an easy win against a silver alliance gets a sure loss instead... that feels like an improvement to me
  • Mainer123Mainer123 Posts: 527 ★★
    Skymastr wrote: »
    Mainer123 wrote: »
    Heres an idea. Kick the MFers out of the season. If you cheat in the Olympics Do you get silver instead of gold. Hell no
    Perma ban simple and easy

    Yea. I’m not a everyone wins a trophy type of guy. Grew up in a diffence time, when you had to scratch and claw for the ONE first place trophy.
  • Hammerbro_64Hammerbro_64 Posts: 7,463 ★★★★★
    I like where your head is at but maybe keep them where they are, but keep track of the points they got by cheating, then take those away as the season ends and points and rankings are being calculated; and give the win points to the allys who were cheated out of a win because of the cheating.
  • IsItthoughIsItthough Posts: 254 ★★
    I think the best way to help even out the scales, is to keep the war rating as is. Why drop them, they can double the amount of points taking, but then the cheating alliances will stay facing tougher matches up as punishment. I would also like to see points added to any alliance that lost a war to a cheating alliance. Every alliance that lost such war should be granted an additional 300k in points per instance. This would help with the proper placement of season rewards.
  • Run477Run477 Posts: 1,391 ★★★
    We're talking about the system overall. Whether someone is in Master or Stone, the same action is what we're discussing. If you're trying to somehow imply that it's worse for someone to be knocked down from Master as opposed to Gold, the effect is the same. If they cheated to get to Master, they don't belong there.

    I’m reading through @GroundedWisdom rationale and my head is simply spinning at how much he doesn’t understand the war rating/scoring system/general knowledge in this game.

    The “best” solution in my opinion is to deduct season points but not deduct war rating. That way the ally stays in the tier they belong in based on the majority of the ally’s skill/roster for war matchups but doesn’t get those points toward the end of the season score.

    I guess if you are playing in gold 2 or lower and never have to match these allies that have been docked, you wouldn’t understand how this affects plat 1-3 allies. Most of these docked allies have been docked because of one or two people cheating, not the whole ally. That person is gone and replaced with a better player. Most of the master/plat 1 allies are filled with strong players with even stronger rosters. The vast majority of those allies definitely earned their tier 1 war rating.

    So now you are getting an ally filled with great players (sans the cheater theoretically) and multiple 5* r5 and r4 champs matching with plat 3 or gold 1 allies that may not even have one 5* r5 champ. I don’t care how much “skill” you have. An ally running all 5* r3 and 4* r5 defenders against all 5* r5 attackers as well as that same lower ally facing all r4 defenders are almost never going to win. What’s more, with the scorin system, a “win” at tier 3 is worth more than a “loss” at tier 2. So these allies can move up quicker by knocking off allies that are 5+ million lower PI than them.

    So to make a comment that whether you are stone or master has the same effect is ludicrous. Is piloting in gold 3 or stone even a thing???
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    IMO, the best solution is to only have one point adjustment per season. That adjustment will come in the time between the end of the season and when rewards are handed out. For any war an alliance cheated in, they will lose the win bonus for that war and that bonus will be awarded to the team they cheated. Additional points can be docked from multiple offenders.

    This solution is the best because it keeps everyone playing the correct opponents. Also, with the deductions happening at the end of the season the cheaters won't be able to jump ship or buy into other groups to gain the lost rewards.

    The primary problem with this solution is that point corrections are imperfect, so delaying punishment until the end of the season means an alliance can continue to cheat against other alliances for longer than necessary and point corrections both won't always make the victims whole and could also indirectly harm other innocent alliances if the victims incorrectly jump them.

