Developer Update: Monday Edition! | Forums

[Cauhalem]

Dear Steve,

Since you're recognizing the problem with Hyperdrive and such, I think it is fair that people suffering from it to be compensated. What about adjusting Legendary prizes to shortening the breach between different categories in the chart (by *increasing* the rewards of the people in lower categories, so everybody would be satisfied)? I mean, if you (and the rest of the developer team) truly take *responsibility* for the problems the BFU created (right before the Legendary season ended!), I'm sure you'll be in a good disposition to make up for those problems to the affected players (not only apologising and promising it would be better *next* time). If not, at least you could explain us why you are not disposed to compensate us that way.

About the cheaters' problem, I have found comments of members of the developer team either saying a) "it's an important problem to be fixed" but without providing any effective way to do it for a long time now or, b) "it's not a problem at all, trollsban solved most cases, you're experiencing something else" despite the fact that the experience of many players coincide *exactly* with the description of the effects that the different cheating methods claim to have on their sites —besides, your decision to move things server-side make no sense if trollsban is really effective, and also reporting cheaters would be rather otiose (in which case it would be stupid to suggest to report cheaters in the first place).

To be honest, I don't trust your word (nor of any other developer) about you trying to do something effective about the problem, since you have done nothing effective for a long time ago, and the position about this problem of the developer team as a whole is unclear, inconsistent and opaque. So in order to be proactive, I suggest this:

i) each report we make might be marked with a word saying whether it was a cheat a bug, or what have you. That way your process of considering our reports would be more transparent and it might increase our confidence in that you're dealing with the problem,

ii) You can talk a little bit and in a general level about your anti-cheating methods (or the difficulties you find applying them) in the live streams, in such a way that it won't compromise their implementation. That way we would know you're actually working on fixing the problem,

iii) you could be less dismisive of our complains of the problems in the ubisoft's and reddit's forums, recognizing perhaps that (among other things) your methods to *detect* whether there was a cheat operaring or not (less alone, to block it) might be defective (even very defective) —or alternatively, you can explain why your methods are reliable (or, perhaps, perfect!). That way, people wouldn't be so frustrated with our interaction with *you* (the dev team) while reporting these problems (there is enough frustration with the cheaters and bugs already).

Since you were so kind to respond to Geerti95's complains (understandable complains from my perspective), I hope you extend me the same courtesy.

Thanks in advance,

Cheers

P.S. Ideally, a non-generic response from you would be nice

[Geerti95]

For all people who dont believe me yet, just came across a level 11 energy hacker in the 49 rank.
Spamming out troops and suddenly being able to push at the end and send in a lightningbolt at my newkid.

Name REAPPI1337
Here steve go do something usefull instead of making up excuses and ban this energy hacker.

[laplonge61]

Seriously Geerti, stop whining on every single post, it's really boring to always read the same thing over and over. If you hate the game, just quit, period!

For me, last update with the matchmaking fix did the trick, I can finally play against people of my level and I can finally re-enjoy the game. That new bundle of bugfix is one more step to a healthy game and the report system seems like a good idea ( I hope that the one in charge of dealing with those report will have a bonus on his paycheck \o/)

Keep going on !

[Geerti95]

Maybe i wouldnt have to if they fixed the cheaters like 10 months ago when everyone was telling them and they denied it until today.

I would love to but with that many blatant cheaters I cant.

They havent really done a good job at all but introduce more bugs and deny all the problems.

[Hanmann]

Hi Steve,

Glad to see that you guys are continuously trying to improve the game. Still some way to go, but step by step I suppose. As a Mystical player, I'm hoping with every developer update that there is some more news on fixing Purify and Powerbind. Nothing on that this time, but hopefully in the future.

The main thing for me in the update is that you are trying to give people a reason to go into legendary and not stay in the silver shield ranks. As a professional sandbagger myself, I can certainly appreciate that, because at this moment I felt that the benefits of going to legendary did not outweigh the potential frustration that comes from it. I have just gone to legendary myself a couple of hours ago, but only because of the end of season rewards. And already I feel the frustration. That being said, I don't think that your plans will achieve this.

