PVE Cheating?

Zappa

Playing Shard 4, CL8 in webbed wonder.
Have boosted grocket, and was 2nd on the leader board at end of day 1 first clear with a sub 30 minute 4x node clear (I wish I had recorded who was ahead of me on that board).
Come day 2, after my near optimal 3x final clear and grinded a 3 point node approx 10 times. Finish day 2 first 4x node clear in 25 minutes.
On the overall leaderboard in my bracket is someone with 407 more points than me:
1) Suspect 34931
2) Me 34524
3) Guy who was also grinding nodes 34517
4) 34499
5) 34481

As you can see, the values after 1st place are super tightly grouped. And yet this guy has the equivalent of ~136 more 3 point grinds than me. For 1 extra mordo cover? I find it hard to believe. He is currently sitting rank #7 on the current sub (I am at #1), which indicates he probably clears more slowly as well and will have worse refresh timing points. Seems pretty suspect. Is it worth reporting for possible botting?

Milk Jugz

Hey!! That's my bracket!!! I'm not that close to the top though.....

Anyway, could s/he have been more optimal on the first sub? You said near optimal. 

Zappa

near optimal was i was 6 minutes off from timing the end of my final x3 clear coincide with the end of the sub. So I grinded instead, which likely put me over the optimal maximum without grinding.

Ducky

Tapping is a thing. 1st means a lot to some people, regardless of covers.

Werewombats

I'm the number 3 in that bracket. Finished clears 8 minutes early so that's why I hit the 3pt node a few times. I was shocked as well when I saw that guy with those points.

shardwick

I'm in that bracket too. I started late on sub 1 so decided that I'd just play for progression and finish early. With a couple minutes left I checked the scores and saw who was in first. That person has done that before and honestly I didn't put it past them since Webbed Wonder is heavy on goon missions. I mean I need a couple Mordos to champ him but replaying missions that much just to get them is pretty insane to me. 

robertbah

He must overgrind the 4* essential nodes repeated hours ago. I believe that he must did this 2 hr before the end of sub. Well, it seems that he loves mordo so much. Let him have it then. Lastly, to counter overgrinder, the only way is to overgrind yourself. It's boring and stupid. D3 should fix this nonsense asap.

vinsensual

So please correct me if I'm wrong; the highest point node you can tap is 3 points.  But at what point does the time spent multi-tapping a fight 100+ times make it worth it?  The time it takes to do all that means the player wasn't clearing optimally doesn't it? 

Or is the player getting all the multi taps before the clears on one of the middle nodes then doing the rest of their clears optimally?

Pants1000

Heh, I'm in the same bracket.  It's not cheating so don't bother reporting it, but yes that player often hits 3 point nodes hundreds of times to beat "optimal" grinding.  I've seen him do it in previous events too.  

You can ask the devs to put a stop to this.  It wouldn't be difficult, all they would have to do is make all nodes drop to 0 like the easy ones.

Phumade

Personally thats the reason why they don't want the nodes to decay to 0.  They specifically want a way for people to beat a optimal player with LOTS of suboptimal work.  Thats part of the reason why some of the tests decayed to 20, some to zero.  Specifically to find a sweet spot where optimal strategy could be defeated with late game grinding and force players to actively monitor scores.

If the person is putting hours of extra work in,  thats fine and its incumbent on players to figure out a new strategy or put enough roadblocks to make the process unfeasible.

If you think the person is using an automated testing script and suite to automate then process, then feel free to report the player.

But the strategy of 1pt and 3pt nodes is intentional.

JSP869

I almost fall asleep doing my clears, and that's just tap-tap-tapping for one hour, and the matches are against different opponents so there's at least some variety. I cannot imagine replaying the same match over & over again for several hours. If someone is doing that, then they absolutely deserve whatever prize they get from it. But if they're botting, using a script, etc., then they should be reported. Problem is, unless you know them personally, there's no way to be able to say with any certainty that they are botting.

shardwick

Phumade said:

Personally thats the reason why they don't want the nodes to decay to 0.  They specifically want a way for people to beat a optimal player with LOTS of suboptimal work.  Thats part of the reason why some of the tests decayed to 20, some to zero.  Specifically to find a sweet spot where optimal strategy could be defeated with late game grinding and force players to actively monitor scores.

If the person is putting hours of extra work in,  thats fine and its incumbent on players to figure out a new strategy or put enough roadblocks to make the process unfeasible.

If you think the person is using an automated testing script and suite to automate then process, then feel free to report the player.

But the strategy of 1pt and 3pt nodes is intentional.

D3 has already said that they changed the way that points refresh because some players were replaying some nodes thousands of times and that it was an unhealthy way to play the game. I think a good fix for this would be to limit how many times a particular node can be played. 6 wins gets a green check, 10 wins gets a red check.

Zappa

Pants1000 said:

Heh, I'm in the same bracket.  It's not cheating so don't bother reporting it, but yes that player often hits 3 point nodes hundreds of times to beat "optimal" grinding.  I've seen him do it in previous events too.  

You can ask the devs to put a stop to this.  It wouldn't be difficult, all they would have to do is make all nodes drop to 0 like the easy ones.

What makes you so sure it is not cheating? If this single player is doing this repeatedly and grinding hours on a 3 point node, how are you so sure it is not him just running a script at the beginning of each desired pve?

shardwick

A little over 2 hrs to go and said player has already started their final clears. It'll be interesting to see where they end up.

Stick

You can't be sure either way, that's why you need evidence before you can claim they're cheating.

acescracked

Guilty until proven innocent!

Phumade

shardwick said:

A little over 2 hrs to go and said player has already started their final clears. It'll be interesting to see where they end up.

Well there you go.  If he beats you in the sub, then his optimal path is better than your optimal path.  

One issue that many many people misunderstand is that optimal scoring does not always mean shortest time.

shardwick

Except that as I already said in a previous response D3 discourages this type of play because they see it as unhealthy.

Pants1000

He got first in the 2nd sub by about 75 points, and after 3rd sub initial 4 clears he has 67,777, while the rest of the top 10 is between 67,050 and 67,300.

I finished a little early and watched his score go up 3 points at a time, so he's definitely overgrinding, and it works for him.

If he only does it for an hour or two per sub, I see no reason to think it's a bot.  

Phumade

shardwick said:

Except that as I already said in a previous response D3 discourages this type of play because they see it as unhealthy.

LOL Why would 2nrs of extra play be considered unhealthy.  There are lots of people and rosters who avg 2+ hrs to do a clear.

The people who were hitting thousands of nodes were using scripts and test automation suites to score those points.  Anyone who accepts that the D3 did this because its "unhealthy" is drinking the cool aid.  The move towards the 5th clear and 40 wins aren't steps made with the intention of reducing actual human interaction.

shardwick

Speak for yourself. I hit 40 wins fairly quickly and only did a few at a time. Play a little before bed, play some in the morning, play ddq, play some here and there throughout the day. Yeah, I hit 40 in no time. And honestly you can't really play the human interaction card when D3 just implemented new easier scaling. Well on 8 my max leveled enemy would increase by 7 but on 7 it would absolutely plummet to like 245 I think. Easier enemies for slightly less rewards? Yeah, sign me up.