An increase in cheating?

Ludaa

I'm seeing lots of rosters sprout up with max Banner/Widow/Bolt where they once had much less. I'm aware they could've hoarded, but my spidey sense tingles. Anyone else seeing it too?

Orion

Ludaa wrote:

I'm seeing lots of rosters sprout up with max Banner/Widow/Bolt where they once had much less. I'm aware they could've hoarded, but my spidey sense tingles. Anyone else seeing it too?

I've seen people say they were spending their CP hoards on Latest Legends because it's easier to max out 1 of 3 5*s rather than spreading them out across 7 different 5*s. It helps that Black Bolt is really good.

So I wouldn't jump to the cheater label so quickly.

Ducky

I know that there have been several accounts that have been sandboxed lately describing what the OP is noticing. Might be another exploit that popped up that hasn't hit the mainstream yet. I hope not though.

Ruinate

Just found a guy with level 450 Bolt and Banner but only has 34 roster slots. A good portion of them are taken up by champed 2s and most of the slots are taken by poorly covered 3s and 4s. Spend mega bucks on specific characters and throw the rest away because there aren't enough roster slots? 3* transitioner who learned how to reroll legendaries imo.

Jabrony_Geoff

Ruinate wrote:

Just found a guy with level 450 Bolt and Banner but only has 34 roster slots. A good portion of them are taken up by champed 2s and most of the slots are taken by poorly covered 3s and 4s. Spend mega bucks on specific characters and throw the rest away because there aren't enough roster slots? 3* transitioner who learned how to reroll legendaries imo.

Something smells very fishy here.

Bowgentle

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Ruinate wrote:

Just found a guy with level 450 Bolt and Banner but only has 34 roster slots. A good portion of them are taken up by champed 2s and most of the slots are taken by poorly covered 3s and 4s. Spend mega bucks on specific characters and throw the rest away because there aren't enough roster slots? 3* transitioner who learned how to reroll legendaries imo.

Something smells very fishy here.

Whales are mammals, though.

Polares

Bowgentle wrote:

Jabrony Geoff wrote:

Ruinate wrote:

Just found a guy with level 450 Bolt and Banner but only has 34 roster slots. A good portion of them are taken up by champed 2s and most of the slots are taken by poorly covered 3s and 4s. Spend mega bucks on specific characters and throw the rest away because there aren't enough roster slots? 3* transitioner who learned how to reroll legendaries imo.

Something smells very fishy here.

Whales are mammals, though.

Exactly. This is why it smells fishy and not like mammals.

PS: I really doubt someone who doesn't have any 4 maxed would have three 5s maxed. There is no chance in hell, you will pull 39 5 covers without maxing a 4 before. This person should be reported ASAP.

8punch

is there a way to cheat without getting sandboxed?

that is like saying is water wet.

after watching the documentary Zero days a couple of days ago, i think everything is possible to hack.

Dartmaster01

Ruinate wrote:

Just found a guy with level 450 Bolt and Banner but only has 34 roster slots. A good portion of them are taken up by champed 2s and most of the slots are taken by poorly covered 3s and 4s. Spend mega bucks on specific characters and throw the rest away because there aren't enough roster slots? 3* transitioner who learned how to reroll legendaries imo.

Yeah, this doesn't sound right. Cheater or not, his scaling and MMR are screwed. Enjoy those 5*s

robertbah

It's not cheating. The dups you got from latest one can be swapped to another color. It's not only easier but the only possible way to fully cover a 5*.

DaBeast911

Ruinate wrote:

Just found a guy with level 450 Bolt and Banner but only has 34 roster slots. A good portion of them are taken up by champed 2s and most of the slots are taken by poorly covered 3s and 4s. Spend mega bucks on specific characters and throw the rest away because there aren't enough roster slots? 3* transitioner who learned how to reroll legendaries imo.

I came across a couple like that Ruinate, very suspicious, especially when Bolt, Banner and BW are maxed and championed.....fishier than a fish market in Boston...

jobob

robertbah wrote:

It's not cheating. The dups you got from latest one can be swapped to another color. It's not only easier but the only possible way to fully cover a 5*.

It's cheating.

Let's think this through...

-To fully cover 3 5*, you are going to need around 300-350 LT pulls.
-If you have a roster of 2-3*, you are almost certainly not earning that many pulls via progression. Let's assume you've done well and hoarded... Gotten up to 50 pulls (generous, I think)
-That means you still need 250 more pulls. So how do you do that? Buy clubs.
-A single buy club will get you ~8 pulls: ~2 LT from heroic packs, and 140 CP (25 points per pull)
-So that comes out to 31 Stark buys, or about $3100... Which, granted, is possible that we have a lot of newbie whales...
-HOWEVER... 31 Stark buys = 620,000 HP. So are we really assuming that these people spent NONE of that on roster slots?
-If you make this assumption, that means that they were willing to throw away ~270 4* covers in pursuit of the three 5*, when all it would've cost was a small percentage of their HP to keep them.


