About cheating (the other part of the story)

The rockett

HoundofShadow said:

One of the top players said in the forum before that they track T10 placement in scl 10 pves religiously. T10 in SCL 10 are largely dominated by the same two or three alliances. And majority, if not all of them, has 550 or close to 550 roster. When a player with only one 5* Shang Chi champed gets T10 in the first bracket, it's going to stick out like an eyesore. 

Anyway, I need to wait until my next clear start before I can send video proofs of me not cheating. 

And it has been an interesting experience getting flagged for cheating. I didn't know they would boot you out of your alliance and prevent you from joining a new one.

Yea I am that guy that does this because I saw too many things that don’t add up.  There are still a lot of things and cheats that are open the dev team doesn’t have the time to close, people power to close or won’t listen to get closed.  But hey, it is what it is.  We will have about 6 more 5* deals come out before the weekend is over.  

The rockett

HoundofShadow said:

Yes, but those are bottom tier supports.

Out of all three R5 supports, one can only be equipped to Captain Marvel, the other Spider-man and last one Vanessa Fisk for villians. Vanessa Fisk support goes well with my Thanos and no one else.

The best supports are probably those aps gain at start of turn but I hardly use them. Even though those supports look good to you, but I use only 1-3 of them regularly for competitive purpose.

I have a total of 2-5* supports…. That’s it.   I won the first one, Taskmaster, during the anniversary season when it was released. So I have a total of 1-5* support that was pulled.  Your alt has 3-5* supports.  Totally seems fine though.  

And for those that don’t know me or my roster, I am not hard to find, but have 4-550 5* and been around a long long time.  

LakeStone

Just wanted to pop in to share that sometimes the game will auto flag a cheater for whatever reason that may look off and if that happens, please reach out to customer support as that is likely what may have happened if you experienced this without cheating.  The CS team does a pretty good job at responding to most inquiries for false flags and unflagging them in a reasonable amount of time.  

If you suspect anyone of cheating, please send the player name to customer support and they will investigate.  Thanks!

bbigler

LavaManLee said:

bbigler said: 

I’m thinking the battle would go like this: get the winfinite rolling on your 2nd or 3rd turn, prioritize building up combo points using mostly red while leaving some purple on the board.  By the time he has 10 combo points, the first 650 should be down.  Then simply do critical charged tile hits on purple, which pays for itself.  The other 2 enemies should be down in seconds.  

Would I be correct, then, that you actually haven't done all of the SCL10 CN nodes?  Don't minimize BRB/Pol/1Jugg until you do.  Not all of them are straightforward and within 2/3 turns your entire team (including a champed SC) could be gone if the board is not good.  Sometimes it's nice to be slow and steady but guarantee a win on that 5th try of SCL10 CN.

I’m at rank 112 currently, so I haven’t done any of them.  I realize their match dmg is very high, so you either need defense or a quick kill to win.  An unlucky AI cascade is frustrating, I’m sure.  But slow and steady would be tiresome and seriously hurt your pve rank.  I would come up with a reliable team but fast team for that node

HoundofShadow

I can't control what rank support I get from those tokens gotten from Puzzle Gauntlet. RNG is afterall RNG. There were players who drew two or three newest 5* from a single 10x pack pull in reddit and I think the odd is 1:266 for 10x pack. And there are players in this forum who drew 3 or 4 5* within 10 pulls. 

I don't think the number of R5 support I've is something to be envy of. Rather, the quality of Support is more important. It's like a player with 550 Okoye and 550 Apocalypse being jealous of another player with 550 Wasp, Kingpin and Bruce Banner just because he has one more 550 than you. I would rather trade away all three of my R5 supports for something that would be more impactful like R5 Baton or R5 Quantum Realm for my Shang Chi. 

Anyway, the next time I play SCL 10 will probably be next month. Since you track T10 placement in scl 10, you should be able to count from your record the number of times my alt plays SCL10 for T10 placements.

And I want to say that the speed of CS's reply is really fast. Everything was resolved in 24 hours 6 minutes. Anyway, for that particular account, it has been cleared of cheating, and I hope the dev close all the other real cheating cases. 


Edit: since you guys in line have a list of suspected cheaters igns, can you pm me those list just in case my main account made it to your list? 

Bad

I'm glad CS has made a good job.
And like it's mentioned above in all gacha games the trend is that characters usually get outclassed awfully. 
I like that a character like SC that needs all the attention and decisions from the player can be at the top and I wouldn't like that changing.
This game needs more characters like SC which really activate players brains.

HoundofShadow

Can Rockett pm me the list of suspected cheaters? The reason is that if my alt account got flagged by you guys, chances are my main probably got flagged by your side. And that might explain why I have seen comments from top players about cheaters not being banned for years. 

The above is based on my hypothesis that your criteria for whether a player who got top 10 in scl 10 (first bracket) did it via cheating or not is based on the level of Okoye or Apocalypse and specific support ranks that they have. If a player has baby champed Okoye/Apocalypse like 450 and they got T10 consistently, your side will flag them for cheating and you'll file a report with CS. If my hypothesis is correct, the chances of my main getting flagged by your side is probably 80%.

