Cheaters, Cheaters Everywhere
Here's a pilot with over 3400 wins and a hangar full of premium items wiping the Gold League opposition out singlehandedly in the first minute of a battle.
Fellow Pilots,
I haven't posted in a long time, for two reasons. First, it's summer, and my human children are not institutionalized daily, as they would normally be. Second, the topic of this post is discouraging. That's a place I don't like to go.
The U normally spends all or most of its energy helping players learn to play a more tactically sound and enjoyable game of War Robots. This will remain true if/when we get going again in the fall. But the game, as you know, has changed. And the changes have been dramatic. We've enumerated them before, but they can be summed up pretty neatly again here. The matchmaking system was changed to ignore strength of hangar, and new content for the last year has been both overpowering and expensive. The predictable result? RAMPANT cheating, and a diminished game experience for all players.
Before I define cheating, I'll describe "rampant." It's pervasive and persistent - cheaters appear in nearly 100% of battles (see our previous post about the frequency). They may not be cheating at that moment, but their profiles often display tell-tale evidence and their behaviour raises red flags. Long (20 or more) win streaks, for example, are extremely improbable in a fair game with twelve evenly matched players. In War Robots, they happen only when groups of players exploit absurd mismatches for long periods of time. It's more than unsportsmanlike - it's cheating. The opponents have - literally - no chance to win.
Cheating also includes, but is not limited to:
Fraud - some players spend exorbitant amounts of money obtaining premium gear, and then they have the expenditure refunded by Apple or Google by claiming their children made unauthorized purchases or that their accounts were stolen. While this is certainly the riskiest cheat, as it is criminal fraud, I've never heard of a punishment longer than a temporary suspension. In fact, no player known to me has even had items removed from an account or an account banned from the game.
Hacks - some players utilize add-on programs or inserted code to obtain advantages like weapons that never need reloading or unlimited resources. Hacks are rare, but they occur in all online games.
Exploits - like the unlimited stealth we saw with Spectres recently, players manipulate their internet connection and other loopholes in the game's mechanics to obtain an advantage.
Tanking - deliberate losing OR deliberately remaining in leagues far lower than ones in which the competition is fair. Have you seen what a Spectre does to Leos and Gepards? Skilled players (like the Reverend of Death and Forum moderator Dark Vagabond) reach Champion league with level 9/10 gear in as few as 500 wins. But Gold, Diamond, and Expert leagues remain packed with players who have thousands of wins AND premium gear at very high levels.
Time Drops - players open voice communications in Discord, Line, or WhatsApp, get two full squads together, and they drop into battle at the same time. If they land on the same field, they take turns destroying the other team in its entirety. The yields are huge silver rewards, easy gold, inflated damage totals and averages, and sometimes, event prizes.
Account buying and sharing - some players have accounts that are being played around the clock by groups of people to build huge sums of resources. Similarly, these and other high-level accounts are sold on a secondary market to players who thus obtain an unfair advantage in gear.
There's more, but you get the picture. While some will argue that my definition of cheating is overly broad (I mean any behaviour, not just rule breaking, that leads to an advantage not obtained by normal play), the pernicious effect on the game is obvious to virtually everyone. Sometimes we shrug our collective shoulders, sometimes we blame individuals, groups, or Pixonic.
Saga here plays in Expert, finding his way into battles against Diamond and Gold pilots, despite the MK2 hangar and almost 10,000 wins.
Clans are doing this together. Here's two pilots from STAHLREITER, which translates roughly to "We Suck, So We Cheat." Believe it or not, I ran into them in separate battles. I think I beat both, definitely wiping out Nini-Linz with his/her 13,000+ wins and whale hangar in Silver league. If I was using that hangar in Silver league, my win rate would be 100%. For the record, it was an easy encirclement on Springfield.
I'm conducting a simple experiment to see what I can do in terms of rating and win rate using a F2P, non-component, level six hangar. It's simple, but effective:
Nini, on the other hand, rocks three stealth jumpers and a pair of HeyCheese, much of it maxed out. He/she has been in champion league (the 978 trophies are obtained by finishing a season rated over 5000) but currently resides in ... Silver 1!
The problem, of course, is the system. With that said, these folks are ridiculous, cheaters, and a stain on video gamers everywhere. The only entity with the power to fix the issue is, of course, the company that designed the game in the first place. Pixonic needs to acknowledge the cheating, and they need to address it. There are simple fixes available (see our previous post about a few of the solutions). I'm aware that Pixonic needs to make money; I'm aware that there is a parent company with financial goals and oversight. In case Pix didn't realize it, there are a couple MASSIVE mobile hits out there (Fortnite and PUBG, among others) that make money AND place a high degree of emphasis on equal opportunity.
Dear Pixonic, FIX THE GAME. Please.
I hope to resume blogging about War Robots some time after September 10th. Until then, I remain your humble servant,
Dr. Yat
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The U is not just a blog ... we are also iOS clans #48669, #141459, and #139479. We are always looking for champion-league pilots, and welcome skilled communicators from around the world.
The U is not just a blog ... we are also iOS clans #48669, #141459, and #139479. We are always looking for champion-league pilots, and welcome skilled communicators from around the world.
