Macro Recorders in-game and support not doing anything

[Luke Stark]

Hello,

because the polish support will not do anything for months now, I'm trying to bring this matter closer to those responsible for the game. You, my dear developers

How is it possible that after 4 months of cheating with program Macro Recorder in GvG on world F ( and many others on polish servers ) that particular guild is not facing any repercussions?

For months seasoned players have contacted support on countless occasions after noticing this particular guild is BRAKING THE RULES.
The only response to this was "we will take care of it" and.......

nothing, zero, the people using it are still using it, just laughing at our faces cause they know they cannot be touched. It might just be the case that one of their players is working for support, would not be the first situation for me in this game.

At the end, I really think You guys are ought to look just at the maps during fights and see for yourself, something is terrible wrong and none of your tools can detect it ( does not mean there is nothing going on, just that your tools are not perfect )

Either take care of the business or just pull the plug on GvG all together.

Please do not say "We will take care of it" cause we all, on the polish server have heard it enough times already. JUST DO IT!

 

[DeletedUser]

would You mind doing some scare tacticts

Actually I don't feel this would be a good approach, nor do I see any benefit from it. It's not fair to send a blanket warning to all players when only a very small number of players are actually involved with this issue. It will only cause undue alarm to those that play within our rules.

As I have said before, I have no right to comment about any other support team as I am not involved with those teams. If someone has clear cases and details of suspected bot/script/macro use here on Beta please contact me with all of the details and I will investigate it thoroughly and do what I can within the scope of my abilities, and pass the rest on to our devs. We are the only test server after all, so it makes sense that we do as much investigating as possible.

Also I see comments that support does not care, and that bug reports are pointless. Just because support can not resolve something you reported immediately does not mean we don't care. Caring is a very different subject than what we are capable of proving and being able to action within the tools and information we have available.
As for bug reports they very much matter, and we fix bugs here on Beta on a daily basis to ensure the game play is working smoothly on our live servers. But it is important to also note that suspected bot/script/macro use is not a bug. It is not a flaw in our game code. It is a suspected breach of rules involving 3rd party software to manipulate player actions in the game.

I know everyone is frustrated about this, but as I have said before this is an ongoing battle that has no simple fix. Each new variation of an app that performs rule breaching actions requires us to identify the exact patterns and develop ways to identify their use. While we of course want to catch rule breaches, we do not want to be taking action with players by mistake who have done nothing wrong.

Anyway, keep up the great feedback Beta

 

[Luke Stark]

hmmm...and not doing anything openly about it looks to me like "ok we will not send a mass PM to all players cause then it would mean we openly admit there is a problem"

and this is not a small issue and if there is no visible feedback from Inno in this matter SOON more and more will start to use it, since why not? You can not do anything about it

 

[Luke Stark]

ps. I hope You understand our frustration, for months now, there has been none visual repercussion for braking the rules, it's just very frustrating to us, the players that follow the rules and most important, some of us payed more or less real life money for this game this is by far the greatest "bug" in this game...

 

[DeletedUser10039]

(This is not a Beta issue, but this post was exactly what I have been saying for ages on live forums)

We have the same issue with a certain guild who can kill every tile, which each had 80 defending troops in each tile on every map in 10 seconds. But support only say they will investigate and that's the last we hear. (we do notice they slow down for a day or two after each report, then they are back to their kill everything in 1 click method again so we report and the process starts all over again). Then they go on global and boast about how easy they take every tile from every guild. This has been going on for over a year to my knowledge but others commentated about them doing this before I noticed it with my own eyes. They also use many alts and push accounts which is easy to spot for anyone to see. They also form Alt guilds to push their HQ around the GvG map so they clear one side, get removed by one of their alt account solo player guilds and land and clear the other side of a map. They get 10,000+ FP's added to a GB from a player in Iron Age on every GB. this list goes on and on.

They can collect from your city at the exact same time your buildings are collectable, irrespective of when you change the collection times to.

 

[Luke Stark]

I think the devs cant do anything about it then when its been going more then a year in your world, ofcourse support team from that particular server has no connection to the guild in question, am I right? ;]

well maybe the we will have to take care of it on our own and play fire with fire

 

[DeletedUser8262]

Hey Luke, do you know if the number of fights are recorded on any or all of the players using the bot/script? I'm just wondering if tracking the number of battles the players concerned have might help. If a guild completes 800 battles over reset and if it can be demonstrated that the majority were allegedly done by a single player surely that might be considered acceptable evidence ??

