What just happened?

Rootbreaker

I've been pvping a lot in the current quick battle, while I watch the magic pro tour and pax east online.

I finally made it up to 1st, and I was 1st for around an hour. Then I drop to 2nd, and think I've just been passed and the next person will be right ahead of me.

I load up the leaderboard. What do I see?

1st place is 80 points ahead of me.

I play another game.

Now 1st place is 160 points ahead of me.

I assume someone is cheating somehow.

Rogan_Josh

I don't want this to turn into a discussion about possible cheating but could you give a rough time scale when you noticed these happening? 20 seconds? couple of minutes?

My guess is simply bad syncing with the server rather than someone cheating.

Rootbreaker

Each game I was in was 5 minutes. Currently they're on the top of my bracket with 3000 points, while nobody else in the bracket has broken 1000. They went from behind me some number of points, to ahead by 80 5 minutes later, to ahead by 160 5 minutes after that.

Morphis

Rootbreaker wrote:

Each game I was in was 5 minutes. Currently they're on the top of my bracket with 3000 points, while nobody else in the bracket has broken 1000. They went from behind me some number of points, to ahead by 80 5 minutes later, to ahead by 160 5 minutes after that.

That is quite suspicious...
I am at top of my bracket with 1.1k points with a fast deck usually needing 2 or 3 min to win(this counting loading times too) and I managed to reach it with A LOT effort and time.
Is it possible to reach 3k legit? I would say yes.

Let's do some math: you get very reliable and lucky too(my deck could use some upgrades to perform better)
Let's say 2 min each win(loading times included)
That's 30 wins per hours
That's 180 ribbon per hour
Hours of play needed: 16.6

So in 3 days you need to spend 16 Hours just playing this game....

span_argoman

Morphis wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

Each game I was in was 5 minutes. Currently they're on the top of my bracket with 3000 points, while nobody else in the bracket has broken 1000. They went from behind me some number of points, to ahead by 80 5 minutes later, to ahead by 160 5 minutes after that.

That is quite suspicious...
I am at top of my bracket with 1.1k points with a fast deck usually needing 2 or 3 min to win(this counting loading times too) and I managed to reach it with A LOT effort and time.
Is it possible to reach 3k legit? I'd would say yes.
That would mean no eating/tv watching/ nothing else bug just playing 8 hours non stop a day I think.

Let's do some math: you get very reliable and lucky too(my deck could use some upgrades to perform better)
Let's say 2 min each win(loading times included)
That's 30 wins per hour
That's 180 ribbon per hour
Hours of play needed: 16.6

So in 3 days you need to spend 16 Hours just playing this game....

How do you guys even win matches in 2 minutes? That's like winning each match in 5 rounds or less.

You're also assuming no damage taken cause otherwise, you need your planeswalker's health to last at least 30 minutes for a potion top-up on health.
Based on 2 minutes per game, that's 82hp (assuming Chandra) for 15 matches. Not gonna be enough especially when you're matching up against other Chandras chipping away at your health.

I'm assuming the average game even for a super fast deck (including load times) should be like 3.5 minutes on average?
Which brings the hours of play needed to 29.2 hours.
That's a crazy crazy amount of time compared to what Rootbreaker is saying.

Morphis

span_argoman wrote:

Morphis wrote:

Rootbreaker wrote:

Each game I was in was 5 minutes. Currently they're on the top of my bracket with 3000 points, while nobody else in the bracket has broken 1000. They went from behind me some number of points, to ahead by 80 5 minutes later, to ahead by 160 5 minutes after that.

That is quite suspicious...
I am at top of my bracket with 1.1k points with a fast deck usually needing 2 or 3 min to win(this counting loading times too) and I managed to reach it with A LOT effort and time.
Is it possible to reach 3k legit? I'd would say yes.
That would mean no eating/tv watching/ nothing else bug just playing 8 hours non stop a day I think.

Let's do some math: you get very reliable and lucky too(my deck could use some upgrades to perform better)
Let's say 2 min each win(loading times included)
That's 30 wins per hour
That's 180 ribbon per hour
Hours of play needed: 16.6

So in 3 days you need to spend 16 Hours just playing this game....

How do you guys even win matches in 2 minutes? That's like winning each match in 5 rounds or less.

You're also assuming no damage taken cause otherwise, you need your planeswalker's health to last at least 30 minutes for a potion top-up on health.
Based on 2 minutes per game, that's 82hp (assuming Chandra) for 15 matches. Not gonna be enough especially when you're matching up against other Chandras chipping away at your health.

I'm assuming the average game even for a super fast deck (including load times) should be like 3.5 minutes on average?
Which brings the hours of play needed to 29.2 hours.
That's a crazy crazy amount of time compared to what Rootbreaker is saying.

uhm I think after all I undervalued the time for matches if we talk about average time.
3 minutes though I think is right for me.
It is not "that rare" for me to win by turn 6 max
But there are times when it tooks me like 5 minutes cause of bad start or good opponent start.

For life since I play spells defensively I take low amount of damage at the same time unless I face bad luck or a Chandra.
Usually by the time I need to heal 40 minutes have passed already.
If I really want to keep playing for so long that I lose all heals I can always switch pwalker losing a little in match speed.

I know lots o ppl cannot reach such fast matches but I have a screenshot of one really explosive start with my Chandra
While it is not representative of average match it gives an idea of what you are capable of.