Improving the lockers is nice, but we don't know how much they will be improved. And if you can't win matches, the improved lockers don't mean much now do they? It's better to reach your daily locker limit in rank 45, than only be able to open half of the locker limit in legendary don't you think?
The fact that we don't know how the lockers will be improved brings me to the second, and for me the main, issue, that half of the players will remain in legendary. But how many players is that? For the top 500 this won't make much of a difference, but let's say you are around position #2500 and you estimate that there are 5000 players in legendary. You now have a choice, lose matches to drop position so you aren't stuck in legendary or defend you position. If you drop in position you get a worse season reward. But if you stay you can end up at the bottom of legendary and not be able to do the next event. And if you want to be dropped from legendary, you can only guess below which position you have to sink.
And finally the reward for making it to legendary in the first week. Some mats and a possible Visitors card is nice, but it in no way compensates taking 2 or 3 times as long to collect pvp packs and opening lockers for the next month.

My time is limited and I can't afford to spend all of it playing Phone Detroyer. Just as an example, I have about 20 minutes during my lunch break to play and in that time I have to get my pvp pack otherwise I have to wait another 5 hours before I can try again. If being in legendary risks preventing me from doing that and the rewards aren't compensating this risk, I won't. This is the reality for people with 9 to 5 jobs. What I feel that should be done is:
1. Have a limit on the amount of people in legendary, let's say 5000 people. This amount could also start low and increase during the season. Every day you kick the people who are below this back to rank 50. 5000 is probably close to the amount of people in legendary now, but the difference is that you have the choice of losing matches to get kicked out of legendary if you want.
2. Give daily rewards for being in legendary to compensate the additional effort for opening pvp packs and lockers. Doesn't have to be much, just some Cartman coins or materials.
3. When you do a season reset, create additional silver shield ranks to avoid legendary players flooding the top silver shield ranks. For example, after season 3 reset, create ranks 51-55.

This was my way too lengthy feedback on the update, but quite frankly after getting the nerf on my Purify and Powerbind cards and now the news that I might be stuck in legendary for the next month unless I deliberately lose positions in legendary, I'm not all that happy. But I see that you are busy with it and hopefull that it will all work out after another xx updates or so
And to be clear, I do enjoy the game. If I didn't, I wouldn't bother giving my feedback, so keep it up!

[Cauhalem]

Here is another suggestion for the cheating problem (or the perception many of us have of it, anyway): Make the energy bar and the energy spending of *both* players visible in every match, so if we record (or take pictures of) the match we can check ourselves easily whether there was energy hack at play or not (and, if trollsban is really effective, the number of reports would significantly decrease, and so will decrease the amount of work you have to do to analyse such reports). (Each player's bar can be colored differently to avoid confussion, for example, my own energy bar might be blue, and my opponent's might be red). Just and idea.

[jc322011]

Will you miserable faux at least acknowledge thar DK Clyde is broke as duck. Already ruined my mystic cards , DKC was already not working sometimes. Now its 50/50 at BEST.

Im sure if it was adventure deck yall be fix it in a heartbeat

[Bobothemonkey88]

Hey, Geerti. If you check out the feature section of the update above, you'll notice that we have implemented a stronger anti-cheat that should stop people from "energy hacking". It's the first feature I mentioned.

"Improved Anti-cheat: this feature has been drastically improved, and the first phase of moving critical components of PvP server-side has now gone live."

We are taking strong strides toward increasing PvP stability and curbing any attempts to cheat. Players who are found to be cheating have their accounts permanently banned. We have decided to make the significant time and resource investment required to move all critical elements of PvP serverside, and that process will continue over the coming months.

Do you want me to start naming cheaters steve..?
Oh wait you would rather let them roam free and ban me for shaming those poor poor cheaters.

It would show some reall bolls if you actually showed some respect for people that reported 100s of cheaters instead of keeping up the constant bashing on people daring to name hackers or do something about it.

