Cheaters

[MVNLA2]

@larry — I didn’t read the whole main post, but it looks really great! Glad you got everything to work like you wanted.

[LondoJowo]

This week I’m on a Platinum board with no cheaters (at this point, knock on wood), it’s actually weird maybe two other players besides myself grinds for a 1,000 or so extra points while the others get their daily objectives/points acquired and stop at that point. Currently I’m in 1st with a 2,500 point lead.

[Immortal… Larry]

@burbman, yeah, I know what you mean. It looked good on the first 2 days. It seemed like everyone was playing fair except for one idiot on top of the board (also many names like cheatersarebad and nocheatingplz). Then all hell broke loose and literally EVERYONE went mad and started cheating. I’m all the way in the bottom and don’t feel like playing the arena at all. Never seen this many cheaters before!

[Immortal… Larry]

@burbman, It indeed comes down to disabling data all together. I’ll update the first post to put it in airplane mode instead. I think that should cover it?

[Strategia55]

I’ve tried the Airplane Mode tactic and it has worked half the time. So, essentially, it’ll work; just maybe not all the time.

[Immortal… Larry]

@strategia55, it *should* work all the time. When do you engage it and when do you disable it?

[Strategia55]

Personally , I’ve tried it various ways.

The most successful is disable connection immediately after the start up screen and before the map fully shows up. Select Arena and go through the motions till it asks You to reconnect network/etc. That usually works and any problem, I think, is due to AB and not the method.

[Immortal… Larry]

From what I have gathered and tested and just now triple checked (Disclaimer: on my android device), the line-up is created while the lobby is loading for the first time. This means that if you have been in the arena lobby already while the internet connection was on, the game will use the last line-up which was loaded.

After a match, the new line-up is loaded after you claim your prize from the wheel. Disabling internet there should prevent the game from finding an opponent on the internet.

@strategia55, do you use android or something else? There may be a difference between different platforms. Perhaps it takes your device too long to shut down all data connections? Would you mind testing this a bit further? I just want to be sure that the info applies to everything and if your situation is different, it would be useful to include a different process…

[Blorg]

The cheater on mine shot up about 30,000 points so far today. I’m level 28 and have around 40,000 with all the daily objectives done, so far, and a LOT of grinding and this cheat is at almost 80,000.

Seems small compared to what others are dealing with but it’s still very irritating.

At this point cheating seems to be the only way to win. Hopefully Rovio fixes this mess soon.

[MysticBurn]

@larry FYI I tried entering arena with airplane mode after fully loading island map, doesn’t work on my iphone, you get the “network not availble” Reconnect window

[Immortal… Larry]

@renitz At least the basics are good. It can’t connect anymore. Although usually (on android) there is a bit of time between losing the connection and the game notifying you.

Could you try this for me:
Start the game, when island map is fully loaded, enable airplane mode. wait 5 seconds and if the game still does not ask to reconnect, load the arena. If the game does ask to reconnect, do so, push the reconnect button in the message and the moment it disappears enable airplane mode again. Now it should take some more time before the reconnect message appears.

On my device I have been able to determine that there’s a time interval between the connection attempts. It’s like a “ping” which happens every 15 or 20 seconds or so…

@strategia55, are you on iphone/ipad as well?

[james.dale.733]

I don’t know if it’s already been mentioned on this thread, but fighting an unranked battle against a friend will also force a new opponent.

[KillerKea]

Following is a response I got from Rovio yesterday.

“We have decided not to impose any strict deadlines to the developers/programmers for getting the update out. This is to ensure that once the update is released, it will have as many bug fixes as possible and that the fixes would work the way they are supposed to, not causing any additional problems. Not having deadlines does not mean that the developers aren’t working as hard as possible to get the update ready. It’s just to make sure that we avoid any additional problems with Epic, as it has already been hampered by several issues during its existence. Because the developers don’t have deadlines for the update, we can’t tell the specific release date of 1.2.4 to you or other players.
In principle, we don’t provide any compensation for the problem, because the situation is the same for everyone playing the PvP leagues.”

[KerrAvon]

@killerkea Do you have any updates on your position? You seem to have a bad time with cheaters. I have only encountered one, a few weeks ago when I was in the stone league, although this could have been a single fortunate reset. I lost out then because of objectives that I couldn’t achieve. But I didn’t have any cheaters in the Silver league last week, when I started a day late, or so far this week in the Gold league, when I started 14 h late.

I do wonder if your best chance (if you don’t get through this week) is to give up your first set of objectives. If you were in one of my leagues, you would have had little problem advancing if you were willing to grind to get points equivalent to a single set of objectives. And in the Silver league, I got through with only a little grinding even after starting one set of objectives behind.

[Immortal… Larry]

In principle, we don’t provide any compensation for the problem, because the situation is the same for everyone playing the PvP leagues.

Wow, that’s wrong… They really don’t have a clue.

