Cheaters

[Bubbley]

@silleck you may be right but I know that like mine your score advanced slowly. I sent Rovio time interval screen shots which showed giant strides. Hence their reply. I just hope they solve the problems soon or suspend the game.

[burbman]

Moved up to Gold League this week, so far my leaderboard looks pretty fair. I was expecting it would be like my first week in Silver league with four cheaters and zero chance of advancement. Definitely will be keeping my eyes open before starting battles, but I can deal with this. Might even decide to make a run for top three again. I see a lot of negativity in this thread, and understand the frustration that can sometimes occur. My approach is to stay at least at this level, and build up my banner with gold level items through the GPM. If it looks possible to move up, I will go for it, if I run into lots of cheats, I will just meet my dailies, and stay high enough to maintain my place. I trust that Rovio is working on making things better, but understand that there will always be some jerk with so much time on their hands that they will find a way to cheat at a free game without any real reward.

[petekeeling]

I’m not playing epic anymore. Got a few guys in my league with 10 on every headgear, crashing and cheats getting 1.2 billion points

[Paladin]

I’m sure they’ll fix it as soon as they can. We are due for a major update in the next 1-2 weeks. I’m guessing it will be bug fixes and more chronicles caves levels with the level cap increased to 45.

[Immortal… Larry]

@petekeeling, Check the first post of this thread. It should be of some help to deal with hacked accounts.

[cosmo2503]

I am nt sure what all players can do to make Rovio these problems with cheaters. I hoped one with reseting daily objectives in arena was solved as someone yesterday told it didn’t work for iPhone…Unfortunatelly it works :-( I amnot going to abuse this fact but it makes me sad knowing that I won’t be able to advance to higher league then gold as I planned to be there again at the end of this week, after bing put down from gold to silver last week.

@amslimfordy do you have any more info about this from your conntacts with Rovio?

[AMslimfordy]

We can always delete this thread. Otherwise, I’m not sure what else to do.

@cosmo2503 Nothing that I’ve heard.

[cosmo2503]

@amslimfordy I am not sure about closing this thread. I sent link to this thread to Rovio in my ticket support. Hope they are observing these comments. As for info from Rovio I hope you will get something soon.

[Bubbley]

I know absolutely nothing about computing but surely Rovio can suspend the Arena while they fix it. Why don’t they if nobody is spending any money. Certainly cheaters have no reason to buy anything. I guess other players are still spinning the pig for upgraded items and still renewing banners in the vain hope that suddenly cheaters will vanish. If every stopped spending it would probably be fixed overnight.

Sorry should read everyone stopped spending ..

[AMslimfordy]

Replies that were created in response to the cheater have been removed; we deemed they were too revealing. The thread in its current state is how we are going to operate.

[Bird Leader]

Rovio is aware of this problem and will fix it. This thread should remain open. I would rather have people talking here than somewhere else.

[t_russell]

Looking at the player distribution numbers it seems that combined Platinum and Diamond percentage in week 12 will be 6.09% of the players. Since I would guess the number of cheaters will be higher than that it would seem there will be no legitimate way to get there unless Rovio does something quick.

[petekeeling]

It’s safe to say the first players to make platinum will be cheats. This isn’t a problem that can be fixed, any game that can be made can have software to cheat it. The PvP itself is just a bad idea. Angry birds friends is the same now as people have every sling and infite weapons to use. I’ve got 3 stars in every Rovio Angry Birds game. I was level 41 on Epic and level 7,8,9 birds. The PvP stopped interesting me week 2, I don’t play it. I may start Epic again from scratch to see how far I can get with no money this time. I’m also going to check some laws with legal advice, because Rovio refused to disclose the odds on the Pig machine, now they may be in their right to do that (though I doubt it), I’ve spent loads on that machine to not get anything back, which seems like gambling. I can afford the £80+ I spent but guaranteed there’s kids on here gambling on the pig machine with real money. I don’t like the scammy nature of it. What happened to honest games where its the same for everyone? Where you buy the game and you’ve got it, done!

[Immortal… Larry]

@petekeeling @MVNLA2, Both of you are showing an interest in the odds of the gambling part of the game. I would actually suggest you start a thread on this. I believe @petekeeling is on to something with the odds in the game.