It seems you rather keep bashing on us and give your mecha timmy cards away to random plebles on your streams..
That will teach those hackers... ban all those people reporting them.

All my 1000s of screenshots.. all the other reporters with videos... with legit pictures... all fake steve.

Once again, that's why your most used word on redit is "banned".

Stop justifying cheating.
They are out there.

tons of level 11s in legendary rank and people spamming fireballs and lightning bolts.

I think by now everyone knows they are out there, if not it will get way worse because all big reporters gave up.
Keep bashing on legit reporters steve.

The usual reply you always give:

It's your connection..
It's a bug..
It's your phone...
YOU YOU YOU YOU

Sure Steve, that's why this never happens to me or anyone else, sure.
I don't have a button that makes my zap go 10 times faster.
I don't have a button that makes it so I never have to wait and can keep spamming out troops.
I don't have a button that makes my ike kill a level 4 pirate ship timmy in one hit at level 4.
Neither do I have a button to make cyborg kenny a 2 energy cost unit.

Where can I find those Steve, is that part of the glitch you are talking about?

That's usch a coincidence that i always disconnect just after I defeated a push or the enemy took one bar down and tons of units start to show up?!

Stop the lies.
Show some bolls, speak the truth.

40-46 is full of them.

Yes it is and level 15-16s that derank. Which is just as bad.

[SimpleJ32]

Here is another suggestion for the cheating problem (or the perception many of us have of it, anyway): Make the energy bar and the energy spending of *both* players visible in every match, so if we record (or take pictures of) the match we can check ourselves easily whether there was energy hack at play or not (and, if trollsban is really effective, the number of reports would significantly decrease, and so will decrease the amount of work you have to do to analyse such reports). (Each player's bar can be colored differently to avoid confussion, for example, my own energy bar might be blue, and my opponent's might be red). Just and idea.

The problem with that is it will change the whole dynamic of the game if you can see your enemy's energy. I also believe there would be a lot more people against this idea than for it.

[Cauhalem]

The problem with that is it will change the whole dynamic of the game if you can see your enemy's energy. I also believe there would be a lot more people against this idea than for it.

I'm not sure how much the dynamic of the game would change. Why do you think the *whole* dynamic would change? Surely, some strategies rely on ignoring the remaining energy of the other (like using Dougie when its calculated that the opponent's energy is depleated, for example), but most strategies won't. Also, the game would be more competitive and fair that way, since people won't have to memorize each card energy value and the regened energy over time in order to play more efficiently (people with bad memory or not so familiar with the game would have more chances).

Also, not sure if people in general would be against it, we would have to see what other people think about it and why they think that way. Anyway, at least it is worth discussing this and other ideas and put them to the consideration of everyone.

An alternative suggestion: make a small temporary registry of the most recent game with data such as the energy spending (the time a card is dropped, what card is used, its energy value, the enery regeneration speed, and so on) that is accesible in game. That way, after having a suspicious match we can immmediatly check whether it is accurate or not, and if it is not and we have evidence of it (screen captures, video, etc.) we could report with more confidence that there was indeed cheating. Also, I see no point in the devs not making public the results of each report they check. How making public that info would harm anyone? If the supposed cheater was not cheating, his name would be cleansed. If he was cheating, he would be banned frome the game anyway (according to the explicit "no cheating tolerance" policy of the devs).

Anyway, I'm not sure that these ideas would work, but I prefer to explore new ideas than keep the status quo in which we trust or distrust the dev team only based on our personal experience with the game, with no other clear objective criteria. The devs' testimony is not very useful in that respect since they usually just make assertions with no public evidence to back them up. We either trust them like they were immune to error or incapable of deceiving (perhaps, unintentionally) or distrust them (perhaps unfairly) based only on our subjective experience. There is no objective standard to which we can hold them accountable if we need to. They don't seem to be even worried about it, since they have no interest in implementing a system so we can check if there are indeed just a few cheaters (as they claim), instead of outright denying that there are way more than a few —completely ignoring the experience and concerns of many of us.