[KillerKea]

@kerravon Currently I only have one cheater in my league. I’m in 3rd place with 46250 and will finish between 52-54K depending on what the 4th place person does. There has been at least one person resetting objectives every week I’ve played except once. Sometimes I have as many as 3 players resetting their objectives. Most of the cheaters only reset their objectives on the last days, but some do it the first day and continue to do so all week.

[MysticBurn]

@larry Nope, lol, straight away disable flight mode and the reconnect window. Also not with quickly disable/enable flight mode. But i am content with getting a new line up after restart, ok sometimes a few restarts in a row, buts that ok for me.

[MVNLA2]

@killerkea — Were you asking for compensation for real $ spent on the arena? I agree with @larry that Rovio’s attitude is arrogant and clueless if they are not refunding real $ spent on the arena. However, I would argue that if you spent real $ once you knew what the problems were, Rovio shouldn’t be obliged to compensate you.
Remember how stingy Rovio’s “generous” compensation for the Holiday Event fiasco was?

[KillerKea]

@mvnla2 No, I was asking if they would compensate the players for all the frustration they’ve had to deal with because of the cheaters. I have not spent any money on this game because I think they charge too much for LC. Also it seems unfair and pisses me off that they’ve had several sales and promos on Android and none for iOS users.

@kerravon I think there is a second cheater in my group now. This person made sure he passed the previous cheater by more than 5500.

[KillerKea]

I didn’t think giving all the players only 6 LC for when they disabled the friend’s PGM for about a month was very generous either since that is only 2 spins when you would have gotten ten times as many spins. In my opinion the least they should have done was have Piggy spin on your GPM for each day it was down.

[KerrAvon]

@larry I actually agree with Rovio on their position on this. I should say I have only spent 5 LCs on the arena – to get a guaranteed arena set item. Rovio have not got my complete buy-in to the arena.

I can’t see how spending money to get LCs changes your position with regard to cheaters. Having more and better set items or getting more of the Bird Classes does not help you with cheaters. How can these items help you against players who are resetting objectives? Or completely changing their scores? Such purchases only put you in a better position against fellow players. Rovio might give some benefit of the doubt for the first few weeks, but now, surely players who spend their money to get ahead of cheaters are just really naive or foolish?

I know you have taken a stance on this @larry and are pushing players to get compensation for money spent. But surely at some point players must take the fall for this and learn from their mistakes.

[KerrAvon]

@mvnla2 the compensation for the Christmas event was kind of generous. That was 60 LCs for everyone, even for those who got the rewards on the event rewards wheel.

What was not generous was that there was no additional or separate compensation for those who completely missed out on spinning the event rewards wheel. I put in a specific request with Rovio but got the same generic response published elsewhere on this forum. At the time, I would have given up my 60LCs for a chance to spin on the wheel (I am not so sure now). Gaining those levels of mastery outside of events is a very slow process.

[Immortal… Larry]

@kerravon, I’m not saying I disagree. I thought @killerkea’s response was related to getting a refund. Since that is not the case, I think it’s totally reasonable not to give compensation to all.

The holidays events should have been dealt with in a better fashion. However, since they are only with a few to support all these (what is it, thousands? millions?) players it is understandable that they don’t want to go through the workload of case-by-case compensation. (although one might ask why their multi-billion organisation is not equipped with more support staff…)

With regard to spending REAL money on the game, yes I have taken a stand here and will continue to do so. I believe that the way Rovio has been exploiting this game, accepting people’s money regardless of their own f*ck ups and blatantly ignoring the grief they are causing by changing rules on the fly AFTER people pay for something which seems good is shocking, stunning and (more words which I can’t say in here) and unheard of. The amount of money Rovio makes with this strategy is mind blowing. At the same time, people keep falling for the same in-game tricks with too many similarities to the addictive properties of actual gambling. And now the worst part, many of these players are children. That really pisses me off.

I have held myself back in this forum a lot, but hearing the amounts of real cash which some people in here have paid up, it is shocking. (one time 25 EUR myself, but others have spent more than thousands of dollars…!!!!!)

People need to reclaim their money big time. At least as long as Rovio continues to deliver crap and keeps accepting money for flawed products.

Few, that’s off my mind. For the record, I’m pretty nice and easy going for the rest of the time… :) Oh, and I really like epic besides all the crap that comes with it…

[Mimi27]

Lots of cheaters this week in Gold league. I started around 6 hours late and was alone until Shakafilth (suitable name) showed up with thousands right off the bat.

My actual place on the board:

[KerrAvon]

@larry Glad I could give you the opportunity to get this off your chest.

I agree Rovio has a questionable design for their games, where they offer in app purchases for a lot of items that help to advance the game. I know some people have spent lots of real cash, but that’s their choice. This is not just a game, it can be considered as entertainment – like going to the movies (a lot of movies in some people’s cases). But the way that this and other games target children and asks/gets them to spend money is the biggest question. But I don’t think that discussion is for this thread.

Regarding the Christmas event, I always thought they should have just terminated it. I guess people would have complained about that to. Rovio made their choice. It didn’t cost me anything. I didn’t waste any Stamina drinks. In fact I got a whole stash of them. And I am still playing – can’t break the habit.