From Rovio to Epic Fans: Cheaters and Leaderboards

[Anonymous]

@laura118b I think the 2nd question has a universal answer: Hacks. Likely an item hack at that.

[KerrAvon]

@laura118b In both cases this will be players who have hacked their accounts.

Some players hack their EPIC games to change the statistics of their birds and the amounts of snoutlings, LCs, etc., that they have. I believe that following some of the recent updates to the game, these players are now unable to use birds in the arena that can do extremely high levels of damage or have high levels of health.

I can only assume these, or similar players, are now working out other ways to mess around with the EPIC game.

In the first case, I assume they are hacking their games and changing the experience levels of their bird team. For example, increasing the experience level from 8 to 41. This is probably still considered to pass the selection criteria for having a legitimate account and so they can compete in the arena. I have seen several of these teams this week in the arena (in season 2).

In the second case, this is probably a player who has obtained the red key, purchased SeaDog (probably using LCs obtained by hacking the account), and then hacked the account and reduced the experience level from, for example, 30 down to 8. They have probably done this because they think they can compete and win at the lower experience level.

By the way, the special LC classes (e.g. Sea Dog, Thunderbird) do not show up in Piggy McCools shop until you reach the position on the map with the training area for that class.

[laura118b]

Didn’t know that last part. I’ve finished all 13 caves where as she is only on her 5th week of play. So while I saw Seadog because she came to me very confused about that class having never seen it, I don’t poke around her game comparing what the updates affected. In truth it makes me sad…she has a better Kindle than I do thanks to grandpa and the resolution difference is screamingly obvious on Epic. ;-)

[KerrAvon]

@laura118b Sorry, I was wrong about Piggy McCools shop. Those classes are available in the shop, even though my level 18 team has not reached the training areas. As far as I can tell, you just need LCs to get them.

[Rovio Nefuah]

Hey guys,

this thread wasn’t meant to be a one time posting. I will update you with news on your questions and try to avoid one liners. Compiling and sending the answers to the games team sometimes requires a bit of time. So don’t expect 1-2 days answers please. And as already stated, we don’t work on the weekends. Please be patient while we answer your questions, filter your feedback and fix the bugs in the game.

yours

nefuah

[Thorondor]

Nefuah – thank you, we appreciate your comments and feedback!

[MVNLA2]

@rovionefuah — Thanks for checking it. I do understand it takes time to get answers.
However, as the chief impatient person, what I’m looking for is some indication that you and Rovio understand why the “ghost” players are a problem, and that Rovio is actively trying to fix this problem. So far all you’ve said is that Rovio did this on purpose, and that it does not affect the outcome of the Arena leagues. You did say improving this is possibly going to be done in the future. This gives the impression that Rovio does not understand what the problem is, and that fixing it is a low priority.
To quote your words: “We know that some players are appearing on multiple leaderboards in the Arena leagues. The reason this is happening is because it is a fallback method for building leaderboards when the game is otherwise not able to build a fully populated … leaderboard. …. We know it’s not ideal, but it does not affect the outcome of your Arena league.”
Perhaps explaining why you claim it does not affect the outcome of the league would help. As it is, people think that the “ghosts” frequently occupy the top spots in the league and therefore prevent legitimate players from advancing. Even if the ghosts are deleted (unbeknownst to the other players) before the results are calculated, their presence can discourage others from trying to reach the top.

[Immortal… Larry]

@rovionefuah, Any chance you can let us know that you understand the frustrations on ghost players? We *think* we understand what Rovio intends the system to work like.

We are all trying to relay to you (and Rovio) that there are side effects which are very very wrong.

All frustrations in the nest are caused by Rovio refusing to acknowledge what’s going on. It will help if you can let us know that you understand what’s happening and that it’s somewhere on a priority list.

In the mean time, congratulations with getting rid of 99% of the cheating. The cheaters thread is slowly disappearing towards the archives which is a very good sign. I haven’t seen or heard a lot about cheaters anymore (although there still seem to be score editors out there…)

[Bubbley]

@mvnla2 @larry its probably not the best place for this question but it follows. Now that we can see friends scores would we see two sets if they are being used as a ghost?

[MVNLA2]

@bubbley — I think the ghost has the same score as the real player, so no, I don’t think you would see 2 sets.

@rovionefuah — Obviously I agree with @Larry 1000% (yes, one thousand : D ).

