WARNING TO ALL ARENA PLAYERS:
The arena is heavily bugged and wildly unbalanced. The arena allows all sorts of hacked accounts and people using exploits or alterations to keep competing. If you join the arena leagues, you will INEVITABLY run into these types of players, forcing you to lose leagues without a chance of winning.
TO ANYONE USING ANY TYPE OF CHEATING
Please do everyone a favor and do not cheat in the arena. Let's give everyone a chance to enjoy their competition. Also, do not spread your knowledge on cheating methods. This tactic has already caused a lot of grief among fair players. If you are using any kind of exploit with side-effects in the arena (no info on this in the nest!), make sure to play only a single set of objectives each day. That also means that you should not grind the arena when you can accidentally achieve objectives.
The first group is resetting their daily objectives on a regular basis to achieve a high level of points in a short time to the disadvantage of all fair players who don't know how to do this. The known methods for this should be tackled with the upcoming update. People who use this type of cheating gain thousands of points many times per day. They can easily reach from 50000 to more than 100000 points per day.
Score/winnings alterations
The second group is able to alter their scores or winnings directly. (input/confirmation needed) These players have been able to get their scores upto millions within hours of the start of the league, making it impossible to overtake them. This is probably done either by directly altering their league score or by altering the wheel prizes.
Image by @richruppImage by @steven-dunn-5648 (notice the picture of GenteBoa compared with the other image, they're one week a part)
Another glitch in the scoring causes even negative numbers to become the highest scores.
Image by @espejo123 (These guys think that higher numbers are better but they don't seem to understand why it doesn't work...)Image by @thumper316 (This one understands the concept of negative numbers)
Hacked accounts
The third group is using hacked accounts so they become unbeatable. Most of these accounts have an xp level of 99999999 or similar so you should not get these as an opponent or in your league. However, some have managed to get their flag or their birds to have health and/or damage in the billions. These will cause a certain lost battle if you accidentally start a fight with them.
Image by @espejo123Image by @strategia55 (there are so many numbers, you can't even read them anymore)WARNING
We now have also seen several opponents with slight modifications which give all birds 30-50% more attack power. These are VERY DIFFICULT TO SPOT. Therefore make sure you check really carefully before entering a fight in the arena.
Images by @tigerussell, very well spotted. Note the 30% increase in all attack power
How to identify cheaters
First of all I want to explain who are NOT cheaters. If you see scores which are slowly rising to high numbers (with only a few hundred every 10 minutes or so), this means that someone is working REALLY HARD to achieve fair points. This is called grinding. A normal progress for grinding the arena is about 6000 total points per day for a normal player. An average hard grinder can get upto around 9000 points per day fairly. Some excessive players who have nothing better to do can achieve upto 20000 points by grinding throughout the day ( check out the post by @silleck at page 5 of this thread).
These kind of people deserve any winnings they can get.
Another thing which needs to be made clear is the following. The leagues start at the same time around the world. However, objectives are being reset at midnight local time for everyone. This means that some players already get a new set of objectives within the first hours after a new league starts (Europe). This means that it is normal for someone to achieve a score of around 12000 within a few hours of the start of a league.
Now onto the cheaters. With the information above in mind, this means that to positively identify a cheater, you have to keep a really good eye on your league scoreboard. People who regularly jump ahead with many thousands of points throughout the day and achieve let's say 30K in a few hours are most likely resetting their objectives.
Obviously it is easy to identify anyone with 100000 points or more. These are all cheaters, most likely using objective resets. We have not had any reports from anyone at all achieving these kind of scores at the end of a league. This is simply not a reasonable amount of points. Therefore, any player with 100000 points or more at the end of the league can be assumed to be a cheater.
Anyone with a NEGATIVE score is altering the scores directly or modifying their prize wheel with negative values.
Finally, you can run into hacked accounts during battles in the arena. You have to ensure to check each and every opponent bird AND banner for any incorrect numbers. Be aware that some modifications can be hard to spot. In this thread there are some screenshots from altered birds with only a few hundred added to their attack damage. These WILL take you out.
What to do with cheaters
If you have confirmed a cheater in your league of any kind, we would ask you first of all to report this player to Rovio. This is done best by creating a support request at https://support.rovio.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
By now Rovio will be fed up with all these cheater reports, but that’s the point isn’t it?
Make sure to include a screenshot of your scoreboard or the altered birds. I recommend you look for instructions on making screenshots for your particular device. This screenshot should be included in your support request.