    The best solution I can come up with is a two part solution. First, when cheating is detected the cheating alliance is handed both a seasonal point penalty that is high enough to be much higher than any point advantage they might have gained (it is perfectly fine to err on the side of penalizing high here). They are also handed a multiplier penalty that reduces all future season point gains by some value, for example purposes 0.75 or 75%. This penalty will last for some number of wars and the penalty can only be worked off during in-season wars. The penalty also stacks with future infractions: an alliance caught cheating that is caught again could get a 0.75 penalty on top of a 0.75 penalty, which means they would be earning points at 0.75 * 0.75 = 0.56 the normal rate. Their rating stays the same and rating changes continue to accrue when they fight and win or lose wars. This hits them with a point penalty, docks future points for an amount of time, but doesn't change their match up criteria or who they fight.

    Second, after the season is over, all ranks are determined and all alliances' rewards are tentatively calculated. Then, all victims of cheating alliances are given point bonuses equal to the victory points they would have earned at the multiplier they had at the time of the cheating infraction, plus some small additional point bonus. Then, all victims are recalculated to see if these compensation points would have advanced them into a higher bracket. If they do, they are given the higher bracket rewards. No one else is bumped to make space. In this way, no innocent alliances are ever bumped downward and lose rewards when compensation occurs, so the compensation point value can err on the side of giving victims additional bonus points without worrying about the effect this has on global ranking. Victim compensation can only help the victims, it cannot hurt anyone else.

    This simultaneously allows us to apply punitive punishment on cheating alliances without harming other alliances (through bad matchmaking) while allowing us to also attempt to make victims whole without harming other alliances through compensation points bumping innocent alliances downward. We can be as harsh as we like on cheaters, and as generous as we want to be for victims, while everyone else is unaffected to the highest degree possible. We can also apply punishment as early and as often as we want to try to deter cheating.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    edited October 2018
    My issue with allowing them to keep War Rating is effectively, you're allowing them to maintain the product of the cheating. My suggestion is actually to have another system altogether for Matchmaking. There are a number of reasons for this, including Points Reductions and Tanking. There should be a system in place that cannot be manipulated by Off-Season, and doesn't have any adverse effects from punishment. As it stands, allowing them to keep their War Rating would in essence be the same as allowing them to cheat and get away with it, regardless of the Matches. War Rating is a product of Wins, and if Wins are gained illegally, they're not deserved.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    My issue with allowing them to keep War Rating is effectively, you're allowing them to maintain the product of the cheating.

    Out of season, you might have some barely not-ridiculous point, but within the war season the overwhelmingly important aspects of higher war rating is it offers the alliance a higher seasonal multiplier, and it forces them to fight higher competition. Keeping war rating high to force them to fight higher competition is not allowing them to "maintain the product of the cheating."

    Almost no one cares at this point if the higher rating allows the alliance to temporarily earn slightly better victory rewards per war due to higher tier. That is complaining about the water damage when the fire department extinguishes your blazing house.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    It's not at all, really. The point is they're cheating to earn it and get to where they are. That's what needs to be rectified. Unfortunately, in the current system, that includes War Rating and that affects Matchmaking. I'm not okay with the idea that cheating allows them to make their way up the Tiers through earning Rating, and I am definitely not okay with the idea of them keeping that position in lieu of bad Matches, as collateral damage. They didn't earn it if they got there illegally.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    It's not at all, really. The point is they're cheating to earn it and get to where they are. That's what needs to be rectified. Unfortunately, in the current system, that includes War Rating and that affects Matchmaking. I'm not okay with the idea that cheating allows them to make their way up the Tiers through earning Rating, and I am definitely not okay with the idea of them keeping that position in lieu of bad Matches, as collateral damage. They didn't earn it if they got there illegally.

    Welp, we can't ban cheaters either. Because a ban is something they earned through cheating. Can't let them have that.
  • battleonebattleone Posts: 286 ★★
    What about a roster freeze for punished alliance, youre stuck with the banned... cant sign in guy for a certain length of time. Thus creating a handicap for the alliance in future wars.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    battleone wrote: »
    What about a roster freeze for punished alliance, youre stuck with the banned... cant sign in guy for a certain length of time. Thus creating a handicap for the alliance in future wars.