[Bubbley]

@mvnla2 the ghost may not have the same score. When I saw @dallasreds in my Diamond league he saw himself in a Platinum league but certainly the scores were different. @larry kindly posted the images in the presence in multiple leagues thread. I would link this if I could.

[burbman]

Apparently there are still ways to hack the Arena Leaderboard. A player on my board jumped from zero points to 128,500 instantly this morning. Now there are only two spots for legit players to advance, Grrr.

[t_russell]

@burbman — The leaderboard hacks are probably here to stay unless Rovio wants to get out the BAN Hammer. They have seemed enthusiastic to stop people from cheating but not to punish them if caught. Since removing them from leaderboards or zeroing scores is a direct punishment I don’t see it forthcoming.

[Angry Johnny]

@burbman Yeah, that is probably a cheater that manipulated the game’s and game save’s values. Unfortunatly that is the most general common kind of cheating over all kinds of games and is hard to prevent in Epic considering the game synchronize pure values between the app and the database.

Online games should never be that simple to manipulate but instead rely on hardcoded values to be looked up or calculated in the database. I made a thread about it on this forum a while ago.

[briette]

Soundwave4000 is biggest cheater of all he has 795,000,000 in wood league

[Neomerlinmagic]

This is how the leaderboard currently works, as I understand it.
1) Everyone has their own leaderboards.
2) Everyone on your board also has you on their board, as said by @rovionefuah. But most, if not all, the other people on the two boards have no one else in common. Therefore, your position on their board doesn’t necessarily match with yours.
3) People on your friends list are excluded from your board.
4) Everyone has their own set of objectives everyday.
5) The leaderboards are populated with people from any league level regardless of what league level you’re in.

[Eric OG]

Not sure if this is the place, but there seems to be another cheater on my arena leader board. We’re less an an hour into this week’s tournament and the person in 1st place has already scored 11,700 points, and I’ve seen their score jump by several thousand points in less than a minute.

[FreckledPig147]

@ericog I think this would be better put in the cheaters thread found here.

[MVNLA2]

@ericog @freckledpig147 — Actually, since this forum is being monitored by Rovio it is a good place to let them know that there are still cheaters.
Posting a screenshot of your leaderboard and sending a detailed support request directly to Rovio would also help.

[Eric OG]

Here is a screenshot taken around 10:30pm EST, only a few hours after the new tournament started. The cheater’s score jumped several thousand points on multiple occasions, so it looks like they may be repeatedly resetting their daily objectives.

<img src="<img src=”https://www.angrybirdsnest.com/wp-content/uploads/album/69483/Screenshot_2015-03-29-22-34-071-640×360-100×100.png&#8221; alt=”Screenshot_2015-03-29-22-34-07.png” />” alt=”Cheater screen shot 3/29″ />

[MVNLA2]

@rovionefuah — Some recent info on cheaters (see above). Also, everyone without all the classes purchased with LC really object to objectives that require that you use those classes.

[Tman]

@mvnla2, and @rovionefuah, yes, this. I have the objective today to use Sea Dog and Spies. Of course I don’t have Sea Dog. From what was shaping up to be a good week with a chance at advancing to the next league, unless others suddenly have some bad objectives, I’ll be stuck in Wood for another week. It really discourages me from playing and therefore I’ll watch fewer ads.

I also feel I have a ghosted player at the top of my league. Either he is cheating or he is in a higher league since he has that much more points than the rest. I doubt he is cheater since he isn’t that much higher than the next in line. If you can’t get rid of the ghosts for whatever reason, I feel a fair compromise would be to change the system so that the top four or five go on to the next league. With this I’d have a good chance this week of advancing.

[Rovio Nefuah]

Hey all, the frustration is acknowledged and understood. We are looking into the issues with our highest priority at the moment.

For the leaderboards: Please send us screenshots of the same player appearing in 2 leagues with the same score, aka a ghost player showing up in multiple leagues. FYI: A player can’t win multiple rewards.

We are looking into possible solutions.

[KerrAvon]

@rovionefuah Are you looking for new examples of this occurring (i.e. during the current rounds) or some old examples?

There are a number of examples from the past where this has occurred that have reasonably good data. And we can probably direct you to these within the forum.

But if you are after new occurrences, then you may have to wait. I think it was easier to identify examples of ghosts when more players were in the higher leagues – from the gold league upwards.

[MVNLA2]

@kerravon — Since @rovionefuah doesn’t answer that often, It would really help if you could link the posts showing the ghosts. I will be AFK most of today. Thanks