...OR
-They built up 10 - 20 LT.
-They found an exploit that let them open, and either "re load" previous data and re-pull each one, or found a way to re-use the tokens.


...Occam's Razor tells me they are cheating.

...BUT
-The most damning piece of evidence? The whales all know each other. There are a limited number of buy clubs, and if you're new and buying 30+ Starks, then people from the clubs will recognize you. A lot of these recent 3 5* rosters are complete unknowns.


I would say the odds of most of them being cheaters is 95+%

Quibbles

-The most damning piece of evidence? The whales all know each other. There are a limited number of buy clubs, and if you're new and buying 30+ Starks, then people from the clubs will recognize you. A lot of these recent 3 5* rosters are complete unknowns.

This. For those of you who have never done a buy club, and I expect that's 90%+ of the people on this forum, it's hard to believe, but we really do all recognize each other. Bigger whales are buying a stark a day or more in some cases. And we see each other all the time in the same clubs. It is extremely rare for someone to show up with multiple champed 5* without participating in or being recognized by buy club members. Even if the person did not buy in the club, we would have noticed as their MMR brought them into contact with the champed 5* MMR level. So while it's certainly possible to go from zero to multiple champed 5*, we will see the progress along the way, either in buy clubs or in placement in events.

Fightmastermpq

Orion wrote:

Ludaa wrote:

I'm seeing lots of rosters sprout up with max Banner/Widow/Bolt where they once had much less. I'm aware they could've hoarded, but my spidey sense tingles. Anyone else seeing it too?

I've seen people say they were spending their CP hoards on Latest Legends because it's easier to max out 1 of 3 5*s rather than spreading them out across 7 different 5*s. It helps that Black Bolt is really good.

So I wouldn't jump to the cheater label so quickly.

I feel like someone willing to hoard for that amount of time would recognize how weak banner is and wait just a little longer for him to leave legends before opening? Maybe not.



Regardless - if you see something fishy, just report it. Let demi determine if the account is legit or not - based on the reasoning that jobob laid out it's not too difficult to spot a cheater.

Sm0keyJ0e

One other point to add to jobob's list is that some of these are in public alliances surrounded by very weak rosters. So if they were doing in-alliance buys, which is certainly possible if they are unaware of buy clubs, I would expect those surrounding rosters to be reasonably strong as well since the amount of spend (without a buy club) would be astronomical. But there are some well-known rosters with max/champed 5*'s in public alliances with 2-3* transitioners. Just doesn't seem likely.

jobob

Not only that... But I assumed 140 CP from a buy club for the calculations. If you are doing an individual buy, it's 7 CP. So instead of ~8 pulls, you get ~2.

So you are looking at something like 120 Stark purchases.


Not impossible, but so highly unlikely that I would encourage everyone to report these guys. As pointed out, key signs are: only LL champs maxed. No or very few maxed 4* or 3*. Few roster slots (less than 75 or so). Member of a public alliance with mates whose rosters do not add up. If you're wrong, D3/Demi can easily verify it.

Mr_Sinister

Can I start a GofundmyMPQroster page and have all you kind, smart, funny, attractive, generous Wales contribute? I'd probably only be a dolphin after but would still be great.

carrion_pigeons

Not that I condone cheating, but isn't this to the personal benefit of legit whales? It expands the number of people you can see, and they're all specifically exempted from truces.

Fightmastermpq

carrion pigeons wrote:

Not that I condone cheating, but isn't this to the personal benefit of legit whales? It expands the number of people you can see, and they're all specifically exempted from truces.

No.

jobob

Fightmastermpq wrote:

carrion pigeons wrote:

Not that I condone cheating, but isn't this to the personal benefit of legit whales? It expands the number of people you can see, and they're all specifically exempted from truces.

No.

And certainly not in the cases where it's a roster that's cheated up to 550, and is a difficult win for even a whale. Plus, I would think it's a good way to get "legit" whales to stop spending if they see people cheating their way to a roster that whales put a lot of actual cash into.

dsds

Question... Could these people have sold all their 4* or 3* so that their scaling is different? Doesn't scaling take into account the strongest 3 characters. So if they had 2 5* And a bunch of 2*, then their scaling must be significantly lower?

However this still does not explain the lack of roster space. I mean you could technically not use the 70-90 extra roster space and people wouldn't be able to see them then? But why would anyone do that unless they knew that scaling also considered covers and not just levels?

The third guess is that maybe the developers are putting in these players to entice others to spend Or to put more players in for the 5* mmr? Like those fake dating site where employees were posing as women