Cheaters

[deft_bonz]

Just had a cheater where the mage had over 5000 health, the flag over 22k, etc. Two attacks and all my birds were gone :(

Sadly I don’t know how to take screenshots on my Galaxy S3 when playing ABE. Usually I just have to swipe with my hand over the screen, but that doesn’t work with ABE :(

[t_russell]

@deftbonz — I had one slip past me this morning, set up was so unassuming I didn’t notice anything odd. It was Red/Guardian, Chuck/wizard, Matilda/cleric level 41 with lower mastery. No complete sets equipped and only a couple of set items for the whole crew. It didn’t even occur to me to check the stats after I looked at Red. I went first and concentrated on the banner. The AI played red to the banner, little damage. Then Chuck unloaded, banner goes down leaving all my birds standing looking like idiots. Since I’m coasting this week I don’t truly care and I didn’t even bother to try and grab a screen.

However I do place the blame solely on Rovio for us having to face these hacked teams. The resets may require some serious rewrite of the game code but anything that resides on their servers could have and should have been cleaned up long ago.

[deft_bonz]

@tigerussell

I really do wonder, why Rovio didn’t program some basic checks since everyone has to be anyway online. I’m not a software coder, but still I think it mustn’t be so hard and difficult to implement such a thing.

[bbmnky]

because I have spent so much money on this game (especially in the last 2 months since Arena started), I sent my complaint to Rovio. Would I have liked a refund of all my LC, yes, but I didn’t use them all on arena so I thought that was a bit greedy. I asked for a refund of 1250 LC and received it, after detailing the problems I have had due to glitches and cheaters. I don’t normally complain (I’m North Dakotan by birth, we don’t like to make a fuss), but the plethora of cheaters and glitches made it necessary to do so. I give big kudos to Rovio for refunding me what they did. Now I wish they would work on finding a way to banish cheaters and fix the major glitches. Honestly, they should suspend all play on the arena until these glitches are fixed and they find a way to end cheating.

[LondoJowo]

It’s a cheaters gone wild in the diamond league I’m in. I will no longer be posting screenshots as the cheaters can use them for bragging rights. Though I will be sending them to Rovio. I got yet another apology email from them and they stating there was nothing they can currently do about cheaters and an update would address the exploits the cheaters use. I replied that they had no issues shutting down the holiday event so I couldn’t see why they couldn’t shut down PvP until they fixed their problems.

[Strategia55]

I don’t understand how it’s not possible to set some type of “points per day” total and automatically kick people that have a high amount of points to the same league.

[james.dale.733]

Well, it shouldn’t be especially difficult. They obviously just hadn’t thought about cheating before adding pvp. Now that pvp has revealed there are numerous exploits they are stepping back and thinking about how best to put a stop to them and making sure not to add any new ones! It’s probably going to be too late for this season of pvp, it pretty much already is.

[Angry Johnny]

From Angry Birds Epic’s official twitter today:

Good news everyone! The next update will eliminate the cause of players appearing to be cheating. #EpicFixes

— Angry Birds Epic (@ABepic) February 11, 2015

[Laxietoo]

Notice how they said “players appearing to be cheating”. Now I wonder how long we’ll have to wait for this update.

Thanks for the info @angryjohnny

[MysticBurn]

Ok, still bit vague, every possible cheat way or just the reset objectives one, because think that one would be the easiest.

[Immortal… Larry]

@angryjohnny, You beat me to it! Good stuff!

[Immortal… Larry]

@renitz, Rovio has been very clear on only one thing. They really want to make sure they tackle all known bugs and cheating business with the next update. This means that they have to change a lot! Obviously this cannot be limited to the objectives resets, since these are the smallest cheaters.

I expect to see a completely different arena (and possibly main game) system which:
checks for hacked birds (easy to do with some checksums)
keeps the reward wheels and scores at rovio and not the client (to prevent gamekiller mods)
include server checks for the daily objectives
is independent of local time.