Most cheaters we have seen are repeat offenders. Therefore it can make sense to post a copy of your image in this thread as well. This way everyone knows who to look out for. To do this, you should use your album (it’s in your profile. If you don’t have a profile here, create one) to upload the image and you can copy-paste the embed code (med) into a post in this thread.
Avoiding cheaters
To prevent cheaters in your league you can try to start a new week's league as late as possible, while still allowing yourself enough time to achieve the first set of objectives of the day (let's say half hour before midnight). This should give you better chances of getting a fair board for the next week. This is based on the principle that most cheaters are quite fanatic about their scores. They will likely be playing as soon as the new week starts to get high scores. This means that they will be dominating the boards which are formed in the first hour of the leagues. If you dare, you can even try to join much later in the week. The odds are however that you will end up with a score which is several days behind, with some missed objectives. On the other hand, some have reported having a (nearly) empty league board with a high to guaranteed upgrade to the next level.
Check out the "Join the Birdsnest Arena leagues!" thread for all details on how we determined this.
Dealing with hacked and outclassed opponents
The leagues for xp level 41 are a complete mess. The difference in rank between the different players can be enormous so for many players it becomes impossible to just beat other players' birds. Although this has nothing to do with cheating, it does prevent many lvl 41 players from achieving their goals in the arena fairly. This is what we call an unbalanced fight. For you this means that you’re dealing with an outclassed opponent.
Here's some tips and tricks for dealing with these kind of line-ups which we do not consider cheating, since you don't gain anything on anyone else's expense, except for fair or sometimes even easy fights.
1- Make sure you always check the opponent xp level, mastery, strength and health, including the flag to ensure you're not dealing with a hacked account.
2- If you are dealing with a hacked account or an opponent which is several mastery ranks ahead of you, restart epic to force a new line-up.
3- If you cannot get a fair line-up in the arena, restart the game and as soon as the island map is fully loaded, enable airplane mode and load the arena. While the arena loads, it is trying to generate a line-up from the servers. Obviously this fails so the game ends up with a generated line-up. When the arena is loaded, simply disable airplane mode and start your fight. You can do this many times in a row. All you have to do is enable airplane mode again before accepting the prize on the wheel. Re-enable in the arena lobby and you are good to go again.
The computer generated line-up can be recognised as "unnamed player" and mastery bars which are empty. (Ie mastery 8 with no half-filled bars) All birds will have the identical mastery level. This line-up is random and something you should be able to deal with at your level (experience level AND mastery level) relative to the league you're in. Higher leagues and ranks will give you higher ranked opponents.
Reclaiming purchases
What you need to know is that if you spend money on the game and Rovio does something which renders the purchase useless, it is reason to get a refund and you should not hesitate to claim it. Rovio is currently worth many billions with almost no expenses at all. Don’t worry, you won’t bankrupt them.
Several people (including myself) have spent varying amounts of money on the game, from several bucks to many hundreds. I and others have received refunds for our purchases due to changes made by Rovio and bugs after the purchases which caused more trouble than what the purchases bought.
An example, a while ago the mastery system was a lot different. You could buy the master level hats for LC. Let’s say you spent money to get these hats, only to find out that the mastery system has changed so you cannot buy the necessary hats anymore, this is enough reason to get a refund.
A more up to date example. Let’s say you spent money to get in-game items with the purpose to get an edge in the arena. Then you are confronted with all the cheaters. This means that the edge which you should have had is reduced to zero. Plenty of reason to get a refund since Rovio is responsible for dealing with these cheaters.
Here’s how to apply for your refund:
Start by submitting a support request and informing them that you want your money back. Don’t be impolite, don’t get angry or upset, just normal business.
Don’t muddle along with things like “maybe you can give me my money back", “I would consider to asking for a refund" or “If you don’t do something then I want my money back".
Instead, make sure that you state very clearly: “I hereby formally request that you refund my following purchases:" and then list your order dates, order numbers and money values.
Do not forget to explain in detail why you wish to get a refund. For example, “I spent money to gain in-game items which everyone seems to have, so that I can have a chance at competing in the arena. Now I am continuously confronted with impossible scores, undefeatable opponents with millions of health and continuous cheating. This has made my purchases worthless. Therefore I hereby formally request …"
Feel free to copy anything you like, although I would strongly recommend using your own wording. Just make sure to keep it formal so they cannot simply ignore you.
Please report back into this forum thread whether your refund was successful!