 

[Luke Stark]

it's not the point of the battle but putting a siege 0.2 sec after we brake a siege this kind of action is impossible by a human since you have to travel with a mouse from one point to another and click it,

this is only possible by using such a program like Macro Recorder, basically they record the movement of the mouse on the screen and then repeat the recording over and over again at inhuman speeds. Having more active fighters during a siege does not help since they use a program that automatically sets as siege

 

[DeletedUser9537]

Online Games all have to deal with this issue. Its a pain in the butt, but also a fact of life. There is only so much you can do on the server end. Though... blocking click and harvest bots should be pretty easy... There are services out there that do a much better job of it.

I play a couple of other RPG games and they use a verification process that has seriously kiboshed most of the cheaters... And no... I do not work for the company I just find it an effective means of stopping the cheaters from cheating (most of the cheating).



I can tell you that at first? It was a pain in the butt because its random and seems to increase with "A Lot" of repetitive activity (like clicking) but once you get used to it? You sort of don't notice it anymore.

And yes, at first the "Usual" complainers complained. But the majority didn't care because it meant a fairer game play environment for them. Sort of like a "Neighborhood Watch" in concept...

All the icons and images are supplied by the Game Developers, and placement is also up to them. But the process is controlled and protected by an outside service. I have never noticed any lag whatsoever, and I am online day/night...

 

[Luke Stark]

I hope out devs read this then

 

[DeletedUser9537]

I hope out devs read this then

It might be an issue of cost vs gain however. These services are subscription services for game developers and website managers and I do not know what they cost to subscribe to. While I think its a good investment in an otherwise profitable game? It may not be worth the investment if in-game purchases have declined to such that the game costs more to maintain then it profits.

The players/ users may not appreciate that, but at the end of the day that is a primary reason the game exists. To make money...

 

[DeletedUser10047]

It might be an issue of cost vs gain however. These services are subscription services for game developers and website managers and I do not know what they cost to subscribe to. While I think its a good investment in an otherwise profitable game? It may not be worth the investment if in-game purchases have declined to such that the game costs more to maintain then it profits.

The players/ users may not appreciate that, but at the end of the day that is a primary reason the game exists. To make money...

I would expect such services to be of most benefit to small or mid-sized companies. Larger companies such as InnoGames would probably be better off developing their own version of verification.

 

[DeletedUser9537]

I would expect such services to be of most benefit to small or mid-sized companies. Larger companies such as InnoGames would probably be better off developing their own version of verification.

Not true A couple games I've seen this in have 1 mil plus players with dozens of active servers. The benefit is that the draw is not on the games own servers but on dedicated servers for this purpose only.

Anyway it's just a suggestion...

 

[Mr. Chi]

The same situation on my server, exist a lot of player with suport counts with army for PVP and because of that many player leave the game

 

[Luke Stark]

well, the same on my server,

I'm guessing not doing anything about this and the whole GvG will bite Inno in the behind soon enough

 

[Cardena]

@i2mcabre I do not think, that such a puzzle would be a good solution for a suspected bot. You do a lot of repetitive clicking in GvG, and such a puzzle would give the other side a big and eventuall very unfair Advantage.

Just because a Guild can take 1 sector in 10 sectors does not necessarily mean they are using a bot. If the guild has 40 fighters, that all are on, I think that is no big issue, with just 2 fights for everybody. (I know there are very seldom 40 fighters at the same time on for most guilds, but there may be one or the other guild consisting of very ambitious players. So that can happen)

 

[Luke Stark]

its not about getting a sector in 10 seconds or less, we all know that this is possible,

it is humanly impossible however to put a new siege under 0.2 second, just because it takes time to get from one point of the screen to another and making at least two clicks with a mouse....

 

[Prom d Exolandia]

That sort of bot which scan all the GvG maps is easily visible from inno servers. I don't understand why they let do that.
A wellknown external website was doing that job of scanning GvG maps for registered users to send notifications on siege.
We notify inno thru our staff, the inno response : it is allowed... Finaly the website officialy stopped that bot cause inno tell him to scan not too frequently.

I know it is not easy to complicate the bot job without complicate honest player game... But i think it is easy to popup when a player loot another at the second of end of production. It's also easy to add delaying or popup for fasters players on GvG.

And in the idea of allowing everyone to play the GvG, it would be good to put handicaps to guilds too successful (for example rejecting some of their actions)

 

[Cardena]

….
And in the idea of allowing everyone to play the GvG, it would be good to put handicaps to guilds too successful (for example rejecting some of their actions)

Inno should do something against bots, and that scanning the GvG map for sieges with a bot is allowed, well I think, that should not be allowed.
But a handicap just because a guild is successful? No.