Season 9 known Cheaters

[Nightcrawler]

@bubbley I find the list useful as it helps identity cheaters

[Suzy]

@bubbley

I too find the list useful. When I get a new board your list is the first place I go to.

[datguygamer]

@jamairoqui I missed the pictures you posted about Level 999 birds (hence the late reply). Now those are some birds to borrow. XD

It’s very easy to do honestly and requires only about an input period of 10 minutes.

[Jamairoqui]

@bubbley I apologize. I am not trying to be inflammatory. The point I am trying to make is that as far as Rovio is concerned, playing with the network off might not be considered cheating, they might not even be able to tell if someone is deliberately setting their game up that way. In that case, reporting people for doing that is pointless (no offense, pointless) and you might be better off trying to identify people who are cheating by manipulating their scores by modifying external data files as opposed to those who are using features contained in the game. In fact, there are times when I am grinding in arena that it looks to me like the network is off, even when I know it is active. At those times, the teams I face in a series, maybe 5 in a row, are total quails, with wood-league banners, mis-matched sets, power levels that are well below my team etc. I suspect that what is going on is the game can’t contact Rovio’s servers, goes into “no network” mode, and lets me play on (the “lone Red” team is a variant of this, in my opinion). So, according to you, I should stop and wait for it to come back? Not play the weaker teams? It’s a *feature* of the game. Furthermore, even if you are playing against CG teams, you still have to play the matches, and it seems to me that “winning” in the arena these days comes down to who can afford to spend an hour, or two, or three, grinding away to get 15.000+ points seven days a week.

What Rovio considers to be cheating might be more related to gaming the system for extra LCs or resources, since that is how they make money. They might in fact care more about who is figuring out ways to get multiple runs per day through the golden cloud castle, or why the game lets some people tap multiple times on event rewards, than they do about people figuring out ways to get easier teams in arena.

It is frustrating when you are up against people who you think are cheating. I read about it and think to myself “Why?” It’s not like anyone in RL gives a damn about how you are doing in ABE, and mostly people I know make fun of me for even playing the stupid game. So the idea of cheating to win ABE makes as much sense to me as seeing who can amass the biggest pile of sand on a beach that is 20 km long.

You’re probably not going to see this as an apology. But it is. It’s a funny old world.

[Jamairoqui]

@datguygamer Yeah. I found a post online somewhere that discussed modifying bird levels and so forth. But as I said to @bubbley, why? Part of the “fun” of ABE is the attainment of rewards over time. Finding that your birds are able to beat pigs easily that were difficult a few months previously. By the end of the week, I might have 5 hats that are at level 70. </irony mode on> Woohoo! </irony mode off> But I ground them up there through playing the game, and won a couple of events to get the extra mastery, and I think I would feel even less “Woohoo!” if I knew I had simply tweaked some bits in a data file.

Somewhere, some guy is sitting in front of a monitor listening to industrial music, pounding down Red Bull, inhaling Slim Jims, and getting carpal tunnel syndrome so I can curse at how I just lost a match because the opposing team got eight time jumps and five resurrections in a row. So if I wait for a sale and buy some LCs, I look at that as supporting the coders who wrote the game.

[datguygamer]

@jamairoqui Most people don’t play game legit even though people here do. They just wanna get the stuff faster and easier. That’s their notion of “fun”. I know people who wants to pay me for hacking their game accounts. Same here. The people who modifies their accounts will get extremely strong birds which legit players will never get.

[Jamairoqui]

@datguygamer Heh. Although I might not fully understand the mindset of someone who would pay someone else to hack the game for them, I have to admit, it absolutely rocks taking a Level 999 bird along into a dungeon or the golden cloud castle. So I guess I’m a cheater of sorts as well.

Oddly, it does strike me as something of an intellectual challenge figuring out how to modify the data files on my own. Sort of like how a while back some friends of mine, and I, got hold of the source code (in Fortran) for a text-based Star Trek game that ran on a Prime 350. We modified the game code so the Enterprise had god-like powers compared to the Klingons (and Romulans). The point was we wanted to “win” so we could get the stupid certificate the game was supposed to print out at the end. And when we did win, the game started to print the certificate and then crashed because the printer driver for the system on which we had recompiled the code wasn’t compatible with the character set from the Prime the code was trying to print, or something like that. <play sad trombone> But most of the fun in that exercise was diddling the code to begin with, the game play was anticlimactic because it was like picking ants off a sidewalk with a tack hammer.

[datguygamer]

@jamairoqui I could modify my own game (since it’s easy) but I won’t simply because I collect normal weapons and off-hands. If I jump to 999, I’ll miss whatever items I may get upon leveling up.

[Bubbley]

@jamairoqui thank you for your apology.

I can tell you, because I have had lengthy discussions with Rovio, that manipulating the game in any way is considered cheating.

Yes there are times when CG opponents appear. The first few weeks of season 8 being a case in point. It was the experience for everyone playing the Arena. Yes occasionally a few CG Opponents appear at random. Again everyone may be experiencing that. There is no way to know and of course I don’t expect you not to play them. As you say yourself you know the game is connected to the network.

To suggest that players are deliberately able to disconnect and then to play for hours in this mode in order to face easier opponents so that they may rack up hundreds of thousands of points is simply hard to believe.