Bad

HoundofShadow said:

. And that might explain why I have seen comments from top players about cheaters not being banned for years. 

That could mean a change on the way CS now handles with cheaters.
SC was released a year ago, so those years before effectively top players could have been detected true cheaters and CS doing nothing. 
The way CS treated you account, without a warning or asking for proofs before banning it means that they trust the denounces.
Possibly  the forum and posts could had been the trigger for that happening, like the change on the board and the dim screen for the hack speed issue (speculating here).

HoundofShadow

I might have gotten T10 in scl 10 with champed Colossus before. But I can't remember if he was boosted or non-boosted when that happened.

DAZ0273

If you are paranoid about this why not just say your IGN here @HoundofShadow and then the big alliances will know who you are and hopefully take you off their list if you are even on it?  Surely all this covert sharing of other players names will just lead to more potentially unjust bans?

Also having a few rank 5 Supports is entirely possible without cheating or whaling. I have a rank 5 Taskmaster Sword, Avengers Quinjet, Avengers Tower and Vanessa Fisk (thanks to last Puzzle Gauntlet) and I got them all through luck via tokens from PG. I haven't even levelled Vanessa fully yet, she seems a bit lacklustre. I also have some 4* ones such as Arc Reactor. I don't trouble anybody in PvE so nobody is gonna accuse me of cheating I guess but it is entirely possible to obtain these things just plodding along.

HoundofShadow

I'm not paranoid but I'm more curious to learn how these top players determine cheaters. There are other clear cut cases of cheating which they have successfully caught, but I believe they got many false alarms.

Let's say if their method or criteria of flagging out cheaters is somewhat flawed, then it means that they could also potentially flagged out other players erroneously. If they continue to use that same criteria, then I think it might be problematic. 

Based on the last Q&A with the dev in 2018(?) about cheating, the dev did mention there were also a high number of misunderstanding about "cheating".

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/comment/781200/#Comment_781200

We investigate every report that comes into CS about cheating. We appreciate the reports and they've directly helped us shut down several exploits over the years. A large proportion of reports are mistaken (two common causes of this: 1) some players think they know about all the buy clubs and don't recognize players who use a different set of them; 2) sometimes players bank a whole bunch of currency or tokens over the course of many many months (sometimes years) and spend them all at once). We don't typically respond to the individual reports with specifics, because that could reveal information about how cheat detection works. Put that together and that allows the perception of cheating and its impact to be larger than the reality. I'm not sure how to fix this, and not 100% sure we should - any amount of cheating is a big deal and we're working to get it to zero and keep it there, so I'd rather deal with mistaken cheat reports than not hear about an issue.

DAZ0273

It is already problematic if any player not known to the big alliances is potentially going to be labelled a cheater for breaking up established leaderboards. And with all due respect to the big A's, they have a vested interest in targeting anybody who breaks up the established order so accusations of cheating can also be used just to eliminate potential new threats. As per the above quote - "A large proportion of reports are mistaken..." but even temporary suspension of an account might succesfully dent a players progress.

It makes me happy to be plodding along at my own pace than have to deal with a big ol' swamp of politics and mis-trust in what is after all just a game.

bbigler

I’ve noticed that people in “high end” positions develop a big ego and think that their way is the best and only way to do things.  So anyone that challenges their position is attacked.  It’s immature and unfortunately a part of human nature.  I don’t think their ego could handle you placing as well as them.  Maybe they thought you cheated, maybe they didn’t, but they clearly attacked you.  

I’ve also heard of 550 players complaining about the 5* boosts because “lesser” players can beat them, which takes away their prowess.  Now, not all players with 550’s are like this, but some are.  I’ve seen this immature behavior in other areas of life too.  It boils down to pride, which is thinking you know better than everyone else and wanting to be above them.  

SuperCarrot

DAZ0273 said:

It is already problematic if any player not known to the big alliances is potentially going to be labelled a cheater for breaking up established leaderboards. And with all due respect to the big A's, they have a vested interest in targeting anybody who breaks up the established order so accusations of cheating can also be used just to eliminate potential new threats. As per the above quote - "A large proportion of reports are mistaken..." but even temporary suspension of an account might succesfully dent a players progress.

It makes me happy to be plodding along at my own pace than have to deal with a big ol' swamp of politics and mis-trust in what is after all just a game.

I have to agree that what is being talked about is a dangerous precedent. It makes it kind of scary to luck up and do well if one has not been given the seal of approval. 

JackDeath666

It's weird as I find my level 550 Shang slower than my level 550 Okoye + Hulk which in turn is slower than other people with 550 Colossus. I have no idea how you are doing so well with just a 450 Shang. High end PVE players (which I am certainly not) are all about optimal clear orders and clear/grind times. I just can't understand how you can beat people who have that knowledge down perfectly after years of practice, particularly when you rarely play SCL10. And why do all of this with your alt not your main roster? It just seems odd, although CS have cleared you, so that is reassuring. 

On another note, I wouldn't assume top alliances are out to get you or anyone else. If anything they'll be looking to recruit someone who performs so well.