    That seems to excessively punish every player in the alliance for something it is possible only one player did wrong. We have to penalize alliances as a necessity, and that means we have to penalize the players in that alliance whether they did something wrong or not. That's a necessary evil. But beyond that, applying additional restrictions on the players that did not break the rules seems incorrectly punitive.

    We *penalize* alliances because we have to take away ill-gotten gains, whether every player is to blame or not. We *punish* players for breaking the rules, because if you break the rules you deserve to be not just penalized for ill-gotten gains but also punitively punished for breaking the rules and to try to deter other players from breaking the rules. But we shouldn't punish players for things they did not do and had no control over.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    It's not at all, really. The point is they're cheating to earn it and get to where they are. That's what needs to be rectified. Unfortunately, in the current system, that includes War Rating and that affects Matchmaking. I'm not okay with the idea that cheating allows them to make their way up the Tiers through earning Rating, and I am definitely not okay with the idea of them keeping that position in lieu of bad Matches, as collateral damage. They didn't earn it if they got there illegally.

    Welp, we can't ban cheaters either. Because a ban is something they earned through cheating. Can't let them have that.

    Didn't say I was opposed to that.
  • Justice_Evo_8Justice_Evo_8 Posts: 213 ★★
    It’s a very big problem and it hasn’t even been addressed or acknowledged by kabam yet. It’s BS. Pilot and catch a ban. The alliance should be told exactly who was piloted so they can kick that person. Then they should be locked out of AW until next season and miss out on rewards.
  • GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,189 ★★★★★
    Unless they start losing in which case they drop to whatever th
    It's not at all, really. The point is they're cheating to earn it and get to where they are. That's what needs to be rectified. Unfortunately, in the current system, that includes War Rating and that affects Matchmaking. I'm not okay with the idea that cheating allows them to make their way up the Tiers through earning Rating, and I am definitely not okay with the idea of them keeping that position in lieu of bad Matches, as collateral damage. They didn't earn it if they got there illegally.

    What you are giving them as punishment is easy, item free wars with a fast path back to where they were at the expense of lower alliances who get massacred. How can you not see that?

    I didn't say I was arguing for the current system. I said I don't support allowing them to maintain their position within the current setup.
  • DNA3000DNA3000 Posts: 18,552 Guardian
    DNA3000 wrote: »
    It's not at all, really. The point is they're cheating to earn it and get to where they are. That's what needs to be rectified. Unfortunately, in the current system, that includes War Rating and that affects Matchmaking. I'm not okay with the idea that cheating allows them to make their way up the Tiers through earning Rating, and I am definitely not okay with the idea of them keeping that position in lieu of bad Matches, as collateral damage. They didn't earn it if they got there illegally.

    Welp, we can't ban cheaters either. Because a ban is something they earned through cheating. Can't let them have that.

    Didn't say I was opposed to that.

    I didn't say that you were not saying I said you were not saying you were opposed to that.
  • LegendJRGLegendJRG Posts: 39
    Unless they start losing in which case they drop to whatever th
    It's not at all, really. The point is they're cheating to earn it and get to where they are. That's what needs to be rectified. Unfortunately, in the current system, that includes War Rating and that affects Matchmaking. I'm not okay with the idea that cheating allows them to make their way up the Tiers through earning Rating, and I am definitely not okay with the idea of them keeping that position in lieu of bad Matches, as collateral damage. They didn't earn it if they got there illegally.

    What you are giving them as punishment is easy, item free wars with a fast path back to where they were at the expense of lower alliances who get massacred. How can you not see that?

    I didn't say I was arguing for the current system. I said I don't support allowing them to maintain their position within the current setup.

    That only leaves us with banning them, as your opposition to the only other solutions seems clear. I’m not ok with that when there are guys I know for sure in top alliances not cheating who would be banned. Also leads to super scummy stuff at the top like whales literally paying players to get caught so their competition gets banned. That will happen and needs to be avoided, docking their points severely enough that they can’t recover to their original placing or anywhere near is the only practical solution. That leaves players who didn’t cheat the chance to leave and join other top alliances if they wish.
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