To make 100k takes many hours of play. All this time disconnected? Where is the score stored certainly not on the server? So there must not be 1 freeze, 1 crash, 1 Epic message otherwise all is lost. Furthermore these players have been doing this week after week for for months if not a couple of years.

I am sorry but I don’t believe the many many cheats I have encountered use this method. I report every player I have photographic evidence of an impossible jump in score. They may not be cheating. It is possible that scores are not always uploaded promptly. That is for Rovio to determine. However I do not believe that this regularly happens to the same players week after week and I also don’t believe that any such lag amounts to 100k.

Perhaps we should agree to disagree.

Thankfully we both play for fun and the challenge. Personally I loathe CG opponents, far too boring.

[cosmicdebris]

Does anyone from Rovio read this stuff? I sent in a support request about Moa over a week ago and no reply yet. This piece of #%*+ is on my board again this week and is still cheating.

[DD]

@cosmicdebris They do pass along the info to Chimera who is not taking effective action, either because they are reluctant or incompetent. Unfortunately for honest players, this will seem like falling on deaf ears, and some have already given up on arena.

[cosmicdebris]

Again Moa the Cheater 34,540 points in 24 minutes

[DD]

@cosmicdebris Not great to have cheats spring to the front of the league table at the end but at least you managed to hang on to the top 3. I have two known cheats ahead of me at the end, namely ZiZu and AVS. ZiZu in particular added 50k to jump to the front from around 10th place.

[cosmicdebris]

@toolow

I know it sucks …. At least no Moa or ZiZu this week.

I sent the above to Rovio lets see what their response is.

[cosmicdebris]

Not a word as to what they are going to do about MOA.

Hello there,

Thanks for contacting us and sorry to hear that you have run into a cheater in Epic.

We have been working on this issue for some time and we made some good progress with the cheating issue during fall 2015 and spring 2016 especially. The number of cheaters in the game has decreased significantly since then.

Of course, that doesn’t help you much if there is now a cheater who takes over your leaderboard or battles in a team against you. Unfortunately there are still some cheaters who can circumvent our anti-cheat methods. However, we work on the situation continuously and with the update 1.5.2 we added a new cheater detection system that will automatically flag players who go over set score limits. We continue working on this and will do our best to make the game as fair as possible for everyone.

We sincerely apologize for any negative effect these dishonest players are having on your gaming experience. We understand very well that they take the fun out of the game very quickly.

Please note that i will solve request #1419871 to keep the conversation in one place.

Thanks for your patience!

Kind regards,

Paweł
Rovio Support Team

[ShapokoManbeast]

@jamairoqui

MOA is definitely a cheater and an old one to boot. A long time ago(in a galaxy far, far away) he was putting up 30000 points a day in minutes. At the end of the week there was an arena points boost so with a 6 hours left I grinded like hell and overtook him by 1000 points. He waited until 5 mins left in arena and put up 20000 points in 1 second. I was watching the leaderboard the last 10 minutes so I caught him in the act

This mindset is foreign to me as well but it does exist.

Apologies to all who have been using my birds. Please don’t waste your time on my birds anymore (unless you get great joy out of it?). Marvel contest of champions has consumed all my free time as of late. I will still play and occasionally use your birds but please don’t feel obligated to pay me back.

I intend to make another post alerting as many as I can and will still check into the site once in awhile. I will give a proper goodbye when I have the time. Thx to all and if you do mention my name I shall appear.

EDIT- Provided my email gives me the alert ?

[DD]

@bubbley
Luis is back on my board for Season 8 Week 11. :(

[datguygamer]

@shapokomanbeast It’s not about obligation per se but the sentiment to share and help a fellow nester with some resources if be needed. Obligation would mean it is being done with some reluctance. This is samaritanism. :)

Hopefully you won’t say goodbye.

[Bubbley]

@shapokomanbeast your goodbye will be a great personal loss my friend.

[Suzy]

@shapokomanbeast

I felt very sad when I read your post, I will miss reading your posts and the chance to be on the same board as you again ?

[angryde]

@shapokomanbeast Well, that’s depressing… thanks a lot! XD Do I really need to do the whole Dawson’s Creek routine..? Don’t test me, dude, I’ll do it… seriously! ;-)

[ShapokoManbeast]

@datguygamer, @angryde

Too funny dudes lol

@bubbley, @suzyq, @toolow

Thx to all for the kind thoughts, I will miss being actively involved in this forum but still will play the game and drop by the forum once in awhile so a goodbye doesn’t mean forever, I will just miss the time I got to spend with all you on this forum and in game. Although I have given thought to the notion if @dallasreds wanted to take over my account I would let him have it. Are you out there @dallasreds? That way he could start receiving and giving FE again. If he doesn’t want it, I could give it to @toolow if interested.

If that was the case I may start Epic over anew, but I digress.

Hope this new year is better than the end of last year for you @bubbley

[datguygamer]

@shapokomanbeast Hopefully you are playing for the elite headgear. At least that would keep you a bit more active than what you’re willing for. ;)

[ShapokoManbeast]

Yeah I will participate in events I just won’t be putting up beastly scores. I may have to change my name to ShapokoMan, than I definitely will sound like a Pokémon character ?

[DD]

@shapokomanbeast Not sure I deserve even second-in-line but thanks for the consideration.