Bubba3210

I agree with JackDeath666. This just seems odd to me for a few reasons based on Hound’s posts. 

The alt account is the one that spends money on the game. He invested in the one typically used less instead of the one used since he started playing. The alt is not the one covered in blood, sweat and tears from the start. Players invest in their primary account. I don’t want to hear the f2p excuse as the reason. Why would anyone do that?

The alt gets a top finish and gets flagged. Was it a boosted Shang Chi event? No mention but it would certainly explain the placement.

Does the alt typically place higher than the primary account? If yes, it’s time to flip those two. I can see why people are questioning the posts especially given more information than the original post. 

HoundofShadow

Maybe I can throw back this question: there are 550 Okoye + iHulk that takes about 16-18 minutes to do 3 clears (T1-T3??) and then we also have 550 Okoye + Hulk that takes ~25 minutes or more to clear (T10 or outside of T10). Since all are using 550 Okoye + iHulk, then why are there such a big difference in clearing speeds? Logically, the difference in their clearing speeds should be ~2-3 minutes instead of 10 minutes. Sometimes, I can see players with <500 Okoye clearing faster than 550 Okoye. 

550 SC will be able to get T5 and potentially T1 if you're willing to spam boosts. This is based on my experience with using boosted SC. However, it depends on the pves itself. I find that SC can be fast in some pves and slower in some other pves. Other factors like familiarity with SC and AC are important too. If you're spending 2 seconds to make a move with this team, you're in trouble. 

The reason why I didn't mention my main is because my alt got flagged. If my main got flagged, this thread would be about my main.

My main gets T10 as well and occasionally better. That's the reason why I want to know which IGN is under those top players' radar. If those top players are using levels of Okoye/Apocalypse as a guide, my main would very likely to be in their list of players who they think cheated but not banned.

I think I've gotten T10 with Colossus using my main as well but I can't remember if it was him boosted or unboosted. 

SourCream

Don't think anyone is out to get you. I don't know why top alliance is a point of discussion anyhow. First off, how you know who or whom reported you ? Also, one reply in thread should weight more than the rests.. stating "auto-flag" is a possibility. You shared a bracket with 999 players , sure you can be an outlier .. can you really blame anyone questioning the possibility of cheating; whether automatically or manually ? 9 4* and 3 5* supports if I counted right is quite impressive for an account with 450 days of play. Yes, I know who are you based on some comments and informations given in current thread. Also, I'm that not competitive, don't care whether you first or last place.

StanleyBurrell

JackDeath666 said:

It's weird as I find my level 550 Shang slower than my level 550 Okoye + Hulk which in turn is slower than other people with 550 Colossus. I have no idea how you are doing so well with just a 450 Shang. High end PVE players (which I am certainly not) are all about optimal clear orders and clear/grind times. I just can't understand how you can beat people who have that knowledge down perfectly after years of practice, particularly when you rarely play SCL10. And why do all of this with your alt not your main roster? It just seems odd, although CS have cleared you, so that is reassuring. 

On another note, I wouldn't assume top alliances are out to get you or anyone else. If anything they'll be looking to recruit someone who performs so well.

That is actually surprising to me as I’ve heard big Chi is really fast. Speed is small piece of the overall puzzle though. 

On a different note the woe is me attitude about 550’s is silly. Are there some truly petty 550’s out there? Absolutely but most of them could really care less about you. I find it relatively easy to spot a suspicious player but I really only look at the very top of the leaderboard and I’m sure I could be wrong.

On the topic of boosted 5’s. I could care less about a small player hitting me, it’s the slog of all that health that I hate. 

HoundofShadow

I'd like to say that if my account is indeed auto-flagged by the system, they surely took a long time to flag my alt. My alt has gotten T10 in other slices (I think) before as well and it wasn't flagged, and that got to be weeks ago.

Given that top players track who the top 10 in scl 10 pve are religously and they (from diffferent slices) communicate with one another on suspected cheating, naturally, they would "flag" my alt account faster than the system can do so. Simply because, my alt account is truly the most outstanding out of all the giants in T10 in the first bracket.  It's impossible to get T10 with 450 SC, but i did it. That's a red flag.

I imagine when they first saw my alt getting T10, they'd probably be thinking that it was using hack. Also, having 3 R5 bottom tier supports seem to hold a big weightage in determining whether I was cheating or not. Personally, I think using the number of R5 support to determine whether a player is cheating is seriously flawed. 

All, if not at least 2, of my R5 support was gotten from the special token which gives a 1:40 chance of getting R5, instead of 1:100 from Advance Support. You might think that 1/40 is a very low chance. It's low but not as low as 1:100, 1:266 or 1:166. Over in reddit MPQ, the mod has banned lucky pull posts of players getting 4* cover on their first pull from spicy vaults because it was getting too common.

I've spent $400 usd on my alt account and have been playing competitively in both pvps and pves. On top of that shards and milestones also sped up my progress. And I've 44 champed 4*. 

In the other thread, bbigler has already champed 3 5* and 22 4* in 180 days by spending only ~$660. Even he concluded that it's much faster to progress compared to 2018.