Note that it is a lvl 60 Gideon during his first round.
He starts with 104 HP

span_argoman

That's a seriously lucky start. It's pretty rare that you get to cast a Fireball on round 1.

I'm still very curious to see the decklists of people who can finish in 3 minutes on average. My deck takes 4 minutes on average per match so either it's slow or my phone is slow. (My phone is kinda slow)

For those who are wondering how it's done.

Round 1 you have 3 cards: Keeper, Embermaw and unknown spell in your hand.
You cascade out Keeper and Embermaw into play, Keeper's free card is Fiery Bloodlust.
You cascaded enough to cast Fireball for 25 damage then you deal 11 damage with Embermaw boosted Keeper.

ChrisTot

span_argoman wrote:

That's a seriously lucky start. It's pretty rare that you get to cast a Fireball on round 1.

I'm still very curious to see the decklists of people who can finish in 3 minutes on average. My deck takes 4 minutes on average per match so either it's slow or my phone is slow. (My phone is kinda slow)

For those who are wondering how it's done.

Round 1 you have 3 cards: Keeper, Embermaw and unknown spell in your hand.
You cascade out Keeper and Embermaw into play, Keeper's free card is Fiery Bloodlust.
You cascaded enough to cast Fireball for 25 damage then you deal 11 damage with Embermaw boosted Keeper.

Lol, is that really how this was done? I'd rather do this for the win in 7 turns quest, not Quickbattles

Rootbreaker

Lucky cascades aren't really a factor when you're talking about 3750 points (their current score).

Morphis

Rootbreaker wrote:

Lucky cascades aren't really a factor when you're talking about 3750 points (their current score).

Yes my point was that i think i am already near enough to the "best point per time reachable" and still it is almost impossible to reach such high scores unless you play 24/24 hours literally.

Could it be that there is still the "face lvl 1 opponent" bug?
That could explain it somehow cause against such a low level opponent winning in even under a minute is not hard...

This is the only non-cheat explanation I can think of.

Rootbreaker

Even if you were the beneficiary of such a bug, why would you play so much that you had 2750 more points than 2nd place?

And this score hasn't move in the last half hour either, which makes it even more suspicious if it jumps up again.

ChrisTot

When you get matched against that #1 person, does that person have Nissa? I think it's probably being matched vs the level one bug. Games could be REALLY fast if that was the case, since the score stopped..it sounds like the logic of a human: "I am already way way way ahead, so no reason to continue".

I would screenshot the player's name and then PM a mod on these boards though, if you think something suspect is going on.

Meto5000

ChrisTot wrote:

When you get matched against that #1 person, does that person have Nissa? I think it's probably being matched vs the level one bug. Games could be REALLY fast if that was the case, since the score stopped..it sounds like the logic of a human: "I am already way way way ahead, so no reason to continue".

I would screenshot the player's name and then PM a mod on these boards though, if you think something suspect is going on.

Even if that person is playing against level 1 characters the games are still going to be ~2 minutes long minimum just because of the load times between matches. If the behavior that is being described is accurate, there is no way it could be anything but a game hack. Gaining ~16 points per minute is just not possible even with the juiciest of possible matchups.

ChrisTot

Meto5000 wrote:

Even if that person is playing against level 1 characters the games are still going to be ~2 minutes long minimum just because of the load times between matches. If the behavior that is being described is accurate, there is no way it could be anything but a game hack. Gaining ~16 points per minute is just not possible even with the juiciest of possible matchups.

And this was reported pretty early. 1k points a few hours into 1 day without there even being a steady climb is beyond normal.

EDUSAN

There is always 1 or 2 people that are really high on the ladder

Right now, after 12hs more or less since the beginning of the new ladder im in the 31th position with 160 points.
The people all the way upto 2nd position are fro 160 (me) to 300, but the leading guy is over 700 points

Can it be reached if you would have been playing since midnight today? Probably, 700 points are more or less 7hs playng.
but dude that man has no life or he is exploiting something, both seem to be possible

EDUSAN

1 hour before ending the ladder

1st guy has 2298 points
2nd has 918

Abenjes

That is bloody ridiculous, a thousand points beyond the next competitor is seriously suspicious, I can usually only amass 2-300 points a round and that is playing every spare second I get (makes my wife furious)

EDUSAN

Abenjes wrote:

That is bloody ridiculous, a thousand points beyond the next competitor is seriously suspicious, I can usually only amass 2-300 points a round and that is playing every spare second I get (makes my wife furious)

loololololol i have the same thing happening to me hahahahaha
and i also get into 300 more or less

could we say that 300 is the "married guy ribbon rank"?

Rootbreaker

For what it's worth, I put a ticket in about the guy to D3 and their response was that they take cheaters very seriously and will investigate.

The quick battle session ended with that guy still in first though. I got a non-response when I asked if the prizes would be passed down.

Morphis

Being a player that spends a lot of time and have good deck(also good skill I think) I can confirm that ~700 point a day is possible but requires playing almost nonstop.

2 times I placed first was 1st with 1760 point(3 day event) and 750(2 day event but joined later to avoid competing with other top nerds XD)

Such higher scores really demand investigation and to be honest most of the time there is always a way to cheat in these games and I think I even found out how.
Cannot try it though.

dimit

Yeah these accounts need to be shut down ASAP. Ridiculous, some guy has 1378 in my ladder, 2nd place is 400-something.