From Rovio to Epic Fans: Cheaters and Leaderboards

[Rovio Nefuah]

Hello Angry Birds Epic community

We are very aware of the issues in the game and do our best to solve those as quickly as possible. 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 synchronous leaderboard (everybody on the leaderboard sees each other). This method was chosen to ensure that no player ends up in an empty leaderboards, even if they start the Arena league turn late in the week, and there are few – if any – players within the same level range available. We know it’s not ideal, but it does not affect the outcome of your Arena league. However, we will keep working on improving this feature in the future, and if possible find a different fallback solution.

And about cheaters – with the latest update we blocked exploits that some players were abusing to gain otherwise impossible scores, but unfortunately some new holes have popped up. It may seem like we’re playing a game of whack-a-mole, but understand it’s not fun for us when we see how it is really upsetting you, our fans. Rest assured that we will work on this until we are rid of all cheaters for good.

Thanks for being so passionate and vocal about the game and keep up the feedback! We’re listening.

Please follow @ABepic on Twitter to get short and frequent updates on the issues. Check out the Rovio support page at rov.io/support and visit this forum for more feedback.

Best Regards

-d

Topic

[Angry Johnny]

@rovionefuah Thank you very much for your feedback. We are aware that you are working hard on improving Epic and making it a better experience for us players.

The main issues we have are that when there are real people you play against that are abusing holes in the system it gets really frustrating not only working hard playing the game but competing against those that do not follow the rules. It is much like competing in sports where the winners are using performance enhancing drugs and everybody knows it but are helpless in doing anything about it.

Your efforts in trying to stop this is greatly appreciated and your wllingness to get feedback from the community and through support requests to help you on your way towards that goal is admirable.

Keep up the good work and don’t let the negative voices bring you down but instead fuel your ambitions.

[Bird Leader]

@rovionefuah Thanks for taking the time to share Rovio’s perspective.

@angryjohnny I appreciate your well thought out response as well. I would love to hear from more of you as well.

[Immortal… Larry]

@rovionefuah, Thanks a lot for finally communicating this message in here. This has been long awaited. I think I can speak for the entire community when I say that your efforts on getting rid of the cheaters are appreciated and that we’re looking forward to your presence in this forum.

@angryjohnny has done a good job wording the frustrations we’re all feeling.

Please be aware that there is a large group of people in here who are very willing to assist with improving the game. Many in here are capable and able to help by providing you with lots of information.

All we need is one word from you and we’re all ready to get involved.

In the mean time I wish you good luck with fixing all the holes and we hope to hear more from you in this forum.

[Dallasreds]

@rovionefuah,@angryjohnny,@larry,@birdleader

This is very encouraging. I think anger is one emotion most of have been fighting. This is a great step in the right direction for our small circle of birds/friends. Amen to all of the comments made. Thanks.

[firedragon]

@rovionefuah
Setting a threshold on score is an effective way to stop cheating. The threshold can be 4-5x of daily objectives. Usually the cheaters’s score is “too good to be true” and average Joe is nearly impossible to achieve.
Once the cheater reached the threshold, he/she will be banned to enter the tournament until the next one comes out.

[MVNLA2]

@rovionefuah — Oh, wow! Great to have you here, so that we know Rovio is paying attention to more than support requests. Would be interesting to know what position you have at Rovio.
I think that your comment about players playing in multiple leagues is incorrect. It does affect the outcome of your arena league. These “ghost” players seem to exist for many weeks, appearing in leagues determined by how the real player did the previous week. The ghost can end up in a league significantly below where the real player is, but the ghosts score always equals the real players score. Thus you can have ghosts occupying one of the top three spots, which keep one or more real players from advancing.
You (Rovio) really need(s) to study the thread on Multiple Players:

Presence in multiple leagues

Let me say again that we all really appreciate your creating this thread. However, to make it useful, you need to know the hard truth.
Thanks
MVNLA2

[Rovio Nefuah]

Thanks so much for your kind words! I would understand a swarm of critical and and less nicer sounding phrases as much as I do the uplifting feedback in your responses. I’m a passionate gamer myself and talking from experience, my fuse is much shorter when facing problems. So thanks for staying with us as we fix those problems. I promise, a lot of people are working hard just for that at the moment.

I won’t be able to leave comments very frequently, but I will update the first post when there is news to share! Your constructive comments and feedback is always welcome and I will keep it always in mind.

cheers

[laura118b]

Well I got an email tonight as a follow-up to my problem report that an update was out and it fixes the arena bugs. That would be really sweet but for the fact that once again there is no update out for Amazon. Is it really so hard to roll out all the updates at once? I find it hard to believe that Amazon is responsible for so few of your players that we deserve to lag behind all other platforms by days, sometimes weeks.