Okay, it is in-game money which you can earn by playing, but since you can also buy this stuff for real money and all mechanisms involve gambling to an extent, it may actually have some merit to call upon the gambling laws…

What do you guys think, get a separate thread on this? I’d be happy to get involved… With a bit of luck there are some legal students active in the community who would like to dive into this…

[petekeeling]

@larry I don’t know how to start threads as new to the nest. But sounds good. I can’t believe the Pig Machine is random and if so it won’t play fair for all players, meaning one person could get the same item over and over (Which is what happened to me a lot) I had the same two items repeated for a good £30, I complained to Rovio saying I want refunding, as if this was any other service in life that charged me for something theyd already sold me there would be hell to pay! To which Rovio gave me a bag of “lucky” coins, to which they either gave items I already had or one time for 200 coins at the ‘triple chance of set items’ in 15 minutes 200 coins didn’t give me one set item, not even one I already had!!! There must be people that have the opposite happen and have loads of luck on it, if it is random and in that case it isnt fair. The only way it could be fair is if everyone has been ripped off on it like me!! (I doubt)

[t_russell]

@petekeeling I’m willing to bet the only players to make it to platinum or Diamond will be cheats.

[Immortal… Larry]

@petekeeling I’d be happy to start a thread on this, but I won’t be taking charge of it. If you start it I believe you should remain active in it to make sure all info assembled is being compiled somewhere. A place to do this is in the first post. Check out the first post of this thread or the mastery one by @MVNLA2.

@MVNLA2, what do you think, would you wish to maintain a thread on all the odds and assemble some legal stuff around it? You’re already doing a whole lot of statistics around many subjects, why not consolidate it all in a gambling topic so that everyone may get some idea about the chances of pay-out when spending real money on the game?

[Immortal… Larry]

@petekeeling In response to your other point about set items, there have been several exploits which allowed people to get daily set items. I think most people have gotten most of their sets complete because of this. I also spent money on the game, but mostly to buy the chili, gold cauldron and gold anvil. I haven’t spent any of that on the gambling part of the game since I am already aware of that side of the game being completely useless. I have also used the mentioned exploits for most gear like almost everyone else. (see the bugs and golden pig threads as well)

[t_russell]

@larry Buying LC is like buying tokens at a video arcade. they have no value outside the establishment and neither do the rewards received for them (game plays). Epic is a game and not a lottery or a sweepstakes. Those laws do not apply since there is no purchase necessary and the rewards have no value. The sale of LC is a sale of entertainment value.

[Immortal… Larry]

@tigerussell, true. However, there is a certain gambling effect which offers the potential of getting specific in-game results which are determined by chances, which in turn are programmed by the game developers. You can buy in-game currency to gamble on this, but the devs will not share the odds.

I can imagine this to be a shady area in the sense of legality… It may warrant some in-depth discussion.

[burbman]

@tigerussell – I will take that bet! Two days into this week’s tournament, I was in first place by a couple hundred points in a fair gold league. Then events happened and four members of my league began cheating. So I will stay in Gold for one more week. My expectation is that next week I will get fewer cheaters, and I will be able to move forward to Platinum League without ever having cheated. Not sure I will ever make it to diamond, but I am optimistic.

[t_russell]

@larry I liken it to Shakespeare in the park. Free for everyone to attend with an optional area with supplied seating for a fee. You are free to sit in the grass and view the performance which may be entirely to your liking. Or you could pay the fee for a chair and the actors may be terrible. The choice is yours to pay or not and the result is entirely based on your point of view. Either way it was simply for entertainment. YMMV

[t_russell]

@burbman Thankfully none of my leagues have contained cheaters at all. I expect to move to Gold this week as long as I don’t draw any challenges I can’t complete. But percentages being what they are. if only 7% of all players cheat then they will be the ones in platinum and diamond at the end of the tourney. Legit players might pop up now and then but the chances of being knocked back down are astronomical. If the percentage of cheaters is less than 6% then there is a chance for some people to make it. Since we don’t know how pervasive the cheating actually is we will just have to wait and see.

[MVNLA2]

@larry @petekeeling — I will have to think about a new forum on odds in Epic. There is already a fair amount of data in the Golden Pig and Mastery threads, but it might make sense to combine it all in one place. I haven’t updated the main post of the Mastery thread recently, and someone else started the Golden pig thread.

@tigerussell — Might be just me but I didn’t understand the table that you posted above. What are the rows, and what are you calculating and how? Might just be that I stopped playing the arena during the first week.
Also, are you a lawyer? I think we really need a lawyer to weigh in on the legality of the gambling aspect. I can’t remember knowing for sure that anyone on ABN is a lawyer, but I would think there must be some.

[senigami]

@amslimfordy I understand you want to remove some of the content that would show the method of cheating, but seriously, what is the point of posting in a forum if all your posts get deleted! I only had 1 post that may have hinted at the method and you deleted every one of my posts which had nothing to do with that. Thanks a lot. I’d rather take my discussions elsewhere if that is how things are here.