The War on Cheaters Update - September 2023
MCOC Team
Administrator, Admin [en] Administrator › Posts: 604
Hello Summoners!
Season 10 of Battlegrounds was busy for the anti-cheat team as we monitored the leaderboard to ensure the integrity of our Battlerealm Brawl qualifiers. Over the course of the season, we developed a method to identify a new cheating strategy, as well as improved our detection for win trading. Both ended up paying off and impacted the final qualifiers for the Brawl. Congratulations to those who qualified fairly, we look forward to hosting you in Vancouver!
We believe our anti-cheat methods are in a pretty good spot. There is still work to be done, and we meet regularly to improve our detection algorithms, but we have active programs in place across the game, regularly banning modders in Battlegrounds, Arenas, Incursions and solo content.
With that progress made, we have had a chance to dive into the “shelling” problem in Alliance War. For those unfamiliar with the concept, some alliances have been using an exploit to modify the matchmaking parameters to their favor. This off season we carefully monitored the movement of players, and three alliances near the top of the leaderboard were clearly engaging in this anti-competitive behaviour. Today the officers of those alliances were issued temporary bans, and when they return they will find their shell alliances at the very bottom of the AW rankings. If they want to compete for the top rewards in AW, they will have to do so from their primary alliances. Given this is the first time we have taken action against this exploit we were slightly more lenient; consider this a 'warning shot' of sorts. In the future, any alliances that we catch shelling will receive harsher penalties up to and including permanent bans for all members of guilty alliances.
Additionally, we have had the time to take a closer look at mercenaries in Battlegrounds. A number of accounts have received escalating bans for being played by someone other than the owner. Those that were not banned permanently will be banned from the Battlegrounds game mode for three season.
Finally, there is already a post up about players exploiting the Enlistment gifting event, but we wanted to note this is still on our radar and there will be action taken before the end of the event. The most extreme exploiters will receive bans, and we will be taking additional action against some accounts.
Season 10 of Battlegrounds was busy for the anti-cheat team as we monitored the leaderboard to ensure the integrity of our Battlerealm Brawl qualifiers. Over the course of the season, we developed a method to identify a new cheating strategy, as well as improved our detection for win trading. Both ended up paying off and impacted the final qualifiers for the Brawl. Congratulations to those who qualified fairly, we look forward to hosting you in Vancouver!
We believe our anti-cheat methods are in a pretty good spot. There is still work to be done, and we meet regularly to improve our detection algorithms, but we have active programs in place across the game, regularly banning modders in Battlegrounds, Arenas, Incursions and solo content.
With that progress made, we have had a chance to dive into the “shelling” problem in Alliance War. For those unfamiliar with the concept, some alliances have been using an exploit to modify the matchmaking parameters to their favor. This off season we carefully monitored the movement of players, and three alliances near the top of the leaderboard were clearly engaging in this anti-competitive behaviour. Today the officers of those alliances were issued temporary bans, and when they return they will find their shell alliances at the very bottom of the AW rankings. If they want to compete for the top rewards in AW, they will have to do so from their primary alliances. Given this is the first time we have taken action against this exploit we were slightly more lenient; consider this a 'warning shot' of sorts. In the future, any alliances that we catch shelling will receive harsher penalties up to and including permanent bans for all members of guilty alliances.
Additionally, we have had the time to take a closer look at mercenaries in Battlegrounds. A number of accounts have received escalating bans for being played by someone other than the owner. Those that were not banned permanently will be banned from the Battlegrounds game mode for three season.
Finally, there is already a post up about players exploiting the Enlistment gifting event, but we wanted to note this is still on our radar and there will be action taken before the end of the event. The most extreme exploiters will receive bans, and we will be taking additional action against some accounts.
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Comments
While they’re in alliance B, the other alliance A now becomes the shell, loses 12 wars and loses its rating so that they can jump back to A at the end of that season and continue beating up on lower rated alliance.
It’s cowardly, and been going on for far too long. So I’m really glad kabam are cracking down on it
With regard to the enlistment event, could you please clarify… if one person has a large number of alts (entirely under his own control) and uses them to gift his main account, is that considered actionable abuse? Or are you only targeting ppl who are using third party alt farms?
Well done to everyone at Kabam involved in making this an actuality.
With regard to the enlistment event, could you please clarify… if one person has a large number of alts (entirely under his own control) and uses them to gift his main account, is that considered actionable abuse? Or are you only targeting ppl who are using third party alt farms?
He's even took the screenshot and admitted it all in the forums, all by himself. 😅😅
https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/347059/act-6-need-nerfing-and-changing-so-cavalier-and-uncollected-players-can-get-through#latest
But why they had started out with excess points that boosted their season totals at the beginning ? Miike had said they were looking into that early on, but could see they were still much higher that their WR should allow them to be towards the end (not sure about how they actually finished after the season was completely over and rewards sent out ?)
And secondly, did “Nothing Imp.” actually get rewards based on their ranking they were in that people saw during the season, or was that situation rectified for Rewards (even if not seen on Leaderboard) ? Still not sure how someone could manipulate matchmaking to avoid similar WR matches, but if that is what happened, we’re they docked as well ?