I spent three solid days reporting tankers to Pixonic. By the third day i was re-reporting the same players. When i pointed this out to pixonic they told me the players concerned were in the low priority queue. The players concerned were still playing with maxed mk2 hangers in silver 1 winning gold/silver and keys. I told pixonic and they had no idea how they were doing it and had no solution. They kept asking me for more information as for some reason they could not check themselves. I have over 150 jpegs of tankers game results and stats but i have given up sending them to pixonic. It's completely pointless. They don't want to fix the problem. If they tried playing the game for themselves in the lower leagues they would see that it has become an unstoppable plague. For the record one of the worst i have seen is called mucking fuppet. He wrecks every game i see him in. The others are usually clans like Red Alert, Black knights and -UA- They tank systematically all the way down to low bronze leagues with 12000+ wins. It's hopeless
ReplyDeleteI haven't yet entered the same "hopeless" territory, I guess ... I wrote the post and shared it with Pixonic. My real frustration, of course, is with them. Because of the breakout successes of Fortnite and PUBG, I believe that a game can make money - and lots of it -without being unfair. In fact, I'd argue that for a game to reach its real potential in the marketplace, it has to be perceived as fair by most of its players. Maybe I'm an idealist ... are there huge hits out there with the same P2W model as War Robots?
DeleteTerrible definition of cheating...
ReplyDelete"Cheating" may be the wrong word - I chose it for the provocative connotation. There are, of course, "legal" ways to obtain almost insurmountable advantages in War Robots. Call it unfair, call it life, call it economic inequality, or whatever you want - I call people who want to beat up on inferior opponents "cheaters," and I call what they do "cheating." When we play Skirmish, Hangar X, or sixpack, that's the future of the game. I hope.
DeleteI think you got it correct forst time. Cheating is what it's called....plain and simple and it has wrecked the game.
DeleteI could not agree more. It seems that every month we see more OP weapons that can only be bought for components, preventing everyday players from using them. The new test server weapons are good examples of this. The same as the current shotgun weapons, but they also immobilize their targets. Smashed by the same damage as a Thunder, and unable to run away or get behind cover, just sad. Like you, I hope that Pixonic fixes this aspect of their game, but I doubt that will happen in the near future. It is not only the weapons and robots being produced that are causing this failure in the game. It is that players that are taking advantage of a broken system. This hurts the players that do not cheat and because they are hopelessly outmatched and hardly ever win they themselves start to cheat and take advantage of the loopholes. This intern just fuels the cycle. But maybe one day this will change.
ReplyDeleteAs a frequent reader, you probably saw the post about the Nash Equilibrium. This is what John Nash described (for a Nobel Prize!) ... a game in which no one can benefit by changing their strategy. Pixonic upended the entire game once, when they introduced the rating system as the basis for matchmaking. They could, and should, do it again.
DeleteAnd that is the problem. In normal evolution both the environment and organism changes and adapts. In this game the only thing changing is the environment, while the player is unable to change to fit it. If they do change the matchmaking system hopefully they go back to a rating system. The rating system would have to be based on what bots and weapons currently in your hanger at the time of battle, not your league. This would prevent tanking and also prevent someone with an all Spectre and a hanger with the newest weapons from destroying a person with only a Destrier and Cossack.
DeleteI guess we need to wait for aa completio to come up with a WR clone. BoT seems to have many similar problems. Hopefully some Belorussian company will release something similar to WR but a fair one, without Shittrains, clearly op bots and weps, and so on. Belorus seems to know how to get it right (e.g. Blitz). Reporting to Pixonic cheaters is a full time job, and they end up not doing anything about it.
ReplyDeleteRight on, Nook - I'm told they have been unable to keep up with tankers as they attempt to do it by hand (individually) and using slap-on-the-wrist penalties. If it's not going to be automatic, it needs to be a much stronger statement so that word gets around!
DeleteWith so many obvious tankers in games I found it completely ironic not to mention unfair when Pix placed me in LLQ .I contacted them to ask why as I never leave games early and was informed by Pix that I was tanking.For one thing I never have tanked and I never lowered my league so how was I tanking? Typical Pix BS!
DeleteI spent time in LPQ as well, and I know why - I was skipping all KOTH and TDM. I attempted to do this before the game began so I could be replaced, but still wound up in purgatory. Because actual cheaters can get out of the LPQ in a couple hours (if not less), it isn't an effective deterrent, and as we've seen, happens to people who aren't tanking at all!
DeleteHey, Y’at. Reverend of Death here. Decided a while ago to take a break from the Champ meta play, and spent the past two seasons playing mainly non-component gear. I still played hard, and played to win, but inevitably I slowly (more slowly than expected, though, which was nice) dropped down into Expert league. I eventually settled at the E1/E2 border, where I was being trounced by the kind of hangars that I used to face in Champ. On a whim I put my old Level 10 gear Champ hangar back in, to see how it would fare down here under what looks like the old Champ meta. And to be honest, it can barely hang on in Expert II, where I remain stuck vacillating between 3500 and 3600 league points. In every game there are stronger hangars than my old Champ hangar on both sides of the battlefield, making it impossible to gain any real traction, but I sit instead stalled in this purgatory. My experiment is done, proving to me the meta has shifted down five league levels or so, and so I will now go back to playing mostly non-component gear again. I find it more satisfying to try and win a game with a level 9/10 hangar of four non-component Geps and a Gust Pursuer than with a hangar full of Dash bots, a Spectre and an Inquisitor. Or a hangar of four non-component Griffs and a Lance. Or a hangar of non-component Rogs and Stalkers. Much more satisfying when you pull off a win as the underdog.
ReplyDeleteAgreed! Winning when under-leveled is one of the game's great pleasures, and it sharpens our skills tremendously!
Delete