Open letter: Cheaters in Inventor's Fair

jetnoctis

Dear @Brigby and developers,

During this second run of Inventor's Fair, a number of players have noticed that 2 well-known cheaters are in the gold tier bracket in which I happen to be competing. I provide a screenshot* below which shows the two cheaters in question occupying positions 1 and 4 (henceforth referred to as "number 1" and "number 4" respectively) on the ranking at that particular moment in time:

*Pic removed. The names have been noted and been sent to Brigby.*

Regarding number 1, I have personal experience in Quick Battle where I have seen this player make impossible gains in very short amounts of time, and I know that many in the community have sent evidence of this to the support team a multiple number of times. Regarding number 4, I do not have personal experience but others in my coalition have corroborated this player's cheating and also sent in support tickets with evidence. The fact that number 4 does not have a perfect score is possibly because he has realised he is being monitored and has therefore lost one point to look "real."

The reason I bring this issue to you is twofold.

Firstly, cheating is becoming increasingly rampant in the game. As many of my fellow players have expressed at length, this is ruining the game for everyone. Already we are at the stage where it is nigh on impossible to get first place in QB anymore, and now it's becoming more difficult to even get top 10 because there are more and more cheaters showing up. Cheating has now also begun to poison events and everyone is starting to take notice.

Secondly, these two cheaters will most likely mean that at least two people will have their chance at getting the exclusive card Aetherworks Marvel stolen from them (and this is not even discussing cheaters in other bronze, silver, gold and platinum brackets). Please note that behind most of the high scores in the screenshot above were made by honest players. We have spent hours and hours discussing the best deck building strategies to meet the objectives, we have shared our experiences with our coalition mates and wider community and we have helped and supported new players (and received help in turn) to have a develop our capabilities in playing this game and having a chance at winning this amazing prize: we have dedicated significant time, money and emotion to this game which we love. In short, we have helped nurture this game to flourish, thrive and expand. So to be facing a situation where all of that will most likely be destroyed by a bunch of players who think nothing of hacking the game and hitting an autowin button, is just absolutely disheartening and heartbreaking. Some of you might be thinking, "Get over it, it's just a game." For some of us, this game has become a passion and the intricacies and the mental challenges it provides us, the amazing opportunities it has given for us to meet new people from all over the world, to make friends and to form a beautiful community is something that I believe is worth being vocal about and fighting for. Even if I personally lose the last three matches I have coming up, I will continue to fight in any way I can for all honest players to have the opportunity to get the prize that they have worked so painstakingly hard for and which they so justly deserve.

Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest is on the verge of entering the door to its impeding demise. Unfortunately, it is clear that one foot has already made the stride. @Brigby and developers, I ask, no, implore you to please consider the honest folks who sustain this game and who breath life into it every single time they play. I know that you are currently aware of this problem and are working on solving it, and for that you have my deepest gratitude. However, I ask that you act now where you can to minimise the damage that this state of affairs is having, by awarding the due prize for at least this Inventor's Fair to those genuine players whose true placing in 1-5 in bronze, silver and gold, and 1-25 in platinum will be ripped from them by these incorrigible cheaters. I say at least because Aetherworks Marvel seems to be a one-off exclusive, highly coveted card; there will not be another chance to attain it (until the next set, and then with a very low chance), unlike there is for other events affects like Terrors in the Shadows or Nodes of Power. I am no expert but one avenue to achieve this might be to look at which players have had multiple support tickets filed against them for cheating and then awarding the correct top prizes to however many players missed out based on how many cheaters are in their bracket. Obviously, shutting down the cheaters accounts and implementing a way to stop cheating instantly is the ideal solution, but for now, I beg you to please at least set right this grievance suffered by those of your community who are being wrongfully affected.

I thank you for your time in reading this and I sincerely hope that you will consider my plea worthy of action. If there is anything further that I or we as a community may do to aid in this cause, you will always find us ready and most willing.

Yours faithfully,
jetnoctis

GrizzoMtGPQ

@brigby when the **** are the cheaters going to be purged? You have the list and the evidence. Do **** something already!

THEMAGICkMAN

Ok devs, it's been what, 15 minutes since this was posted, and there's already more than 12 upvotes. If that doesn't show you we need something done about this, or at least word that something is being done then I don't know what will.

Edit: in the time it took me to write this (less than 5 minutes) there was another 3 upvotes.