[Mimi27]

@tigerussell, I think I had the same hacked bird as you. Nothing special about the weapon set-up and nothing special about the banner. I probably did the same thing as you and checked one bird, saw it was relatively low in health, and went for the battle. One or two hits from the enemy and my banner was destroyed. I was too shocked to note the set up before the match ended. I’m in Gold league, level 41.

[burbman]

I just met that same team, I knocked out two of the three birds in my first turn, then Chuck one shotted my banner. Diamond level 41

[bbmnky]

I received this email from Rovio today:

We’re very sorry to hear that you’ve run into so many issues in the PvP arena. We’re aware of the issue of the birds sometimes freezing mid-battle and have now found a bug that caused this, if you won the coin toss and one of your birds’ attack was blocked on the first turn. Our game developers seem to have been able to solve this issue and the fix will be released with a next game update.

However, we haven’t heard of the birds disappearing after they’ve been stunned, has this happened more than once? Is there any pattern how this occurs, after a certain attack etc.? We’d also love a screenshot of this is it happens again.

We are aware of some players being able to use cheat tools in the game, and are working hard to block the cheaters and hackers as soon as possible! We understand that the cheaters take the fun out of the game and are unfair to the honest players who have spent time and maybe even money to advance in the game. The next game update should also help with the cheater issue.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope that you can still enjoy Epic while we are trying to get rid of the dishonest players and get the bugs fixed!

Best regards,

Iida
Rovio Support Team

_________
I realized today that the disappearing bird issue occurred the same day when I did the Lollipop update on my Android phone. I am not sure, but think that may have been the issue. Now that I play on my Android tablet and other Android phone (which does not have Lollipop), I haven’t had anything resembling that problem.

[mich]

I received a similar answer and went on to ask whether it would be helpful to keep reporting cheaters. The answer was

Actually it would not, since there are unfortunately so many, that automated methods of dealing with them are preferred. We are doing everything we can to take care of these cheaters.

[KillerKea]

Another way to make the game freeze is when you attach the Sea Dog to another bird and attack with that bird, but your opponent has the Vengeful emblem which kills your attacking bird before your Sea Dog can attack.

[KerrAvon]

@m-ich I think that is good sign from Rovio. It seems they are responding to the issue and are looking to automatically screen out cheaters – much like others on this site have suggested they do.

I wonder if they will be a bit devious and implement systems that detect if a player has a hacked account when they try to play the arena – systems that also allow Rovio to respond directly against such accounts, by resetting or deleting the account. I am looking forward to the next update.

[KerrAvon]

@killerkea How are you progressing through gold this week? Are you looking like moving straight on up to the next league, or do you have the same old problem?

[briette]

http://mcdn3.angrybirdsnest.com/wp-content/uploads/album/64250/Screenshot_2015-02-13-10-20-421-640×384-100×100.png. I couldn’t figure out how to put screen shot so go to my link and how does a player get this high of a score

[Immortal… Larry]

Hi @briette, the image you uploaded is really very small. It is impossible to make out anything from that. If you can upload something with a somewhat higher resolution, I m sure I can tell you more. In the mean time, check out the first post of this thread as well. I have assembled all information about cheaters which is currently known.

[sjmike]

Here is a better image that briette posted: http://mcdn3.angrybirdsnest.com/wp-content/uploads/album/64250/Screenshot_2015-02-13-10-20-421-640×384.png

[KillerKea]

@kerravon There is one blatant cheater in my group with 128K. I’ve been busy this week and there are a lot of people that want to advance more than I do. I’ve completed every objective, but I’m usually in 7th or 8th place. I’ll be happy to finish 7th this week and get 2 stars, but I’ll probably finish 8th with 1 star since if the top 7 also keep completing all their objectives they’ll all have a 4K+ lead over me.

[KerrAvon]

@killerkea I am in the same situation as you. I can play to get to 7th, but it’s not so important for me. I can’t be relegated, so I may not play again until next week and concentrate on my secondary game (level 16). Much more fun and no cheaters. Although I have seen players at level 18 with Mastery rank 10 birds? I am having a go at finishing on top in Diamond league.

[DuncTK421]

Ran into this today. Haven’t seen before. Players other two birds were Mastery level 10s.