[cal101]

but then all cheaters do is achieve scores that are just below that threshold so they don’t get caught.

[MVNLA2]

@rovionefuah — The introduction of players (“ghosts”) on multiple boards is equivalent to cheating by Rovio, and could be stopped by deleting the ghost player after the first week, which is not happening. The “ghost” players frequently end up in the top 3 spots of the league, and prevent honest players from advancing. In my opinion Rovio’s creating ghost players who end up cheating by “playing” in a lower league while the real player they are ghosting plays in a higher league is far worse than letting people play in a league by themselves.
The ghost players continue to play week after week using the score of the real player, but in a league determined by how they did in their own league. I’m sure that the ghost and real player start out in the same level leagues. However, if at the end of the first week the real player advances and the ghost player stays in the same league, in the second week the real player is competing in a higher league, where higher scores are possible, and the ghost player is “competing” in a lower league, but with a score obtained in the higher league of the real player.

[Immortal… Larry]

@rovionefuah

Thanks for your response. Acknowledgement is pretty much what everyone in here has been waiting for, together with some kind of dialog. I really hope your presence here will be permanent since opening the door for dialog will take out the sting for most players.

(no offence for the support department, but that really isn’t any kind of dialog…)

As one of the people involved with the multiple leagues or ghost players thread, I fully agree with @mvnla2. This “fallback” system really puts the leagues out of balance. It would be much, much better to have empty leagues than this current system. I sincerely recommend Rovio terminates this system.

In the mean time we’re trying to keep track of all other issues in this forum. I will say it again, if there is anything in particular you’re interested in, let us know and there are dozens of loyal players ready to chip in. Whether it’s about reproducing bugs, screenshots or statistical data (we’re getting really good at all that statistical stuff…), every single one of us is ready to help out.

[Immortal… Larry]

@dallasreds, it’s easy to vent anger when you think there’s nobody listening. The cause is often the same, the idea that nobody’s listening. As soon as someone does listen and lets you know that you’ve been heard, there’s no need to be angry anymore.

(got a toddler and it works the same way… :D)

Personally I’m *very* happy that all the shouting is finally heard by someone.

[KerrAvon]

@rovionefuah I think there needs to be a little more explanation around @mvnla2’s ghosts.

We have noticed players appearing in multiple leaderboards within the same league, which makes sense given your explanation of the fallback procedure to fill leaderboards.

However, there are also cases where players have been found in multiple leaderboards within different leagues (e.g. a player in platinum and silver or in diamond and platinum). I would have thought that the fallback process for selection of players to fill up leaderboards would have selected players from within the same league. Is this the case?

The other thing that I find odd is that the fallback process for filling up of leaderboards is activated early in the week – even on the first day. Is the system set up so that leaderboards, at least for the first day, fill up with players (players logging in and then the fallback system) within a set period of time? For example, within 2 hours of the leaderboard being opened?

[MVNLA2]

@rovionefuah @kerrAvon — Humm… I hadn’t been thinking the same way as KerrAvon, but his viewpoint is a possibility. I don’t understand why the fallback of creating ghosts would be implemented at all during the first few days of the week, unless a player was in a league by themself.
I have been assuming that the reason ghosts appear in leagues at a different level than the one the real person is playing in is that the ghosts continue to exist for multiple weeks, taking on a league promotion/demotion profile of their own.

[MVNLA2]

@rovionefuah — It would be really appreciated if you would leave a brief message indicating that Rovio understands that what is going on with the ghost players is a serious problem, and that Rovio is working on fixing the problem. So far everything from Rovio seems to say the creation of ghosts is intentional, and you haven’t bothered to figure out how they are actually working.
The ghosts are playing in different leagues than the real player while tracking the score of the real player. This is a serious problem when, as frequently is the case, the real player is in a higher league than the ghost. This result puts Rovio in a bad position, whether it is unintentionally the result of ghosts living many weeks, or Rovio’s intentionally filling lower leagues with ghosts of players in higher leagues. The second case makes Rovio one of the worst cheaters in its own game, while the second merely adds to the evidence that Rovio does not adequately check its games before release.
You probably won’t see this until Mon, so hope you had a nice weekend and that Spring weather has arrived in Finland.