Second Edit: 35 now, only a few hours after it was posted

Third Edit: ummm. 59???? It hasn't even been 12 hours???

jetnoctis

Just got this from a fellow community member. The current platinum leader board, showing a long time, well-documented cheater in first place with a perfect score:



*Pic removed. The names have been noted and been sent to Brigby.*

Nitymp

jetnoctis wrote:

Just got this from a fellow community member. The current platinum leader board, showing a long time, well-documented cheater in first place with a perfect score:
l]

Was going to add this. Maximum 24 places for legit players to get Aetherworks Marvel. Less however many cheatsrs are currently sandbagging games.

GrizzoMtGPQ

Devs,

Purge their accounts! Do something! Say something!

buscemi

What are we going to doo, man????

Monkeynutts

cheating? in what way?

Quick match scores?
perfect scores in events?

Monkeynutts

What your find is the devs won't respond because they don't have the stones to address it.
Many things need to be looked at and nothing is done. Event and Quick Match cheats.
The drop rates thread has seven pages and hundreds of upvotes across it and not one post of apology or "we are looking at this". Zero response and acknowledgment is what D3 are good at.

Bottom lines is they got your money, why should they bother?... and your keep playing through it....

buscemi

Monkeynutts wrote:

Bottom lines is they got your money, why should they bother?... and your keep playing through it....

Behaviour like this is grounds for a full refund. If you've spent any money, get on the phone to the app store or play store and demand your money back. The guy I spoke to at google could not believe that they'd sold me a Transform card and only now, 4 months later, ironed out all the bugs necessary to have it work without crashing the game. The behaviour of D3 is well below standard, and Apple/Google have shown some sympathy recently in returning customer's money to them because of it.

jetnoctis

I wanted to make this public to everyone. As predicted, cheaters in positions 2 and 5 have knocked me and the next player out of top 5. See Screenshot 3 in the link below.


*Pic removed. The names as well have been noted and been sent to Brigby.*


The effect this is having on me is that, at this present moment, I don't think I will even be bothered to play the Terrors in the Shadows coming up - and I'm the sort of person who has not missed a single event since BFZ's release.

Lagartha

Monkeynutts wrote:

cheating? in what way?

Quick match scores?
perfect scores in events?

It was first very noticeable in Quick Battle and now the known cheaters from there are taking top 5 in events.

Glenghis

The conspiracy theorist in me would say that some of these cheaters may actually be employees / associates of the developers and are doing this in order to get P2P gamers to part with even more of their hard earned cash.

If a P2P player misses out on something they really want often enough they will always bite the bullet and purchase it (or at least purchase a more realistic chance of obtaining it).

Nitymp

Lagartha wrote:

Monkeynutts wrote:

cheating? in what way?

Quick match scores?
perfect scores in events?

It was first very noticeable in Quick Battle and now the known cheaters from there are taking top 5 in events.

Not only that, but they finish their last charge of refreshes in about 2 minutes, ensuring that they win the time based tie breakers too

ZW2007-

...cheaters in game got removed as quickly as threads about cheating get removed from the forums.

Theros

Cheaters will always cheat. But the game's economics does encourage some cheating too

For a temporary fix, they should stop rewarding mythic at individual level and/or group level, but award more crystals or extra bb instead.
Top performers can use the crystals to buy bb or open the ones they earned.

Nitymp

Gone in 60 seconds! (this thread)

jetnoctis

We remember.

James13

Come off it.

5 or 6 of the current posts are solely about cheating as an issue. Threads that were removed either link to the cheats or were encouraging people to do it. That's fully appropriate to remove.

For people who want to eliminate cheating, try to not promote and spread it so much, ok? Some truly ham-fisted attempts to talk about it probably managed to create more. And griping about taking down links and promotions of cheating while pretending there are not dozens of other threads discussing the topic is really quite annoying.

EDIT: This apparently got merged in from another thread, so doesn't appear to make sense in context here, sorry. Referring to a separate thread and context thereof about "disappearing" threads about cheating.

Astralwind

I have never bothered to play competitively so I am not affected by these cheaters.

Just want to say, if these cheaters are not taken out quickly, more and more people will get discouraged and eventually leave the game.

So management of MTGPQ, please listen to the honest players here. This is kinda like crisis management now.

bk1234

MADAFAKA wrote:

Cheaters will always cheat. But the game's economics does encourage some cheating too

For a temporary fix, they should stop rewarding mythic at individual level and/or group level, but award more crystals or extra bb instead.
Top performers can use the crystals to buy bb or open the ones they earned.

The best short term solution to this is to take individual rewards out of PVP coalition events -- and run the reward structure like PVE. At the very least, there is less of an incentive to cheat as an entire team would have to do it in order for it to make a difference.