[FreckledPig147]

@rovionefuah I agree with all the other Nesters who play Epic’s PvP and have contributed to the discussion about the ghosts and other PvP issues. Basically the source of most of the grievances from the ghosts are that sometimes cheaters end up “ghosted”, and those ghosts end up in the lower leagues, which means that people would be upset dealing with cheaters that get 1st place unfairly that they actually haven’t been competing, and thus, there would be less people being able to reach the Diamond League (or even one of the upper leagues) than there could be. This, added up with all the glitches that haven’t been fixed (as well as the well-known presence of cheaters), would logically be enough to dissatisfy some players. And even with honest players being ghosted, them being in a higher league than their ghosts really are in would still make the leagues inbalanced due to the fact that higher leagues have larger prizes on the wheel after winning a PvP battle, and thus, people in the same league as their ghosts would on average have to grind more just to get to the top 3, especially when 2+ ghosts are present on the leaderboard. But thanks for the explanation anyways.

[KerrAvon]

@dr_ishmael @neomerlinmagic @tomc @tigerussell @larry @mvnla2

After considering all the information on the final boards and where people finish, I think

You are awarded the frame based on your final position at the end of the final week. This is how we originally thought it would work.

The mixing up of players on peoples leaderboards (e.g. tomc and neomerlinmagic) indicates the problem of filling up boards is far worse than we (or I) thought. Kestrel371 (neomerlinmagic’s board) was most likely competing in Diamond as well as being on neomerlinmagic’s board in Gold. And players on tomc’s board were from lower leagues. So Rovio is adding players onto lower and higher level league boards as part of their fallback position.

The fallback position is operating early in the week – we already suspected this. I assume @neomerlinmagic logged in early last week, although this will need to be confirmed. Neomerlinmagic, could you please let us know whether you logged in before or after the first set of objectives expired?

I believe this explains the ghosts people are referring to.

[MVNLA2]

@kerravon — I think your theory may only be consistent with my experience if we assume the first 3 people in my silver league were ghosts, and they were deleted before the results were calculated. I got a gold frame and a gold trophy, even though I’ve never reached the gold league, and came in 6th in the silver league.

[KerrAvon]

@mvnla2 I can’t explain how you managed to get a gold frame and trophy.

[TomC]

I believe the trophy is awarded for the highest league you reached during the season. So if you reached the Diamond League at any week (or any time from Week 6 to Week 14) you would have gotten the diamond trophy even if you fell back to Wood League at the end.

One of my friends was in Diamond League but finished in Gold League and still got the diamond trophy.

Also the Diamond Frame description says: “A frame for your profile picture to show you reached the diamond league during arena season 1”, and the item blurb text says “Trophy for reaching Diamond League in Arena Season 1.”

That means even though there were 2 other diamond frames on my leaderboard for week 14, they may have been in a lower league during that week, thus no guarantees that any other player were in fact in Diamond League that week…

[MVNLA2]

@Tomc — I’ve never been in the gold league, but got the gold trophy and frame anyway.

[KerrAvon]

@tomc @mvnla2 There seems to be some inconsistencies here. @dr_ishmael made it to the silver league, stopped playing and dropped back to the wood league. He ended up getting a wooden frame, not a silver frame.

[Neomerlinmagic]

@kerravon
I logged in after the first 5 hour window, therefore missing the first objective set. It was a complaint of mine in another thread that it wasn’t very fair for the Chinese time zone. Even after I started, I was alone on my board until around 18 hours after the start of the week for some reason. In retrospect, I think I could have stayed out of the arena before my board filled and got an easy first place. I’ve heard of others using this trick.

My theory as to why some people got a trophy higher than they ever achieved is because their “ghost” achieved top three on another persons board. For instance, if a person from a lower league achieved third or better on my board, but may have been fifth or sixth on his own board, he would still get the higher award due to his “ghost” being promoted on my board.

[laura118b]

I’m seeing some REALLY weird things in the arena. Can anyone explain how there can be opponents that are level 41 yet their birds are only rank 1-2? I’m not complaining, it’s an easy win, but how can that exist? These were named players btw, not unnamed Rovio ghosts. I also had to back out of lots of battles where the other side was ridiculously over powered, but it’s never players on my board.

I’ve still never gotten an answer from Rovio about something in my daughter’s league. A level 8 player that had Seadog, before the hats showed up in Piggy’s store front. How could a level 8 player have gotten the red key from the caves to get to Seadog, yet only be level 8?

[Neomerlinmagic]

@laura118b
In answer to your first question, it is possible to be level 41 with low mastery. The person could have leveled up to 41 before the new mastery system was implemented.

I can’t explain the second question.